The Merge at Night: DAS vs. legacy fighter

firstimpulse wrote:There have been plenty of nighttime dogfights through history. Give me a minute to dig some up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ed-Zb2roc

Though that show is calling them "dogfights", none of those ever got to a "merge" situation. The modern part was all BVR.

count_to_10 wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:There have been plenty of nighttime dogfights through history. Give me a minute to dig some up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ed-Zb2roc

Though that show is calling them "dogfights", none of those ever got to a "merge" situation. The modern part was all BVR.

Gotcha.

count_to_10 wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:There have been plenty of nighttime dogfights through history. Give me a minute to dig some up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ed-Zb2roc

Though that show is calling them "dogfights", none of those ever got to a "merge" situation. The modern part was all BVR.

Very few of the engagements were BVR (10 miles+) actually. The RoE were quite restrictive. The F-14s didn't have the correct IFF units (but they did have TVS for long-range visual ID), and the F-15Cs didn't have TVS or A/A FLIR for visual ID. At least one F-15 pilot reported being unsure of the target was actually a MiG-25 and not a F-15 friendly, although this was due to an IFF malfunction. Good tactics prevented a blue-on-blue kill from IFF issues. F-15Es did have LANTIRN pods that may work for A/A Visual ID, but they are not tasked for CAP missions and didn't have AIM-7s for most missions.

I'll try and find further confirmation on an Israeli WVR kill at night, during the wars they fought.

neurotech wrote:

count_to_10 wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:There have been plenty of nighttime dogfights through history. Give me a minute to dig some up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ed-Zb2roc

Though that show is calling them "dogfights", none of those ever got to a "merge" situation. The modern part was all BVR.

Very few of the engagements were BVR (10 miles+) actually. The RoE were quite restrictive. The F-14s didn't have the correct IFF units (but they did have TVS for long-range visual ID), and the F-15Cs didn't have TVS or A/A FLIR for visual ID. At least one F-15 pilot reported being unsure of the target was actually a MiG-25 and not a F-15 friendly, although this was due to an IFF malfunction. Good tactics prevented a blue-on-blue kill from IFF issues. F-15Es did have LANTIRN pods that may work for A/A Visual ID, but they are not tasked for CAP missions and didn't have AIM-7s for most missions.

I'll try and find further confirmation on an Israeli WVR kill at night, during the wars they fought.

That was referring to the night time air battles described in the linked episode, not all modern air combat in general.

I hope there is some understanding that the gentle maneuvering and very little head swivelling of the F-35 pilot and his team is going to be a great boon in any night time work. Spatial Disorientation is ignored only at the peril of the pilot who wants to maneuver aggressively and has to move his head from side to side rapidly under IFR conditions. Now that IS a nightmare.

Which is the thing: all evidence I've seen indicates that the WVR "merge" doesn't really happen at night. For whatever reason, fighters only engage in turn battles during the day. But the F-35 pilots tell us that there is "no difference between day and night" for them. This would seem to be an extreme advantage for a fighter that is seen as weak in a knife fight, especially when so much of combat operations has gone to the night.

'count_to_ten' said: "...For whatever reason,...". What? How does night flying not able to see anything much at all qualify for a reason for no WVR? Emphasise the 'VISUAL' in WVR and you will SEE what I mean. Most aircraft fly IFR Instrument Flight Rules at night. Visual Night flying is hazardous. Flying a military jet under high G with drastic maneuvers to induce Spatial Disorientation is definitely not the best strategy to effect a hopeless WVR night fight. You would have to be there. We may well see an even more specialised (in a standard F-35) night fighter pilot perhaps. Probably it will be so easy that they all qualify at all the good things the F-35 will achieve.

What will be great is the 'dayFORnight' carrier landings - arrest and VL (SRVL). Nice.

IF ONLY for this quote this story is GOLD for the nightfight situation... F-35 opponents will have to be like 'one-armed wallpaper hangers' - think about it.

Lockheed says JSF better and cheaper 21 Feb 2013 Max Blenkin, AAP Defence Correspondent

http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaki ... 2ets0.html

"Defence company Lockheed Martin has defended its controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), declaring it will be better than current combat aircraft, and cheaper.

Test pilot Elliott Clemence, who flew classic and Super Hornets in missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, says the JSF is superior in critical areas such as stealth, aerodynamic performance and futuristic sensor technology.

So-called sensor fusion allows information from aircraft radar and other systems to be projected as an image on the inside of the pilot's helmet visor.

"The air performance in a combat configuration is just eye-watering," he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.

Mr Clemence said flying aircraft using older systems was akin to trying to drive a car while texting, operating the radar [perhaps RADIO was meant here?] and programming the GPS....

spazsinbad wrote:I hope there is some understanding that the gentle maneuvering and very little head swivelling of the F-35 pilot and his team is going to be a great boon in any night time work. Spatial Disorientation is ignored only at the peril of the pilot who wants to maneuver aggressively and has to move his head from side to side rapidly under IFR conditions. Now that IS a nightmare.

