8 ms·

Unfortunately the circumstances where this is useful is very limited. You'd have to be in very close range and in a very bad disadvantage, which honestly doesn

Unfortunately the circumstances where this is useful is very limited. You'd have to be in very close range and in a very bad disadvantage, which honestly doesn't last long (you'd blow up very fast) and when you start decelerating you become a very easy target to hit. And after your opponent overshoots--you just lost a ton of energy--and energy is everything in aerial combat. Energy is the currency you spend to maneuver, and you've just spent it on this hail mary.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"And after your opponent overshoots--you just lost a ton of energy--and energy is everything in aerial combat. " The idea is, to be able to make the kill, after you are now behind. Then it does not matter, if you are too slow. But wikipedia indeed says, this manoever has never been confirmed in real air combat, so yes, its usefullness is quite limited.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  The problem is, you are now not only behind but also much slower than your opponent. And as parent poster mentioned, energy is everything. I would also point out both aircraft are in straight and level flight, basically in formation, with the pilot composed and prepared. This is not how a dogfight looks like.
  - Sightline 4y ago
    "you are now not only behind but also much slower than your opponent." That's what HMD's are for: (ignore the shit music) https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194 https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Dumb question - why can't planes shoot in reverse? It seems like this would be useful for these situations. I get that it would be hard to aim - but can't computers do that?
  - jleahy 4y ago
    Energy. If you fire a missile to your rear then it needs to first accelerate to your original speed just to be staying still, only then can it accelerate towards the target. An AIM-9X can do this, but the kill probability drops rapidly as you move off boresight.
    - leeoniya 4y ago
      > only then can it accelerate towards the target but in a dogfight (where this move is presumably useful) the target is not stationary, it's moving towards the missile. if all the missile does is accelerate to stay still, it will still hit the target at 700mph
      - pishpash 4y ago
        In a vacuum. The aerodynamics aren't possibly the same.
        Karellen 4y ago
        Surely the aerodynamics are better for firing a missile backwards. If you fire it forwards, the missile has to accelerate through whatever air resistance you're both already experiencing through even more air resistance to get to the target. That's hard. If you fire backwards, the missile uses air resistance to accelerate towards (i.e. slow down) towards the target. Even when it goes through 0mph relative to the air and continues to accelerate, the resistance will be much less as it approaches an even higher closing velocity in a shorter period of time.
        mumblemumble 4y ago
        I would guess that the speed at which air moves over the missile's control surfaces has a large effect on its ability to steer to meet the target.
        fakethenews2022 4y ago
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  > The idea is, to be able to make the kill, after you are now behind. Then it does not matter, if you are too slow. Air combat is rarely 1vs1 so being slow means you get killed by someone else.
  - MikeBVaughn 4y ago
    Based on what I've read from people vastly more informed than me, this absolutely 100% seems to be the case. Even beyond that, the general impression I get w.r.t stuff like supermaneuverability is that it's a much better use of money to ensure that most fights never even make it to the point where the stuff like the cobra seems like a good idea. Given the choice between 1) "marginally improving survivability in comparatively low-energy corner-case states" and 2) "increasing the odds that the fight never makes it to the merge," #2 seems like a much better choice in terms of money spent and pilots kept alive. (Though a counterpoint, I guess, based my my casual understanding, would be that making the judgment too heavily in favor of #2 was part of what hampered the USAF and Navy's air-to-air combat capabilities in Vietnam)
lumost 4y ago
In dcs, when a player cobras successfully it typically just results in them missing the next turn and getting shot. The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. bin mind that dog fights happen in a one or two circle high g turn as each fighter attempts to out turn the other, cobra maneuvers require that the (losing fighter) exit the circle.
- Sightline 4y ago
  >The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. That's what the HMD and R-73 are made for: (ignore the shit music) https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194 https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194
  - lumost 4y ago
    Based on the canyon, they were trying to simulate the top gun movie. While entertaining, this is not how real fighter aircraft fight. The tail fighter in this scenario would have been 30k feet higher, 10+ miles away, and traveling at at least Mach 1.5. The only time fighters are in direct contact in this situation is a dog fight. Which the above video is not. Checkout the YouTube category for “DCS BVR” as well as “DCS dogfight”. There are a few videos analyzing cobra in both as well as the use of terrain. TL;DR there are some interesting uses of terrain at the end of both engagements, however in a realistic setting the pilots would head home rather than risk dying to a “maneuver kill” where they accidentally crash into the ground while trying to “out rate” or “out turn” the other fighter.
nine_k 4y ago
I always thought that the cobra is about making a radar lose the lock on you, because you suddenly stopped moving. Might be useful if you detect a radar pulse. Losing your speed and showing your belly / back to the enemy, when you cannot shoot, never looked like a reasonable thing to do.
- kortex 4y ago
