Pete Bonanni: The Art of the Kill

The gun is different from missiles in that it has no minimum range. The gun weapons envelope is a circle around the bandit depicting the gun’s maximum range. There is no minimum range circle. Figure 1-11 shows the gun envelope.

Remember, a fighter pilot must be aware of where he is at all times in respect to his weapons envelope.

The geometry of the fight is important. Before we move on, you should understand the terms and definitions covered in this section. The academic lecture on the videotape will reinforce your knowledge of BFM geometry. After viewing the first section of the tape, you can take the quiz on BFM geometry located in “BFM Lesson Plans.”

It was a great fall day at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. I was flying a BFM ride with the “Top Dogs" — the 61st Fighter Squadron. This was my seventh ride in the F-16C, and I was quickly learning to love the power of that big GE engine and the improved avionics. My previous 850 hours in the F-16 had been in A models, which are much lighter (and more primitive) than the C model. The A model is powered by the old version of the Pratt and Whitney F100, which was a good engine when it was made, but is an underpowered relic compared to the GE F101 that powers the Block 30 F-16 flown by the 61st. Even my memory of the Pratt-powered F-16A had faded somewhat, however, because my most recent 500 hours of fighter time had been in the venerable A-7D Corsair II.

I had left MacDill AFB and the F-16A five years earlier for A-7D training out in Tucson, Arizona. My Guard squadron expected to fly the A-7 for a year or two after I arrived and then make the transition to F-16s. That “year or two” turned into five years of doing nothing but flying low and bombing, bombing and more bombing. Not that I have anything against bombing, mind you. It’s just that when all you do is bomb, it gets old fast, especially if you’re a former Viper driver. We did do something that we called air-to-air in the A-7, but fighting air-to-air in an A-7 is like watching bowling on TV — it’s slow and boring. You come into the fight at about 400 knots and quickly get slower and lower. Nobody has any energy to maneuver after about 90° of turn, and it’s impossible to get any energy back without extending for several minutes. Most fights end up in a kind of neutral wallow. Year after year of this type of air-to-air had atrophied my BFM skills to the point that I was starting to have trouble keeping my hands from banging into each other when I was debriefing a BFM fight. (I also could only chew gum while sitting down for fear of seriously injuring myself.)

But now, it was five years later, and I was very happy to be back driving an F-16 in the skies over sunny Florida. Taxiing out to fly, I still looked the part — shock of unruly hair hanging down from the front of my helmet, boyish grin on my face, piercing gaze. It’s too bad looks are irrelevant in fighters. The only thing that counts is what’s inside. My cranium was crammed with all the correct terms and techniques of F-16 BFM, but it remained to be seen whether or not any of this would come out once good old American aluminum started to strain under a G load.

In the F-16C syllabus, this ride was called BFM-1. BFM-1 consists of offensive perch setups [12] perch setups — setups in front of the attacker starting from 3,000 feet and working out to 9,000 feet. The 3,000-foot setup is essentially a gun fight with both fighters starting at 300 knots. At the “Fight’s on” call, the instructor pilot (IP), from a position out in front, does some serious moves to stay alive while the student (yours truly) tries to film him under the gun sight.

In this case, the IP was a blond-haired guy that we called “Poster Child.” At the “Fight’s on” call, he initiated an 8 G break, slightly out of plane. The fight started with my jet slightly to the inside of the turn, so as the IP made his move, I leaned to lag for a couple of seconds and then started to pull back to lead pursuit. Within another two seconds, I realized that I was in lag for too long because I could not get my nose on the IP as he started to pull slightly nose high. I was stuck in lag as the fight started uphill. Poster Child kept a tally throughout the fight and quickly called “knock it off.” Wow! This was happening fast. The whole fight lasted less than 10 seconds. I was so far behind in this fight that I felt like I was hanging on the tail of the jet. We set up again, and I got back on a 3,000 foot perch. I decided I better crawl back up into the cockpit, [13] crawl back up into the cockpit — mentally catch up with the aircraft or I would never shoot this guy.

The next fight started the same way, but this time, I only leaned toward lag for a split second and then went right to lead pursuit. In a gun fight, you know you’re going to win when you see your opponent make an aggressive out-of-plane maneuver to keep from getting shot. When I first went to lead pursuit, I pulled the throttle out of burner to slow my overtake. As I entered the gun envelope with my airspeed under control, get me to overshoot so he started to jink out of plane. I had him. I got a good shot and called a kill, ending the fight.

On the next setup, I started back at 6,000 feet. The 6,000 foot setup is the easiest offensive perch position to start from because you’re just outside the bandit’s turn circle. (The chapter you’re about to read covers all of this turn circle stuff.) On this fight, Poster Child started a very high-G defensive turn straight into me, but I flew textbook offense and quickly got into guns parameters. As I approached the guns positions, my eyes beheld a sight I hadn’t seen before. Poster Child reversed the direction of his turn as I approached him and started pulling away from me instead of executing a classic jink out of plane. As I started to reposition, he again reversed his turn direction and started to pull away from me.

I was getting confused as I closed the range, so I did what I always do when I’m confused and flying guns offensive — I set my wings to the horizon and pulled up away from the bandit. As soon as I was established in the vertical, I rolled back to watch what he was doing. This move kept me from overshooting at close range and slowed the pace of the fight. After pulling in the vertical and rolling back to keep a tally on Poster Child, I noticed he was real slow, and his speed brakes were extended. Poster Child’s jet looked like it was hanging from a string, though in reality, he still had about 120 knots of airspeed. No problem. I kept the nose up, and after I had bled off a few more knots, I started back down into him. He had given up all his energy (maneuvering potential) to spit me out, and he was a goner when I didn’t blow past him. This fight ended with me in the saddle as both of our jets hung on the burner at very high alpha. [14] alpha — angle of attack