Air combat manoeuvering
From Free net encyclopedia
Air Combat Manoeuvering (ACM) is the art of manoeuvering a combat aircraft in order to attain a position from which an attack can be made on another aircraft. It relies on offensive and defensive Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM) in order to gain an advantage over an aerial opponent.
Historical Overview
Military aviation appeared in World War One with aircraft being used to spot enemy movement. Soon the need to stop enemy aircraft from completing their mission became a necessity, and this rapidly led to the creation of a class of aircraft designed specifically to destroy enemy aircraft: fighter aircraft. It was soon noticed that the best armament for such an aircraft was fixed, forward-firing guns. With such armament, the pilot just had to point his aircraft at the enemy and open fire. In order to achieve firing position while not being threatened by the enemy's guns, the best technique was to get behind the enemy aircraft. This is known as getting on an aircraft's six o'clock, or on his tail, plus a wide variety of other terms... During World War One, Oswald Boelcke, a German fighter ace, was the first to write down basic rules for aerial combat maneuvering. He advised pilots to attack from the direction of the sun (towards which the defending pilot could not see), or to fly at a higher altitude than the opponent. Most of these rules, know as the Boelke dictat, are still as valuable nowadays as they were a century ago.
Today's air combat uses not only guns but also long-range guided missiles, which require their own set of rules, but close-range combat, also known as dog fighting, still obeys to the same general rules. The master rule is still the same: do not let your opponent get on your six o'clock, and ... get on his.
Close-range combat tactics vary considerably according to the type of aircraft being used and the number of aircraft involved.