Pete Bonanni - The Art of the Kill

You are inside 3,000 feet on the bandit with your nose in lead. How do you take a gun shot? The gun in most fighters is actually a cannon. The F-16, for example, has an M61 20mm cannon which is common to almost every U.S. fighter. The M61 shoots high explosive incendiary (HEI) rounds at the rate of 100 per second. At the proper range, the gun is like a giant buzz saw. In order to carve up the enemy, however, you must understand the fundamentals of taking a gun shot. To hit a target with the gun, you must meet the following conditions:

► You must be in range. This range varies, depending on aspect, but it is usually about 2,500 feet at low aspect angles and about 4,000 feet at high aspect.

► You must have your nose in lead pursuit. The bullets fired by the gun are unguided projectiles that take time to get to the target. For most gun shots, the bullet time-of-flight (TOF) is .5 to 1.5 seconds. If you point directly at the target and fire, the bullets will pass behind the target. If the bullet moved at the speed of light, you could point right at a turning target and score a hit. Since the bullet is considerably slower, you must pull lead. This lead may not be very pronounced, however, at close range.

► You must be in the bandit’s plane of motion. When an aircraft turns, it carves a circle in the sky that creates a plane. In order for you to hit the target with the gun, you must be turning in the same plane as your target. For example, if the target is flying a loop and creating a vertically oriented plane of motion, you have to be flying a loop in the same plane as the target.

The new gun sight for the F-16 and F-15 is called EEGS. [19] The Falcon 3.0 simulation features the most prominent aiming cue of EEGS, the EEGS funnel. EEGS (pronounced as it is spelled) stands for Enhanced Envelope Gun Sight. The EEGS funnel allows the pilot to match the wingspan of the target with the width of the funnel to determine the proper firing range. The other important gun aiming cue in the HUD is the gun cross. The gun cross represents the departure line of the bullets. You can consider the gun cross as the gun barrel. Bullets pass straight out the gun cross.

Figure 2-11 shows an F-16 HUD with the EEGS funnel and the gun cross.

So, how do you use the funnel? The gun in the F-16 is boresighted to 6 mils. This means that the gun is adjusted to fire a burst that will put 80% of the rounds inside a 6-foot diameter circle at 1,000 feet. This is a tight pattern. You can have either a highly concentrated burst that completely misses the target or a very lethal burst that vaporizes the target. It just depends on the quality of your gun sight (and your ability to aim it.) Air-to-air situations are always dynamic, and targets under attack will normally jink violently to stay alive. Since the sight (and your reactions) are not instantaneous, it is likely you may achieve a highly accurate miss; that is, a tight burst that finds only empty air. The sight was lined up and stable, but you missed. How could this happen? The sight was lying because the target was jinking faster than the sight could react. The way to overcome this problem is to strive for an inaccurate hit. You do this by using the EEGS funnel to fire a burst while moving the target through the area of uncertainty. The EEGS funnel gives you a perfect solution when the wingtips of the target match the width of the funnel. If the target is jinking, however, this “perfect solution” may be in error.

Here is how to use the gun cross/funnel combination to kill the bandit:

► Place the gun cross out in front of the target. Picture the target with a long pitot boom [20] pitot boom — a sensor probe on the nose of the F-16 sticking out the nose. The gun cross should be placed on this extended pitot boom. If the target changes his plane-of-motion, then fly to place the gun cross on the new position of this imaginary pole sticking out of the nose of the target.

► Next, overlead the target by making the wingspan of the target extend past the funnel. This will place your bullet stream in front of the target’s nose.

► Fire the gun while easing up on the G. This will move the target from the bottom of the funnel to the top. Cease fire when the target’s wings are inside the funnel.

► Make a slight jink out of the bandit’s plane-of-motion so, when he blows up, you don’t suck a body part down your intake.

This technique uses the gun cross and the EEGS funnel to place the bullet stream in front of the bandit. When you ease up on the G, the target should fly through your bullets. Figure 2-12 shows how to make this shot.

Here are a few fighter pilot rules of thumb for setting up an offensive BFM training sortie.

► There should always be one guy who is getting the training and one guy who is the training aid.

► It is easy to set up offensive engagements by first starting line abreast and then executing an in-place turn as shown in the diagram below.

After getting in lead-trail formation, the guy out in front should start an easy 30° bank turn and the trailer should use lead to close the range if necessary or go lag to increase the range. Both pilots should be at the proper airspeed. For setups at a mile or greater, this airspeed is 400 to 500 knots. For setups at 3,000 feet, the airspeed of both pilots should be no more than 300 knots. Any airspeed faster than 300 knots at ranges of 3,000 feet or less will cause line-of-sight rates that the offensive fighter cannot handle.

► For sake of discussion, we’ll call the trailing pilot “Falcon 1-2” and the guy out in front “Falcon 1-1.” The fight should start with the trailer saying, “Falcon One-Two is established at 1 mile and ready.” The guy out front should say, “Falcon One-One is ready — fight’s on.”

With the “Fight’s on” call, Falcon 1-1 should crank into a defensive turn, forcing Falcon 1-2 to BFM. When flying offensive setups, both guys should fight full speed. If the offensive fighter cannot get into guns position and achieve a kill, the fight should be set up again, with the defender pulling a 5 G level turn. Continue this setup until the offensive guy gets in for a gun shot and then go back to a more dynamic engagement.

Offensive BFM is not as straightforward as it appears at first glance. This chapter contains a lot of talk about turns, turn circles and turning room. On the offensive, you must constantly be aware of your position in relation to the bandit’s turn circle. You must also control your airspeed because it is the key to turn performance. A fighter at corner velocity has the best overall turn rate/radius performance — slower or faster speeds degrade turn performance. It sounds simple, but you can spend far too much of your life suffering under tremendous G and not turning the jet because you let the airspeed run away. The message here is this: control your airspeed or you will lose the fight!

Finally, you must also remember to factor in Gs. As you pull Gs, you must place your nose on the proper pursuit course to the target. Remember, on the attack, lag the bandit until you are inside 3,000 feet. At 3,000 feet, go lead for the gun shot but watch your overtake.