It was definitely interesting to learn that Team Deathmatch obsessed individuals are not, in fact, specific only to the competitive gaming communities.
True, and to be fair, their ideas are only good on paper but not good in practice since technology progress much faster and most of their ideas (with the exception of Boyd's E-M theory) are also controversial at best. It's a good thing they didn't fully adapt the ideas of "Fighter Mafia" because a single purpose fighter is not a good fighter at all since that time, they were entering in an age were Multi-Role fighters are becoming a thing (Except the F-15A and C version).
@@BluePegasus1381 Funny thing about Boyd. I read "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War", when it first came out. For a book that is supposed to be a tribute to the guy, it sure made him sound like a giant A-hole.
@@BluePegasus1381 The F-15 (A/B and C/D) actually does have multirole capabilities (not a true multirole fighter like other 4th Gen aircraft) despite being a dedicated Air Superiority fighter. They might need to be slightly modified but the Israeli Air Force did use their F-15C/Ds for ground attack missions. Which actually further proves your point.
This group has been taking advantage of the success of the f-15 and 16 for decades. In reality they played a very small role, and these jets continue to succeed despite their input. The f15 is relevant today because of its ability to carry a ridiculous amount of missiles and tech. The F16 hasnt turned into a flying missile truck, but its continuing relevance can definitely be linked to its ability to carry modern tech and be continually updated to newer tech. The f16 they wanted would have been obsolete before entering production.
Fellow youtuber Lazerpig has a few videos on the influence and misdirections of the fighter mafia, namely how some massively under-qualified people tried to convince the US air force to adopt laughably inept plane designs lacking missiles or radar
@@spartanx9293 Ah, yea. I'd usually it a 30mm cannon, but rotary is literally the correct words. Feel like with normies i'd still have to say gatling gun for them to get it, or... 30mm minigun. -.-
I'm disappointed that nothing was mentioned about what the fighter mafia thought was the "perfect" fighter, the F-5 Freedom Fighter. It was small, lightweight, super maneuverable, unable to carry any radar missiles, very short range, day fighter only. It also couldn't fight it's way out of a wet paper bag. It is still used as a training aid for visual air-to-air fights only. It cannot detect, target, shoot at, or be a danger in any way to anyone outside of 10 miles. That's the perfect fighter mafia jet, but the Air Force found it totally useless as a fighter. The fighter mafia thought they had better ideas than anyone else. I learned in the Army that a good idea that doesn't work, isn't a good idea.
That was Sprey's idea of a perfect fighter (At the time). Boyd, Christi, Myers, Riccioni were all very different people and had differing ideas but agreed mainly that the defense industry was over selling and over charging while under performing. The fact that this wasn't mentioned and the focus on Sprey's opinions makes me wonder if this is worth a read or not. Also, no mention of the USSR, in this video, as a driving force behind some of the Mafia's idea. He did mention that lots of these ideas rose from the debacle in Vietnam.
Interestingly, the F-5A was basically only useful as a close-support aircraft. It had an F-86 gunsight, no radar, and inky dumb bombs and rocket pods. The F-5E was supposed to correct that. It sorta did. Kinda. Some of the updates are interesting, and supposedly the Soviets looked closely at examples from Vietnam in designing the MiG-23. That is kinda hard to believe, as the two are hugely different platforms, but legends are legends. Both models were relatively inexpensive and easy to use, so we could shuffe them off to client states. They beat nothing. Nostalgia for their son, the F-20, continues to this day. Matching that aircraft against the developed F-16 does not make it look very well.
the mig19 would slam the F5 and all it's variants despite being 30 years newer. America didn't get the maneuverability/thrust thing right til the F16 and F15
some clarification is needed, here. the fighter mafia did not "design" the f-16. the fighter mafia concocted the specs the manufacturers had to meet. Northrup and g.d. tried their best to meet those qualities which were tested at Edwards. sum point, Boyd, Sprey, et. al. did not design either the yf-16 or yf-17.
There's an interesting passage in Ben Rich's book about his time at the Lockheed Skunk Works (He was a engineer and succeeded Kelly Johnson as head of the Skunk Works). Apparently when Lockheed began to design their submission for the fighter project that ultimately became the F-16, Kelly Johnson looked at the RFP specs and said they were ridiculous. The plane the USAF said it wanted was too small, had too little wing area, didn't have enough fuel capacity, etc. Johnson argued Lockheed should "overdesign" their proposal to address those flaws. Rich argued they should design to the RFP specs. Johnson got his way and the Lockheed submission was bigger/heavier/more capable than the requested design. Lockheed's submission was not accepted. But when contract winner General Dynamics ultimatelly built the production version of the F-16, they added more wing area, more fuel capacity, etc. pretty much as Kelly Johnson predicted would happen.
Wanna bet? My high school friend is the grand daughter of Mr. Hillaker and still has the "napkin" that he used to sketch out the OML of the F-16 at the local Waffle House in Fort Worth. This well before the first "Fly Off" (against McDonnel Douglas's YF-17 ... that became the F-18) ... the YF-16 (2 each) and "FSD" (12 each). So yeah, Harry was truly the designer of the F-16. That is not to say changes were made he didn't like (and the Fighter Mafia as well) ... but he got the job done. Keep in mind the context of what the F-16 was originally designed for ... not just what is stated in the Video but on a larger scale and that being the huge number of enemy aircraft in the inventory of the USSR. After Vietnam and poor record of the F-4, that had no guns ... only missiles, USAF aircraft were few and no competition for what the Soviets were spending on. The F-16 initial logo was 2 arches in red and blue ... to signify putting an F-4 and an F-16 side by side on the runway at Carswell AFB and saying "Go" ... they both rolled out and the F-16 was so much more nimble (with a light airframe and 26,000 lbs. of thrust) it was able to get airborne so fast and turned so quick it was able to come up on the F-4's 6 just as it was getting airborne. And yes, I entered GDFW at the beginning of the FSD Program ... and stuck with it for nearly 4 decades ... hellava ride Cowboy.
I guess a 'TIE Fighter Mafia' must have gotten it's way in the Galactic Empire, cause the TIE fighter is exactly the design philosophy that these guys were looking for, while the Airforce went for the equivilent of X-wings, much more multi-role.
Now I want to see that as a skit. Seriously the TIE Fighter in the way its presented is a complete piece of crap. The Interceptor is good, but still not great, but the way the TIE has become flanderized into this Swarm fighter is really kind of ridiculous.
@@BoisegangGaming "Flanderized" Honestly in concept and in execution the tie really wasn't that great. No hyperdrive so that pilots can't pursue anyone faster, no shielding so that any ol tiny asteroid or single blaster fire could destroy it. Awful field of view because who needs visibility in a dogfight, and designed to be cheap, so, a swarm fighter.
@@BoisegangGaming you are right on all points but you forget the TIE fighter wasn't designed to fulfill the same role as the X-Wing, and was created in a different time by a different government. TIES were designed to be cheap and numerous, for every X-Wing you build/buy you could get 3-5 TIEs Secondly the TIE was meant to be cheap enough and ubiquitous enough for counterinsurgency operations all over the galaxy. So that if you lose one TIE to rebels, etc it could easily be replaced vs an X-Wing. The X-Wing peaked because it was designed during a time where the republic was fighting large scale battles against a peer enemy. The TIE was designed when the Republic/The Empires main threat were insurgents ie Rebels.
@@nash-p I'm aware of that. It's just that the media of star wars portrays tie fighters as really non-threatening, usually because of the character's plotonium-laced plating.
@@petersouthernboy6327 only because they haven't learned to deal with it now. in the real world, missiles used by the F-35 can be evaded, yes evaded. the rules for the missile have not changed since the vietnam war. it's only a matter of time before the find how to neutralize the sensors, then you are back to WW2/Korean War style fighting.
Read up on the top aces from WW1 & WW2. One of the most consistent ideas is to AVOID dogfighting. This from the time BEFORE radar and missiles. Then the whole aggressor squadron thing, that tactics and training mean more than roll rates and turn radii in actual dogfighting. That includes Boyd's energy theory, where having more energy (which generally requires bigger heavier engines) produces more consistent outcomes, when you are actually dogfighting. And that is if you are talking a one dimensional piece of equipment. A one trick pony, if you will. As training a pilot is more problematic than just producing a fighter, limiting what that resource can do is shortsighted. As far as the "small nimble fighter" thing goes, I remember reading about an exercise where a British Vulcan BOMBER was able to outmaneuver an F-15 at high altitude (40,000 feet or something like that). Kinda puts that smaller is always better argument in perspective.
@@mcamp9445 I don't recall the book, but it was extolling the virtues of the Vulcan as the epitome of engineering, which it was a very technical design. As the P-38 could outturn most other WW2 fighters(roll and dive were it's weakness, along with cost) there is a basis for that as well. I don't have much interest in bombers and, as a typical American, am less interested in those "second rate"😜 designs from Europe, so have even less understanding of them anyway. Was some sort of high altitude intercept exercise in the late 70s, which the F15 with it's remarkable climb performance was trying to demonstrate.
@@drudgenemo7030 I think it has less to do with the Vulcan itself, more that fighters have less 'in practice' performance than people think. I also recall a Mirage 2000 pilot account that he were unable to keep up with B-52 in a turn at higher altitude, with fuel tanks and weapons.
@@mcamp9445 Its probably not entirely without merit. Smaller doesn't always equate to being more maneuverable. For example (ships not planes), The Iowa Class battleships actually has a tighter turning circle, and thus could turn faster, than its contemporary Destroyer the Fletcher class as well as most US Cruisers of the time. In fact characteristics needed for speed can often work against characteristics needed for maneuverability, So it wasn't an unusual thing for battleships to end up being more maneuverable than many cruisers or destroyers.
@@mcamp9445 Not surprising. A vulcan not fully loaded has a way lower stall speed. An F-15 would have to fly faster to pull as hard. Which it can. 40,000 ft is where it can hit mach 2.3+
It's amazing how much of history the Fighter Mafia ignored. The idea of "if it's maneuverable enough then the pilot doesn't need more armor" didn't work well for the A6M and yet here they are suggesting the same idea.
Well here they aren't really wrong. There's a reason why armor has completely disappeared from aircraft and that's because it's frankly useless. The amount of armor you'd actually need to protect the pilot would require giving up a significant amount of speed and maneuverability and there are always other systems that can do a better job of protecting the pilot. Armor was only a bit of a thing in WWII and that's because things like radar had not yet been developed but you'll notice that it does also slowly disappear over the cause of the war, the only exception was the IL-2 and that's because it was a dedicated ground attacker. Armor is just a bad idea on planes in general because every bit of weight you add is weight you have to lift and carry and armor simply doesn't justify itself in that equation, especially because while you might be able to armor the cockpit that really doesn't matter when a hit to the engine is still gonna down the place. It just gets even worse with the introduction of missiles because while with guns you can at least reasonably anticipate where the shot might come from, a missile uses a proxy fuse and can easily detonate somewhere above the cockpit and it's famously difficult to armor glass while keeping it see-through.
It's my understandinfg that the Zero was NOT in fact all that maneuverable, it has a tight turning circle but that's it, for example it had a very slow roll rate and sucked in the vertical. Anything other than a horizontal turning contest the Zero was less maneuverable.
Your interview skills are excellent, Chris. You came prepared with great questions and let Dr. Hankins expound on his answers without cutting him off. Great work on the B-Roll footage you added in post.
Your videos have gotten better and better and we appreciate the time and effort you put into this. Thank you. My dad was a WWII Navy crew member of a PBY. Aircraft have always fascinated me and your channel is an excellent resource.
Funnily enough most military enthusiasts would criticize those systems for technical/design flaws that are completely different from those the Reformers criticized.
Christoph: Your questions seem so well thought out and allowed us all to get the very best out of this interview. I think I will become one of your patreon supporters again.
I find it rather ironic that the philosophy the Fighter Mafia opposed (more high technology, more weight, more expensive) ended up producing the ultimate dogfighter jet in the F-22. (Not to mention that it can also do BVR better than just about anything else out there.)
I think the background of members (especially Boyd) is very important. Boyd was a super smart guy and he quite literally wrote the book on dogfighting for the USAF, afaik his Energy Manoeuvrability Theory book still forms the basis of much of what is taught at US fighter weapons. schools (think Top Gun); and was by all accounts an excellent dogfighter himself. However he was also obsessed with dogfighting and it was very much his thing so he understandably wanted the airforce to build the ultimate dogfighter, at the detriment of all else. Imo the designers of the F-15 and F-16 did a great job of taking on board Boyd & Co's advice and both planes are excellent knife fighters (especially the 16), but also tempered it and didn't let it ruin the rest of the plane.
@@jayfelsberg1931 why do we always have to sugar coat the truth? "Major personality problems" is just another way to say the guy was an asshole and a pain to work around. Being a leading mind in his field doesn't excuse his personality.
Boyd didn't literally write the book on dogfighting, but he did help develop energy maneuverability theory, meaning he and Christie formalized what fighter pilots had already known tacitly for some time. This made it easier to present and teach, but skilled pilots were already doing it long before Boyd came on the scene. I think this guy gets a bit too much hero worship on TH-cam. He does deserve credit for taking the initiative to develop a more objective basis for things like energy maneuverability and OODA, but he did not invent the principles. Also, while he considered himself the ace of the base during peacetime training flights, he never shot down an aircraft in combat. I suspect this may have influenced his extremist mindset the that most important attributes for a fighter were to be simple and light, which is great for a peacetime guns-only cage match but less important in real world combat operations.
Never quite understood the light and nimble crowd; didn't the A6M Zero put paid to that fable? If you're going to emphasize shaving weight and complexity, put it into speed instead. Lundstrom's First Team books tallied up carrier F4F vs A6M losses and they were something like 93-94, as close to dead even as doesn't matter, and F4F rookies had better chances of learning from their mistakes than A6M rookies, in spite of being slower and less nimble. Boyd was right: experienced pilots in a nimble plane don't need armor. But lightweight means fewer rookies become experienced. If you're going to skimp on technology, what difference is acceptable? The Sopwith Camel and Fokker DR-1 were lightweight and nimble; obviously not enough against any WW II or later fighter. Heck, any jet could probably just fly past fast and toss it around like a dry leaf. Similarly, no WW II fighter could stand up for long against any Korean War or later jet. Put an F-5 day fighter w/o radar against an F-15 or F-16; it's no comparison. Take the same engine, range, etc. Put the weight into radar, missiles, speed; or put it into a bigger more nimble wing. Which one will win in real life? What good is maneuverability against an enemy who shoots you down from 10 miles away? Maneuverability is great for air shows, not for making the other bastard die for his country. Yes, the military likes to gold plate systems. But that itself is the sin, not radar and electronics and stand-off capability. Of course, I am not a pilot, not even in games, so maybe I'm just ignorant.
How is it that you posted 9 days ago if the video got released half an hour ago? I assume it’s just a TH-cam bug, but it’s one of the weirder ones I’ve seen to be sure.
@@thereyougoagain1280 If he has a subscriber or patreon setup, he might be a finacial supporter of the channel, and have access to early release content as one of the perks.
