Forum: Air Power

First of all your aircraft sgould have a modern electronic warfare suite, with a radar warning detector, missile approuch sensor, and chaff/flare dispencer. When you RWR goes off beeping the first thing you need to do is turn on your ECM (electronic counter measures) and locate the missile if you can, you can't evade a missile if you can't see where it's coming from. Wait until the last possible second to turn hard into a turn or dive (or both) while punching the chaff/flare button to throw the missile off your tail. Now back in Vietnam with the SA-3 I think they had, you could pull up and then dive and the missile couldn't manuver well enough to intercept with the technology they had back then. And ECM worked well for the F-4 Phantoms. Now a skilled SAM operator could switch on his radar only a few second to get a speed, altitude, and heading. Then turn it off. Fire a missile, and then turn on the radar again at the last few seconds to give the missile guidance. The pilot didn't know that the missile was up until it was too late. F-16 downed in Serbia. If you want to sneak past someone like that he could've flown lower under the radar coverage. IR seekers are a little tricky, if you have your afterburners on, turn it off. Cooler engines are harder to track, and with flares it'll just lower your chance of getting hit in the butt. More and more fighters are upgrading to helmet mounted sights, making it harder to evade a missile when all the enemy pilot has to do is look at you. And the last thing I'll say is a fighter with a LPI AESA radar like the Raptor can lock and fire a missile and not set off your RWR until the AIM-120D is in the final stahge of interception and its on-board seeker goes active and basicly you'll be dead before you know what hits you. I hope this was helpful.

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Not forgetting that out-running the missile is also an option. The missile motors not gonna burn forever, hence the jets gonna be able to screw around with the missiles energy level.

Speaking of this, I've been wondering; which is more agile, the AMRAAM or the Sidewinder? The AMRAAM is larger and tends to be fired BVR, so I'm leaning towards the Sidewinder. Can the AMRAAM be fired WVR?

While under power, the 9x is mor agile due to TVC and the AMRAAM is likely to be more agile after the burn due to more fin area.

Yes, the AMRAAM can be fired WVR just fine. In fact, the latest C7 and D upgrades improve on it's HOBS capabilities.

I would like to ask a question about speed in "tun in to missile" maneuver. Actualy this came to my mind after reading somewhere that Eurofighter can pull some Gs in supersonic flight (though I dont know the exact numbers, I couldnt find flight envelope with G lines of EF-2000 on the net, as well as I remember 5 G was stated somewhere but I am not so sure, as been some time I read this).

Now for an F-16, according to flight envelope, around 0.8 - 1.0 MACH and at low altitude the Viper can pull sustained 9 G, which I assume this would be the best condition to have the best chance of success of evasion for turn and evade.

Now how about if the evading aircraft like EF is supersonic (like 1.0 to 1.3) and he is pulling something like 5 Gs.

Which aircraft has the better chance of success here? I mean which maneuver causes the terminal missile to pull more amount of Gs so that it cant keep up. Is being lower speed and pulling more Gs is better or being faster and pulling somewhat less Gs better?

Oh, by the way I am considering the missile has still energy and it has reached us, also excluding ECM, flare, chaff etc... This is meant to be an analysis of the last minute turn in to missile only.

I thank you all for your time.

Salute!

Well, a very neat subject, and sure to have many personal opinions and views.

maybe get Snake in here, as he has seen the SAM'a, as I have. Can't talk about the Apex and later A2A missiles. BTW, no SA-3's in Viet Nam although we did get some new radar signals at end of 1972 that looked like SA-3 tracking.

The deal is to maneuver when the missile is too close and too fast to "make the turn". Chaff and flares help, but newer seekers and guidance algorithms seem to do better than the ones we Viet Nam vets saw.

So we have to deal with two guidance schema: pursuit and lead collision.

The old IR missiles, and early radar homing ones were primarily "pursuit", in that they pointed at you. The other kind were "lead collision" and pointed out ahead of you based on your velocity vector. The A2A variety were mostly pursuit, as the firing platform was moving and the target ( YOU! heh heh) were also moving. Computer power was low back then, so the missiles used what they had to. The SAM's could try to use "lead collision", and did. I watched a SA-2 come up in front of me that was aiming at the flight about a half miles ahead. We were jamming to deny good range and the thing couldn't make the "square corner" and exploded just behind that flight.

IMHO, the "lead collision" guidance was easier to defeat if you gutted it out and jinked really hard at the last instant. This assumes you have a good tally on the telephone pole and enuf energy to change your vector.

Remember that one gee is 32 ft per second per gee, and unless the missile has a huge warhead and great fuzing system, then 50 or 60 feet miss distance might be good enough.

So the old turn into the thing and yank will prolly work if you see the thing. Chaff, flares or nothing.

Next is energy of the missile. There was a scenario with the Viper that had an Eagle firing the Great White Hope ( aka Sparrow) at max range head on. We could do the bat turn right in front and out run the sucker. It was slowing down the whole time after a few seconds and we were in full burner gaining speed.

So ya gotta look at the missile propulsion system. Some have a rocket only, others a rocket and sustainer, others ......

Then there's the aero surfaces on the missiles. Some have great maneuvering capability close in, so those guys are tough.

The biggest element of the equation is knowing that you have been shot at and can see the damned thing.

Chaff, flares and ECM can help a lot. But biggest thing is to not get shot at in the first place. Regardless of all the helmet sights and such, I cannot presently see a missile that can do a 180 and nail you before your own missile smokes the other guy.

Gums send s...

To be completely honest, I've often wondered if turning away from a missile fired from your six would be more helpful than ramming the throttle, because if something is trying to run you down, turning just gives it a better chance to cut you off. It feels so wrong, but think about it.

Since the missile has limited fuel, I would think that a zig-zag pattern that would force the missile to bleed energy would be best.

Orthogonal roll?

Forum: Air Power

Missile evasion