  Interesting. I don't work in defense / aero, but that seems plausible. Stealth aircraft are optimized to reduce cross section from certain perspectives. Front, bottom, and oblique are pretty good, iirc, while rear and side are harder to optimize. Not sure about top. I would think it would reflect most energy away from tracking radar unless an active seeker was coming in from higher altitude (in which case you are already toast). Combined with some sort of chaff/decoy release, I could see this causing the seeker's kalman filter or whatnot choosing to go after the return which stayed on the same trajectory with the same signature. Without a decoy, or with smart enough seekers (eg combined mm wave with IR), I think you are probably still going to be hit.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  Not only do you lose speed but the attacker just needs to rake across your now giant profile with guns. They might also pop off a heat seeking missile which sees you as a giant hot spot against the cold sky.
- greedo 4y ago
  You can use the Cobra to break a radar lock since most modern radars look for Doppler shift. But eventually the radar would pick you up again.
- jabl 4y ago
  There is a maneuver called 'notching' which is turning perpendicular to an incoming radar guided missile to try to make a doppler radar lose lock. Often used in conjunction with diving to the deck in order to force the missile to spend energy moving through higher density air. But that doesn't require any vectored thrust, 'supermanouverability' or such. In fact, you should make the turn smooth to conserve energy.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
In a real dogfight, you're not constrained to just pitch. Your nose doesn't need to point straight up. Depending on your exact relative position, you could very well be able to input roll and yaw as well, and end up pointing your nose (and gun) in a rather more useful direction. We can't really call the resulting maneuver a clean airshow version of the "Cobra" anymore; but that's OK: it's a bit more deadly! The airshow version merely demonstrates the aircraft's abilities. An actual pilot practicing combat maneuvers creatively applies those abilities to an actual situation at hand.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Dogfights are an extinct scenario.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Yep Russians will be dodging AMRAAM not dogfighting Vulcan guns, and Cobra doesn’t help much with that. Although the vector thrusting and braking that provide an aircraft the means to do Cobra might help against air-to-air and SAM/manpads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM Otherwise it’s just a pretty display at air shows.
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      Or directed energy weapons.
    - trevorishere 4y ago
      Of course this is a hypothetical now that we've seen how "well kept" Russian equipment is, but the R-37M will technically reach out and touch American aircraft long before the AMRAAM is in range. Gotta wait for the AIM-260.
      - jabl 4y ago
        Well, the R-37M is an absolute monster missile at 600kg, even bigger than the AIM-54 Phoenix at around 450kg. For comparison the AMRAAM is about 150kg. So even if, hypothetically, Russia could sort out their issues with actually producing their ostensibly high tech designs, I find it hard to imagine this would be a mass produced missile comparable to AMRAAM. More like a special missile to take out high value targets like AWACS planes. Continuing wikipedia spelunking, AIM-120D has a range of >160km (and has apparently already entered service), AIM-260 200km, and R-37M 300-400km. However, as everyone who has played flight sims (or seen youtube videos of them) knows, the actual usable range is much lower than the quoted max ranges. And given stealth technology, one wonders whether the actual capability of the missile is more related to the radars, both of the launching platform and the radar in the missile seeker, than to how long burning rocket motors it has.
unity1001 4y ago
> Unfortunately the circumstances where this is useful is very limited. Even worse: Advancing missile technology has mostly invalidated the need for aircraft in a major war since a long while, and drones will literally sweep what's left of it. The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. The drones can travel 1700 km autonomously, very hard to jam, and they are cheaper than the missiles that are used to shoot them. So that at this point you could bankrupt an enemy by just sending drones. If they can destroy them, they go bankrupt due to missile costs. If they cant or dont, you hit all the targets. The only way to deal with this will be miniaturization of warfare, ie creation of mini drones and mini missiles to hunt drones. Which is still difficult to do and yet to be done because miniaturization is difficult. Aircraft are old news. If you can destroy a target by sending an autonomous drone that travels 1700km, which costs less than a fraction of one sortie of an aircraft, leave aside the cost of aircraft, its armament and pilot training, it means that drones rule warfare now.
- eru 4y ago
  > The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. Do you have more information on that?
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Not in easily accessible Western media, obviously. You have to follow Indian, Chinese or other unaligned sources. Indian outlets would be the easiest. However the best and most striking is to follow the Russian/Slavic channels in Telegram. The footage there is incredible (not gore). They post what Ukrainians post online - drones in flight just before hitting their target. Drones passing over. Multiple drones flying in and hitting their targets despite immense air defense fire. One drone even hit a weapons depot and the resulting fire from the explosion lasted for a day.
    - rnk 4y ago
      This is interesting news about the iranian drones I haven't read anywhere. Indian and Chinese media is widely available on the web, surprising this hasn't come up. Can you provide a link to some stories? My own web search found this in Politico. So I don't think it's a secret kept from western media. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/26/iranian-drones-ukraine-russia-war-00058802 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/26/iranian-drones-ukra...
nelox 4y ago
It is exceptionally useful in an aerobatic display
philwelch 4y ago
And that's assuming that the fight hasn't already been decided from BVR with radar-guided missiles in the first place.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"And after your opponent overshoots--you just lost a ton of energy--and energy is everything in aerial combat. " The idea is, to be able to make the kill, after you are now behind. Then it does not matter, if you are too slow. But wikipedia indeed says, this manoever has never been confirmed in real air combat, so yes, its usefullness is quite limited.

