Unfortunately the circumstances where this is useful is very limited.
You'd have to be in very close range and in a very bad disadvantage, which honestly doesn't last long (you'd blow up very fast) and when you start decelerating you become a very easy target to hit.
And after your opponent overshoots--you just lost a ton of energy--and energy is everything in aerial combat. Energy is the currency you spend to maneuver, and you've just spent it on this hail mary.
> Unfortunately the circumstances where this is useful is very limited.
Even worse: Advancing missile technology has mostly invalidated the need for aircraft in a major war since a long while, and drones will literally sweep what's left of it.
The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. The drones can travel 1700 km autonomously, very hard to jam, and they are cheaper than the missiles that are used to shoot them. So that at this point you could bankrupt an enemy by just sending drones. If they can destroy them, they go bankrupt due to missile costs. If they cant or dont, you hit all the targets.
The only way to deal with this will be miniaturization of warfare, ie creation of mini drones and mini missiles to hunt drones. Which is still difficult to do and yet to be done because miniaturization is difficult.
Aircraft are old news. If you can destroy a target by sending an autonomous drone that travels 1700km, which costs less than a fraction of one sortie of an aircraft, leave aside the cost of aircraft, its armament and pilot training, it means that drones rule warfare now.
In dcs, when a player cobras successfully it typically just results in them missing the next turn and getting shot.
The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. bin mind that dog fights happen in a one or two circle high g turn as each fighter attempts to out turn the other, cobra maneuvers require that the (losing fighter) exit the circle.
In a real dogfight, you're not constrained to just pitch. Your nose doesn't need to point straight up. Depending on your exact relative position, you could very well be able to input roll and yaw as well, and end up pointing your nose (and gun) in a rather more useful direction.
We can't really call the resulting maneuver a clean airshow version of the "Cobra" anymore; but that's OK: it's a bit more deadly!
The airshow version merely demonstrates the aircraft's abilities. An actual pilot practicing combat maneuvers creatively applies those abilities to an actual situation at hand.
I always thought that the cobra is about making a radar lose the lock on you, because you suddenly stopped moving. Might be useful if you detect a radar pulse.
Losing your speed and showing your belly / back to the enemy, when you cannot shoot, never looked like a reasonable thing to do.
“Go up, blow up” is the common phrase in this kind of aerial combat. You highlight your heat signature against… space.
Even without heaters, I can be extremely aggressive on a guns attempt because an overshoot in the vertical isn’t nearly as risky - few aircraft can capitalize on an overshoot uphill. Almost all defenders in that situation (if they live through the attack) will be forced downhill anyway.
Also a maneuver that takes so much energy and trades it for heat/turbulence better also be getting a kill out of that trade immediately, and that kill had better the be the last guy left trying to kill you. There are vanishingly few situations where a cobra won't leave you reeeally wishing you still had the energy you just spent.
Is there a reason why modern planes can't shoot backwards? A lot of the WW2 planes had turrets a separate gunner would control, but they all seem to have disappeared.
My only guess is that dogfights don't actually happen much anymore.
> A lot of the WW2 planes had turrets a separate gunner would control,
In WWII unescorted bomber losses were quite catastrophic even with gun turrets pointing in every conceivable direction like the B-17. Ultimately it was long range escort fighters like the P-51 that brought down the loss rate to an acceptable rate so that long range raids could continue.
Post-WWII bomber design evidently came to the conclusion that, except in some cases a tail turret, all these guns weren't worth the weight and drag, and got rid of them. And then missiles came on the scene, further reducing the usefulness of defensive guns.
> My only guess is that dogfights don't actually happen much anymore.
Modern short range AA missiles have 'off boresight' capability, meaning that the pilot has a HUD mounted in the helmet, he doesn't need to point the nose towards the target to shoot. And yes, longer range AA missiles are apparently nowadays expected to be amazingly effective to the point that actual short range dogfights would be very rare.
Yes - I followed former fighter pilot on YT - you have bad guys in range if your sensors/missiles, fire missile or two and that is mostly end of the fight.
Even if you don't hit the guy you just pull back and go for your station because without rockets you will be gone if the other guy somehow survives 2 and you don't have any.
So not quite "backwards", but dang close. With that being said, beyond visual range (BVR) engagements for gen 4 and higher fighters (gen 4 would be F-16 (the best plane ever produced, and everyone here knows it ;), F-18, MiG-29, Su-27; gen 5 would be F-22, F-35... and somewhat arguably Su-57) should be the norm. The USAF/US Navy is a bit behind on this with the AIM-120C/D being a medium-range missile where as some of the Russian-produced missiles have a longer reach. The USAF currently has a program to produce a long-range variant of the AIM-120C/D (our last long range missile was the AIM-54 Phoenix, exclusively carried by the retired F-14) with the designation of AIM-260 -- the AIM-260 is expected to replace the AIM-120.