I'm a pilot educated in aero engineering. I can help dispel some misconceptions. Your thinking used to dominate fighter design until the Vietnam War. We learned a lot since then and we didn't completely ditch the emphasis on speed and weapon systems. For the most part, we just integrated energy management into the design process as well. I want you to think of that term energy management rather than maneuverability, because while they both achieve similar performance, the former better describes how designers went about making improvements. Specific Excess Power (Ps) is a measure of how quickly an aircraft can gain energy per unit of mass, or in simpler terms, the acceleration/climb rate of the aircraft. The way you achieve greater Ps is by increasing thrust, reducing drag, and reducing mass. All of these things will directly improve acceleration, climb, and top speed, like you suggest fighter designers should strive for. As a byproduct, maneuverability will also improve from these efforts alone. What I am getting at here is that maneuverability is not necessarily contradictory with speed. Don't let WW2 fighters fool you. Now you may be wondering why fighters aren't much faster, or in some cases are slower than the Phantom and some other 60s fighters. The raw stats of these aircraft on paper is a bit misleading. In the real world, fighters don't use their top speeds. It's not practical. Designing a fighter that reaches Mach 2.8 only for it to occasionally reach Mach 1.5 is a wasted effort. Instead, optimize the fighter to operate under Mach 2 and for various reasons of weight savings and low speed drag reductions (ask about examples if you want), you will get a fighter that accelerates better, has greater range, and has greater maneuverability. It may look worse on paper, but it will perform its job more effectively in combat, even beyond visual range. Let's look at some examples. Unless you're an F-22 (and even then), you as a fighter pilot will cruise around at high subsonic speeds because that saves gas and lets you fight farther away and for longer. Now imagine you spot an enemy formation 125 miles away and they spot you. At your current speed and altitude, neither of you have the missile range to hit each other, but you can extend that range by accelerating and climbing. So you kick in the afterburner put in a shallow climb, and when you have the range, you fire your missile and turn away immediately to avoid their missiles. In this engagement, he who can accelerate and turn away first will survive the match. Even without dogfighting, the ability to accelerate, climb, and maneuver is a necessity in BVR combat. Even with equal radar and missiles, a heavy but fast interceptor like the Phantom would get slaughtered by a lighter and more nimble fighter like the F-16. Summary of the story, maneuverability goes hand in hand with acceleration and climb rate. Acceleration will dictate who is faster in a realistic engagement, even if the plane with less acceleration has a higher theoretical top speed. Reason: nobody wants to run out of gas, and so the sound barrier is still a barrier of practicality.
What I personally find endlessly amusing is that the reformists were in fact old guard. And the bunch of people they considered against them they labelled as old guard but they in fact were the ones who were always trying to push the envelope.
An excellent point. Even the "pure fighters" Bf-109 and P-51 were much used for ground support. The Fw-190 and P-47 evolved into major ground pounders. Ditto the F4U.
@@sir0herrbatka his point is that the purpose of air superiority is to support the war on the ground. It’s not an end in itself. As we see in Ukraine at the moment.
@@sir0herrbatka In the case of the P-51, the USAF was transitioning into jets and knowing that, relegated the P-51 to ground support roles but sent to the scrapyards all of the P-47's that were actually better suited for the ground attack role than the P-51 was.
Don't forget: the reformers were the same people who conceptualized the Blitz Fighter, an attack plane with only a titanium bathtub and 30mm cannon. No sensor equipment, or the ability to use AGMs...
Or radar, because that "couldn't tell the difference between an enemy and a volkswagen full of refugees" (i believe I got the quote right, but you get the gist). I don't understand how so many people believe the reformers are right.
And then claimed they (mainly Sprey) designed the A-10 when it became successful when they didn’t. Poor Kartveli, he designed so many successful aircraft only for Sprey to try to steal his design and claim them as of his own intuition after realizing he was wrong.
And the A-10 was acknowledged at the time to have a very short expected lifetime in combat, I think they were hoping for three missions each before loss.
They were so so so wrong though, as the gulf war showed. The high tech stuff ended up performing on a completely different level than the stuff from the previous generation, to the level of having like 100:1 kill ratios.
Great video, however the F-16 was used extensively in combat well before the Gulf War, namely by Israel in 1982 (Bekaa Valley operations) where is got something like 42 air-to-air kills. Minor point, but facts are facts. The fighter mafia (actually, just Boyd) contributed energy maneuverability theory (E-M diagrams) to fighter design, but other than that they were worse than worthless. Incompetent ignoramuses. Believe me, as a former F-16 operational pilot, I am very glad they failed (and everyone else I know in that community would agree).
I was even more impressed by the Israeli Air Force strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor being built in 1981. Of course, using the F-16 in a bombing mission would probably horrify the fighter mafia since they only advocated for the air-to-air role for the F-16. The precision of the Israeli strike had some observers thinking that the Israelis were using guided munitions, but, if I recall correctly, they used unguided 2,000 pound bombs. It proved the F-16 was extremely well-suited for the air-to-ground role; it's almost like the USAF maybe had a clearer idea of what was desirable in an airframe than the fighter mafia.
@@KMRobertson Yes, that's a very good one. And they were indeed 2,000 lbs Mk-84s, unguided. That being said, it was the weapon control system that made the F-16 accurate. It was derived from that in the A-7D, as far as air-to-ground capability is concerned. The big advantage the F-16 had (and still has) is the ability to self-escort effectively, although in the Osirak raid they had F-15s in that role.
@Fraser Fir LOL, what a moron. Boyd was perfectly capable of doing enough of the math to substantiate the theory. Shit, I could do it myself! (granted, I have a degree in engineering physics). Yes, Christie elaborated on the finer details, for sure, but to say this would have amounted to nothing without him is inane. Plenty of other mathematicians could have done the same work, it's actually NOT "rocket science." The essential point is Boyd was the originator of the idea. The rest is mere details...
I can't second that enough ; The Revolt of the Majors shows the various political maneuvering schemes the Fighter Mafia/Reformer movement did, by essentially trying to convince a majority of the uninformed populace at large that modern technology doesn't work, using simplistic arguments like claiming NCTR doesn't work, which the Air Force couldn't reveal worked in the real world as it was classified technology back then, or saying that fuzz busters from RadioShack countered radars. Their emphasis on daylight-only WVR dogfighters was also extremely misguided as Central Europe, the likely battlefield in case of WW3, only has about 4.5 hours of good flying weather on average per day in the winter. I'd also suggest checking out on "F-16, Sale of the Century", a 1979 documentary made with the cooperation of several European broadcasters. It shows how the F-15 and then F-16 programs evolved and how they were perceived by the public back then, and one can also see the many criticisms about technology and cost as can be seen today with the F-35.
@@KenshiroPlayDotA , had the F-16 been as wished by Boyd and Sprey, that is a purely daylight good weather fighter, the European NATO countries would never had bought it. They would probably had bought the Dassault Mirage F1 or maybe the SAAB JA-37 Viggen.
Found it. Michel flew three tours in Vietnam, then went on to F-15s and going to Israel for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If Corman's book on Boyd is a hagiography, Michel's thesis a polemic, and that's being nice.
I just downloaded this on your recommendation. I'm barely through the introduction and it's already so wonderfully catty I don't even care if I agree with its conclusions or not lol I love it EDIT: "These dissidents whom I call the Critics - wanted a very small, light, simple, inexpensive fighter instead of the F-15. Nevertheless, the Air Force fell in solidly behind the F-15, and the Critics were left carping on the sidelines." fucking poetry
What's funny is that the F-4 in Navy service was never equipped with integrated cannons and yet it still enjoyed many combat successes with early missiles. Also, the majority of the combat experience in Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan show rather convincingly that aircraft have to be able to integrate very well with ground forces and be able to designate and strike targets independently and accurately with minimal direction from ground forces in CAS scenarios where ground forces may be too preoccupied staying alive to direct a strike. Also, aircraft have to be versatile and all weather capable because it turns out people on the ground are just as vulnerable to ambushes at night as during the day. Especially when paramilitary forces know exactly where they sleep. The fighter mafia was more or less obsolete the day it was founded.
The other side of the F4 coin however is while it did gain successes with missiles it was hopelessly outclassed when enemy fighters DID close into visual range BECAUSE it had no integral guns. That lack resulted in the loss of more than a few F4's. I am firmly of the opinion that Fighters of any sort require integrated guns. As for ground forces being 'too occupied' to direct a strike, sorry, but ground forces have integrated Forward Air Controllers whose job it is to stay clear and direct the air support. Absolutely NO ground troops wants their Air dropping their god damned weapons without guidance from the ground because that is a SUPERB way of killing your own troops.... Multiple Blue on Blue incidents involving aircraft striking misidentified friendly forces without much direction from the ground has shown the dangers of that to the ground troops.... Infantry especially love their air support, but they HATE undirected air support because that is just as likely to flatten them as it is to flatten the enemy....
@@alganhar1 Except the F-4 was fine within visual range. In fact the bigger problem with the F-4 WVR was that is had poor rear visibility making situational awareness a little hazy. The operation red baron study would later reveal this due to two integral things about combat. One being that if you can be seen you can be acquired if you can be acquired you can be shot and if you can be shot you can be killed. Two being that to do all this you need to be seen and what's interesting with dogfighting is that in fact 80% or so of the pilots that were shot down didn't even see the enemy. This is a stark contrast to what the fighter mafia wants because if the problems rests with situational awareness and not kinematics you don't need a fighter that can cobra you need a fighter that can see everything and let the pilot react quickly. In fact dogfighting in WW2 and WW1 happened quite rarely and typically most engagements were hit and runs. Aces that people love to talk about recognized this and we know this because people like the red baron did exactly what you'd expect which is give the enemy as little time to react and try as hard as possible to keep them from finding you with tactics like coming out of the sun and diving from above. The entire art of air combat is not doing basic fighter maneuvers and turning at so many degrees per second it's a basic cat an mouse game. The reason why altitude and speed is life is not just to maneuver but to give you one options to get away from an ambush or two engage in an ambush while minimizing the chance of return fire Which is why its silly to suggest that dueling was common place in any war that featured armed aircraft. Because you chances of survival drop as soon as your counter detected while ambushing someone. There was a reason why WW2 aircraft got faster and faster and could climb higher and higher instead of becoming lighter and being able to turn quicker. Missile were in their infancy in Vietnam but that didn't stop them from making the gun a moot point as when the air force did equip their aircraft with guns it made little difference relative to the changes that navy made to their missiles and pilot training to make the missiles more reliable and to teach fighters basic fighter maneuvering.
Afghanistan and Iraq both showed that cannons are still useful. I don't know where you got the idea that either pilots or ground pounders want to get rid of them.
@@koc988 Thats a lot of text and yet you suggest the mafia guys didn't care about situational awareness and thought pulling cobras was the way to fight. Both are demonstrably wrong. EM theory was one of their foundations and is visible in both the F-16 and F15. Improved situational awareness can also be seen in the cockpit design of both jets as well. Your argument about higher, faster, farther is well put but ignores that the US and almost everyone else has given up on trying to push speed much over mach 2. The F-111 kept pushing speed but would have been a poor air superiority fighter. A higher speed is always better and maybe design and real costs are coming down enough that we will see the numbers start going back up. Anyhow good post I just quibble about what you think the fighter mafia was interested in.
"Useless" bcuz guided bombs exist gun runs are rear anyway. As said by FO and FAC they much prefer bombs over guns. And the only aircraft to most commonly use guns the A-10 an army officer commented that "I Dont want no stingkin A-10 if its not gonna drop guided bombs".
What's amazing is, despite some pretty serious effort aimed at cocking it up, the whole procurement shambles generally works out pretty well in the end.
The biggest problems with "if the aircraft is maneuverable the pilot can just dodge and doesn't need armor" are: 1. it makes you an easier target. A plane that will taco from one 30mm hit like a WW2 fighter is something you only need to get some lucky snapshot on or get a missile to detonate in the general vicinity of, not spend time sawing it in half or actually hitting it with a missile. Admittedly you still don't want to build a flying tank for air to air combat. 2. Planes with no damage mitigation systems or armor can be very vulnerable to much smaller caliber weaponry. Helicopters for example need to worry about small arms fire. The idea of trying to *dodge* some dude with a 7mm machinegun that you don't even see during a ground run is pretty dicey.
I think most anti air missiles actually explode in the vicinity of the aircraft. Or at least do it if they cant guarantee a direct hit. So survivability definitely matters; if your aircraft had all no protection, you could make the warhead way smaller and the missile more capable instead. It also seems like a bad idea because of how common it still is to fly low in order to avoid medium and long range missile emplacements.
I mean given the rate of fire of modern aircraft cannons and ground based ones idk if any amount of protection practical on an aircraft can withstand them without massive hit to performance. Small arms also cannot shoot at planes that are not doing super low passes.
You still want self sealing fuel tanks and enough materiel between the pilot and whatever shrapnel/small arms fire is coming that they won't go splat and can eject, along with active countermeasures to throw off as many missiles a can reasonably be carried. Sure the plane may be a loss, but the goal at this point is to enable the pilot to survive. We have an all volunteer military and that means that we have to keep them alive to the best of our ability given the circumstances. Also keep in mind we have a very limited supply of qualified fighter pilots so keeping them alive is still in America's best interest.
@@termitreter6545 no plane is protected like that, even if it survives it's a mission kill and needs to head back to base instead of carrying on. Warheads are potent enough that distance is not as relevant as you think. Also in a conventional war you're gonna fly out as one big strike package with different capabilities to deal with enemy anti-air or aircraft so their ability to find and hit you is degraded quite a lot. Not to say that speed and manoeuvrability are neglected (they're definitely not) but flying low is not really how you go about that kind of stuff.
Japanese fighter doctrine held that a very maneuverable fighter didn't need armor. US pilots who defeated that strategy would be considered a part of the nostalgia referenced in referring to the fighter mafia. Strange the mafia cherry picked their history in terms of performance v. protection.
Lots of people hate on the current F-35 because it is theoretically worse than the F-16 in a dogfight. A dogfight that may never happen at all if the two planes were to fight for real. The F-16 won't see the F-35 on radar, and then it blows up to a Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile from the F-35 that actually works. Remember, the F-15 and F-16 were built with the lessons from Vietnam, which often emphasized how terrible the vacuum tube controlled missiles failed, and failed a lot. Pilots had to get in behind the other plane and use guns or get the terrible missiles to work. However, it is now 2022, with a HUGE shift in how electronics perform (just look at your cell phone with more power than all of 1960's NASA combined). Missiles now work. And missiles now can be fired SIDEWAYS at a target that isn't even in front of you using thrust vectoring rockets (that don't make smoke anymore) using another airplane's data-linked radar to guide it. Yes, an F-16 can out turn the F-35. But the F-35 will probably kill it before they get that close, or use an off boresight missile in that turning fight to down the F-16. And the F-16 will never know it was under threat the whole time because the F-35 is stealth.
I think you need a citation for the F-35 being worse than an F-16 in a dogfight. There's a lot of distorted information about that out there. In particular, the original claim came from a flight test in which the F-35 had software limiters that prevented it from using its full maneuverability. Subsequent comparisons have been made between clean configurations of the F-16 versus combat-loaded versions of the F-35. In short, the claim is dubious.