twawaaay 4y ago
The problem is, you are now not only behind but also much slower than your opponent. And as parent poster mentioned, energy is everything. I would also point out both aircraft are in straight and level flight, basically in formation, with the pilot composed and prepared. This is not how a dogfight looks like.
- Sightline 4y ago
  "you are now not only behind but also much slower than your opponent." That's what HMD's are for: (ignore the shit music) https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194 https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Dumb question - why can't planes shoot in reverse? It seems like this would be useful for these situations. I get that it would be hard to aim - but can't computers do that?
- jleahy 4y ago
  Energy. If you fire a missile to your rear then it needs to first accelerate to your original speed just to be staying still, only then can it accelerate towards the target. An AIM-9X can do this, but the kill probability drops rapidly as you move off boresight.
  - leeoniya 4y ago
    > only then can it accelerate towards the target but in a dogfight (where this move is presumably useful) the target is not stationary, it's moving towards the missile. if all the missile does is accelerate to stay still, it will still hit the target at 700mph
    - pishpash 4y ago
      In a vacuum. The aerodynamics aren't possibly the same.
      - Karellen 4y ago
        Surely the aerodynamics are better for firing a missile backwards. If you fire it forwards, the missile has to accelerate through whatever air resistance you're both already experiencing through even more air resistance to get to the target. That's hard. If you fire backwards, the missile uses air resistance to accelerate towards (i.e. slow down) towards the target. Even when it goes through 0mph relative to the air and continues to accelerate, the resistance will be much less as it approaches an even higher closing velocity in a shorter period of time.
        mumblemumble 4y ago
        I would guess that the speed at which air moves over the missile's control surfaces has a large effect on its ability to steer to meet the target.
        fakethenews2022 4y ago
meheleventyone 4y ago
> The idea is, to be able to make the kill, after you are now behind. Then it does not matter, if you are too slow. Air combat is rarely 1vs1 so being slow means you get killed by someone else.
- MikeBVaughn 4y ago
  Based on what I've read from people vastly more informed than me, this absolutely 100% seems to be the case. Even beyond that, the general impression I get w.r.t stuff like supermaneuverability is that it's a much better use of money to ensure that most fights never even make it to the point where the stuff like the cobra seems like a good idea. Given the choice between 1) "marginally improving survivability in comparatively low-energy corner-case states" and 2) "increasing the odds that the fight never makes it to the merge," #2 seems like a much better choice in terms of money spent and pilots kept alive. (Though a counterpoint, I guess, based my my casual understanding, would be that making the judgment too heavily in favor of #2 was part of what hampered the USAF and Navy's air-to-air combat capabilities in Vietnam)

