#Vertical roll air combat maneuver plus

And we will do that through a bit of the theory behind WVR aerial combat, explaining the so-called BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers), the tactical movements performed by a fighter during an aerial engagement to gain a positional advantage over the opponent. Today we will try to bring you inside the mind of a fighter pilot engaging an adversary aircraft during a dogfight. Navy) We talk about the basics of WVR (Within Visual Range) engagements: turn performance, speed at merge, Specific Excess Power and much more. Navy McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C of attack squadron VFA-82 Marauders over Germany in September 1998. Unlike the Cobra, this isn't a move mostly for airshows-this could be useful in actual combat.A German Mikoyan-Gurevitch MiG-29 Fulcrum of Jagdgeschwader 73 (73rd Fighter Wing) caught with the gun camera of a U.S. Essentially the Herbst Maneuver allows a pilot to turn on a dime while coming back around at an extremely high angle of attack-and therefore with a huge amount of potential energy and speed to spend. Or for a look at the trick from a distance, check out this F-22 Raptor pulling it off (among some other things): It can be a little hard to get a feel for exactly what's going on by watching NASA's footage of the move being pulled in the experimental X-31 plane, so here's a diagram:

Instead of just pulling up and going forward again, the Herbst Maneuver has the pilot roll the plane a bit while its nose is pointed at the sky, so that when the nose comes back down, the plane is pointed in a different direction. That being the case, it's mostly for airshows and hard to imagine it being useful in actual combat.įirst performed by German test pilot Karl-Heinz Lang in 1993, the Herbst Maneuver is basically Pugachev's Cobra with a bit of a twist. Theoretically, the rapid loss of speed could be used to make a high-speed pursuer overshoot you, but it also leaves the jet that pulled the Cobra in a pretty vulnerable state. It's an impressive but questionably useful trick.

But either way, the engines are firing hard enough the entire time to maintain the jet's altitude despite the loss of speed and lift. If the plane does have thrust vectoring, that can help the re-orientation even more. In a plane without thrust vectoring but with a thrust-to-weight ratio higher than 1, the drag towards the tail of the plane can be used to pitch the nose forward again. And these nutso stunts are basically the aptitude test.įirst performed by Soviet test pilot Viktor Pugachoyov in 1989, the maneuver that would go on to be called 'Pugachev's Cobra' is one of the building blocks that makes up many other more complicated supermaneuvers.ĭuring flight, the pilot pulls back to an absurd angle of attack, taking the nose of the craft completely vertical or even beyond.

There are no strict or explicit criteria for whether a jet is supermaneuverable or not, but there's a loose list of the (mostly-Russian) jets that can live up to the name.

#Vertical roll air combat maneuver plus

This gives pilots control of a plane even after it's stalled, and really opens up the possibility of maneuvers where you stall on purpose.Īll that plus high maneuverability by traditional means adds up to a whole other kind of a precise aerial control. Specifically, if that ratio is greater than one-the plane's thrust can completely counteract the its weight and then some-pilots can power through sticky situations by just flooring it. Thrust-to-weight ratio plays a part as well. It looks like this:īut that alone isn't enough. Instead of relying on airflow, jets with thrust-vectoring can twist and turn themselves around by changing the direction their jets are pointed. This is accomplished in a couple of ways. Pilots can pull off moves with precise control in conditions that would leave other aircraft hopelessly plummeting towards the ground. The quality that sets some jets apart from the rest is called supermaneuverability: they are so powerful and nimble that they can fly without relying purely on aerodynamics. But some jets are powerful enough that they can leave all that in the dust. But even during the most intense in-air aerobatics, most planes are still slaves to aerodynamics: The air flowing over their wings gives them the lift to stay aloft and they control their movement by altering the surfaces that air flows over. Loops and barrel rolls are impressive aerial stunts, sure.