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Planes generally can't pull more Gs than the humans inside without needing to go through an extensive maintenance process. Even then, as has been said countles

Planes generally can't pull more Gs than the humans inside without needing to go through an extensive maintenance process. Even then, as has been said countless times in this thread, high-G maneuvers don't do shit against modern missile threats. They might be useful for dogfighting with guns, but given the range and accuracy of modern missiles, combined with proximity fuzes, it simply doesn't accomplish much. Against a weaker enemy, you'll never have the need to pull Gs in the first place. Against an equal or stronger enemy, it won't do a damn bit of difference anyway.

burfog 6y ago
Dogfighting with guns is a great way to stop an incoming missile. You just need the ability to do high-G maneuvers and aim well. Shoot the missile. It helps that bullets as small as 12.7mm can be steered.
- stouset 6y ago
  This comment is so far into Poe's law territory, I'm past the ability to tell if I'm being trolled or not. In case I'm not being trolled: the way to defeat a radar-guided missile is to beam (fly perpendicular to) the radar source. For an missile with active or semi-active radar guidance, this means you need to fly perpendicular to it. And, preferably, fire lots of chaff. This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of flying straight at the missile trying to shoot it with guns. Head-on, a missile will close the last mile in under one second. During this second, you need to accurately track, predict the flight path of, and reliably put guns onto a target that's cold (all the fuel has been burnt) and has (in the case of an AMRAAM) a 7 inch diameter. And that very well may not even care about being shot up with bullets; at best, I think you'd kill the seeker, but within the last mile it's not changing course much to have to come close enough to kill you by the proximity fuze (of which I believe there are two, one in the nose and one in the tail). By the time the first of your slow-moving bullets has any shot of reaching it, it will easily be within a quarter of a mile. This is not even a remotely plausible way to defeat an oncoming missile. It runs directly counter to the actions you already be taking to maximize your chance of survival. And on top of that, bullets are only going to damage the leading-edge parts of the missile which aren't particularly critical to its ability to kill you, at least not within the distance it will be by the time your hail-mary bullet salvo hits it.
  - burfog 6y ago
    We're assuming an AI here. It can aim. Bullets as small as 12.7 mm can even steer. Larger ones, such as those carried by modern fighter aircraft, can have independent seekers. You said the missile had some amazing ability to turn, and now you're saying it has no fuel. You can't have it both ways. There is fuel, or there is no energy to spare. Being "cold" isn't generally possible; nothing cools instantly. Modern IR sensors do not rely on engine heat. Supersonic flight generates plenty of heat on the nose. That last bit deserves more emphasis. Heat was a serious problem for the Concorde and SR-71, despite operating at much slower speeds. The missile is hypersonic. That is the speed at which air molecules come apart from the heat. IR detection will be trivial. There is a circular circuit board that is very much needed for the proximity fuse. That is full width. The speed of the missile contributes to its own destruction. Bullet impact will be devastating. The missile can not endure supersonic flight with a lopsided hole and a bunch of cracks, and it wouldn't fly straight even if it could. Tumbling means instant destruction, like Space Shuttle Columbia. Shooting back is the action to maximize chance of survival. It takes priority; all other options are obsolete.
    - thomasmeeks 6y ago
