Flight Procedures
Air Combat Maneuvering
DEFENSIVE
As you might imagine, priorities change somewhat when finding yourself on the defensive end of an
engagement. Above all else, you need to survive. This will require you to defeat any weapon that
has already been fired and deny the bandit the option of deploying others. Your capacity to perform
this most important task is seriously diminished the longer that you remain engaged. For this
reason, you must look for opportunities to disengage, or bug out. They will rarely simply appear.
You will more than likely have to create them through intelligent defensive BFM.
Lastly, should the opportunity to go on the offensive present itself, take it only if it will result in a
quick kill. It would take a fairly egregious BFM error for this to happen (you’ll recall from your
ACM-1), but it’s possible. It is a whole lot easier to disengage from a dead bandit. Besides, you will
do fighter aviation a favor by removing this individual from the gene pool.
Those of you with an especially robust penchant for blood may be wondering why disengagement
would be a higher priority than a role reversal. Excellent question. It is not always going to be.
There may be times that your mission dictates remaining engaged at all costs. Without a mission
imperative, however, look to bug out first. Your odds of achieving a successful one are a whole lot
better. It’s sort of like holding a blackjack with the dealer showing an Ace up. Take the even money
and move to another table.
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