F16 training intercept on holding GA aircraft

Pilot Fighter said:
Beat me to it. JSOW had a rough start but matured nicely … but it was a bomb.

ACM, LRSO, SLAMR, nuclear B-52ish stuff?
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Yeah JSOW is/was kind of a niche weapon. Pretty outclassed these days, but it was pretty cool technology 15+ years ago. I got to drop one in the Pt Mugu range once. It's post release pitch up maneuver was startling to say the least, even though our launch profile was designed to minimize that (amongst other factors). We were a 5 ship all dropping them simultaneously, and it was suddenly like we all had 5 more wingmen for a few seconds, that were all doing very unpredictable things. Big bomb though.
 
///AMG said:
Yeah JSOW is/was kind of a niche weapon. Pretty outclassed these days, but it was pretty cool technology 15+ years ago. I got to drop one in the Pt Mugu range once. It's post release pitch up maneuver was startling to say the least, even though our launch profile was designed to minimize that (amongst other factors). We were a 5 ship all dropping them simultaneously, and it was suddenly like we all had 5 more wingmen for a few seconds, that were all doing very unpredictable things. Big bomb though.
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Don’t blame me but I think about a couple dozen lines of my ADA code make it into JSOW. The world is safe, my defense contracting and programming career was short-lived.
 
///AMG said:
Yeah JSOW is/was kind of a niche weapon. Pretty outclassed these days, but it was pretty cool technology 15+ years ago. I got to drop one in the Pt Mugu range once. It's post release pitch up maneuver was startling to say the least, even though our launch profile was designed to minimize that (amongst other factors). We were a 5 ship all dropping them simultaneously, and it was suddenly like we all had 5 more wingmen for a few seconds, that were all doing very unpredictable things. Big bomb though.
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If the long term future plan of AI targeting and networked ordnance providers actually happens we are basically all just a big flying warehouse of warheads to be used as SkyNet see’s fit.

It’s funny the people that talk about JASSM truck methodology not being useful in a large scale future conflict, but we are seeing the Uke’s absolutely ruin the other guy’s day with long range precision fires at the pissy rate that they can maintain. God help the poor bastard that we full shock and awe with AI intel targeting sync’s to a flexible network of rapid responsive long range ordnance shooters.


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Pilot Fighter said:
Don’t blame me but I think about a couple dozen lines of my ADA code make it into JSOW. The world is safe, my defense contracting and programming career was short-lived.
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Hah man, small world. I used to teach a class on how to do the aircrew planning portion of ATA (perhaps we adopted a different terminology, I imagine we are talking about the same thing) for JSOW (and SLAM-ER). It was pretty capable stuff, though the interface we used could have used some modernization. But under the hood, I think you guys got it right, with the processors and sensors you had available at the time.
 
///AMG said:
What do you mean?
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I was referencing the military becoming more reliant on stand-off weapons rather than dog fighting back in the sixties (full disclosure, I'm not a fighter pilot nor have I ever served in the military), maybe that's a myth or an urban legend? I have no idea how fighter pilots are training these days but I hope it still involves a lot of gun employment.
 
knot4u said:
I was referencing the military becoming more reliant on stand-off weapons rather than dog fighting back in the sixties (full disclosure, I'm not a fighter pilot nor have I ever served in the military), maybe that's a myth or an urban legend? I have no idea how fighter pilots are training these days but I hope it still involves a lot of gun employment.
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just like children of the magenta, modern fighter types are, and have been for a long while, children of the “green chit in the HUD”
 
@knot4u I'd say fighter training is still heavily (at least in the Navy) biased to dogfighting (or as we call it, BFM) training. And a lot of beyond visual range stuff too. The upgrade syllabus for a new guy, as well as when I was a student going through TOPGUN, was about 50/50 BVR vs WVR/BFM. Part of that was because we typically "re-flew" each BFM event about 2-5 times, so those 6 flights became closer to 20. The "hassling ended in Korea, radar missiles are the only solution" axiom shift was 60 years ago. We learned from the mistakes I think, starting in the 1970's. Mike isn't wrong that we have lost some skills due to really nice technology, but I'd say the actual impacts of that are more esoteric than some true equivalent to the airline magenta. We largely still know how to fight at the merge, much better than just about anyone else in the world. A few of us were fortunate enough to get a graduate degree and teach it on the reg.

