Emphasis on old fashioned dog fighting.

It’s interesting that most discussions on these forums are about old fashioned dog fighting.

I say old fashioned because even in most modern A2A combats since 1991, old fashioned dog fighting has not really occurred.

In fact most modern A2A combat has been dominated by BVR and even short range missile kills have been straight missile launches without much in the way of extensive air combat maneouvring.

The big factors is modern A2A combat appear to be:

1. Superior C3 (Command/Control/Communication) – AWACS is critical here. E.g. in a recent Polish exercise, F-16s were able to “blast” MiG-29s out of the sky with ease whilst guided by AWACS. Without AWACS combat did eventuate in dog fighting between survivors of BVR.

AWACS as well as E-6 Mercury Airborne Communication aircraft are present during any Western operation.

2. SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defence) – jamming/suppressing/destroying enemy air defence radars means the enemy is blind and is unable to effectively guide fighters via GCI (Ground Controlled Intercept). GCI is generally critical if you don’t have AWACS as fighter radars don’t have the capability of larger ground or AWACS radars and also don’t like to broadcast location too much.

3. Missile reliablility – in the old days dog fights eventuated because missiles were unreliable and had limited capability. This has changed considerably since 1980s. BVR kills are now the main aim of the game in Western forces.

4. Unless there is a massive disparity in quality, training does not reduce the impact of above. Serb pilots in 1999 were very professional but lack of reliable electronics, lack of adequate AWACS and C3 means they were generally sitting ducks for NATO F-15 and F-16s.

So if you have dominance in above factors, air dominance is assured even if you jets are poorer “dog fighters” than the opponent’s.

The only exception to the rule is where opponents are poorer countries without access to CGI, AWACS, SEAD or any level of capable C3.

Eritrean-Ethiopian War’s a good example here. BVR was not a decisive factor (1 kill out of 25+ launches) and both sides lacked sophistication required for operations as described above. Hence dog fights eventuated.

But this is the exception rather than the norm. Most larger air forces that are capable of war fighting (i.e. air force isn’t a dozen or so jets) will have invested in above factors.

Indeed the big winner in terms of improved sales since 1991 has been the AWACS aircraft with aircraft sold to a variety of new users that never had this capability before (Pakistan, India, Brazil, Australia, South Korea, Turkey, Mexico, China (well other than some converted Tu-4 Bulls!)).

Hence maneouvrability doesn’t really matter that much these days as it did up to the 1980s.

And from above perspective, F-35 makes a lot of sense for an operator ala the US. They have absolute overkill dominance in the sphere of C3, SEAD/DEAD and overall electronic warfare as well as critical first strike capability via cruise missiles, stealth bombers and in future F-35.

That basically means most enemy fighters are dead on the ground and those that get airborne are easy pickings for US fighters. Indeed this is what happened last time US did get into aerial battles in 1999 over Kosovo.

It also means that if even a larger operator such as China or Russia can’t override US dominance in this area, they will struggle with heavy casualties in any conventional shooting war.

It’s even relevant in smaller wars – Israel had absolute electronic and C3 dominance over Syria in 1982 which saw both Syrian ground air defence and air force defeated for few Israeli losses.