Flight Procedures
Air Combat Maneuvering
Duke: “Duke confirms horizontal scissors 180.”
Mo: “Mo’s turning in, tally, visual, Fox-2, bandit in trail.”
Bandit: “Bandit, knock it off.”
Mo: “Mo knock it off.”
Duke: “Duke knock it off.”
At this point, the bandit will be on the other side of the section. He will set up again on a high perch
and reinitiate the exercise, but in the opposite direction. This gives both fighters a chance to practice
all aspects of the appropriate communications.
You will have a tendency to not maintain combat spread during this exercise. Do not get so caught
up in the comm that you forget to monitor your airspeed and altitude and make corrections appropri-
ately. You will also find yourself making inappropriate calls because you are not watching the bandit
carefully. If he reverses left, do not transmit to your wingman that he is reversing right. Here in
training it is embarrassing. In a real combat situation, it could be fatal!
Rear-Quarter Attacks
In a rear-quarter attack, the bandit attacks from behind and between the section. When the bandit
attacks from the rear, the section has to be aware that one of three things can happen. First, when
the bandit engages one of the fighters, he may stay with that fighter throughout the entire engage-
ment. This is a no-switch attack, and once the engaged fighter is identified, no roles change for
either fighter. Second, after the bandit engages a fighter at some point during the engagement, he
disengages from the first fighter and engages the other. This is a single-switch scenario and forces
the fighters to recognize the situation and change roles once during an engagement. Third, the
bandit may switch several times, continuously disengaging from one fighter and engaging the other
when the bandit feels it is to his advantage to do so. This is a multi-switch scenario, causing any
number of role changes between the fighters. Even though the procedures for each of these
scenarios are canned, they represent what can happen in a real 2 v 1 engagement.
No-Switch Scenario
A classic strategy to defeat a bandit attacking from the rear-quarter between the section is to employ
the “counterflow,” where the engaged fighter forces the bandit into a predictable flight path, while the
free fighter maneuvers out-of-plane, going counter to the direction of the fight for a kill.
In the first scenario, the counterflow exercise, the bandit will attack from behind and between the
section. As shown in the top section of Figure 37, the tactical lead, whether lead or wingman, calls
for the threatened section member to break or hard turn. The tactical lead becomes the free fighter
and maneuvers in the opposite direction using an uncalled cross turn to achieve counterflow with a
vertical split. The engaged fighter calls his role, gets the tally, and fights the best possible 1 v 1
defense. If the engaged fighter can generate high AOT, the fight may develop into lufbery, which
would serve to prevent the bandit from maneuvering for a shot while forcing him into a predictable
flight path.
(10-98) Change 1
Page 63
Previous Page