@@BlunderMunchkin The basic physics is based on weight vs surface area, called wing loading. TL:DR is that the less wing loading = better turn performance and less loss of speed during that turn as well. The F-16 is better at turning with 88 lbs/in^2 vs 107 lbs/in^2 for an F-35. Also, thrust to weight. Ironically, the F-35 is worse at thrust to weight than a plane that can hover in the B model. However. Those are not telling the whole story. I still think that an F-35 will kill an F-16 most of the time. The F-35 has stealth, so your F-16 will never get a chance to fire at it, but will have to dodge a bunch of missiles from a plane it can't see. Also, datalink. F-35's can work in groups, even using radar from one plane to guide missiles from another in the squadron mate, letting the lead F-35 go silent and get in close, using the info from the rest further back to stay aware of what is going on, and shooting at them too. As one pilot said, there are about 6 things that make his plane a world beating fighter, only that 5 of those things are classified. But, they did have to give up some maneuverability to get those 5 things.
i read the book. quite interesting. i have to admit, I was drawn into a yahoo group that was really in Boyd and Sprey. it's a testament to the misinformation present now and even then.
Excellent interview and thanks for Michael Hankins recommendations. Perhaps one could learn more about the subject of qualifications of modern fighter pilots in a future video?
This was an excellent interview. What you have here - is the type of people Fighter Pilots are - and how they feel about the Military Systems they are in. As an illustration of Pilot Mentality - there's a documentary on Amazon Prime called _Across the Pacific_ about the early days of Pan American Airlines and how they developed their world wide routes. One of the problems they had (the one that killed Amelia Earhart) was that when flying over large bodies of water - there are no immediate clues you can see to tell you where you are and where you are going. So - one of the things Pan Am did was to create Radio Direction Finding tools, such that a ground station - could monitor a radio signal from an aircraft - and tell if it were on course our not. Pan Am had a plane get lost and go into the water trying to fly 90 miles from Cuba to Florida as they were developing this system, which lent weight to the need for it. The Pilots hated it. The very last thing these independent people wanted - was some schmuck on the ground - monitoring where they went and telling them what to do. As an aside - what happened with Earhart - was that she had a former Pan Am navigator on board and a Radio Direction Finder - but - she had a communications failure. While she could transmit - she could not receive, thus - she couldn't pick up the signal the Coast Guard Vessel on Howland Island was sending for her to guide on or speak to the radiomen trying to talk to her. Now - here's what happened with the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18. First off - if you've played WWIII Campaign Games - you may be experienced with the issue NATO had to deal with. Specifically - the Warsaw Pact - had thousands of cheap aircraft, such as Mig-19's, (and maybe even Mig-15's) that they could just swarm the NATO Air Superiority Aircraft, (the highly sophisticated and excellent F-14 and F-15), with. The Problem for NATO was that - while The Best Air Superiority Aircraft in the World - the 14 and 15 were very expensive and NATO could not afford enough of them. So - what to do? The decision was made - to make cheaper - but still capable aircraft to fill out the numbers - so the 14's and 15's didn't get swarmed by cheap things like thousands of Mig-19's. These aircraft ended up being the 16's and 18's. Here though - they also needed ground attack aircraft. They did not want to send their highly expensive Best In The World Air Superiority Aircraft down low where some guy with a rifle could put a bullet in them and knock them down. So - the F-16's and F-18's were designed to give them a Dual Capability - they could be both Air Superiority and Strike Aircraft. For the F-18 at least (I don't know about the 16) they could adjust the position of the wings - to make it better at which ever role, Air Superiority or Strike, it was going to play. And THAT was the reason they were even considering aircraft like the 16's and 18's. Fighter Mafia preference for small dog fighters - wasn't even a consideration. The Fighter Mafia may have thought they were a factor - but they were not. The Aircraft these guys would have wanted - would of course be the Northrup F-20 - but the Air Force wanted nothing to do with a Dog Fighters Dream - they wanted an aircraft that would give them a Higher Density of Fighters that could also act as Strike Aircraft. They wanted what the F-16 and F-18 were. The F-20 had a weapons pay load of 8,000 lbs. The F-16 had a weapons pay load of 17,000 lbs. Now - there were other parts of this that the Fighter Pilots *_REALLY_* hated. All these Red Baron Wannabees - were to be part of very large scale air operations - that were being controlled by such as an AWACS aircraft. The Air Force Planners - wanted to be able to *_SEE_* anything and everything that was flying (and using JSTARS on the ground as well). The Generals wanted to be able to micro manage their war and move all their air assets around like a giant chess board. There was to be NO Fighter Pilot Glory here - just pushing buttons on radar selected targets (picked by someone else). This - was all a reaction to what they ... almost ... could have done during Vietnam - but weren't quite there yet - and still required visual confirmation before they could fire on someone as they just didn't quite trust the systems they had. During the Gulf War - they had those systems. Here - in this type of fighting - they want to use missiles - not guns as some of these aircraft (F-14's) were designed specifically to be able to engage multiple targets at the same time. You can't do that with guns. So - where the real value of the Fighter Mafia was - was in how to beat your opponent in the sky, - in the real world - where everything doesn't come down to just pushing a button when the AWACS tells you to. This is where these peoples contribution was important - in trying to keep the human beings at the tip of the spear - alive - as their opposition fell burning from the sky. Oh - and there's nothing new about this. Jiro Horikoshi got A LOT of input into his aircraft designs from Japanese Fighter Pilots - who really liked maneuverable aircraft ... .
The problem is, the Fighter Mafia base all of their ideas off of WW2 and Korea. Of course, technology has changed massively since then. In WW2, you didn't have even half of the safety features we have today. Back then, the only realistic way to keep the pilot safe under fire was to kill the other guy, so a dogfighting focus was the only sensible way to build a plane. Today, however, we better understand how to coordinate a combined arms force. SPAA and AAA is also far more widespread and longer range these days, so there are more ways to keep the pilot safe than just having him kill the other guy. Dogfights are a massive risk to take, and the quality of the plane, if it's in the hands of a good pilot, really doesn't matter in a dogfight between two planes of the same or close enough generations. Pilot skill means significantly more than the plane, since every plane that isn't objectively shit in every category has a way it can be used effectively. Anyone working in military procurement who knows what they're doing will try to limit matters of skill as much as possible, because training and experience will fail you at some point. Everyone has their breaking point, and relying on skill to win battles means you're relying on the most unreliable machine on the planet after a Maserati, the human body. The Swedes saw how bad of an idea it is to rely on human skill and courage when they lost their empire to the Russians. Sweden had significantly better soldiers than the Russians, with better equipment, too, but by relying on the human element too much, the Russians were able to exploit the human weakness of the Swedish soldiers, forcing them into the slaughter that was Poltava. There was nothing the Swedish command could do. They made the best choices they could in their situation, and their men fought as hard as they could, but they were doomed to failure. In short, relying on your soldiers' ability will work in the short term, but will always fail you in the long term
That was such a crazy assumption that missiles would remain unreliable, because EVERYTHING was built on that. Reliability could only improve and the problems were eminently solvable.
After this video I'd love to see the antithesis of the "Reformer" movement highlighted, the B-1 Gunslinger concept. A B1 outfitted tith 72 AMRAAM missles working in conjunction with AWACS aircraft to dominate the sky. It never even got an experimental aircraft built, but could possible have redefined air superiority. I expect the influence of the "fighter mafia" had a big influence on why it never got developed.
Missile buses have a problem. 1. Maneuver and acceleration are limited compared to smaller planes. 2. With equal effort, the RCS of a small plane is smaller than a large one. Though the radar of the large one may be able to partially compensate. 3. It still only has one hitpoint. Not many planes can take an AMRAAM and keep fighting. The B-1 is no exception. 4. When a plane goes defensive, it goes defensive against multiple missiles at once if there are multiple fired at once. Unless the missiles are sufficiently spaced out anyway. More Dakka doesn't always mean more hit chance. 5. Against a group of smaller planes, it may end up merging or trying to go defensive. If this occurs, it has almost no chance. Even if it had all-aspect HOBS sidewinders, it wouldn't be able to use them before it gets shot down.
I expect that the concept is not either/or. Older generation fighters like F16 could fly escort for mid and short range targets I'd expect, questions like that are exactly what I'd like Chris to look in to.
The statements made in the video at the time marks below are the BEST arguments I've heard for the necessity for the multi-role capabilities of modern fighter/attack aircraft... @14:45 - "There's an operational reality to it as well, which is if you have an aircraft that the ONLY thing it can do is air-to-air combat that's not something that the Air Force is going to see as especially useful. Because once you clear the enemy from the skies, then what do you do with that aircraft, right?" @15:07 - "The main goal of air power is NOT dogfighting. The main goal of air power is to hit targets and achieve effects. Right. So you want to make sure there's no enemy MiGs in the sky to attack you so that you CAN then attack those targets and achieve those effects on the ground. So having an aircraft that can do BOTH that can be really effective in air-to-air combat and THEN be able to perform those ground attack roles effectively ALSO is what the Air Force is looking for and what they want."
Many people forget the General Dynamics YF 16 was entered into the lightweight fighter competition against the Northrup YF17. The YF16 won because it was smaller and single enginned and had a single tail/ It looked more like what the " fighter mafia" wanted. The YF 17 was further developed into the F/A 18
And now they both perform a ton of the same roles, with multirole capability being extremely important, and more and more sensors being added every iteration. Essentially the opposite of what they wanted.
Ironic that the F16 first use in combat was with the IDF to fly deep into Iraq and bomb a nuclear reactor, with a strategy of avoiding any air to air combat.
I'm reading this on my Kindle after a recommendation from the FPP, it's very interesting definitely doesn't hold its punches but seems fair in it's analysis.
I always got a kick about how the so-called "Fighter Mafia" promoted Boyd's "OODA Loop" concept. Nobody outside of the "Fighter Mafia" bought into that silliness. Heck nobody but Boyd seems to have bought into it.
@@86309 they still teach it in USMC Basic training lol I just got in February of 21 and it surprised me seeing the OODA loop concept and a mini-bio of Boyd in the handbooks since I knew of his background and controversy beforehand.
I saw it on a business course. Under a different name, but the same thing and it made sense in terms of being able to react to market changes quicker than your competitors.
From what I've heard the fighter Mafia actually hated the f15 and and f 16 for one reason we put radars in them and gave them advanced missiles we also turned both of them into multi-role fighters
It's worth remembering the context in which the fighter mafia developed their opinions. At the beginning of Vietnam, missiles really didn't work as well as it was thought (broadly) they were going to work, and this cost a bunch of airframes and pilots to overcome. So being a bit cautious about "miracle" weapons changing the entire face of air combat was quite reasonable. (See also early WWII US torpedo technology.) That said, the restrictions of a Model A aren't the same as the restrictions of a Tesla Model S, and it's crucial to understand technology maturity curves. Does it still make sense to devote the necessary weight and volume for an internal cannon in a fighter? Maybe, since it gives you a different capability than that of a missile and does not have some of the vulnerabilities of any sort of missile. But maybe not too, since it limits your other choices. This isn't an easy thing to manage. Which is why "frank" and "robust" debate is so important in this context.
Agreed, hindsight is 20/20 and all that. I completely agree we have to look at this from where things were at the time. Given the challenges in Vietnam that were had with the F4 Phantom, BVR and missiles in general, it wasn't unreasonable to ask whether a lighter, cheaper, simpler fighter might have done as well for a lot less cost. People very often only compare fighters based on total capability: is this the single best fighter available or not. However, people often forget to consider how expensive that aircraft is and whether it's providing good value for money for the primary missions it is tasked with. For example, I tend to agree with the argument that while the F-35 is an extremely capable aircraft it is also an awful lot more expensive than the planes it was designed to replace and in a lot of scenarios (for example the all too common "low threat environment") it may bring few practical advantages over those much cheaper platforms. Yes it is "better", but is it "worth it"? I certainly wouldn't agree with the Fighter Mafia's vision: it was clearly leaning too far in one extreme. However, questions like "is this providing good value for money, would something much cheaper be able to do this just as well?" is always a valid and important debate to have.
My other view on this video is that it also hints at the cost of these weapons systems. As I understand it, the F16's operational costs are about half that of an F15, and the FA18e/f are roughly half way between the F15 & F16.. The reality is very few nations can afford to fund these systems to the level the US currently does, and the US Government's current deficit will have an impact on these future costs, which, even excluding inflation, will inexorably rise as the airframes age, and on past experience, their eventual replacements will probably cost more per airframe again, The cost of crashing one of these things is equivalent to many small nations' national income and national debt combined ! Sometimes it can be easy to overlook this aspect, or not even realise the huge sums of money involved.
I recall back in the late '70s early '80s how the media and a lot of people in Congress were freaking out that an F-15 cost an astronomical 10 to 12 million dollars per copy. A lot of the politicians were pushing for F-5s because they were so much cheaper. They did not consider the fact that F-5's in Europe would have been almost useless, and that you would have to train and equip tens of thousands of extra pilots and ground personnel to fly those thousands of extra F-5s, as well as build more infrastructure to support them.
How about the F-105 Mafia that was comprised of the Viet Nam era "Thud pilots" who were so misused in the VN War and suffered greatly at the hands of what they referred to as "Bomber Generals" as well as the Johnson administration and the DoD. Lots of heroic 105 pilots and an argument can be made that they were all heroic. I wouldn't be surprised if the 105 guys were also a factor in the Fighter Mafia. Great content. Thanks.
The F-105 story is very interesting. People think it was a piece of crap because three quarters of the airframes were shot down or destroyed. In reality, only the F-105 could have done the mission the Air Force was making it do at the time. It is remarkable that they did it so well. A recent book on the F-105 shows that from 1965 until 1968, F-105 had 29 MiG kills while Air Force Air Force only achieved 17 or 18, IIRC. Weigh that against the fact that the primary job of the F-105 was to avoid MiGs, while the F4 was to find and fight them ( to keep them away from the F-105s). Not to go off on a rabbit trail here but that book was also eye opening in that it described the complex switchology required to take an F-105 out of air-to-ground mode and convert the gun sight to air-to-air. Many many chances to kill MiGs were missed because of that. And there is a mention of the bomber barons. Back in the late 50s early '60s, the big bomber guys essentially subjugated TAC into a mini SAC - another reason why dog fighting skills deteriorated by the time our guys got to Vietnam.
Great video and topic (again)! Thank you for your continued work in more scholarly conversation and analysis. It is refreshing to learn without the "what about this" dialogue so common in other content.
Funny, I suggest these people build private planes and volunteer for air combat. Their enthusiasm will be quickly verified. No radar means you are blind. The radar is not only active but passive. The information from the radar is not only used for the pilot's needs but also for the entire system. Skills are not everything, during the fighting in Ukraine, several outstanding pilots of Ukrainian aviation who took part in international demonstrations died. It cannot be said that every missile and rocket can be avoided by maneuvering. Air domination is not for the fun of a few pilots. This is a key task for military operations.
I believe that in the fifties and sixties they might have had points - missile performance early in Vietnam was much under expectations and not exactly satisfactory. In a modern context what they speak of or demand is absurd.
Have you seen the commercial drones being used by Ukraine to drop grenades on Russian forces lol hilariousy effective and very cheap . They even shot down a hovering helicopter with a man pad recoilless rifle system lol and the radar and missiles used to deter or destroy these cheap weapon systems is extremely expensive and costly compared to these low flying drones with cameras and grenades.
