How many fighter pilots lurk hacker news?

Fighter pilots are not what you think. They know thier planes and thier enemy's planes, but those are always many years old. Few pay any attention to cutting edge technology as it doesn't impact thier work. They are not experts in missile development nor even aerodynamics. Point to a bit on a plane and they can say what it does, but ask them to explain exactly why it is engineered as it is and they will not have specific answers.

A cop is not an expert on ballistics just because he uses a gun. He knows his gun and how to best use it, but debates about the latest gun technology isn't necessarily his interest as they don't change how he uses the gun he has today.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Diesel has met a few fighter pilots. It's not a monolithic culture--there are plenty of pilots out there who are exactly as you describe, but also a number who not only can explain why a thing is engineered a certain way, but actually did some of that engineering themselves. Even if they're playing supporting roles in flight test and weapons development, they absolutely take the lead in tactics development/refinement, which is intimately tied to current knowledge about both friendly and enemy systems and tactics.

Besides, believe it or not, some of them are huge nerds...

Probably a few actual fighter pilots, and quite a few more simulator enthusiasts who know a lot about the mechanics.

Or perhaps even those that built the flight simulators that trained the pilots.

Now we’ve come full circle.

I think I've seen a handful here...

Both. This would mainly be WVR, but there are variations for use in F-pole/BVR in general, especially if there is significant vertical angle between both. In theory this could be adapted as an F-pole manoeuvre against a plane with an altitude advantage in which you could defeat radar and shoot off a missile at the same time.

Why do you need to turn your nose that far that fast in a BVR fight? It may not even be possible in the flight regime you're in. There are a lot of other potential issues with this kind of maneuvering.

I agree that there are some potential uses in a WVR fight (particularly a 1v1 fight), but I think it's pretty fair to say that it's generally preferable to bleed off the missile's energy and preserve your own (which makes sense considering that countries tend to procure HMCS and HOBS missiles long before supermaneuverable aircraft). You don't get extra points for a missile making it to the target at a higher energy state, as long as it has enough energy to get there to begin with.

What prospects do you think there may be for active anti-missile tech like Trophy on fighters? The demonstrations I've seen of that system were mind-blowing and it doesn't seem too far-fetched to put on a jet.

I find active missile countermeasures weirdly ignored in these discussions. Compared to ground engagements it seems like there's plenty of time to engage. It's not like missiles are especially maneuverable. It's not like planes are cheap and disposable. And yet all the defenses we seem to talk about are passive (more stealth! more speed!)

The first impulse with naval, ground or even space doctrine is to at least try to shoot down missiles but it's like we don't even talk about it in the air. Am I missing something?

That's a good question! For something very similar to Trophy, I'd generally say low for at least 3 reasons (weight/size/complexity, issues from moving 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than armored ground vehicles, and the fact that you need to consummate the intercept at a much further range because airplanes are much more fragile than tanks), but never underestimate what a few billion dollars and several decades of research can achieve.

I'd expect to see something like this to show up on transports and tankers long before it shows up on fighters, and probably in the form of an antimissile missile (EFPs might not mix well with relatively delicate airframes) or a similar expendable. This is more in the realm of plausibility, and the idea actually has some historical precedent as a proposed defense against SAMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pye_Wacket

That said, there are other forms of active defense against missiles that don't rely on physically destroying their airframes. Generally, I think those technologies are more promising, particularly when they aren't limited by ammunition.

Suffice to say, there's a big Red Queen's race going on between countermeasures and counter-countermeasures.

> That said, there are other forms of active defense against missiles

Ah yes i'm reasonably well aware of some of the EW/optical suites being deployed. Was just wondering if anything kinetic was, er, on the radar. Totally agree that Trophy et al is not really going to work - they just want to avoid a direct hit whereas even 100m away could be fatal to an airplane. But these BVR missiles are active - flinging something back almost seems like low hanging fruit!

Perhaps no-one really knows. The lack of any peer air confrontation in 50 years definitely shows. The f-22 is a marvel but I for one have trouble seriously believing it can just boop su-35s out of the sky from a hundred miles away completely risk-free. None of this has ever been tested. Frankly, without some astonishing tech breakthrough, i find the idea of routine BVR shootdowns of peer adversaries to be kind of wishful thinking...

And none of this even touches on the real weak point, the tankers, aka. the reason why none of these planes are ever going to fly over a real adversary anyway.. sure, you can probably get an f-22 over Beijing. Once.

The idea in BVR is that in many situations the enemy aircraft has an altitude advantage compared to you. Therefore, the enemy radar is only able to detect the target if there is a significant Doppler shift compared to the ground. The combination of rapid deceleration as well velocity change drastically reduces the Doppler shift which would lead to a loss of lock.

Meanwhile, the ~120+ degree change in AoA combined with HMCS means that there is a good possibility of shooting off your won missile, putting the enemy in the defensive. Given the advantage in energy of the R-77 this can lead to a situation where even if your missile fails, you have a subsequent energy and position advantage.

Bleeding off the missile's energy and preserving your own is not necessarily the best strategy if your enemy has an energy advantage that is sufficient to prevent you from taking the other hand despite your energy being sufficient to get a kill in a vacuum. If you react fast enough you may be able to throw off the missile or lock entirely and also get your own missile on target.

There are advantages to look-up and look-down depending on the tactic you're employing. It might work well against a radar with a known vulnerability to this type of maneuver, although I'm not sure I would employ it as a general tactic against generic Doppler radars (ignoring kinematic issues here, but they're very much a concern even if the maneuver is both doable and effective).

There are plenty of other ways to skin the cat that I would suggest reaching for before this. We've been fighting with and against Doppler radars for a long time...