The F-35 Helmet will be a game-changer, no doubt. The F-35 helmet will have considerably better horizon reference, so all things being equal, disorientation is less likely to occur but still quite possible.

There has been a few incidents of pilot disorientation resulting in a graveyard spiral, with a JHMCS equipped jet fighter, during aggressive maneuvering. As I recall, the pilots were able to recover, but not without considerable altitude loss. One flight surgeon I know, suspects that ALOC/Grey out was involved, and the pilots vision was temporarily impaired.

I guess the vHUD will have to be IFR certified? Or perhaps that is not necessary. Difficult to say from the other side of this planet. Some early HUDs including the early F-16 HUD was not IFR certified as we saw in another compare Hornet/Viper USN Test Pilot story recently:

A Navy Test Pilot’s Perspective [F-16 vs F-18] By Lcdr John “Toonces” Tougas
Air Age Publishing Jun 2003

http://www.defence.pk/forums/air-warfar ... ctive.html
OR
http://www.f-16.net/index.php?name=PNph ... gas#245210

"...The [Viper] main instrument panel is centrally located, compactly organized and easy to scan. The Viper is a fly-by-wire electric jet, but it still has what are considered old-fashioned, round airspeed and altitude dials, tape gauges for vertical speed indicator (VSI) and angle of attack (AoA) and an analog attitude indicator. These are the primary flight instruments because the HUD is technically not certified for IFR (instrument flight). In the Hornet, I use the HUD as my main information source and crosscheck the steam gauges during instrument approaches. The Viper HUD gives the same data as the Hornet HUD does, but the format’s different...."

neurotech wrote:

spazsinbad wrote:I hope there is some understanding that the gentle maneuvering and very little head swivelling of the F-35 pilot and his team is going to be a great boon in any night time work. Spatial Disorientation is ignored only at the peril of the pilot who wants to maneuver aggressively and has to move his head from side to side rapidly under IFR conditions. Now that IS a nightmare.

The F-35 Helmet will be a game-changer, no doubt. The F-35 helmet will have considerably better horizon reference, so all things being equal, disorientation is less likely to occur but still quite possible.

There has been a few incidents of pilot disorientation resulting in a graveyard spiral, with a JHMCS equipped jet fighter, during aggressive maneuvering. As I recall, the pilots were able to recover, but not without considerable altitude loss. One flight surgeon I know, suspects that ALOC/Grey out was involved, and the pilots vision was temporarily impaired.

It doesn't help when you're looking thru NVGs. HMD night vision will take it to a,whole new level.

Night Flying in an A4G was not done as often as more modern aircraft these days because it had no role at night; except to recover and launch at dusk and dawn, for the day jobs. Just changing the radio frequency at night required a special technique of putting one's right hand near the dial on the right hand console near the back usually. Then, being straight and level, trimmed, SLOWLY putting one's head down and looking to the right to get an accurate radio dial reading to change - then SLOWLY bring your head back again to front and centre. Otherwise HELL awaits.

How 'easy' it will be for the F-35 pilot to 'night' dogfight in a gentler fashion in the world of the F-35?

F-35 soars when it comes to stealth and sensors 22 Feb 2013 Lauren Davis

http://www.electroline.com.au/articles/ ... nd-sensors

"...“The data from these sensors are stitched together to give the pilot a 360° spherical image of the outside world. No other aeroplane has that,” said Clemence. He added that not only does this give the plane an advantage when it comes to missile and aircraft detection, but video can be pumped into the visor to allow the pilot to see the outside world.

“We’ve done recent testing where the test pilot actually put a vision-restrictive device over his visor, [THAT MYTHICAL 'BAG'! ] so he couldn’t optically see the outside world, but he had the sensor information pumped into his visor and he was able to virtually see the outside world,” said Clemence.

“We can basically make the night into day and see in other spectrums.”.

The cockpit is designed to be intuitive, with a touch screen and voice activation to control simple functions like temperature, so the pilot doesn’t need to be reaching around for different switches. Clemence said it is the simplest cockpit he has ever been in.

“It seems pretty bare, but that’s because all the functions are pretty much on the glass,” he said.

“For somebody who is used to knobs and switches and old avionics, it takes a little bit of getting used to. But after a couple of flights, you start building cockpit efficiency and you really start to enjoy it.”

One certainly does not need to be a computer genius to operate the systems, with Clemence saying that though he is not computer-savvy, he can operate the plane “because it is designed to be that easy”....

I wonder if it will be so lopsided that F-35A pilots go for gun-kills at night.

count_to_10 wrote:I wonder if it will be so lopsided that F-35A pilots go for gun-kills at night.

Why?