The man pad operator knew to keep the targeting Lazer off the hovering helicopter until the last minute to keep the pilots systems from knowing they were targeted .
@@ChauncyFatsack The cost of an infantryman compared to a couple rounds is also disproportionate, yet infantry won't be obsolete until we invent battle mechs with laser guns.
@@klobiforpresident2254 Not even then. Nothing, and I mean nothing takes and holds ground like the Infantry, and to win wars you need to take and hold ground. Its one thing I point out when people go on about various weapon systems being obsolete because 'they are vulnerable'. The point I make being so why is infantry not obsolete? Infantry has been vulnerable since the first dude bashed another dudes head in with a rock! The answer is Role. Nothing can fulfil the battlefield role of the infantry, and likely never will be able to. ESPECIALLY not mechs. I love the idea of stompy mechs, problem is they are impractical as battlefield weapons for several reasons. It is why you still see tanks on the battlefield. The point of what I am saying is too many people look at the vulnerabilities and forget to look at the ROLE of the weapons system. Militarily the role is the more important factor. In war you are going to lose people and equipment, that is the nature of war, so the question has to be when it comes to a bit of kit is can its job be done as well or better by a system that is less vulnerable? When you look at Infantry and Tanks the answer to that question is no...
Had the F-16 been purely an A2A fighter it would not have been nearly as successful as it was. The F-16 is the most widely produced and used 4th generation fighter and is deployed on every continent I'm pretty sure and that is specifically because it's a small light weight multi-role fighter. Had it been purely A2A no one would have brought it because the niche it appealed to were countries that could only afford to operate a single fighter and wanted as much bang for their buck and the F-16 was perfect for that. It was slightly weighed towards air superiority but that's great when it's the only plane you can buy and it being somewhat worse at ground attack again doesn't really matter because any 4th gen multirole fighter is better than none. But if it had been purely A2A it would have been completely useless to all of these countries, they're not gonna shell out millions for a fighter that can't do half the job the air force needs and either the F-15 or the F-18 would have ended up taking it's place. So thank god that the F-16 was changed by the USAF because that's what actually made it worthwhile for the majority of the world. There's a reason why about a dozen countries ended up being part of the F-16 development and that legacy continued onto the F-35 which largely fills the same role as the F-16 in the 5th generation.
What I gather from this is that the FM submit a prototype, the airforce changes it up to meet their criteria, they get pissed off and the plane ends up being great. How does that paint them in a positive light whatsoever
Good interview! The guest seemed to dismiss the idea of an aircraft that was only a fighter, but that was pretty common when the F-15 was developed. It had no air-to-ground capability until the F-15E was developed in the late 80's. Same for the F-14. The Air Force of that era had no particular love for "attack" aircraft or their missions.
That's a rather interesting point indeed. Especially considering that the USAF had a significant strike capability on both the F-100, F-105 and F-4 fighter aircraft of the Vietnam war. I wonder if it has something to do with the high-low capability mix of fighter aircraft.
this actually isnt true, F-15A had the ability for bombs and retained this capability up until the F-15C MSIP I upgrade, the usaf never wanted the F-15 really used as a fighter bomber otherwise they would have done so, the F-15 can also carry fast packs which makes it able to carry even more bombs
@@djeudhdushrhfu3521 f-14 did t carry bombs until the nineties when the A-6 was going away and the A-12 was canceled. F-14 was mainly a fleet defense fighter
Just bought the book Flying Camelot and finished reading it today - and I was amazed, I thought the Fighter mafia made the F-16 and was surprised they thought the F-16A was too complex - the wanted an airplane with lower wingloading, two IR missiles (because missiles are crap so you dont need more anyway) and a small radar (F-5E radar)...blew my mind away. Also they hated the F-15 Eagle - one of the best air to air fighters of all time. Certainly changed my view on Boyd and the rest of his "gang"....
So...what the fighter mafia want would be the F-5. Not even the F-5E, but the F-5A. Take the F-5E in DCS into any server where you have to face F-15s, 16s, Fulcrums, Flankers, etc. You'll quickly learn why radar and missiles matter. Sure it's a blast in a cold war setting, when all you're facing is other aircraft without good radar or missiles. But the second either of those things changes, you're having a bad time. Had the reformers truly gotten their way with the F-16, it would have gotten dumpstered in the real-life encounters it entered, where missiles formed the vast majority of its kills (just like every other aerial contest since the middle of the Vietnam war has)
>what the fighter mafia want would be the F-5. Pretty much. The group put 'cheapness' and maneuverability above anything else, even if it (significantly) compromises other fighter characteristics.
I just watched an ad for a compact airborne data networking technology, which is the most interesting ad I have ever seen, the most relevant ad in relation to the material being watched, sent to the most irrelevant viewer.
I remember these days all so well. The Fighter Mafia. Gary Hart and his mini-aircraft carriers. More fast attack craft like the hydrofoils with SSM. Oh the revolution. By the way, if the F-35 is such a dog, why is everybody and their mother trying to design their own F-35?
Having watched a lot of Lazer Pig's content, I can't say I would want any of his stuff used as a valid source of information. He gets some things right but he also tends to push narratives that are very popular with the internet military enthusiast crowd even if those narratives are complete nonsense. I mean. His take on "the reformers" was generally on the mark because there isn't really much room for opinion now that so many of the facts are readily available. Things get worse when you start listening to his "hot takes" about specific platforms/aircraft. He jumps to some conclusions without even bothering to fully research what he is trying to talk about.
@@startrekmike ngl, after 2 years, im basically of the same opinion as you, i do my own rather well depth research and the pig is quite lack luster lol.
Great video, but I don’t think much of any of this philosophy applies today. In a BVR fight, with planes showing up the size of a marble on radar, an insistence on less technology is just crazy - that may be the only thing that keeps you alive, and indeed with today’s 5th Gen aircraft, it’s what gives them a decisive edge with extreme kill ratios.
@@thatdude3938 yes. The stealthier plane of the two will always win as it would be able to detect and fire missiles at the enemy aircraft first. Even the stealthiest planes like the F-22 and F-35 can be detected when they are about 40 Km to 50 Km away so it would still be a BVR fight
Sprey's and Boyd's vision of the future use of air power was directly from WWII. They saw huge fleets of bombers hitting enemy targets and needing small escort fighter to protect them from enemy fighters. That small escort fighter was the F-16 that was supposed to have a cannon a IR missiles to use against the enemies. The radar was supposed to be used for aiming the cannon. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union the Soviets were developing AA-missiles and SAM's. There would not have been any Soviet dogfighters trying to shoot down US bombers!
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 , I suggest you read "The Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed After Vietnam" by Marshall Michel III. You can find it as a PDF file by googling. The train of thought is easy to see when looking at what Boyd said about what the task of a fighter was! He and Sprey wanted something that could escort bombers to targets and back! They saw no need for long range radars and BVR missiles. The gun and short range ir-missiles were enough. The wanted a dogfighter to do the same jog as the the P-51 had done in WWII when escorting bombers to Berlin and back. In Korea it was the F-86 that escorted B-29's to targets and back. The book "Flying Camelot" by Hankins is also full of useful info.
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 ,why do I assume? I "assume" it from what Boyd and Sprey said was important for a fighter and what NOT important for a fighter! Just find out what they said. Boyd did NOT like the F-15 it was too big and too technical for his liking! Sprey got very angry when a better radar was added to the F-16. The F-16 would NEVER have got a stellar reputation if it had been built as Boyd and Sprey wanted. John Boyd's thoughts are also very well known, there is no need to "attribute" anything to him that he has not said! It is very well known what Boyd said about what fighter aircraft should look like and what its task is! As for Energy Maneuverability, Boyd lifted the idea from an article written in 1954 by Edward S. Rutowski. He also copied the way the results were presented as graphs.
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 , don't make assumptions that in no way are supported by facts! Read something that is written by people who do NOT consider John Boyd their God! I will be very enlightening.
Lol…yeah…if there’s one thing we have learned over the last 30 years it’s that cheap low-tech simple weapons systems are the way to go! I mean, complex high-tech weapons like the F-15, M1A1 abrams and Ah-64 Apache just don’t work! (Yeah…sarcasm) The US should have been using f-5s and T-72s Thank god that Boyd and especially Sprey didn’t get their way. The F-16C (the predominant 1980’s Cold War version) was NOT what Sprey wanted. He lamented it’s lantirn/night navigation capabilities, new high powered radar and updated computers allowing for the use of radar guided missles as unnecessary “junk” that reduced its capabilities. Yeah…a fighter that only Carries 2 short range air to air missles, has no search radar and can only be flown in daytime with clear weather would have been REALLY useful in a NATO/WP war in Europe in the 80’s. Lol
It's not just the F-15 and F16. The F-18 was also an outcome as the runner-up in the LFX competition and went on to become the whole Hornet legacy. Then, the A-10 was also a product of the reform movement and the Fighter Mafia. That's an entire era of attack aircraft.
Experience has shown that the fighter mafia and reform movements we basically incorrect. Some of the things they pushed had a good effect, but for the most part, putting up large numbers of cheap planes (and MBTs and iFVs) is not a winning strategy. The Soviets/Russians have that strategy. If you look at the Gulf War and OIF, you see a more sophisticated army with more advanced equipment crushing an army equipped with the Soviet/Russian equipment. This is also true of the Israelis.
You could do an episode on attack helicopter tactics in the Russia-Ukraine War. How they hit anything smaller than a grid square by pitching up and firing rocket salvoes without computer aided pipers and GPS.
Depending on how the computer works, if the ground forces are directing an attack and know the coordinates even with GPS down, they can still feed it to the pilot whose aircraft has his INS calibrated to an airfield with a known coordinate. Otherwise a markpoint can be selected with the targeting optics and again INS can be used to calculate the release point.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD They're using Mi-8 and Ka-52 for that. Last I checked, and judging by the HUD footage missing anything resembling a DLZ, they don't have functions like that. It's just a "this angle at this range gives you this dispersion" kinda thing.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD In an aircraft that will show a pipper, yes. In Russian aircraft that only have a flight ladder and no other indicator visible there is no computer aid.
Not just F15 and F16, even F/A18, F14, F-CK1 and JF17 are the products of energy maneuver theory. And later on they are carried reliable radars and lots of capable missiles in addition with their excellent dogfighting capabilities.
It was definitely interesting to learn that Team Deathmatch obsessed individuals are not, in fact, specific only to the competitive gaming communities.
This wins the comment section.
kek nailed it
These " team deathmath obsessed" forgot more about aerial warfare than you could EVER hope to learn.
Show some respect.
Wow a worthless opinion from an animal profile picture, colour me shocked
The gulf war photo on the book cover was photoshopped in 2002.
The "Fighter Mafia" were a lot better at self-promotion and claiming credit for others' work than they were at designing the best fighter.
True, and to be fair, their ideas are only good on paper but not good in practice since technology progress much faster and most of their ideas (with the exception of Boyd's E-M theory) are also controversial at best. It's a good thing they didn't fully adapt the ideas of "Fighter Mafia" because a single purpose fighter is not a good fighter at all since that time, they were entering in an age were Multi-Role fighters are becoming a thing (Except the F-15A and C version).
@@BluePegasus1381 Funny thing about Boyd. I read "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War", when it first came out. For a book that is supposed to be a tribute to the guy, it sure made him sound like a giant A-hole.
The F-15 A/C is multi-role it could drop dumb bombs.
@@BluePegasus1381 The F-15 (A/B and C/D) actually does have multirole capabilities (not a true multirole fighter like other 4th Gen aircraft) despite being a dedicated Air Superiority fighter. They might need to be slightly modified but the Israeli Air Force did use their F-15C/Ds for ground attack missions. Which actually further proves your point.
@@BluePegasus1381 I would point out that F6F in ww2 was fairly multirole
This group has been taking advantage of the success of the f-15 and 16 for decades. In reality they played a very small role, and these jets continue to succeed despite their input. The f15 is relevant today because of its ability to carry a ridiculous amount of missiles and tech. The F16 hasnt turned into a flying missile truck, but its continuing relevance can definitely be linked to its ability to carry modern tech and be continually updated to newer tech. The f16 they wanted would have been obsolete before entering production.
Exactly.
As you say, F-15 is relevant because of payload capacity. What makes F-16 relevant is cost to operate/upgrade.
@@Mediiiicc more so it's multirole capability as in it can do everything really well drop bombs do sead and protect itself
What makes the F-16 viable is due to it being multi-role and the USAF brought alot of it so the cost to operate and maintain it naturally went down.
@@koc988 F-15/16/18 are all multi-role. It's not a unique feature of the f-16
Fellow youtuber Lazerpig has a few videos on the influence and misdirections of the fighter mafia, namely how some massively under-qualified people tried to convince the US air force to adopt laughably inept plane designs lacking missiles or radar
His critique of the A-10 is spot on too. Will always a great novelty for me though, 30mm gatling or autocannon...
Lazer Force ASSEMBLE!
@@TheBucketSkill I will tell you the same thing I told him it's a rotary Cannon
@@spartanx9293 Ah, yea. I'd usually it a 30mm cannon, but rotary is literally the correct words. Feel like with normies i'd still have to say gatling gun for them to get it, or... 30mm minigun. -.-
I love LazerPig! Hes my favorite lol!
I'm disappointed that nothing was mentioned about what the fighter mafia thought was the "perfect" fighter, the F-5 Freedom Fighter. It was small, lightweight, super maneuverable, unable to carry any radar missiles, very short range, day fighter only. It also couldn't fight it's way out of a wet paper bag. It is still used as a training aid for visual air-to-air fights only. It cannot detect, target, shoot at, or be a danger in any way to anyone outside of 10 miles. That's the perfect fighter mafia jet, but the Air Force found it totally useless as a fighter.
The fighter mafia thought they had better ideas than anyone else. I learned in the Army that a good idea that doesn't work, isn't a good idea.
Day fighters were a bad idea to begin with, even heavy clouds during daylight limits their ability
That was Sprey's idea of a perfect fighter (At the time). Boyd, Christi, Myers, Riccioni were all very different people and had differing ideas but agreed mainly that the defense industry was over selling and over charging while under performing. The fact that this wasn't mentioned and the focus on Sprey's opinions makes me wonder if this is worth a read or not. Also, no mention of the USSR, in this video, as a driving force behind some of the Mafia's idea. He did mention that lots of these ideas rose from the debacle in Vietnam.
Interestingly, the F-5A was basically only useful as a close-support aircraft. It had an F-86 gunsight, no radar, and inky dumb bombs and rocket pods. The F-5E was supposed to correct that. It sorta did. Kinda. Some of the updates are interesting, and supposedly the Soviets looked closely at examples from Vietnam in designing the MiG-23. That is kinda hard to believe, as the two are hugely different platforms, but legends are legends. Both models were relatively inexpensive and easy to use, so we could shuffe them off to client states. They beat nothing. Nostalgia for their son, the F-20, continues to this day. Matching that aircraft against the developed F-16 does not make it look very well.
the mig19 would slam the F5 and all it's variants despite being 30 years newer. America didn't get the maneuverability/thrust thing right til the F16 and F15
The F-5 could hold its own against the feared MiG-28
some clarification is needed, here. the fighter mafia did not "design" the f-16. the fighter mafia concocted the specs the manufacturers had to meet. Northrup and g.d. tried their best to meet those qualities which were tested at Edwards. sum point, Boyd, Sprey, et. al. did not design either the yf-16 or yf-17.