Gun employment is still challenging. It has never been easier than it is now, but you still have to get the hands doing the right stuff to put the thing on the thing :)
 
Same as it ever was… “dern kids and their newfangled interrupter gear and throttles…back in my day we blipped the mags to keep in place behind the bandit and died like men when the bullets bounced wrong off the prop”
 
///AMG said:
@knot4u I'd say fighter training is still heavily (at least in the Navy) biased to dogfighting (or as we call it, BFM) training. And a lot of beyond visual range stuff too. The upgrade syllabus for a new guy, as well as when I was a student going through TOPGUN, was about 50/50 BVR vs WVR/BFM. Part of that was because we typically "re-flew" each BFM event about 2-5 times, so those 6 flights became closer to 20. The "hassling ended in Korea, radar missiles are the only solution" axiom shift was 60 years ago. We learned from the mistakes I think, starting in the 1970's. Mike isn't wrong that we have lost some skills due to really nice technology, but I'd say the actual impacts of that are more esoteric than some true equivalent to the airline magenta. We largely still know how to fight at the merge, much better than just about anyone else in the world. A few of us were fortunate enough to get a graduate degree and teach it on the reg.

Gun employment is still challenging. It has never been easier than it is now, but you still have to get the hands doing the right stuff to put the thing on the thing :)
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Hog pilots today don’t even keep any currency on manual drops. Was a qual event in my day, now it’s a one-time fam event. Everything has to be guided something these days, or the birds aren’t allowed into the combat zone, which is part of the problem.


Roger Roger said:
Same as it ever was… “dern kids and their newfangled interrupter gear and throttles…back in my day we blipped the mags to keep in place behind the bandit and died like men when the bullets bounced wrong off the prop”
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It’s a little bit more nuanced than that, when the magic and tech stop working in combat, but the combat doesn’t stop, and the basics need to be known. Not talking about a coffee maker not working or some other mild inconvenience.
 
To be fair Mike, I think the A/G argument you make is a bit different than in A/A. There isn't really a recent (in the last 40+ years) historical comparison between the current AIM-120 and another significantly more manual A/A missile. I mean, in the F-4, the guys had to more or less visually ascertain the LAR, which I guess would be the closest comparison. But that ultimately just led to a lot of sparrows (and AIM-4's) in trees over NVN. Not particularly productive. Also a little bit of a difference in the nature of the weapon. Sparrow was not really designed as a missile to be shot at maneuvering targets, and in such a setting, it was basically nothing more than a dogfighting missile (its kinematics were poor enough that you couldn't really shoot it BVR against anything that as much as coughed).
 
///AMG said:
To be fair Mike, I think the A/G argument you make is a bit different than in A/A. There isn't really a recent (in the last 40+ years) historical comparison between the current AIM-120 and another significantly more manual A/A missile. I mean, in the F-4, the guys had to more or less visually ascertain the LAR, which I guess would be the closest comparison. But that ultimately just led to a lot of sparrows (and AIM-4's) in trees over NVN. Not particularly productive. Also a little bit of a difference in the nature of the weapon. Sparrow was not really designed as a missile to be shot at maneuvering targets, and in such a setting, it was basically nothing more than a dogfighting missile (its kinematics were poor enough that you couldn't really shoot it BVR against anything that as much as coughed).
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the A/G is what I was referring to. Although the current crop of A/A thought is if you get to the merge, you effed up long before (assuming ROE allows that). The ole AIM-7, part of its problem was the electronics being too fragile for repeated carrier ops, and on the USAF ones, their being driven over FOD shakers on the weapons trailers before entering the flightline. That in addition to what you said about it being brought into a dogfighting role it was never really designed for. All true.
 
Yeah you are correct in the sense that BFM is widely considered BVR execution gone wrong. Especially amongst 5th gen folk. To be fair, there are so many tools today to not get there, it might actually be true now in some cases. ROE notwithstanding. On the ROE note, I have personally heard a 3 star (USAF combatant commander type) tell our planning staff that we can have whatever we needed, he'd bottom line it and we could plan for it. This being a staff for a (still) very likely to execute OPLAN. You obviously can't count on that, since he/she doesn't always have the final word, nor would all have such a permissive slant on their own accord. Which is why we spend so much (disproportionately to most of the rest of the world) time training to it.
 
///AMG said:
Yeah you are correct in the sense that BFM is widely considered BVR execution gone wrong. Especially amongst 5th gen folk. To be fair, there are so many tools today to not get there, it might actually be true now in some cases. ROE notwithstanding. On the ROE note, I have personally heard a 3 star (USAF combatant commander type) tell our planning staff that we can have whatever we needed, he'd bottom line it and we could plan for it. This being a staff for a (still) very likely to execute OPLAN. You obviously can't count on that, since he/she doesn't always have the final word, nor would all have such a permissive slant on their own accord. Which is why we spend so much (disproportionately to most of the rest of the world) time training to it.
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don’t get me wrong, the modern weaponry and technology is very impressive in its own right. Capes we only were able to wish for back in the day. Combatant commanders are supposed to have the power to execute as they see fit, however politics will always seemingly work their way into that, positively or negatively.
 
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