Procedures/78th/A2A/BVR

SCOPE and MOTIVATION

This Training Unit assumes understanding of Aircraft Fundamentals, BFM and the Line Abreast Formation

Beyond Visual Range engagements are the most common A2A conflicts that modern era pilots have to master.

This unit aims to teach you how to stay alive minimize blue on blue situations and teach you how to use your weapons most effectively.

BVR I - Basics

This Part orients itself on this video by The Ops Center By Mike Solymon

When a Fighter is commited to an intercept, the goal is to end up in a noffensive position with eyes on the target. But with the proliferation of modern air-to-air missiles its very likely that a target may decide to fire in on an Interceptor before that happens. That fight can happen at Beyond Visual Range, where the only view of the other arcraft is a blip on a radar screen so how do you survive and win a Beyond Visual range Fight?

The overall strategy to winning any bvr fight is to Simply get a weapon Solution on your opponent without lett im get a weapon solution on you. (This is an Oversimplification of a very complex process)

Indentify Friend or Foe (IFF)

Before a fighter can fire on another aircraft, that aricraft needs to be confirmed as a valid target. That process of identification is called IFF (identify Friend or Foe)

WEAPON ENGAGEMENT ZONE (WEZ)

There are many ways of preventing an enemy from getting an weapon solution involving technical counter measures like jamming decoys chaff radar defeating Meanuebers like he Notch and low radar cross-section airframes. All of these are great but have a common flaw: They are not Guaranteed to work.

The only solution that always works is staying outside of the kinetic range of the nemeys missles.

The zone where a enemys missle can kinemetically reach you is called the Weapon employment zone (WEZ)

For most Red-Coalition Figthers a Stern WEZ of 14NM at 30000ft and 4NM at 0MSL is a good Rule of thumb. WEZ is a highly highly dynamic figure and requires a great amount of experience to get right so be conservative with your approximations.

Remember the four A's: Altitude, Airspeed, Aspect, Angle at Launch. High A's increase the WEZ Low A's decrease the WEZ. Altitude is by far the most important figure.

THE "OUT" Maneuver

This leads to a simple stargegy for surviaval: TUrn away from the attacker as quickly as possible. This is such an effective startegy that i even has its own name and brevity.

To execute an OUT make a tactical turn where you maintain air speed throughout the turn and put the treat on your 6oclock. This turn opposed ot standart tactical turns is executed at full After Burner since survival is the main concern here.

The Radio call goes as:

 SHADOW11 OUT [DIRECTION]

MINIMUM ABORT RANGE (MAR)

Now there is a particular time that you want to start your turn. This time is defined by a distance we Call Minimum Abort Range (MAR). We want to start the turn such that throughout and after the turn we stay outside the enemys WEZ. For that we need to know the distance cost of executing an OUT. Factoring in Closure and Turn Rate this comes out to around 4NM in most scenarios at 30000ft and 2/3NM at lower altitudes.

Adding this to a WEZ of 14NM we get a MAR of 17/18NM adding a mile to be conservative we get a MAR of 19NM at 30000ft. At this distance you want to execute or OUT.