      What you’re suggesting is possible technically but nobody does it because the idea of having to turn your entire plane towards a missile threat to neutralize it virtually guarantees your destruction if two missiles are fired at you in rapid succession. This is not a rare occurrence. At all. Yes, from multiple directions. That’s exactly how surface-to-air systems are set up. It becomes slightly more reasonable if you turret the gun, until you factor in the weight of the necessary ammunition to neutralize multiple threats, the turret itself, and the independent radar used for target acquisition and tracking. A B-52 could pull it off, a fighter couldn’t yet. Not without massively compromising their payload and aerodynamics. Chaff, flares, stealth and jamming are used because they actually work in practice. Jamming is a big one that people don’t hear about much. Wonder how the B-52 is still in service? Jamming. Wonder how wild weasels do their job? Jamming. When you see a turret like that on a bomber then you can get excited for self-guided bullets shooting down dozens of multiple incoming missiles. But tbh at the rate we’re going it’ll just be a laser instead.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Fantasy beats technology and physics any day.
  - burfog 6y ago
    Right: the fantasy Mach 4 missile that maneuvers with the engine shut down, does not experience compression heating from hypersonic flight, survives Mach 4 impact with tungsten 20mm shells, can track an enemy through a cloud of 100 incoming 20mm shells, and can maneuver with zero turn radius without losing energy. I'd like some of that. Phalanx CIWS was prototyped in 1973 and has been in service since 1980. Shooting down incoming missiles with machine gun fire has been viable for a very long time.
    - pdoege 6y ago
      Back when I was playing the game the Moskit and its derivatives made the CIWS obsolete. The short engagement range meant that the debris of the threat would impact and mission kill. The larger 30mm and RAM were created to extend that range. We planned to engage when the thermal plume was detected on the horizon. The higher speed of ballistic threats meant that the pK of the SM-3 was pretty low. Luckily finding ships at sea is hard. In a fight against a first line threat it was best to be in a boomer.
    - raducu 6y ago
      Has Phalanx ever been tested against a supersonic missile? Also, there is no way to install such a system on a fighter airplane.
      - burfog 6y ago
        The entire airplane is that system. It has nearly the same gun, 20mm in both cases. It has fancy radar. Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so. No, it's not, because it can't change targeting axis fast enough; you'd have to have a turret mounted gun plus software, which is simply not feasible for a fighter. Also, a major surface warship can afford to expend a lot more weight of ordnance defending against a single missile than a fighter can without sacrificing whatever mission it was protecting itself to accomplish.
kadoban 6y ago
I would suspect that that's due to there being no point in the past of engineering aircraft that can do acceleration that would kill the pilot inside. Now that no pilot is necessarily needed, different choices can be made.
- stouset 6y ago
  No pilot doesn't change the fundamental calculus that high-G maneuvers are virtually useless against an oncoming missile. Even if you could pull an instantaneous 10G acceleration completely perpendicular to your direction of flight without shedding airspeed (think: sideways-mounted rocket motor), in the time it takes a missile to close the last mile, you've moved less than 100ft. And all the while, the oncoming missile is actively tracking you. Even if it misses that's no big deal, since it uses proximity fuzing to blow up at its closest point to you. High-G maneuvers are great for close-in battles to outmaneuver another plane and prevent a guns solution. They're becoming increasingly useless against modern IR missiles like the AIM-9X, and they're absolutely useless against a missile approaching at ludicrous speeds from 75+ miles away.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Might also be useful for firing missiles, without having them to expend their fuel, giving them a better starting angle, less time wasted in maneuvering around...