AIM-120C/D "maddog" call -- now that'd be an interesting air-to-air engagement -- "maddog" is the call for firing the AIM-120 without the aircraft having radar lock and whatever the missile picks up on it's terminal guidance radar is likely doomed.
Ahhh I played way too much Falcon 4.0 and the DCS F-16 module.
Those "turret fighters" were basically total failures. At least one of the British attempts wound up being used for anti-aircraft defense, parked on the side of the runway after having their engines removed.
The Northrop P-61 had a turret, which wound up being used in the locked forward position due to it being unreliable.
Simple, it's a matter of range, weight and balance. All other things being equal, a point defense cannon would probably be useful. However, those weapons are heavy and decidedly impractical for even something as heavy as a buff.
To put a gun in a turret it's got to be pretty small. Turret guns were therefore only good for shooting at slow, close aircraft. You basically don't get that anymore.
> Super stall plagued the early years of Saab 35 service, causing several deaths, which led the Swedish air staff to implement extra training on how to counteract and recover from them. The result was the cobra maneuver.
In Spain, that’s when someone tries to kiss someone in the mouth and the other person reacts by moving their head back real quick in order to avoid it.
In Top Gun 2, he uses it twice. Once, during the training dogfight where Rooster has a chance to shoot him down (he says, "Too late, you had your chance" and then pulls off the maneuver, targeting Rooster instead afterwards). After the training dogfight, he is told by Cyclone, "...and I don't ever want to see that Cobra shit again. That could have gotten you both killed".
The second time was towards the end when they're fending off the SAM attacks -- Rooster is in trouble with no flares to launch, and Maverick simultaneously pulls off a Cobra Maneuver while launching his own set of flairs, resulting in his own aircraft being hit.
In Top Gun 1 he did something like it twice in an F-14 against the MiGs: "I'm gonna hit the brakes, he'll fly right by". Once in the first dogfight and then again in the last one.
I see lots of talk about lack of usefulness in combat. I agree with most, but the cobra maneuver illustrates something important about the post-stall behavior of an airplane. It is incredibly difficult to keep the vortices symmetrical during such a maneuver. Most Western fighters couldn't do it because they would sway left or right.
The ability to perform the cobra illustrates how the design handles at and beyond stall, which can have implications on its ability to turn sharply.
The same goes for the tailslide. It illustrates properties of the air intake and engines.
This maneuver requires high thrust while 'slowing down'. Not sure if that's a reasonable energy trade off. Would you go into a dogfight with external tanks still on?
Sure the pursuitor jet won't (rather should't) be in such close proximity position, unless intending to shoot the enemy with his handgun. Thus with reasonable separation, this at best may force a break of the lock, but at the same time slowing down and with extra fuel loss.
It is fun to watch at shows, though these days these wows are awarded to the vectored thrust tricks.
I don't think so. The way I'm reading it, both fighters should be in a turn fight with the opponent closely following Boyd's rear at high speed.
In the case of a flat plane, you're dumping airspeed but you don't stall the aircraft. This guy explains it way better then I can, describing the maneuver as a Rudder Reversal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ab6Ek1UCcM. Skip to 2:07 to see him demonstrate it with model airplanes.
The Cobra you do enter into a stall (the airflow departs the top surface of the wings) and are instead relying on other some other aspect of the plane to control the aircraft and get the plane back into the fight.
Note that this is just what I know from superficial memory, I never studied it in depth.
I did not Sweden was first to do the cobra maneuver with the Saab 35 Draken, fun. It is very impressive how little Sweden with SAAB have been able to develop stage of the art fighter planes. By exemple JAS 39 Gripen was the first 4th genereation fighter jet in the world, and many older fighterplanes set many records too.
I really like Draken, it is a beautiful plan. And I love this picture :D The timing and composition is perfect and I wounder what the person in the canoe thought haha.
Somewhat related: during the Falklands war it was common technique for Harriers to use their thrust vectoring nozzles to slow down quickly with a similar outcome.
Apparently yet another aviation myth according to Wikipedia:
> Braking could cause a chasing aircraft to overshoot and present itself as a target for the Harrier, a technique formally developed by the USMC for the Harrier in the early 1970s.[33][34] This technique was much discussed in the media before the Falklands War in 1982, but ultimately not used by British pilots in that conflict.[35]
Increasingly rarely it seems. The US has all the best toys and no-one else wants to play any more.
The F14 scored 130 kills… for the Iranians. The F15 has an impressive 100-0 kill ratio (mostly by Israel); zero air to air losses, but 175 losses to accidents.
F16’s have about 60 kills (almost all by Israel again, they really love American jets).
