Forum: Air Power

I know the "Pugachev's Cobra Manuever" has been discussed from time to time. Yet, does anybody have a good reliable source that either Supports or Discounts the value of the Tactic in the real world of Aerial Combat?

F-16.net Sponsor

It was the airshow public and then the western press to give it any importance and first to speculate its aplication to war tactics. Its a myth we created and then the russians carried for publicity purposes. And oh boy did those assumptions back then been wrong. You can still read them today on many publications (just as is the cancelled Su-37 and stuff like that) re-preinted over the years.

A Cobra compromeises speed and inititive and does little to avoid an ordnace shot at it. Todays targeting systems have no problem with it at all.

It's merely a 'circus trick'. And, by the way, the Raptor can do it just as well as the Su.

If the Cobra compromises speed and initiative then so does turning. Dogfights aren't all about energy, otherwise winners would be decided based upon who could fly at their maximum L/D (no more than a few G's).

If somebody's on your 6, in an oversimplified case, a tight 360-degree turn might put you on their tail, but it also means your wings have to generate more than 6 times your bird's momentum in impulse (assuming constant velocity). Yes, impulse. Wings don't do any useful work in a turn (no energy), but they change a jet's momentum. And it may take several turns to get where you need to be.

A Cobra could accomplish this with less than a sixth of the impulse of a 360-degree turn.

And yes, there are the helmet-mounted sights and HOBS missiles that nullify a lot of the dogfight tactics, but all else being equal, there is a place for the Cobra in combat. No pilot would be wise to use it at every opportunity, but that's true for any maneuver.

squirl wrote:

If the Cobra compromises speed and initiative then so does turning. Dogfights aren't all about energy, otherwise winners would be decided based upon who could fly at their maximum L/D (no more than a few G's).

If somebody's on your 6, in an oversimplified case, a tight 360-degree turn might put you on their tail, but it also means your wings have to generate more than 6 times your bird's momentum in impulse (assuming constant velocity). Yes, impulse. Wings don't do any useful work in a turn (no energy), but they change a jet's momentum. And it may take several turns to get where you need to be.

A Cobra could accomplish this with less than a sixth of the impulse of a 360-degree turn.

And yes, there are the helmet-mounted sights and HOBS missiles that nullify a lot of the dogfight tactics, but all else being equal, there is a place for the Cobra in combat. No pilot would be wise to use it at every opportunity, but that's true for any maneuver.

The problem is that aerial warfare isn't 1 vs. 1. The plane that performs a cobra becomes a sitting duck for any wingmen flying around, and even in a 1 on 1 situation, an astute pilot will maintain enough distance to counter it.

The mistake is to assume that an airshow maneuver is also a tactical combat maneuver. Fighters have done rapid aileron rolls during airshows for years, but nobody equates that to a combat maneuver. Instead, it demonstrates roll rate. Fighters such as the F-18 do very slow, very high AOA passes along the showline, but it is not a combat maneuver. It demonstrates the aircraft's controllability at very low speeds and high AOA. The F-22 does a tail slide during it's airshow, but I have not heard anyone say that is a combat maneuver. It is done to highlight the Raptor's impressive controllablity at negative speeds and very low altitude.

For some reason people have lost sight of the objective of the Cobra maneuver in the airshow routine. The object was not to demonstrate some new tactical move, but rather to demonstrate the very impressive handling qualities of the latest (at the time) Soviet fighter. The engine inlet design, engine fuel control technology, and non-FBW flight control technology that permitted this handling at low altitude were simply remarkable at the time. I was an F-16 IP at the time, and when we first saw the tapes (VHS back then!) of the Cobra, we were blown away. Neither the F-14, F-15, F-16, or F-18 were capable of that kind of carefree handling. While we didn't expect to see an airshow Cobra maneuver in a dogfight, what it did tell us is that in a slow speed, close in knife fight, our potential Soviet opponent would be a formidable adversary.

Well, I've heard several sources dicount the tactic as being useless. Yet, I've seen hardly a direct quote from any Western Pilots or from other reliable sources???

What do you call the post above you???

Salute!

Lemme see.......

You are closing on the bandit and he pulls up sharply to a severe AoA and slows to 60 knots, hpoing to spit you out. Then he uses his cosmic helmet sight and hoses off a heater. O.K. That might work.

OTOH, the trailing Viper sees this manuever and goes vertical and his wingie has a stalled strafe tgt for guns or his own heater. Hmmmmmm......

Go look at the Harrier use of vectored thrust for a similar tactic. It's neat, but if it doesn't work, then you are toast. Mav did this in "Top Gun", and it worked once. Only once. The problem is you can't plan on doing this every fight unless the gomer behind you is clueless, or doesn't have a wingie.

