4 ms·
Load factor (g force) is actually a small percentage of what makes an effective air to air weapon system such as a fighter jet. It turns out that the faster, h
by na85 6y ago
Load factor (g force) is actually a small percentage of what makes an effective air to air weapon system such as a fighter jet.
It turns out that the faster, higher aircraft has the advantage. If you have speed, you can deny your better-turning adversary an opportunity to engage you, and you thus dictate the terms of the engagement. If you find yourself on equal footing as a bandit, you can simply climb away at the enemy's maximum level speed and he will be unable to catch you.
Additionally, BVR missiles in particular benefit from a high initial launch velocity so they can use their finite delta-V budget to maximize range and closure with the target.
G Force tolerance only matters if you're in the air combat equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth.
Methinks these trials coming up will not be fair: a human can continue making good decisions in a non permissive electromagnetic/cyber battle space whereas a drone cannot. Air combat tactics will have to evolve but I don't think we will see drones defeating piloted fighters (in actual combat) in my lifetime. Perhaps if there's a watershed moment in AI but we aren't there yet.
- EGreg 6y agoI kind of don’t get it Why isn’t auto-aim game over here for both sides? Approach and simply fire missiles at all the spots the plane could be in the next few seconds. Done.
- azernik 6y agoBecause high speed and maneuverability means that's a lot of space to cover.
- salawat 6y agoThe word simply is doing so much heavy lifting there, I think it almost cracked my screen.
- na85 6y agoAt the ranges you're talking, that's simply too many missiles. To take a SWAG at it: For an aircraft at Mach 1, to hit every potential spot it could occupy in one second from now, you're talking about saturating a 340-metre radius sphere with missiles. For context, the volume of that sphere is about 164 million cubic metres. Even if you assume it can't maneuver with complete authority anywhere in that sphere (valid assumption), you could reduce that volume by 75% and still be looking at 40 million cubic metres.
- EGreg 6y agoOK, so maybe find out what maneuvers would be the least costly for it, and fire missiles there, and so on down the line, until you run out of missiles. At the very least, it would have to expend tremendous resources to avoid all your missiles. I mean, you're not trying to blanket the entire space, just put things in its way. EDIT: Or the missiles themselves can just guide themselves based on tracking how their target moves. Then you won't even need many missiles.
- na85 6y ago>Or the missiles themselves can just guide themselves based on tracking how their target moves. Then you won't even need many missiles. That's what many types do nowadays.