Forum: General

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QGwsRazhvA

Above is a video of a BFM engagement between an F-16 and an A-10. In the last seconds of the video the Warthog driver prevails against the Viper.

This begets the question of why that happened. Did the Viper driver make a tactical mistake by allowing the fight to favor the A-10, or did the Warthog driver get lucky just this once?

Or, even sneakier, is the A-10 a closet dogfight champ that the USAF is playing close to the vest with?

Simply curious
Laughing

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Depends on the Pilot ... The Hog will easily turn inside of a 1000 meters

Lots of things to consider. ROE, current fuel load, sunlight direction, pilot orientation, acft configuration, etc... That's why we have wargames in the first place. Not to see who wins, but to see what parameters were involved during the kill and to learn from them. War is never pretty. It's always a game, like chess. Take advantage of your opponents mistakes, but then said opponent learns a valuable lesson.

My guess, is that the Hog driver is just a better pilot. A superior pilot who knows exactly what his/her aircraft can do will be beat a superior aircraft almost every time.

I immediately recognised it as the Lomac (Lock on: Modern Air Combat) music theme.. So that's where it's from!

bjr1028 wrote:

My guess, is that the Hog driver is just a better pilot.

This is actually two A-10’s versus one F-16 from what appears to be probably a canned 2v1 defensive DACM (not 1v1 DBFM) setup.

The maneuvering starts when the F-16 (Bandit) shoots a heater, probably at the A-10 (Mojo 2) whose HUD you’re looking through. This A-10 is number “two” in the flight and may be a student or “upgrader” of some sort, fairly early in the program.

The “lead” A-10 (Mojo 1) calls for a defensive maneuver by the A-10’s. Number “two” A-10 is in a left turn initially and "lead" reminds him about his defensive options.

The “student” A-10 then pulls up high to maneuver counter offensively as the F-16 does a canned switch to the A-10 leader, who, after one reversal and some wandering around ("let us come around left here") to help out Mojo 2, tells Mojo 2, “you should have an entry there.”

The “student” then does a decent job of converting from high to low to an offensive position on the F-16. Training objective achieved.

This all assumes the original heater didn’t take out Mojo 2 to begin with.

Students are rightfully proud of anything they can get on their gun camera film. But context is everything.

OL

Don't get in front of a Warthog... EVER! Doh

Well, the HOGGY is a beast, and with the wingset up, i would imagine, that it has a pretty solid turn rate, and with its weapon array, mainly the greatest gun EVER for any aircraft. lol NICE!! I beat up on all kinds of jets, using the warthog, inace combat 6, yeah its not the most realistic,but the flight characteristics, are almost right on.

Manfred Von Richtofen said it best:

"It's not the crate, but the man in it". Wink

Then again, it is always best to stack the deck when you can- providing the circumstances...

as a famous Navy pilot(forgot his name) once said:

"Credibility down, kill ratio up". Twisted Evil

I remember my dad telling me that when they went from f-4s to f-16 they had a pilot that could go up in the f-4 and whoop up on the guys flying f-16s.

As everyone else has said its the pilot not the plane that makes a difference.

It's not just about the pilot or the plane. It's the situations and the conditions too.

Thats what im saying i shoot down f-22's all the time in ace combat with the A-10 lol.

OUCH!...That must have hurt...

OL is correct...it's a canned training scenario, and judging by some comm miss-speaks from #2 he is fairly inexperienced which probably means they’re just trying to show him some sight pictures. Per the threat rep, it is also pretty likely that the F-16 is a “mil-power only” bandit, which takes away the Viper's best game plan vs. the Hog...going vertical. Many folks like to talk about the Hog's small turn radius (and it is) and how great of a BFM machine that should make it, but it cannot maneuver vertically (except downward) which is a HUGE disadvantage.

Yep, definitely a student sortie, 2v1 vs the viper. Clearly this was canned and the viper had some sort of cuffs that were meant to create a protracted engagement. If this were an ACM engagement with two F-16s, I'd be embarrassed that the engagement took so long before we/they were able to kill whomever decided to tangle with the Viper. Lots of extraneous comm between the two pilots, too, which further reinforces the theory that this is a student/young wingman training flight.

That being said, just like with any aircraft, the day you show it no respect is when the guy sitting in it's cockpit outwits you and guns your brains out. It's all about maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses in the heat of battle.

I fought a week of ACM vs the A-10 guys from Willow Grove right after 9/11. They didn't cuff us on the first day, but by the end of the week they had us at mil power and in a 2000' altitude block at the merge. Still was pretty fun flying, though. I got in a slow-speed scissors with a hog for about 30 seconds, and it took all I had to keep him from getting behind me.

Forum: General

BFM Question-how a Viper lost to an A-10