There's an interesting passage in Ben Rich's book about his time at the Lockheed Skunk Works (He was a engineer and succeeded Kelly Johnson as head of the Skunk Works).
Apparently when Lockheed began to design their submission for the fighter project that ultimately became the F-16, Kelly Johnson looked at the RFP specs and said they were ridiculous. The plane the USAF said it wanted was too small, had too little wing area, didn't have enough fuel capacity, etc.
Johnson argued Lockheed should "overdesign" their proposal to address those flaws. Rich argued they should design to the RFP specs. Johnson got his way and the Lockheed submission was bigger/heavier/more capable than the requested design. Lockheed's submission was not accepted.
But when contract winner General Dynamics ultimatelly built the production version of the F-16, they added more wing area, more fuel capacity, etc. pretty much as Kelly Johnson predicted would happen.
Hey Dummy,the Fighter Mafia's core is NOT ABOUT HATING TECHNOLOGIES....
THEY ARE ADVOCATING PRACTICAL INEXPENSIVE SOLUTION.
Fighter Mafia only showing the way,dictated the ideal design of an aircraft. .... they did not designed the F-16 but the concept
Wanna bet? My high school friend is the grand daughter of Mr. Hillaker and still has the "napkin" that he used to sketch out the OML of the F-16 at the local Waffle House in Fort Worth. This well before the first "Fly Off" (against McDonnel Douglas's YF-17 ... that became the F-18) ... the YF-16 (2 each) and "FSD" (12 each). So yeah, Harry was truly the designer of the F-16. That is not to say changes were made he didn't like (and the Fighter Mafia as well) ... but he got the job done. Keep in mind the context of what the F-16 was originally designed for ... not just what is stated in the Video but on a larger scale and that being the huge number of enemy aircraft in the inventory of the USSR. After Vietnam and poor record of the F-4, that had no guns ... only missiles, USAF aircraft were few and no competition for what the Soviets were spending on. The F-16 initial logo was 2 arches in red and blue ... to signify putting an F-4 and an F-16 side by side on the runway at Carswell AFB and saying "Go" ... they both rolled out and the F-16 was so much more nimble (with a light airframe and 26,000 lbs. of thrust) it was able to get airborne so fast and turned so quick it was able to come up on the F-4's 6 just as it was getting airborne. And yes, I entered GDFW at the beginning of the FSD Program ... and stuck with it for nearly 4 decades ... hellava ride Cowboy.
They didn't even do that. If the specs they gave were matched it wouldn't have a radar or pylons for missiles. They wanted a ww2 dogfighter.
I guess a 'TIE Fighter Mafia' must have gotten it's way in the Galactic Empire, cause the TIE fighter is exactly the design philosophy that these guys were looking for, while the Airforce went for the equivilent of X-wings, much more multi-role.
Now I want to see that as a skit.
Seriously the TIE Fighter in the way its presented is a complete piece of crap. The Interceptor is good, but still not great, but the way the TIE has become flanderized into this Swarm fighter is really kind of ridiculous.
@@BoisegangGaming "Flanderized"
Honestly in concept and in execution the tie really wasn't that great. No hyperdrive so that pilots can't pursue anyone faster, no shielding so that any ol tiny asteroid or single blaster fire could destroy it. Awful field of view because who needs visibility in a dogfight, and designed to be cheap, so, a swarm fighter.
@@BoisegangGaming you are right on all points but you forget the TIE fighter wasn't designed to fulfill the same role as the X-Wing, and was created in a different time by a different government.
TIES were designed to be cheap and numerous, for every X-Wing you build/buy you could get 3-5 TIEs
Secondly the TIE was meant to be cheap enough and ubiquitous enough for counterinsurgency operations all over the galaxy. So that if you lose one TIE to rebels, etc it could easily be replaced vs an X-Wing.
The X-Wing peaked because it was designed during a time where the republic was fighting large scale battles against a peer enemy. The TIE was designed when the Republic/The Empires main threat were insurgents ie Rebels.
@@nash-p I'm aware of that.
It's just that the media of star wars portrays tie fighters as really non-threatening, usually because of the character's plotonium-laced plating.
@@BoisegangGaming when the protagonist is flying TIEs, e.g Soontir Fel in his Legends arc, it's an entirely different story.
This has to be the single nicest thing I have ever heard about the reformers.
When he started talking about the Reform Movement i had a massive Aero-Gavin Flashback
Wasn't Pierre Sprey the guy who said the M48 was a better tank than the Abrams?
yes, however I think it was the M60.
With AMRAAM, AIM-9L and 9X, and AIM-260 on the immediate horizon it’s fortunate that the “fighter mafia” didn’t completely get their way.
Well kinda. Such weapon systems would suggest the need for vehicles more capable of defeating those as well.
@@air-headedaviator1805 stealth - which Pierre Sprey lampooned as well
@@petersouthernboy6327 The problem with stealth is in order to make it work you make changes that make the plane less maneuverable, less aerodynamic.
@@linusa2996 see Red Flag. Aerodynamics and maneuverability don’t win fights in the current air battle environment
@@petersouthernboy6327 only because they haven't learned to deal with it now. in the real world, missiles used by the F-35 can be evaded, yes evaded. the rules for the missile have not changed since the vietnam war. it's only a matter of time before the find how to neutralize the sensors, then you are back to WW2/Korean War style fighting.
Read up on the top aces from WW1 & WW2.
One of the most consistent ideas is to AVOID dogfighting. This from the time BEFORE radar and missiles.
Then the whole aggressor squadron thing, that tactics and training mean more than roll rates and turn radii in actual dogfighting. That includes Boyd's energy theory, where having more energy (which generally requires bigger heavier engines) produces more consistent outcomes, when you are actually dogfighting.
And that is if you are talking a one dimensional piece of equipment. A one trick pony, if you will. As training a pilot is more problematic than just producing a fighter, limiting what that resource can do is shortsighted.
As far as the "small nimble fighter" thing goes, I remember reading about an exercise where a British Vulcan BOMBER was able to outmaneuver an F-15 at high altitude (40,000 feet or something like that). Kinda puts that smaller is always better argument in perspective.
The Vulcan part seems entirely unsupported
@@mcamp9445 I don't recall the book, but it was extolling the virtues of the Vulcan as the epitome of engineering, which it was a very technical design.
As the P-38 could outturn most other WW2 fighters(roll and dive were it's weakness, along with cost) there is a basis for that as well.
I don't have much interest in bombers and, as a typical American, am less interested in those "second rate"😜 designs from Europe, so have even less understanding of them anyway.
Was some sort of high altitude intercept exercise in the late 70s, which the F15 with it's remarkable climb performance was trying to demonstrate.
@@drudgenemo7030 I think it has less to do with the Vulcan itself, more that fighters have less 'in practice' performance than people think. I also recall a Mirage 2000 pilot account that he were unable to keep up with B-52 in a turn at higher altitude, with fuel tanks and weapons.
@@mcamp9445 Its probably not entirely without merit. Smaller doesn't always equate to being more maneuverable. For example (ships not planes), The Iowa Class battleships actually has a tighter turning circle, and thus could turn faster, than its contemporary Destroyer the Fletcher class as well as most US Cruisers of the time. In fact characteristics needed for speed can often work against characteristics needed for maneuverability, So it wasn't an unusual thing for battleships to end up being more maneuverable than many cruisers or destroyers.
@@mcamp9445 Not surprising. A vulcan not fully loaded has a way lower stall speed. An F-15 would have to fly faster to pull as hard. Which it can. 40,000 ft is where it can hit mach 2.3+
It's amazing how much of history the Fighter Mafia ignored. The idea of "if it's maneuverable enough then the pilot doesn't need more armor" didn't work well for the A6M and yet here they are suggesting the same idea.
Well, yes, but actually no, the biggest downfall was lack of self sealing fuel tanks, and even that I believe was to be adressed in the latest models
Well here they aren't really wrong. There's a reason why armor has completely disappeared from aircraft and that's because it's frankly useless. The amount of armor you'd actually need to protect the pilot would require giving up a significant amount of speed and maneuverability and there are always other systems that can do a better job of protecting the pilot. Armor was only a bit of a thing in WWII and that's because things like radar had not yet been developed but you'll notice that it does also slowly disappear over the cause of the war, the only exception was the IL-2 and that's because it was a dedicated ground attacker. Armor is just a bad idea on planes in general because every bit of weight you add is weight you have to lift and carry and armor simply doesn't justify itself in that equation, especially because while you might be able to armor the cockpit that really doesn't matter when a hit to the engine is still gonna down the place. It just gets even worse with the introduction of missiles because while with guns you can at least reasonably anticipate where the shot might come from, a missile uses a proxy fuse and can easily detonate somewhere above the cockpit and it's famously difficult to armor glass while keeping it see-through.
It's my understandinfg that the Zero was NOT in fact all that maneuverable, it has a tight turning circle but that's it, for example it had a very slow roll rate and sucked in the vertical. Anything other than a horizontal turning contest the Zero was less maneuverable.
Your interview skills are excellent, Chris. You came prepared with great questions and let Dr. Hankins expound on his answers without cutting him off. Great work on the B-Roll footage you added in post.
Your videos have gotten better and better and we appreciate the time and effort you put into this. Thank you. My dad was a WWII Navy crew member of a PBY. Aircraft have always fascinated me and your channel is an excellent resource.
Man I can't think a group I disagree with more then fighter mafia. That fact they have so much hate for F15, M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley just crazy.
They waffle between hating the F15 and claiming that they were it's designers. They're fraudsters, plain and simple.
The m1 comments were startling, they actually believe that the m48 was better protected.
Funnily enough most military enthusiasts would criticize those systems for technical/design flaws that are completely different from those the Reformers criticized.
Your episodes always amaze me. This was fantastic, I'm checking out buying the book as soon as I post this comment.
What a quality presentation, well done all! Excellent and informative.
Thanks for the feedback, Roger. I'll be passing it on and I am sure Mike will be happy to hear it!
Boyd and Sprey don't deserve the credit for the F-15 & F-16
George Graff and Harry Hillaker do
"I don't know how specification or design requirements work"
Christoph: Your questions seem so well thought out and allowed us all to get the very best out of this interview. I think I will become one of your patreon supporters again.
Thanks very much, Charles, much appreciated. Happy to hear you enjoyed this interview
I find it rather ironic that the philosophy the Fighter Mafia opposed (more high technology, more weight, more expensive) ended up producing the ultimate dogfighter jet in the F-22. (Not to mention that it can also do BVR better than just about anything else out there.)
IIRC the Fighter Mafia were also the 'Not a pound for air to ground' folks too, and they were aggressively wrong there.
I think the background of members (especially Boyd) is very important. Boyd was a super smart guy and he quite literally wrote the book on dogfighting for the USAF, afaik his Energy Manoeuvrability Theory book still forms the basis of much of what is taught at US fighter weapons. schools (think Top Gun); and was by all accounts an excellent dogfighter himself. However he was also obsessed with dogfighting and it was very much his thing so he understandably wanted the airforce to build the ultimate dogfighter, at the detriment of all else. Imo the designers of the F-15 and F-16 did a great job of taking on board Boyd & Co's advice and both planes are excellent knife fighters (especially the 16), but also tempered it and didn't let it ruin the rest of the plane.
Boyd was also a major league personality problem, as his biographer pointed out.
@@jayfelsberg1931 why do we always have to sugar coat the truth? "Major personality problems" is just another way to say the guy was an asshole and a pain to work around. Being a leading mind in his field doesn't excuse his personality.
I would go even further and say Boyd doesn’t just inform dogfighting but also American strategic thinking with his work on the OODA loop.
@@mandalorian_guy One tries to be polite....kinds hard with Boyd, but one tries
Boyd didn't literally write the book on dogfighting, but he did help develop energy maneuverability theory, meaning he and Christie formalized what fighter pilots had already known tacitly for some time. This made it easier to present and teach, but skilled pilots were already doing it long before Boyd came on the scene. I think this guy gets a bit too much hero worship on TH-cam. He does deserve credit for taking the initiative to develop a more objective basis for things like energy maneuverability and OODA, but he did not invent the principles.
Also, while he considered himself the ace of the base during peacetime training flights, he never shot down an aircraft in combat. I suspect this may have influenced his extremist mindset the that most important attributes for a fighter were to be simple and light, which is great for a peacetime guns-only cage match but less important in real world combat operations.
Ahh, Fighter mafia... This is going to be good
Never quite understood the light and nimble crowd; didn't the A6M Zero put paid to that fable? If you're going to emphasize shaving weight and complexity, put it into speed instead. Lundstrom's First Team books tallied up carrier F4F vs A6M losses and they were something like 93-94, as close to dead even as doesn't matter, and F4F rookies had better chances of learning from their mistakes than A6M rookies, in spite of being slower and less nimble. Boyd was right: experienced pilots in a nimble plane don't need armor. But lightweight means fewer rookies become experienced.
If you're going to skimp on technology, what difference is acceptable? The Sopwith Camel and Fokker DR-1 were lightweight and nimble; obviously not enough against any WW II or later fighter. Heck, any jet could probably just fly past fast and toss it around like a dry leaf. Similarly, no WW II fighter could stand up for long against any Korean War or later jet. Put an F-5 day fighter w/o radar against an F-15 or F-16; it's no comparison.
Take the same engine, range, etc. Put the weight into radar, missiles, speed; or put it into a bigger more nimble wing. Which one will win in real life? What good is maneuverability against an enemy who shoots you down from 10 miles away? Maneuverability is great for air shows, not for making the other bastard die for his country.
Yes, the military likes to gold plate systems. But that itself is the sin, not radar and electronics and stand-off capability.
Of course, I am not a pilot, not even in games, so maybe I'm just ignorant.
How is it that you posted 9 days ago if the video got released half an hour ago? I assume it’s just a TH-cam bug, but it’s one of the weirder ones I’ve seen to be sure.
@@thereyougoagain1280 If he has a subscriber or patreon setup, he might be a finacial supporter of the channel, and have access to early release content as one of the perks.
I'm a pilot educated in aero engineering. I can help dispel some misconceptions. Your thinking used to dominate fighter design until the Vietnam War. We learned a lot since then and we didn't completely ditch the emphasis on speed and weapon systems. For the most part, we just integrated energy management into the design process as well. I want you to think of that term energy management rather than maneuverability, because while they both achieve similar performance, the former better describes how designers went about making improvements.
Specific Excess Power (Ps) is a measure of how quickly an aircraft can gain energy per unit of mass, or in simpler terms, the acceleration/climb rate of the aircraft. The way you achieve greater Ps is by increasing thrust, reducing drag, and reducing mass. All of these things will directly improve acceleration, climb, and top speed, like you suggest fighter designers should strive for. As a byproduct, maneuverability will also improve from these efforts alone. What I am getting at here is that maneuverability is not necessarily contradictory with speed. Don't let WW2 fighters fool you.
