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