lumost 4y ago

In dcs, when a player cobras successfully it typically just results in them missing the next turn and getting shot. The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. bin mind that dog fights happen in a one or two circle high g turn as each fighter attempts to out turn the other, cobra maneuvers require that the (losing fighter) exit the circle.

Sightline 4y ago
>The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. That's what the HMD and R-73 are made for: (ignore the shit music) https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194 https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194
- lumost 4y ago
  Based on the canyon, they were trying to simulate the top gun movie. While entertaining, this is not how real fighter aircraft fight. The tail fighter in this scenario would have been 30k feet higher, 10+ miles away, and traveling at at least Mach 1.5. The only time fighters are in direct contact in this situation is a dog fight. Which the above video is not. Checkout the YouTube category for “DCS BVR” as well as “DCS dogfight”. There are a few videos analyzing cobra in both as well as the use of terrain. TL;DR there are some interesting uses of terrain at the end of both engagements, however in a realistic setting the pilots would head home rather than risk dying to a “maneuver kill” where they accidentally crash into the ground while trying to “out rate” or “out turn” the other fighter.

nine_k 4y ago

I always thought that the cobra is about making a radar lose the lock on you, because you suddenly stopped moving. Might be useful if you detect a radar pulse. Losing your speed and showing your belly / back to the enemy, when you cannot shoot, never looked like a reasonable thing to do.

kortex 4y ago
Interesting. I don't work in defense / aero, but that seems plausible. Stealth aircraft are optimized to reduce cross section from certain perspectives. Front, bottom, and oblique are pretty good, iirc, while rear and side are harder to optimize. Not sure about top. I would think it would reflect most energy away from tracking radar unless an active seeker was coming in from higher altitude (in which case you are already toast). Combined with some sort of chaff/decoy release, I could see this causing the seeker's kalman filter or whatnot choosing to go after the return which stayed on the same trajectory with the same signature. Without a decoy, or with smart enough seekers (eg combined mm wave with IR), I think you are probably still going to be hit.
giantrobot 4y ago
Not only do you lose speed but the attacker just needs to rake across your now giant profile with guns. They might also pop off a heat seeking missile which sees you as a giant hot spot against the cold sky.
greedo 4y ago
You can use the Cobra to break a radar lock since most modern radars look for Doppler shift. But eventually the radar would pick you up again.
jabl 4y ago
There is a maneuver called 'notching' which is turning perpendicular to an incoming radar guided missile to try to make a doppler radar lose lock. Often used in conjunction with diving to the deck in order to force the missile to spend energy moving through higher density air. But that doesn't require any vectored thrust, 'supermanouverability' or such. In fact, you should make the turn smooth to conserve energy.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