Now you may be wondering why fighters aren't much faster, or in some cases are slower than the Phantom and some other 60s fighters. The raw stats of these aircraft on paper is a bit misleading. In the real world, fighters don't use their top speeds. It's not practical. Designing a fighter that reaches Mach 2.8 only for it to occasionally reach Mach 1.5 is a wasted effort. Instead, optimize the fighter to operate under Mach 2 and for various reasons of weight savings and low speed drag reductions (ask about examples if you want), you will get a fighter that accelerates better, has greater range, and has greater maneuverability. It may look worse on paper, but it will perform its job more effectively in combat, even beyond visual range. Let's look at some examples.
Unless you're an F-22 (and even then), you as a fighter pilot will cruise around at high subsonic speeds because that saves gas and lets you fight farther away and for longer. Now imagine you spot an enemy formation 125 miles away and they spot you. At your current speed and altitude, neither of you have the missile range to hit each other, but you can extend that range by accelerating and climbing. So you kick in the afterburner put in a shallow climb, and when you have the range, you fire your missile and turn away immediately to avoid their missiles. In this engagement, he who can accelerate and turn away first will survive the match. Even without dogfighting, the ability to accelerate, climb, and maneuver is a necessity in BVR combat. Even with equal radar and missiles, a heavy but fast interceptor like the Phantom would get slaughtered by a lighter and more nimble fighter like the F-16.
Summary of the story, maneuverability goes hand in hand with acceleration and climb rate. Acceleration will dictate who is faster in a realistic engagement, even if the plane with less acceleration has a higher theoretical top speed. Reason: nobody wants to run out of gas, and so the sound barrier is still a barrier of practicality.
@@thereyougoagain1280 If you have a patreon account, you see the video sooner. Apparently "released " means "to the general public".
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 that explains it, thanks. I didn’t realize he released his videos to paid subscribers that much earlier.
What I personally find endlessly amusing is that the reformists were in fact old guard. And the bunch of people they considered against them they labelled as old guard but they in fact were the ones who were always trying to push the envelope.
The Fighter Mafia wanted to build the best gun armed fighter for 1948
What a great channel this is!
Even in WW2, fighters ended up strafing ground targets most of the time. Similarly with tanks. You only fight enemy tanks some of the time.
An excellent point. Even the "pure fighters" Bf-109 and P-51 were much used for ground support. The Fw-190 and P-47 evolved into major ground pounders. Ditto the F4U.
What else you are supposed to do when you run out of aerial targets to shoot? Send your fighters home?
@@sir0herrbatka his point is that the purpose of air superiority is to support the war on the ground. It’s not an end in itself. As we see in Ukraine at the moment.
@@robappleby583 using fighters to achieve air superiority is very inefficient compared to other aircraft at the time anyway.
@@sir0herrbatka In the case of the P-51, the USAF was transitioning into jets and knowing that, relegated the P-51 to ground support roles but sent to the scrapyards all of the P-47's that were actually better suited for the ground attack role than the P-51 was.
Don't forget: the reformers were the same people who conceptualized the Blitz Fighter, an attack plane with only a titanium bathtub and 30mm cannon.
No sensor equipment, or the ability to use AGMs...
Or radar, because that "couldn't tell the difference between an enemy and a volkswagen full of refugees" (i believe I got the quote right, but you get the gist). I don't understand how so many people believe the reformers are right.
And then claimed they (mainly Sprey) designed the A-10 when it became successful when they didn’t. Poor Kartveli, he designed so many successful aircraft only for Sprey to try to steal his design and claim them as of his own intuition after realizing he was wrong.
And the A-10 was acknowledged at the time to have a very short expected lifetime in combat, I think they were hoping for three missions each before loss.
They were so so so wrong though, as the gulf war showed. The high tech stuff ended up performing on a completely different level than the stuff from the previous generation, to the level of having like 100:1 kill ratios.
Excellent video and overview. Thank you Michael and Cristof.
7:22 I imagine a pilot telling a general : "Just dodge bro"
Great video, however the F-16 was used extensively in combat well before the Gulf War, namely by Israel in 1982 (Bekaa Valley operations) where is got something like 42 air-to-air kills. Minor point, but facts are facts.
The fighter mafia (actually, just Boyd) contributed energy maneuverability theory (E-M diagrams) to fighter design, but other than that they were worse than worthless. Incompetent ignoramuses. Believe me, as a former F-16 operational pilot, I am very glad they failed (and everyone else I know in that community would agree).
@Fraser Fir ... And the point would be?... What do you mean by "just"?
I was even more impressed by the Israeli Air Force strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor being built in 1981. Of course, using the F-16 in a bombing mission would probably horrify the fighter mafia since they only advocated for the air-to-air role for the F-16. The precision of the Israeli strike had some observers thinking that the Israelis were using guided munitions, but, if I recall correctly, they used unguided 2,000 pound bombs. It proved the F-16 was extremely well-suited for the air-to-ground role; it's almost like the USAF maybe had a clearer idea of what was desirable in an airframe than the fighter mafia.
@@KMRobertson Yes, that's a very good one. And they were indeed 2,000 lbs Mk-84s, unguided. That being said, it was the weapon control system that made the F-16 accurate. It was derived from that in the A-7D, as far as air-to-ground capability is concerned. The big advantage the F-16 had (and still has) is the ability to self-escort effectively, although in the Osirak raid they had F-15s in that role.
@Fraser Fir LOL, what a moron. Boyd was perfectly capable of doing enough of the math to substantiate the theory. Shit, I could do it myself! (granted, I have a degree in engineering physics). Yes, Christie elaborated on the finer details, for sure, but to say this would have amounted to nothing without him is inane. Plenty of other mathematicians could have done the same work, it's actually NOT "rocket science." The essential point is Boyd was the originator of the idea. The rest is mere details...
@@KRGruner I guess the F-16 was a bit like the Israeli Kfir, in that respect.
No wonder the F-16 replaced it
Imagine. If the reformers had gotten what they wanted, the F15 would have not had a radar... those people are nuts.
Never heard of this...thanks for producing and sharing!
I recommend "The Revolt of the Majors; How the Air Force Changed After Vietnam" by Marshall Michel III. You can find it as PDF on the web.
I can't second that enough ; The Revolt of the Majors shows the various political maneuvering schemes the Fighter Mafia/Reformer movement did, by essentially trying to convince a majority of the uninformed populace at large that modern technology doesn't work, using simplistic arguments like claiming NCTR doesn't work, which the Air Force couldn't reveal worked in the real world as it was classified technology back then, or saying that fuzz busters from RadioShack countered radars. Their emphasis on daylight-only WVR dogfighters was also extremely misguided as Central Europe, the likely battlefield in case of WW3, only has about 4.5 hours of good flying weather on average per day in the winter.
I'd also suggest checking out on "F-16, Sale of the Century", a 1979 documentary made with the cooperation of several European broadcasters. It shows how the F-15 and then F-16 programs evolved and how they were perceived by the public back then, and one can also see the many criticisms about technology and cost as can be seen today with the F-35.
@@KenshiroPlayDotA , had the F-16 been as wished by Boyd and Sprey, that is a purely daylight good weather fighter, the European NATO countries would never had bought it. They would probably had bought the Dassault Mirage F1 or maybe the SAAB JA-37 Viggen.
I've started reading this a while ago, just can't find the time to finish, but yes this paper is beyond valuable for this topic.
Found it. Michel flew three tours in Vietnam, then went on to F-15s and going to Israel for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If Corman's book on Boyd is a hagiography, Michel's thesis a polemic, and that's being nice.
I just downloaded this on your recommendation. I'm barely through the introduction and it's already so wonderfully catty I don't even care if I agree with its conclusions or not lol I love it
EDIT: "These dissidents whom I call the Critics - wanted a very small, light, simple, inexpensive fighter instead of the F-15. Nevertheless, the Air Force fell in solidly behind the F-15, and the Critics were left carping on the sidelines." fucking poetry
What's funny is that the F-4 in Navy service was never equipped with integrated cannons and yet it still enjoyed many combat successes with early missiles. Also, the majority of the combat experience in Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan show rather convincingly that aircraft have to be able to integrate very well with ground forces and be able to designate and strike targets independently and accurately with minimal direction from ground forces in CAS scenarios where ground forces may be too preoccupied staying alive to direct a strike. Also, aircraft have to be versatile and all weather capable because it turns out people on the ground are just as vulnerable to ambushes at night as during the day. Especially when paramilitary forces know exactly where they sleep. The fighter mafia was more or less obsolete the day it was founded.
The other side of the F4 coin however is while it did gain successes with missiles it was hopelessly outclassed when enemy fighters DID close into visual range BECAUSE it had no integral guns. That lack resulted in the loss of more than a few F4's. I am firmly of the opinion that Fighters of any sort require integrated guns.
As for ground forces being 'too occupied' to direct a strike, sorry, but ground forces have integrated Forward Air Controllers whose job it is to stay clear and direct the air support. Absolutely NO ground troops wants their Air dropping their god damned weapons without guidance from the ground because that is a SUPERB way of killing your own troops....
Multiple Blue on Blue incidents involving aircraft striking misidentified friendly forces without much direction from the ground has shown the dangers of that to the ground troops.... Infantry especially love their air support, but they HATE undirected air support because that is just as likely to flatten them as it is to flatten the enemy....
@@alganhar1 Except the F-4 was fine within visual range. In fact the bigger problem with the F-4 WVR was that is had poor rear visibility making situational awareness a little hazy. The operation red baron study would later reveal this due to two integral things about combat. One being that if you can be seen you can be acquired if you can be acquired you can be shot and if you can be shot you can be killed. Two being that to do all this you need to be seen and what's interesting with dogfighting is that in fact 80% or so of the pilots that were shot down didn't even see the enemy. This is a stark contrast to what the fighter mafia wants because if the problems rests with situational awareness and not kinematics you don't need a fighter that can cobra you need a fighter that can see everything and let the pilot react quickly. In fact dogfighting in WW2 and WW1 happened quite rarely and typically most engagements were hit and runs. Aces that people love to talk about recognized this and we know this because people like the red baron did exactly what you'd expect which is give the enemy as little time to react and try as hard as possible to keep them from finding you with tactics like coming out of the sun and diving from above. The entire art of air combat is not doing basic fighter maneuvers and turning at so many degrees per second it's a basic cat an mouse game. The reason why altitude and speed is life is not just to maneuver but to give you one options to get away from an ambush or two engage in an ambush while minimizing the chance of return fire
Which is why its silly to suggest that dueling was common place in any war that featured armed aircraft. Because you chances of survival drop as soon as your counter detected while ambushing someone. There was a reason why WW2 aircraft got faster and faster and could climb higher and higher instead of becoming lighter and being able to turn quicker. Missile were in their infancy in Vietnam but that didn't stop them from making the gun a moot point as when the air force did equip their aircraft with guns it made little difference relative to the changes that navy made to their missiles and pilot training to make the missiles more reliable and to teach fighters basic fighter maneuvering.
Afghanistan and Iraq both showed that cannons are still useful. I don't know where you got the idea that either pilots or ground pounders want to get rid of them.
@@koc988 Thats a lot of text and yet you suggest the mafia guys didn't care about situational awareness and thought pulling cobras was the way to fight. Both are demonstrably wrong. EM theory was one of their foundations and is visible in both the F-16 and F15. Improved situational awareness can also be seen in the cockpit design of both jets as well.
Your argument about higher, faster, farther is well put but ignores that the US and almost everyone else has given up on trying to push speed much over mach 2. The F-111 kept pushing speed but would have been a poor air superiority fighter. A higher speed is always better and maybe design and real costs are coming down enough that we will see the numbers start going back up.
Anyhow good post I just quibble about what you think the fighter mafia was interested in.
"Useless" bcuz guided bombs exist gun runs are rear anyway. As said by FO and FAC they much prefer bombs over guns. And the only aircraft to most commonly use guns the A-10 an army officer commented that "I Dont want no stingkin A-10 if its not gonna drop guided bombs".
Excellent interview!
What's amazing is, despite some pretty serious effort aimed at cocking it up, the whole procurement shambles generally works out pretty well in the end.
So fighter mafia is equivalent to fudd lore in the firearm world.
Exactly.
Fascinating - thanks to Dr Hankins for filling some of the gaps I had. Shall have to get that book.
Glad it was helpful!
@@MilitaryAviationHistory You are welcome.
The biggest problems with "if the aircraft is maneuverable the pilot can just dodge and doesn't need armor" are:
1. it makes you an easier target. A plane that will taco from one 30mm hit like a WW2 fighter is something you only need to get some lucky snapshot on or get a missile to detonate in the general vicinity of, not spend time sawing it in half or actually hitting it with a missile. Admittedly you still don't want to build a flying tank for air to air combat.
2. Planes with no damage mitigation systems or armor can be very vulnerable to much smaller caliber weaponry. Helicopters for example need to worry about small arms fire. The idea of trying to *dodge* some dude with a 7mm machinegun that you don't even see during a ground run is pretty dicey.
I think most anti air missiles actually explode in the vicinity of the aircraft. Or at least do it if they cant guarantee a direct hit. So survivability definitely matters; if your aircraft had all no protection, you could make the warhead way smaller and the missile more capable instead.
It also seems like a bad idea because of how common it still is to fly low in order to avoid medium and long range missile emplacements.
I mean given the rate of fire of modern aircraft cannons and ground based ones idk if any amount of protection practical on an aircraft can withstand them without massive hit to performance. Small arms also cannot shoot at planes that are not doing super low passes.
Planes haven’t had armor since WWII.
You still want self sealing fuel tanks and enough materiel between the pilot and whatever shrapnel/small arms fire is coming that they won't go splat and can eject, along with active countermeasures to throw off as many missiles a can reasonably be carried. Sure the plane may be a loss, but the goal at this point is to enable the pilot to survive. We have an all volunteer military and that means that we have to keep them alive to the best of our ability given the circumstances. Also keep in mind we have a very limited supply of qualified fighter pilots so keeping them alive is still in America's best interest.
@@termitreter6545 no plane is protected like that, even if it survives it's a mission kill and needs to head back to base instead of carrying on. Warheads are potent enough that distance is not as relevant as you think.
Also in a conventional war you're gonna fly out as one big strike package with different capabilities to deal with enemy anti-air or aircraft so their ability to find and hit you is degraded quite a lot. Not to say that speed and manoeuvrability are neglected (they're definitely not) but flying low is not really how you go about that kind of stuff.
Japanese fighter doctrine held that a very maneuverable fighter didn't need armor. US pilots who defeated that strategy would be considered a part of the nostalgia referenced in referring to the fighter mafia. Strange the mafia cherry picked their history in terms of performance v. protection.
Lots of people hate on the current F-35 because it is theoretically worse than the F-16 in a dogfight. A dogfight that may never happen at all if the two planes were to fight for real. The F-16 won't see the F-35 on radar, and then it blows up to a Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile from the F-35 that actually works.
Remember, the F-15 and F-16 were built with the lessons from Vietnam, which often emphasized how terrible the vacuum tube controlled missiles failed, and failed a lot. Pilots had to get in behind the other plane and use guns or get the terrible missiles to work.