I like the extreme AoA that the Hornet can achieve, but I'll take the Viper any day for sustained turn rate plus energy retention, and we've had a great thread about this before.

Gums sends ....

Hey, snakehandler - chime in here!!!!

Gums wrote:

Lemme see.......

...I'll take the Viper any day for sustained turn rate plus energy retention, and we've had a great thread about this before....

I think Gums just said, (in less complicated terms) Lots of specific excess thrust in a light airframe.

IE - big, powerful motor squeezed into a small body with wings!

Cheers

TEG

Does it improve the chances of detecting an enemy and/or does it decrease the chances of the enemy detecting the plane performing the cobra? Does it improve the position of a group of planes vs a group of enemy planes? Does it allow a lock to be broken or a missile dodged? No to all. It's a stunt.

Gums wrote:

Mav did this in "Top Gun", and it worked once. Only once.

Wellllllll.....actually........twice. Once with Jester and the other with the "MiG-28" in the heroic final furball.

It was always my impression that if you were 1v1 with the guy and he did try to pull this off, and you DID blow-by, you'd have so much more energy than he did allowing you a slew of options while he was blind and trying to recover his wits. Extend and re-enter the fight in a manner of your choosing to put him in the 9M or even the Slammer envelope. Go vertical and get lost int he sun (if it's out) for a hi-lo pass. Or just bug out if you couldn't play anymore.

Meteor’s phrase, “carefree handling”, says it all about the significance of these extreme types of maneuvers. Demonstrations of this kind of maneuver speak to the confidence pilots will have to concentrate on fighting with the machine rather than keeping it under “control”.

BFM-wise the older fighters were definitely not “carefree”. Loss of control accidents were quite prevalent in the stick and rudder fighters. There were a few pilots in every fighter squadron who were actually apprehensive of hard maneuvering. There were also those fearless aviators who got more than they wanted out of their machine, some of which were able to recover.

Notable examples of “uncarefree handling” were:

The F-100 had nasty adverse yaw tendencies. Engine-wise, I’ve seen flame come out the front of another guy’s intake in daylight when the J-57-21 afterburner was abused.

Recovery from a spin in a clean F-105 was highly unlikely, however the turning “hard” option in the F-105 was generally wisely avoided anyway.

The F-4 also had significant adverse yaw tendencies. In addition, a misapplication of the flight controls at very low speed often resulted in the inevitable departure from controlled flight, not all of which were recoverable (unlike the A-7). When you think about knife fighting in a phone booth, the F-4 used an entire call center.

Going from the F-4 to the F-16, the Viper was relatively “carefree” except for the early AB recycling restrictions and the little stab on the block 10's.

The thing about the Suhkoi’s and their flyability in extreme situations is that the pilot probably doesn’t have that little voice in his head saying, “can I get away with this?”

OL

(Mav only did a portion of the cobra, maybe a "cob" or a "bra"?)

Salute!

yeah, forgot that Mav did his "trick" in the last fight.

To be honest, one of our SLUF guys departed the thing during a defensive maneuver versus the newly-formed Aggressor outfit that had just showed up at The Beach. The T-38 spit out in front, and the SLUF dude got a good tone after recovering and hosed him!! PLZ do not try this at home, boys and girls.

One thing about the Viper was you could do a "horizontal" scissors and most other jets would lose more altitude than you did. So after three or four weaves, you could still be at 25 deg AoA and roll down for a gun or heater shot. Used to piss off the Eagle folks.

I have always admired the new Hornet demo at PNS homecoming when the guy cruises by at maybe 50 or 60 knots at a 60 deg pitch attitude. Great strafe tgt, huh?

Outlaw needs to describe the locked arms on the stick to ensure no aileron inputs. Rudder only. Worked in Double Ugly and Hun and SLUF, although SLUF was less sensitive.

BTW, the Deuce and 106 could reach unbelieveable AoA's and remain controllable. 'course, you would be at 50 or 60 knots and falling toward Mother Earth at 10,000 feet per minute after your "cobra" maneuver. Not good.

I was against the Viper limiter until I flew it and realized that the FLCS control laws gave me the best performance the jet was designed for. I also didn't have to worry about departing or have to use rudder only to roll the thing. Yep, only one gee, but virtually no buffet and could still roll at 250 deg per second or so. Damn, but that was a neat jet.

Gums sends ....

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

It makes me think about the Raptor, actually. There was a video from this winter where they were practicing for the 2010 demo season and the pilot was commenting on how due to the cold air the motors were really performing well, he went from the 120 knot high alpha pass to having to back off the throttles to avoid busting the Mach in about 30 seconds. To me that seems like a LOT of excess thrust.

Forum: Air Power

Pugachev's Cobra?