F18 two kills, I think.
Soviet airframes are pretty much the same. Almost all their kills are in the hands of Middle Eastern third parties (Syria, Egypt, Iraq).
These are wars from decades ago, and we don’t have any modern examples of large scale air combat, or of combat that wasn’t highly one-sided. F22’s have hardly ever been used, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happens with the F35. Too damned expensive to take out of the box.
Yes. Quite a lot. A small number at the end of the second world war. Regular use of machine-gun armed jets during the Korean War. The Vietnam war saw jet fighters armed primarily with missiles engaging each other (195 kills claimed by the US). Various conflicts in the middle east including the The Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq war (around 100 kills claimed by Iran) and The Gulf War (44 claimed kills by the US). And many more conflicts as well. The most recent US air to air kill was in 2017. An F-18 shot down a Syrian SU-22. Russia also claims some air to air kills in Ukraine. Jets have gone toe to toe with each other since the moment they were first introduced continuously until the present day. The total number of air engagements is somewhere on the order of magnitude of 1,000, and a fair bit less if you are only considering fighter aircraft
[+] [-] hatsunearu|3 years ago|reply
You'd have to be in very close range and in a very bad disadvantage, which honestly doesn't last long (you'd blow up very fast) and when you start decelerating you become a very easy target to hit.
And after your opponent overshoots--you just lost a ton of energy--and energy is everything in aerial combat. Energy is the currency you spend to maneuver, and you've just spent it on this hail mary.
[+] [-] unity1001|3 years ago|reply
Even worse: Advancing missile technology has mostly invalidated the need for aircraft in a major war since a long while, and drones will literally sweep what's left of it.
The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. The drones can travel 1700 km autonomously, very hard to jam, and they are cheaper than the missiles that are used to shoot them. So that at this point you could bankrupt an enemy by just sending drones. If they can destroy them, they go bankrupt due to missile costs. If they cant or dont, you hit all the targets.
The only way to deal with this will be miniaturization of warfare, ie creation of mini drones and mini missiles to hunt drones. Which is still difficult to do and yet to be done because miniaturization is difficult.
Aircraft are old news. If you can destroy a target by sending an autonomous drone that travels 1700km, which costs less than a fraction of one sortie of an aircraft, leave aside the cost of aircraft, its armament and pilot training, it means that drones rule warfare now.
[+] [-] lumost|3 years ago|reply
The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. bin mind that dog fights happen in a one or two circle high g turn as each fighter attempts to out turn the other, cobra maneuvers require that the (losing fighter) exit the circle.
[+] [-] Kim_Bruning|3 years ago|reply
We can't really call the resulting maneuver a clean airshow version of the "Cobra" anymore; but that's OK: it's a bit more deadly!
The airshow version merely demonstrates the aircraft's abilities. An actual pilot practicing combat maneuvers creatively applies those abilities to an actual situation at hand.
[+] [-] hutzlibu|3 years ago|reply
The idea is, to be able to make the kill, after you are now behind. Then it does not matter, if you are too slow.
But wikipedia indeed says, this manoever has never been confirmed in real air combat, so yes, its usefullness is quite limited.
[+] [-] nine_k|3 years ago|reply
Losing your speed and showing your belly / back to the enemy, when you cannot shoot, never looked like a reasonable thing to do.
[+] [-] philwelch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nelox|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] william-at-rain|3 years ago|reply
Even without heaters, I can be extremely aggressive on a guns attempt because an overshoot in the vertical isn’t nearly as risky - few aircraft can capitalize on an overshoot uphill. Almost all defenders in that situation (if they live through the attack) will be forced downhill anyway.
[+] [-] thot_experiment|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmiller123456|3 years ago|reply
My only guess is that dogfights don't actually happen much anymore.
[+] [-] jabl|3 years ago|reply
In WWII unescorted bomber losses were quite catastrophic even with gun turrets pointing in every conceivable direction like the B-17. Ultimately it was long range escort fighters like the P-51 that brought down the loss rate to an acceptable rate so that long range raids could continue.
Post-WWII bomber design evidently came to the conclusion that, except in some cases a tail turret, all these guns weren't worth the weight and drag, and got rid of them. And then missiles came on the scene, further reducing the usefulness of defensive guns.
> My only guess is that dogfights don't actually happen much anymore.
Modern short range AA missiles have 'off boresight' capability, meaning that the pilot has a HUD mounted in the helmet, he doesn't need to point the nose towards the target to shoot. And yes, longer range AA missiles are apparently nowadays expected to be amazingly effective to the point that actual short range dogfights would be very rare.
[+] [-] ozim|3 years ago|reply
Even if you don't hit the guy you just pull back and go for your station because without rockets you will be gone if the other guy somehow survives 2 and you don't have any.