However, it is now 2022, with a HUGE shift in how electronics perform (just look at your cell phone with more power than all of 1960's NASA combined). Missiles now work. And missiles now can be fired SIDEWAYS at a target that isn't even in front of you using thrust vectoring rockets (that don't make smoke anymore) using another airplane's data-linked radar to guide it.
Yes, an F-16 can out turn the F-35. But the F-35 will probably kill it before they get that close, or use an off boresight missile in that turning fight to down the F-16. And the F-16 will never know it was under threat the whole time because the F-35 is stealth.
I think you need a citation for the F-35 being worse than an F-16 in a dogfight. There's a lot of distorted information about that out there. In particular, the original claim came from a flight test in which the F-35 had software limiters that prevented it from using its full maneuverability. Subsequent comparisons have been made between clean configurations of the F-16 versus combat-loaded versions of the F-35. In short, the claim is dubious.
@@BlunderMunchkin The basic physics is based on weight vs surface area, called wing loading. TL:DR is that the less wing loading = better turn performance and less loss of speed during that turn as well. The F-16 is better at turning with 88 lbs/in^2 vs 107 lbs/in^2 for an F-35. Also, thrust to weight. Ironically, the F-35 is worse at thrust to weight than a plane that can hover in the B model.
However. Those are not telling the whole story. I still think that an F-35 will kill an F-16 most of the time. The F-35 has stealth, so your F-16 will never get a chance to fire at it, but will have to dodge a bunch of missiles from a plane it can't see. Also, datalink. F-35's can work in groups, even using radar from one plane to guide missiles from another in the squadron mate, letting the lead F-35 go silent and get in close, using the info from the rest further back to stay aware of what is going on, and shooting at them too. As one pilot said, there are about 6 things that make his plane a world beating fighter, only that 5 of those things are classified.
But, they did have to give up some maneuverability to get those 5 things.
i read the book. quite interesting. i have to admit, I was drawn into a yahoo group that was really in Boyd and Sprey. it's a testament to the misinformation present now and even then.
Honestly the cost argument barely applies to the F35 anymore.
The A model is cheaper than most 4th Gen Fighters built today
Excellent interview and thanks for Michael Hankins recommendations. Perhaps one could learn more about the subject of qualifications of modern fighter pilots in a future video?
This was an excellent interview.
What you have here - is the type of people Fighter Pilots are - and how they feel about the Military Systems they are in.
As an illustration of Pilot Mentality - there's a documentary on Amazon Prime called _Across the Pacific_ about the early days of Pan American Airlines and how they developed their world wide routes. One of the problems they had (the one that killed Amelia Earhart) was that when flying over large bodies of water - there are no immediate clues you can see to tell you where you are and where you are going.
So - one of the things Pan Am did was to create Radio Direction Finding tools, such that a ground station - could monitor a radio signal from an aircraft - and tell if it were on course our not. Pan Am had a plane get lost and go into the water trying to fly 90 miles from Cuba to Florida as they were developing this system, which lent weight to the need for it.
The Pilots hated it.
The very last thing these independent people wanted - was some schmuck on the ground - monitoring where they went and telling them what to do.
As an aside - what happened with Earhart - was that she had a former Pan Am navigator on board and a Radio Direction Finder - but - she had a communications failure. While she could transmit - she could not receive, thus - she couldn't pick up the signal the Coast Guard Vessel on Howland Island was sending for her to guide on or speak to the radiomen trying to talk to her.
Now - here's what happened with the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18.
First off - if you've played WWIII Campaign Games - you may be experienced with the issue NATO had to deal with. Specifically - the Warsaw Pact - had thousands of cheap aircraft, such as Mig-19's, (and maybe even Mig-15's) that they could just swarm the NATO Air Superiority Aircraft, (the highly sophisticated and excellent F-14 and F-15), with.
The Problem for NATO was that - while The Best Air Superiority Aircraft in the World - the 14 and 15 were very expensive and NATO could not afford enough of them.
So - what to do? The decision was made - to make cheaper - but still capable aircraft to fill out the numbers - so the 14's and 15's didn't get swarmed by cheap things like thousands of Mig-19's. These aircraft ended up being the 16's and 18's.
Here though - they also needed ground attack aircraft. They did not want to send their highly expensive Best In The World Air Superiority Aircraft down low where some guy with a rifle could put a bullet in them and knock them down. So - the F-16's and F-18's were designed to give them a Dual Capability - they could be both Air Superiority and Strike Aircraft. For the F-18 at least (I don't know about the 16) they could adjust the position of the wings - to make it better at which ever role, Air Superiority or Strike, it was going to play.
And THAT was the reason they were even considering aircraft like the 16's and 18's. Fighter Mafia preference for small dog fighters - wasn't even a consideration. The Fighter Mafia may have thought they were a factor - but they were not. The Aircraft these guys would have wanted - would of course be the Northrup F-20 - but the Air Force wanted nothing to do with a Dog Fighters Dream - they wanted an aircraft that would give them a Higher Density of Fighters that could also act as Strike Aircraft. They wanted what the F-16 and F-18 were. The F-20 had a weapons pay load of 8,000 lbs. The F-16 had a weapons pay load of 17,000 lbs.
Now - there were other parts of this that the Fighter Pilots *_REALLY_* hated.
All these Red Baron Wannabees - were to be part of very large scale air operations - that were being controlled by such as an AWACS aircraft. The Air Force Planners - wanted to be able to *_SEE_* anything and everything that was flying (and using JSTARS on the ground as well).
The Generals wanted to be able to micro manage their war and move all their air assets around like a giant chess board.
There was to be NO Fighter Pilot Glory here - just pushing buttons on radar selected targets (picked by someone else).
This - was all a reaction to what they ... almost ... could have done during Vietnam - but weren't quite there yet - and still required visual confirmation before they could fire on someone as they just didn't quite trust the systems they had.
During the Gulf War - they had those systems.
Here - in this type of fighting - they want to use missiles - not guns as some of these aircraft (F-14's) were designed specifically to be able to engage multiple targets at the same time. You can't do that with guns.
So - where the real value of the Fighter Mafia was - was in how to beat your opponent in the sky, - in the real world - where everything doesn't come down to just pushing a button when the AWACS tells you to. This is where these peoples contribution was important - in trying to keep the human beings at the tip of the spear - alive - as their opposition fell burning from the sky.
Oh - and there's nothing new about this. Jiro Horikoshi got A LOT of input into his aircraft designs from Japanese Fighter Pilots - who really liked maneuverable aircraft ...
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The problem is, the Fighter Mafia base all of their ideas off of WW2 and Korea. Of course, technology has changed massively since then. In WW2, you didn't have even half of the safety features we have today. Back then, the only realistic way to keep the pilot safe under fire was to kill the other guy, so a dogfighting focus was the only sensible way to build a plane. Today, however, we better understand how to coordinate a combined arms force. SPAA and AAA is also far more widespread and longer range these days, so there are more ways to keep the pilot safe than just having him kill the other guy. Dogfights are a massive risk to take, and the quality of the plane, if it's in the hands of a good pilot, really doesn't matter in a dogfight between two planes of the same or close enough generations. Pilot skill means significantly more than the plane, since every plane that isn't objectively shit in every category has a way it can be used effectively. Anyone working in military procurement who knows what they're doing will try to limit matters of skill as much as possible, because training and experience will fail you at some point. Everyone has their breaking point, and relying on skill to win battles means you're relying on the most unreliable machine on the planet after a Maserati, the human body. The Swedes saw how bad of an idea it is to rely on human skill and courage when they lost their empire to the Russians. Sweden had significantly better soldiers than the Russians, with better equipment, too, but by relying on the human element too much, the Russians were able to exploit the human weakness of the Swedish soldiers, forcing them into the slaughter that was Poltava. There was nothing the Swedish command could do. They made the best choices they could in their situation, and their men fought as hard as they could, but they were doomed to failure. In short, relying on your soldiers' ability will work in the short term, but will always fail you in the long term
If you're talking about the zero, i have some bad news for you.
@@fidjeenjanrjsnsfh Eh ... I wasn't going to get into that but I'm aware of the Zero's problems which was sort of my point.
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That was such a crazy assumption that missiles would remain unreliable, because EVERYTHING was built on that. Reliability could only improve and the problems were eminently solvable.
After this video I'd love to see the antithesis of the "Reformer" movement highlighted, the B-1 Gunslinger concept. A B1 outfitted tith 72 AMRAAM missles working in conjunction with AWACS aircraft to dominate the sky. It never even got an experimental aircraft built, but could possible have redefined air superiority. I expect the influence of the "fighter mafia" had a big influence on why it never got developed.
No, basic principles of BVR had a big influence on why it never got developed. You need to maneuver in BVR too.
Missile buses have a problem.
1. Maneuver and acceleration are limited compared to smaller planes.
2. With equal effort, the RCS of a small plane is smaller than a large one. Though the radar of the large one may be able to partially compensate.
3. It still only has one hitpoint. Not many planes can take an AMRAAM and keep fighting. The B-1 is no exception.
4. When a plane goes defensive, it goes defensive against multiple missiles at once if there are multiple fired at once. Unless the missiles are sufficiently spaced out anyway. More Dakka doesn't always mean more hit chance.
5. Against a group of smaller planes, it may end up merging or trying to go defensive. If this occurs, it has almost no chance. Even if it had all-aspect HOBS sidewinders, it wouldn't be able to use them before it gets shot down.
I expect that the concept is not either/or. Older generation fighters like F16 could fly escort for mid and short range targets I'd expect, questions like that are exactly what I'd like Chris to look in to.
shooting at dots on a screen has also resulted in airliners being shot down
That's yuge, basically a flying SAM battery
The statements made in the video at the time marks below are the BEST arguments I've heard for the necessity for the multi-role capabilities of modern fighter/attack aircraft...
@14:45 - "There's an operational reality to it as well, which is if you have an aircraft that the ONLY thing it can do is air-to-air combat that's not something that the Air Force is going to see as especially useful. Because once you clear the enemy from the skies, then what do you do with that aircraft, right?"
@15:07 - "The main goal of air power is NOT dogfighting. The main goal of air power is to hit targets and achieve effects. Right. So you want to make sure there's no enemy MiGs in the sky to attack you so that you CAN then attack those targets and achieve those effects on the ground. So having an aircraft that can do BOTH that can be really effective in air-to-air combat and THEN be able to perform those ground attack roles effectively ALSO is what the Air Force is looking for and what they want."
One would assume that the fighter aircraft designed by Rutan/Scaled Composites would have been a perfect fit to the Fighter Mafia's purist vision.
Wait, Rutan developed a fighter?!
Wait, Rutan developed a fighter?!
@@Tigershark_3082 Scaled Composites ARES.
Very interesting, this puts new light and perspective on the current discourse on ongoing military aviation developments.
It seems to that the F-5, before it became the F-5E Tiger II, would have been an ideal match for the Fighter Mafia.
You get the most awesome guests, I really enjoyed that, thanks.
Many people forget the General Dynamics YF 16 was entered into the lightweight fighter competition against the Northrup YF17. The YF16 won because it was smaller and single enginned and had a single tail/ It looked more like what the " fighter mafia" wanted. The YF 17 was further developed into the F/A 18
And now they both perform a ton of the same roles, with multirole capability being extremely important, and more and more sensors being added every iteration. Essentially the opposite of what they wanted.
Been waiting for this
Ironic that the F16 first use in combat was with the IDF to fly deep into Iraq and bomb a nuclear reactor, with a strategy of avoiding any air to air combat.
I'm reading this on my Kindle after a recommendation from the FPP, it's very interesting definitely doesn't hold its punches but seems fair in it's analysis.
I always got a kick about how the so-called "Fighter Mafia" promoted Boyd's "OODA Loop" concept. Nobody outside of the "Fighter Mafia" bought into that silliness. Heck nobody but Boyd seems to have bought into it.
Its not taught anymore, not since 1991 at least. Not in USAF pilot training or fighter MDS specific training.
@@86309 they still teach it in USMC Basic training lol I just got in February of 21 and it surprised me seeing the OODA loop concept and a mini-bio of Boyd in the handbooks since I knew of his background and controversy beforehand.
@@karlsson9678 copy that
I saw it on a business course. Under a different name, but the same thing and it made sense in terms of being able to react to market changes quicker than your competitors.
Chris, I recommend the book "Every Man A Tiger" by Gen. Chuck Horner for better insight into the Fighter Mafia. And many other things.
From what I've heard the fighter Mafia actually hated the f15 and and f 16 for one reason we put radars in them and gave them advanced missiles we also turned both of them into multi-role fighters
Man, you finished the video in mere minutes? Perhaps watching it would be a good idea.
@@klobiforpresident2254 no I just commented
@@klobiforpresident2254 dude I'm just stating what I know so far you are not the comment police
The fighter mafia got some things right, but a lot wrong. They didn't understand compromise
@@米空軍パイロット they were men trapped in the past
Great interview!
It's worth remembering the context in which the fighter mafia developed their opinions. At the beginning of Vietnam, missiles really didn't work as well as it was thought (broadly) they were going to work, and this cost a bunch of airframes and pilots to overcome. So being a bit cautious about "miracle" weapons changing the entire face of air combat was quite reasonable. (See also early WWII US torpedo technology.)
That said, the restrictions of a Model A aren't the same as the restrictions of a Tesla Model S, and it's crucial to understand technology maturity curves. Does it still make sense to devote the necessary weight and volume for an internal cannon in a fighter? Maybe, since it gives you a different capability than that of a missile and does not have some of the vulnerabilities of any sort of missile. But maybe not too, since it limits your other choices.
This isn't an easy thing to manage. Which is why "frank" and "robust" debate is so important in this context.
Agreed, hindsight is 20/20 and all that. I completely agree we have to look at this from where things were at the time. Given the challenges in Vietnam that were had with the F4 Phantom, BVR and missiles in general, it wasn't unreasonable to ask whether a lighter, cheaper, simpler fighter might have done as well for a lot less cost. People very often only compare fighters based on total capability: is this the single best fighter available or not. However, people often forget to consider how expensive that aircraft is and whether it's providing good value for money for the primary missions it is tasked with. For example, I tend to agree with the argument that while the F-35 is an extremely capable aircraft it is also an awful lot more expensive than the planes it was designed to replace and in a lot of scenarios (for example the all too common "low threat environment") it may bring few practical advantages over those much cheaper platforms. Yes it is "better", but is it "worth it"?
I certainly wouldn't agree with the Fighter Mafia's vision: it was clearly leaning too far in one extreme. However, questions like "is this providing good value for money, would something much cheaper be able to do this just as well?" is always a valid and important debate to have.
My other view on this video is that it also hints at the cost of these weapons systems. As I understand it, the F16's operational costs are about half that of an F15, and the FA18e/f are roughly half way between the F15 & F16.. The reality is very few nations can afford to fund these systems to the level the US currently does, and the US Government's current deficit will have an impact on these future costs, which, even excluding inflation, will inexorably rise as the airframes age, and on past experience, their eventual replacements will probably cost more per airframe again, The cost of crashing one of these things is equivalent to many small nations' national income and national debt combined ! Sometimes it can be easy to overlook this aspect, or not even realise the huge sums of money involved.