burfog 6y ago

Dogfighting with guns is a great way to stop an incoming missile. You just need the ability to do high-G maneuvers and aim well. Shoot the missile. It helps that bullets as small as 12.7mm can be steered.

stouset 6y ago
This comment is so far into Poe's law territory, I'm past the ability to tell if I'm being trolled or not. In case I'm not being trolled: the way to defeat a radar-guided missile is to beam (fly perpendicular to) the radar source. For an missile with active or semi-active radar guidance, this means you need to fly perpendicular to it. And, preferably, fire lots of chaff. This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of flying straight at the missile trying to shoot it with guns. Head-on, a missile will close the last mile in under one second. During this second, you need to accurately track, predict the flight path of, and reliably put guns onto a target that's cold (all the fuel has been burnt) and has (in the case of an AMRAAM) a 7 inch diameter. And that very well may not even care about being shot up with bullets; at best, I think you'd kill the seeker, but within the last mile it's not changing course much to have to come close enough to kill you by the proximity fuze (of which I believe there are two, one in the nose and one in the tail). By the time the first of your slow-moving bullets has any shot of reaching it, it will easily be within a quarter of a mile. This is not even a remotely plausible way to defeat an oncoming missile. It runs directly counter to the actions you already be taking to maximize your chance of survival. And on top of that, bullets are only going to damage the leading-edge parts of the missile which aren't particularly critical to its ability to kill you, at least not within the distance it will be by the time your hail-mary bullet salvo hits it.
- burfog 6y ago
  We're assuming an AI here. It can aim. Bullets as small as 12.7 mm can even steer. Larger ones, such as those carried by modern fighter aircraft, can have independent seekers. You said the missile had some amazing ability to turn, and now you're saying it has no fuel. You can't have it both ways. There is fuel, or there is no energy to spare. Being "cold" isn't generally possible; nothing cools instantly. Modern IR sensors do not rely on engine heat. Supersonic flight generates plenty of heat on the nose. That last bit deserves more emphasis. Heat was a serious problem for the Concorde and SR-71, despite operating at much slower speeds. The missile is hypersonic. That is the speed at which air molecules come apart from the heat. IR detection will be trivial. There is a circular circuit board that is very much needed for the proximity fuse. That is full width. The speed of the missile contributes to its own destruction. Bullet impact will be devastating. The missile can not endure supersonic flight with a lopsided hole and a bunch of cracks, and it wouldn't fly straight even if it could. Tumbling means instant destruction, like Space Shuttle Columbia. Shooting back is the action to maximize chance of survival. It takes priority; all other options are obsolete.
  - thomasmeeks 6y ago
    What you’re suggesting is possible technically but nobody does it because the idea of having to turn your entire plane towards a missile threat to neutralize it virtually guarantees your destruction if two missiles are fired at you in rapid succession. This is not a rare occurrence. At all. Yes, from multiple directions. That’s exactly how surface-to-air systems are set up. It becomes slightly more reasonable if you turret the gun, until you factor in the weight of the necessary ammunition to neutralize multiple threats, the turret itself, and the independent radar used for target acquisition and tracking. A B-52 could pull it off, a fighter couldn’t yet. Not without massively compromising their payload and aerodynamics. Chaff, flares, stealth and jamming are used because they actually work in practice. Jamming is a big one that people don’t hear about much. Wonder how the B-52 is still in service? Jamming. Wonder how wild weasels do their job? Jamming. When you see a turret like that on a bomber then you can get excited for self-guided bullets shooting down dozens of multiple incoming missiles. But tbh at the rate we’re going it’ll just be a laser instead.
jacquesm 6y ago
Fantasy beats technology and physics any day.
- burfog 6y ago
  Right: the fantasy Mach 4 missile that maneuvers with the engine shut down, does not experience compression heating from hypersonic flight, survives Mach 4 impact with tungsten 20mm shells, can track an enemy through a cloud of 100 incoming 20mm shells, and can maneuver with zero turn radius without losing energy. I'd like some of that. Phalanx CIWS was prototyped in 1973 and has been in service since 1980. Shooting down incoming missiles with machine gun fire has been viable for a very long time.
  - pdoege 6y ago
    Back when I was playing the game the Moskit and its derivatives made the CIWS obsolete. The short engagement range meant that the debris of the threat would impact and mission kill. The larger 30mm and RAM were created to extend that range. We planned to engage when the thermal plume was detected on the horizon. The higher speed of ballistic threats meant that the pK of the SM-3 was pretty low. Luckily finding ships at sea is hard. In a fight against a first line threat it was best to be in a boomer.
  - raducu 6y ago
    Has Phalanx ever been tested against a supersonic missile? Also, there is no way to install such a system on a fighter airplane.
    - burfog 6y ago
      The entire airplane is that system. It has nearly the same gun, 20mm in both cases. It has fancy radar. Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so. No, it's not, because it can't change targeting axis fast enough; you'd have to have a turret mounted gun plus software, which is simply not feasible for a fighter. Also, a major surface warship can afford to expend a lot more weight of ordnance defending against a single missile than a fighter can without sacrificing whatever mission it was protecting itself to accomplish.

kadoban 6y ago

I would suspect that that's due to there being no point in the past of engineering aircraft that can do acceleration that would kill the pilot inside. Now that no pilot is necessarily needed, different choices can be made.

stouset 6y ago
No pilot doesn't change the fundamental calculus that high-G maneuvers are virtually useless against an oncoming missile. Even if you could pull an instantaneous 10G acceleration completely perpendicular to your direction of flight without shedding airspeed (think: sideways-mounted rocket motor), in the time it takes a missile to close the last mile, you've moved less than 100ft. And all the while, the oncoming missile is actively tracking you. Even if it misses that's no big deal, since it uses proximity fuzing to blow up at its closest point to you. High-G maneuvers are great for close-in battles to outmaneuver another plane and prevent a guns solution. They're becoming increasingly useless against modern IR missiles like the AIM-9X, and they're absolutely useless against a missile approaching at ludicrous speeds from 75+ miles away.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Might also be useful for firing missiles, without having them to expend their fuel, giving them a better starting angle, less time wasted in maneuvering around...