Dogfights like in the movies don't happen.
[+] [-] trevorishere|3 years ago|reply
So not quite "backwards", but dang close. With that being said, beyond visual range (BVR) engagements for gen 4 and higher fighters (gen 4 would be F-16 (the best plane ever produced, and everyone here knows it ;), F-18, MiG-29, Su-27; gen 5 would be F-22, F-35... and somewhat arguably Su-57) should be the norm. The USAF/US Navy is a bit behind on this with the AIM-120C/D being a medium-range missile where as some of the Russian-produced missiles have a longer reach. The USAF currently has a program to produce a long-range variant of the AIM-120C/D (our last long range missile was the AIM-54 Phoenix, exclusively carried by the retired F-14) with the designation of AIM-260 -- the AIM-260 is expected to replace the AIM-120.
AIM-120C/D "maddog" call -- now that'd be an interesting air-to-air engagement -- "maddog" is the call for firing the AIM-120 without the aircraft having radar lock and whatever the missile picks up on it's terminal guidance radar is likely doomed.
Ahhh I played way too much Falcon 4.0 and the DCS F-16 module.
[+] [-] googlryas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidewndr46|3 years ago|reply
The Northrop P-61 had a turret, which wound up being used in the locked forward position due to it being unreliable.
[+] [-] Simon_O_Rourke|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
I.e., it might be easier to out-maneuver it this way than to shoot it.
[+] [-] js2|3 years ago|reply
Necessity, the mother of invention.
[+] [-] canjobear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shapefrog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ei8htyfi5e|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gizmo385|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Keyframe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chasd00|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextstep|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vruiz|3 years ago|reply
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJYDSR3ijw
[+] [-] stavros|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otikik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] funstuff007|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bazillion|3 years ago|reply
The second time was towards the end when they're fending off the SAM attacks -- Rooster is in trouble with no flares to launch, and Maverick simultaneously pulls off a Cobra Maneuver while launching his own set of flairs, resulting in his own aircraft being hit.
[+] [-] acidburnNSA|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roeles|3 years ago|reply
The same goes for the tailslide. It illustrates properties of the air intake and engines.
[+] [-] zoomablemind|3 years ago|reply
Sure the pursuitor jet won't (rather should't) be in such close proximity position, unless intending to shoot the enemy with his handgun. Thus with reasonable separation, this at best may force a break of the lock, but at the same time slowing down and with extra fuel loss.
It is fun to watch at shows, though these days these wows are awarded to the vectored thrust tricks.
[+] [-] akkartik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somerandomqaguy|3 years ago|reply
In the case of a flat plane, you're dumping airspeed but you don't stall the aircraft. This guy explains it way better then I can, describing the maneuver as a Rudder Reversal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ab6Ek1UCcM. Skip to 2:07 to see him demonstrate it with model airplanes.
The Cobra you do enter into a stall (the airflow departs the top surface of the wings) and are instead relying on other some other aspect of the plane to control the aircraft and get the plane back into the fight.
Note that this is just what I know from superficial memory, I never studied it in depth.
[+] [-] egillie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MasterYoda|3 years ago|reply
I really like Draken, it is a beautiful plan. And I love this picture :D The timing and composition is perfect and I wounder what the person in the canoe thought haha.
https://i.imgur.com/EBxuaAa.jpg
[+] [-] aivisol|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|3 years ago|reply
http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/boydaerialattack.pdf
There's also the classic Dicta Boelcke:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicta_Boelcke
[+] [-] instagraham|3 years ago|reply
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-unknown-story-of-the-syr...
[+] [-] SergeAx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wly_cdgr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VBprogrammer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zokier|3 years ago|reply
> Braking could cause a chasing aircraft to overshoot and present itself as a target for the Harrier, a technique formally developed by the USMC for the Harrier in the early 1970s.[33][34] This technique was much discussed in the media before the Falklands War in 1982, but ultimately not used by British pilots in that conflict.[35]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Jump_Jet#Operation
[+] [-] jeanlou|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousgal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mr_toad|3 years ago|reply
The F14 scored 130 kills… for the Iranians. The F15 has an impressive 100-0 kill ratio (mostly by Israel); zero air to air losses, but 175 losses to accidents.
F16’s have about 60 kills (almost all by Israel again, they really love American jets).
F18 two kills, I think.
Soviet airframes are pretty much the same. Almost all their kills are in the hands of Middle Eastern third parties (Syria, Egypt, Iraq).
These are wars from decades ago, and we don’t have any modern examples of large scale air combat, or of combat that wasn’t highly one-sided. F22’s have hardly ever been used, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happens with the F35. Too damned expensive to take out of the box.
[+] [-] SonicScrub|3 years ago|reply