I recall back in the late '70s early '80s how the media and a lot of people in Congress were freaking out that an F-15 cost an astronomical 10 to 12 million dollars per copy. A lot of the politicians were pushing for F-5s because they were so much cheaper. They did not consider the fact that F-5's in Europe would have been almost useless, and that you would have to train and equip tens of thousands of extra pilots and ground personnel to fly those thousands of extra F-5s, as well as build more infrastructure to support them.
How about the F-105 Mafia that was comprised of the Viet Nam era "Thud pilots" who were so misused in the VN War and suffered greatly at the hands of what they referred to as "Bomber Generals" as well as the Johnson administration and the DoD. Lots of heroic 105 pilots and an argument can be made that they were all heroic. I wouldn't be surprised if the 105 guys were also a factor in the Fighter Mafia. Great content. Thanks.
I've got this slight feeling that the service record of the F-105 is quite often misunderstood.
The F-105 story is very interesting. People think it was a piece of crap because three quarters of the airframes were shot down or destroyed. In reality, only the F-105 could have done the mission the Air Force was making it do at the time. It is remarkable that they did it so well. A recent book on the F-105 shows that from 1965 until 1968, F-105 had 29 MiG kills while Air Force Air Force only achieved 17 or 18, IIRC. Weigh that against the fact that the primary job of the F-105 was to avoid MiGs, while the F4 was to find and fight them ( to keep them away from the F-105s). Not to go off on a rabbit trail here but that book was also eye opening in that it described the complex switchology required to take an F-105 out of air-to-ground mode and convert the gun sight to air-to-air. Many many chances to kill MiGs were missed because of that. And there is a mention of the bomber barons. Back in the late 50s early '60s, the big bomber guys essentially subjugated TAC into a mini SAC - another reason why dog fighting skills deteriorated by the time our guys got to Vietnam.
Great video and topic (again)! Thank you for your continued work in more scholarly conversation and analysis. It is refreshing to learn without the "what about this" dialogue so common in other content.
I just finished this book. It was a wonderful antidote to the pro-Boyd faction that had previously indoctrinated me. 😆
Was it busy praising Pierre Sprey then?
Great video! Just picked up a copy of the book. Excited to get into it.
Funny, I suggest these people build private planes and volunteer for air combat. Their enthusiasm will be quickly verified.
No radar means you are blind. The radar is not only active but passive. The information from the radar is not only used for the pilot's needs but also for the entire system.
Skills are not everything, during the fighting in Ukraine, several outstanding pilots of Ukrainian aviation who took part in international demonstrations died. It cannot be said that every missile and rocket can be avoided by maneuvering.
Air domination is not for the fun of a few pilots. This is a key task for military operations.
I believe that in the fifties and sixties they might have had points - missile performance early in Vietnam was much under expectations and not exactly satisfactory. In a modern context what they speak of or demand is absurd.
Have you seen the commercial drones being used by Ukraine to drop grenades on Russian forces lol hilariousy effective and very cheap . They even shot down a hovering helicopter with a man pad recoilless rifle system lol and the radar and missiles used to deter or destroy these cheap weapon systems is extremely expensive and costly compared to these low flying drones with cameras and grenades.
The man pad operator knew to keep the targeting Lazer off the hovering helicopter until the last minute to keep the pilots systems from knowing they were targeted .
@@ChauncyFatsack
The cost of an infantryman compared to a couple rounds is also disproportionate, yet infantry won't be obsolete until we invent battle mechs with laser guns.
@@klobiforpresident2254 Not even then. Nothing, and I mean nothing takes and holds ground like the Infantry, and to win wars you need to take and hold ground.
Its one thing I point out when people go on about various weapon systems being obsolete because 'they are vulnerable'. The point I make being so why is infantry not obsolete? Infantry has been vulnerable since the first dude bashed another dudes head in with a rock! The answer is Role. Nothing can fulfil the battlefield role of the infantry, and likely never will be able to.
ESPECIALLY not mechs. I love the idea of stompy mechs, problem is they are impractical as battlefield weapons for several reasons.
It is why you still see tanks on the battlefield. The point of what I am saying is too many people look at the vulnerabilities and forget to look at the ROLE of the weapons system. Militarily the role is the more important factor. In war you are going to lose people and equipment, that is the nature of war, so the question has to be when it comes to a bit of kit is can its job be done as well or better by a system that is less vulnerable?
When you look at Infantry and Tanks the answer to that question is no...
I tried looking up this book on audible and its not there. You gotta have an audiobook version, man
Had the F-16 been purely an A2A fighter it would not have been nearly as successful as it was. The F-16 is the most widely produced and used 4th generation fighter and is deployed on every continent I'm pretty sure and that is specifically because it's a small light weight multi-role fighter. Had it been purely A2A no one would have brought it because the niche it appealed to were countries that could only afford to operate a single fighter and wanted as much bang for their buck and the F-16 was perfect for that. It was slightly weighed towards air superiority but that's great when it's the only plane you can buy and it being somewhat worse at ground attack again doesn't really matter because any 4th gen multirole fighter is better than none. But if it had been purely A2A it would have been completely useless to all of these countries, they're not gonna shell out millions for a fighter that can't do half the job the air force needs and either the F-15 or the F-18 would have ended up taking it's place. So thank god that the F-16 was changed by the USAF because that's what actually made it worthwhile for the majority of the world. There's a reason why about a dozen countries ended up being part of the F-16 development and that legacy continued onto the F-35 which largely fills the same role as the F-16 in the 5th generation.
What I gather from this is that the FM submit a prototype, the airforce changes it up to meet their criteria, they get pissed off and the plane ends up being great. How does that paint them in a positive light whatsoever
Good interview! The guest seemed to dismiss the idea of an aircraft that was only a fighter, but that was pretty common when the F-15 was developed. It had no air-to-ground capability until the F-15E was developed in the late 80's. Same for the F-14. The Air Force of that era had no particular love for "attack" aircraft or their missions.
That's a rather interesting point indeed. Especially considering that the USAF had a significant strike capability on both the F-100, F-105 and F-4 fighter aircraft of the Vietnam war.
I wonder if it has something to do with the high-low capability mix of fighter aircraft.
If I remember correctly there was testing on the f-15c for bombs edit: the f-14 had the ability to carry air to ground ordinance
this actually isnt true, F-15A had the ability for bombs and retained this capability up until the F-15C MSIP I upgrade, the usaf never wanted the F-15 really used as a fighter bomber otherwise they would have done so, the F-15 can also carry fast packs which makes it able to carry even more bombs
@@djeudhdushrhfu3521 f-14 did t carry bombs until the nineties when the A-6 was going away and the A-12 was canceled. F-14 was mainly a fleet defense fighter
The F-15A-D do have the functionality to carry and drop bombs, the USAF simply doesn't do it. Israel did.
2:00 Glasses are allowed for fighter pilots?
While we're on the topics of fighter mafia, lemme put reminder that:
Pierre Sprey is garbage, long life Alexander Kartveli.
Just bought the book Flying Camelot and finished reading it today - and I was amazed, I thought the Fighter mafia made the F-16 and was surprised they thought the F-16A was too complex - the wanted an airplane with lower wingloading, two IR missiles (because missiles are crap so you dont need more anyway) and a small radar (F-5E radar)...blew my mind away. Also they hated the F-15 Eagle - one of the best air to air fighters of all time. Certainly changed my view on Boyd and the rest of his "gang"....
So...what the fighter mafia want would be the F-5. Not even the F-5E, but the F-5A. Take the F-5E in DCS into any server where you have to face F-15s, 16s, Fulcrums, Flankers, etc. You'll quickly learn why radar and missiles matter.
Sure it's a blast in a cold war setting, when all you're facing is other aircraft without good radar or missiles. But the second either of those things changes, you're having a bad time.
Had the reformers truly gotten their way with the F-16, it would have gotten dumpstered in the real-life encounters it entered, where missiles formed the vast majority of its kills (just like every other aerial contest since the middle of the Vietnam war has)
>what the fighter mafia want would be the F-5.
Pretty much. The group put 'cheapness' and maneuverability above anything else, even if it (significantly) compromises other fighter characteristics.
Nice video! Thank you.
7:35 "git gud" John Boyd probably
I just watched an ad for a compact airborne data networking technology, which is the most interesting ad I have ever seen, the most relevant ad in relation to the material being watched, sent to the most irrelevant viewer.
I remember these days all so well. The Fighter Mafia. Gary Hart and his mini-aircraft carriers. More fast attack craft like the hydrofoils with SSM. Oh the revolution.
By the way, if the F-35 is such a dog, why is everybody and their mother trying to design their own F-35?
Yet another fantastic and informative video as always Chris, looking forward to more.
The fighter Mafia wanted to fit violin cases under the f16s wings
Great episode with interesting (at least to me) content/material👍
LAZER PIG! OUR GOD`S WORK HAS SPREAD!
Having watched a lot of Lazer Pig's content, I can't say I would want any of his stuff used as a valid source of information. He gets some things right but he also tends to push narratives that are very popular with the internet military enthusiast crowd even if those narratives are complete nonsense.
I mean. His take on "the reformers" was generally on the mark because there isn't really much room for opinion now that so many of the facts are readily available. Things get worse when you start listening to his "hot takes" about specific platforms/aircraft. He jumps to some conclusions without even bothering to fully research what he is trying to talk about.
@@startrekmike ngl, after 2 years, im basically of the same opinion as you, i do my own rather well depth research and the pig is quite lack luster lol.
Nice video, good job, I did not know about it, but nterestibg topic !
Great video, but I don’t think much of any of this philosophy applies today.
In a BVR fight, with planes showing up the size of a marble on radar, an insistence on less technology is just crazy - that may be the only thing that keeps you alive, and indeed with today’s 5th Gen aircraft, it’s what gives them a decisive edge with extreme kill ratios.
Does BVR apply with two LO planes against each other?
@@thatdude3938 yes. The stealthier plane of the two will always win as it would be able to detect and fire missiles at the enemy aircraft first. Even the stealthiest planes like the F-22 and F-35 can be detected when they are about 40 Km to 50 Km away so it would still be a BVR fight
@@tylerclayton6081 more like 30km and whether the middle radar can actually track is a huge question due to the their small radar diameter.
@@thatdude3938 better radar makes a big diffrence
Great interview 👍
Sprey's and Boyd's vision of the future use of air power was directly from WWII. They saw huge fleets of bombers hitting enemy targets and needing small escort fighter to protect them from enemy fighters. That small escort fighter was the F-16 that was supposed to have a cannon a IR missiles to use against the enemies. The radar was supposed to be used for aiming the cannon.
Meanwhile in the Soviet Union the Soviets were developing AA-missiles and SAM's. There would not have been any Soviet dogfighters trying to shoot down US bombers!
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 , I suggest you read "The Revolt of the Majors: How the Air Force Changed After Vietnam" by Marshall Michel III. You can find it as a PDF file by googling. The train of thought is easy to see when looking at what Boyd said about what the task of a fighter was! He and Sprey wanted something that could escort bombers to targets and back! They saw no need for long range radars and BVR missiles. The gun and short range ir-missiles were enough. The wanted a dogfighter to do the same jog as the the P-51 had done in WWII when escorting bombers to Berlin and back. In Korea it was the F-86 that escorted B-29's to targets and back.
The book "Flying Camelot" by Hankins is also full of useful info.
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 ,why do I assume? I "assume" it from what Boyd and Sprey said was important for a fighter and what NOT important for a fighter! Just find out what they said.
Boyd did NOT like the F-15 it was too big and too technical for his liking! Sprey got very angry when a better radar was added to the F-16.
The F-16 would NEVER have got a stellar reputation if it had been built as Boyd and Sprey wanted.
John Boyd's thoughts are also very well known, there is no need to "attribute" anything to him that he has not said! It is very well known what Boyd said about what fighter aircraft should look like and what its task is!
As for Energy Maneuverability, Boyd lifted the idea from an article written in 1954 by Edward S. Rutowski. He also copied the way the results were presented as graphs.
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 , don't make assumptions that in no way are supported by facts! Read something that is written by people who do NOT consider John Boyd their God! I will be very enlightening.
Excellent interview Chris 👍.
F-15 air to air kills 108.
F-15 air to air losses 0.
Theres been several F-15 casualties
@@danielzhang5395 yes but no loses from air to air combat.
@@maximilianoquinones8236 A Israeli F-15 was damaged by a mig-21
@@danielzhang5395 damaged, not destroyed
I wonder if we're seeing that clash one again, this time in the USMC.
Tank/no tank?
Lol…yeah…if there’s one thing we have learned over the last 30 years it’s that cheap low-tech simple weapons systems are the way to go! I mean, complex high-tech weapons like the F-15, M1A1 abrams and Ah-64 Apache just don’t work! (Yeah…sarcasm) The US should have been using f-5s and T-72s
Thank god that Boyd and especially Sprey didn’t get their way. The F-16C (the predominant 1980’s Cold War version) was NOT what Sprey wanted. He lamented it’s lantirn/night navigation capabilities, new high powered radar and updated computers allowing for the use of radar guided missles as unnecessary “junk” that reduced its capabilities.
Yeah…a fighter that only Carries 2 short range air to air missles, has no search radar and can only be flown in daytime with clear weather would have been REALLY useful in a NATO/WP war in Europe in the 80’s. Lol
Great shots of the birds I work on in the SCANG
It's not just the F-15 and F16. The F-18 was also an outcome as the runner-up in the LFX competition and went on to become the whole Hornet legacy. Then, the A-10 was also a product of the reform movement and the Fighter Mafia. That's an entire era of attack aircraft.
Experience has shown that the fighter mafia and reform movements we basically incorrect. Some of the things they pushed had a good effect, but for the most part, putting up large numbers of cheap planes (and MBTs and iFVs) is not a winning strategy. The Soviets/Russians have that strategy. If you look at the Gulf War and OIF, you see a more sophisticated army with more advanced equipment crushing an army equipped with the Soviet/Russian equipment. This is also true of the Israelis.
Want to see another reason not to use it? The Russians in Ukraine.
Russia does not have an Air Force, they have an Air FARCE.
@@kazekamiha Agree. This will also screw them in the arms market. Arms are the biggest manufactured export.
You could do an episode on attack helicopter tactics in the Russia-Ukraine War. How they hit anything smaller than a grid square by pitching up and firing rocket salvoes without computer aided pipers and GPS.
I think they largely don't hit anything smaller than a grid square is the point.
Depending on how the computer works, if the ground forces are directing an attack and know the coordinates even with GPS down, they can still feed it to the pilot whose aircraft has his INS calibrated to an airfield with a known coordinate. Otherwise a markpoint can be selected with the targeting optics and again INS can be used to calculate the release point.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD They're using Mi-8 and Ka-52 for that. Last I checked, and judging by the HUD footage missing anything resembling a DLZ, they don't have functions like that. It's just a "this angle at this range gives you this dispersion" kinda thing.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD In an aircraft that will show a pipper, yes. In Russian aircraft that only have a flight ladder and no other indicator visible there is no computer aid.
@@bh-2198 Noted. So it's probably "pen and paper" like in the old days of "fly at X degrees at Y speed at distance Z from the target".
Not just F15 and F16, even F/A18, F14, F-CK1 and JF17 are the products of energy maneuver theory. And later on they are carried reliable radars and lots of capable missiles in addition with their excellent dogfighting capabilities.