In a real dogfight, you're not constrained to just pitch. Your nose doesn't need to point straight up. Depending on your exact relative position, you could very well be able to input roll and yaw as well, and end up pointing your nose (and gun) in a rather more useful direction. We can't really call the resulting maneuver a clean airshow version of the "Cobra" anymore; but that's OK: it's a bit more deadly! The airshow version merely demonstrates the aircraft's abilities. An actual pilot practicing combat maneuvers creatively applies those abilities to an actual situation at hand.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Dogfights are an extinct scenario.
- dmix 4y ago
  Yep Russians will be dodging AMRAAM not dogfighting Vulcan guns, and Cobra doesn’t help much with that. Although the vector thrusting and braking that provide an aircraft the means to do Cobra might help against air-to-air and SAM/manpads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM Otherwise it’s just a pretty display at air shows.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    Or directed energy weapons.
  - trevorishere 4y ago
    Of course this is a hypothetical now that we've seen how "well kept" Russian equipment is, but the R-37M will technically reach out and touch American aircraft long before the AMRAAM is in range. Gotta wait for the AIM-260.
    - jabl 4y ago
      Well, the R-37M is an absolute monster missile at 600kg, even bigger than the AIM-54 Phoenix at around 450kg. For comparison the AMRAAM is about 150kg. So even if, hypothetically, Russia could sort out their issues with actually producing their ostensibly high tech designs, I find it hard to imagine this would be a mass produced missile comparable to AMRAAM. More like a special missile to take out high value targets like AWACS planes. Continuing wikipedia spelunking, AIM-120D has a range of >160km (and has apparently already entered service), AIM-260 200km, and R-37M 300-400km. However, as everyone who has played flight sims (or seen youtube videos of them) knows, the actual usable range is much lower than the quoted max ranges. And given stealth technology, one wonders whether the actual capability of the missile is more related to the radars, both of the launching platform and the radar in the missile seeker, than to how long burning rocket motors it has.

unity1001 4y ago

> Unfortunately the circumstances where this is useful is very limited. Even worse: Advancing missile technology has mostly invalidated the need for aircraft in a major war since a long while, and drones will literally sweep what's left of it. The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. The drones can travel 1700 km autonomously, very hard to jam, and they are cheaper than the missiles that are used to shoot them. So that at this point you could bankrupt an enemy by just sending drones. If they can destroy them, they go bankrupt due to missile costs. If they cant or dont, you hit all the targets. The only way to deal with this will be miniaturization of warfare, ie creation of mini drones and mini missiles to hunt drones. Which is still difficult to do and yet to be done because miniaturization is difficult. Aircraft are old news. If you can destroy a target by sending an autonomous drone that travels 1700km, which costs less than a fraction of one sortie of an aircraft, leave aside the cost of aircraft, its armament and pilot training, it means that drones rule warfare now.

eru 4y ago
> The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. Do you have more information on that?
- unity1001 4y ago
  Not in easily accessible Western media, obviously. You have to follow Indian, Chinese or other unaligned sources. Indian outlets would be the easiest. However the best and most striking is to follow the Russian/Slavic channels in Telegram. The footage there is incredible (not gore). They post what Ukrainians post online - drones in flight just before hitting their target. Drones passing over. Multiple drones flying in and hitting their targets despite immense air defense fire. One drone even hit a weapons depot and the resulting fire from the explosion lasted for a day.
  - rnk 4y ago
    This is interesting news about the iranian drones I haven't read anywhere. Indian and Chinese media is widely available on the web, surprising this hasn't come up. Can you provide a link to some stories? My own web search found this in Politico. So I don't think it's a secret kept from western media. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/26/iranian-drones-ukraine-russia-war-00058802 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/26/iranian-drones-ukra...

nelox 4y ago

It is exceptionally useful in an aerobatic display

philwelch 4y ago

And that's assuming that the fight hasn't already been decided from BVR with radar-guided missiles in the first place.