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 Solyom.

When a fighter is committed to an intercept, the goal is to end up in an offensive position with eyes on the target. But with the proliferation of modern air-to-air missiles, it is very likely that a target may decide to fire on an interceptor before that happens. That fight can happen at Beyond Visual Range, where the only view of the other aircraft 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 letting them get a weapon solution on you. (This is an oversimplification of a very complex process.)

Identify Friend or Foe (IFF)

Before a fighter can fire on another aircraft, that aircraft 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 a weapon solution, involving technical countermeasures like jamming, decoys, and chaff, as well as radar-defeating maneuvers like the Notch, and low radar cross-section airframes. All of these are great but share a common flaw: they are not guaranteed to work.

The only solution that always works is staying outside the kinetic range of the enemy's missiles.

The zone where an enemy's missile can kinematically reach you is called the Weapon Engagement Zone (WEZ).

For most Red Coalition fighters, a stern WEZ of 14 NM at 30,000 ft and 4 NM at 0 MSL is a good rule of thumb. WEZ is a highly dynamic figure and requires a great amount of experience to estimate correctly, so be conservative with your approximations.

Remember the four A's: Altitude, Airspeed, Aspect, Angle-off at Launch. High values increase the WEZ; low values decrease it. Altitude is by far the most important factor.

The "OUT" Maneuver

This leads to a simple strategy for survival: turn away from the attacker as quickly as possible. This is such an effective strategy that it even has its own name and brevity code.

To execute an OUT, make a tactical turn where you maintain airspeed throughout the turn and put the threat on your 6 o'clock. Unlike standard tactical turns, this maneuver is executed at full afterburner, since survival is the primary concern.

The radio call is:

 SHADOW11 OUT [DIRECTION]

Minimum Abort Range (MAR)

There is a specific distance at which you want to initiate your turn, called the Minimum Abort Range (MAR). We want to begin the turn such that throughout and after the maneuver we remain outside the enemy's WEZ. To determine this, we need to account for the distance consumed while executing an OUT. Factoring in closure rate and turn rate, this comes out to approximately 4 NM in most scenarios at 30,000 ft, and 2–3 NM at lower altitudes.

Adding this to a WEZ of 14 NM gives a MAR of 17–18 NM; adding one mile of margin gives a MAR of 19 NM at 30,000 ft. This is the distance at which you want to execute your OUT.

BVR II - SKATE

In many defensive scenarios where the safty of the intercepting fighter is more important that the destruction of enemy assets we have launc hand leave tactics. Just like the the name implice ordinaance is launched and the nthe figther execute an OUT. Launch and LEave prserves range betweeen interceptors and the target therby keeping them outside of an adversarys way but it also points the Figthers weapons and sensors away from the target. Flying away makes confirmation of weapons effects more difficult and it usually reauslts in a lower probabliltoy of a kill. but this might be enoug hto accomplis the mission objective if firiing a missle at a hislte aircraft gets it to leave defended airspace then thats a win. even if it doesnt reesult in a kill.

Launch and LEave tactis have their own befvity code as well. its know as SKATE

SHADOW11 [SHORT / / LONG] SKATE

To understand what the diffrence betweeen SHORT SKATE; SKATE; and LONG SKATE is we need to understand two more concepts

THE "IN" Maneuver

Similar to the OUT the IN is a full AB turn that maintains airspeed and altitude but puts the adversary on your 12 o clock.

SHADOW11 IN

The IN has about the same Distance Cost as the OUT

MINIMUM / DESIRED OUT RANGE (MOR / DOR)

The MINIMUM OUT RANGE this the distance to the Adversary where we can execute and OUT then an IN launch a second Missle and execute another OUT while stying outside the Adversayrys WEZ.

So additionally to MAR we do one IN and one more OUT maneuver.

For a MAR of 19NM and assuming 4NM for both the IN and OUT we then have to add 8NM to the MAR

MOR = MAR + COST OF IN + COST OF OUT = 19NM + 4NM + 4NM = 27NM