F-14B short range duels (tips and triks)

Hello Pilots!

It's time for me to give up and ask about help with F-14B. :(

So, the main problem for me (at the moment) is to fight with the Mig-29 or Mig-21 in a short distance.

I have some experience (not too much) with the A2A guns only on Tomcat against these fighters, but I have no idea how I can defeat them if they have short-range IR missiles on board.

I watched a lot of training videos - everywhere it talks about how to use a gun in a maneuverable duel.

But how should I behave if I was not going to enter such a duel?

Usually I launch a missile or two (AIM-7). If they miss, then on the approach I have time to shoot only one AIM-9.

Then the fun begins.

If I try to maneuver, I can’t tear myself away from the enemy. However, he cannot twist me too.

If I use the power of the F-14B engines, I can escape from the enemy in an attempt to take a more advantageous position for the duel. But ... not from his missiles. As soon as I run away, he starts to shoot.

If I stay in the carousel, then such a duel can continue until one of us runs out of fuel.

This would have been acceptable provided an honest duel, but if there are two opponents, then it is difficult.

Therefore, I am forced to ask the help of more experienced pilots: I need tips, tricks, recommendations on how to quickly remove a highly maneuverable, fairly fast enemy from the tail, which is also armed with short-range missiles.

Cheers!

Just a few questions that I would like for you to answer if possible, so I may understand easier.

1. What is your target closure rate?

2. What is your distance to the target? (When initially launching the AIM-7 and then standoff)

3. Are you fighting AI or players?

4. When fighting short-range, do you turn to fight or use vertical climbing to your advantage?

These are the only questions I have. The target closure rate is important to know because of how quickly you are engaging relative to when you launch the AIM-7. Distance to your target, whether being an AI or a player is also important. (In this instance I assume it is an AI, which uses patterns. The MiG-21 AI's FM is very questionable at best!)

The way you are fighting them tactically wise is also important. Do you turn in circles to bleed off your energy/speed, or are you climbing upward with "boom and zoom" tactics? There is no right or wrong answer, it comes down to how you're effectively fighting the other aircraft. :)

1. What is your target closure rate?

300-450 knots at 1000 - 2000 feet

2. What is your distance to the target? (When initially launching the AIM-7 and then standoff)

the first AIM-7 shooted from 8-9 nm.

3. Are you fighting AI or players?

for now it is AI with highest level

4. When fighting short-range, do you turn to fight or use vertical climbing to your advantage?

and vertical and horizontal turns. I tried to do it for few last weeks - had a lot of attempts with different tactics.

For example, the second mission in the "Cage the Bear" campaing. I was fighting against three F-21. Two of them were killed by AIM-7. And the last made a carousel with me until I put him under the water level - just flew on the critical speeds at the critical low altitude when AI couldn't repeat my turns and felt to water. :music_whistling:

The AI cheats and magically pulls energy out of nowhere. The higher the difficulty level, the worse it gets. I personally either set it to Good or Average and leave it at that, otherwise it's just a waste of time. Unfortunately, at those difficulty level it is also pretty easy to take it down.

Having said that, if you really want to dig into BFM, you should read "The Art of the Kill" by Pete Bonanni and "Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering" by Robert Shaw. Both are easily found on Google.

I will try to deconstruct this piece by piece.

1. What is your target closure rate?

300-450 knots at 1000 - 2000 feet

Are they at the same altitude as you, or is there a positive/negative difference?

2. What is your distance to the target? (When initially launching the AIM-7 and then standoff)

the first AIM-7 shooted from 8-9 nm.

I would personally recommend firing the AIM-7 from 11-13 nm. At this range, you're better off flying closer and using your AIM-9.

3. Are you fighting AI or players?

for now it is AI with highest level

The issue with you fighting against AI is that it's all a pattern. And due to the FM being horrific with the AI MiG-21, their best-known method is to climb up, turn in circles and make you chase them. And it seems that if you try to run off, they turn back around and fire on you. The best way to avoid getting killed by their missiles is to make them waste them. Drive them into the ground or jink them while using flares.

4. When fighting short-range, do you turn to fight or use vertical climbing to your advantage?

and vertical and horizontal turns. I tried to do it for few last weeks - had a lot of attempts with different tactics.

If you are turn fighting, do not "load" too much on the stick with extra alpha and keep around 15-20 units. Obviously you will want to variably change it to not let the AI line up their shot on you, and remember to jink around to make it difficult for them. Fly at corner speed of about 350 knots. (Someone may correct me on this if I am wrong.) Also, remember to use the rudder, the F-14B has proverse yaw. Apply rudder in the same direction of the latitudinal stick movement. More drag will be a result of the proverse yaw, so turn right to lead the fighting.

If you are going to vertically climb, climb at roughly 20-30 degrees depending on the situation with your current airspeed relative to beginning the climb and your altitude. Going straight upward will cause a quick decrease of speed with lift, allowing the AI to promptly catch up and kill you. The advantage with altitude is your ability to trade it for energy/speed. Getting the MiG-21 lower than you in a turn is better than you being underneath them or at their correlated altitude. This is the most effective method of fighting I have seen so far.

Also, use CAGE-SEAM with your AIM-9s as much as possible if they have missiles. Missiles should be your first weapon of defense, and guns as your last defense, unless you are too close to engage the target with one.

For example, the second mission in the "Cage the Bear" campaing. I was fighting against three F-21. Two of them were killed by AIM-7. And the last made a carousel with me until I put him under the water level - just flew on the critical speeds at the critical low altitude when AI couldn't repeat my turns and felt to water. :music_whistling:

Killing the AI with maneuvers is a good method to fight them, but don't rely on it when you fight against players. AI is purely pattern-based.

People can add on with what I have said, these are simply the best tips and tricks I have learned while fighting in the F-14. It takes patience and time to fight the AI since they have no real "skill" value towards them. As Teo mentioned, it is best to not have them on the highest difficulty setting. You'll be pulling your hair out with them :thumbup:

No expert. But I've found that what (sometimes) works for me is

(1) Focus on defeating his first shot(s) on the merge Defeating IR missiles head-on is relatively easy: cut throttle, pump flares, pull up (still pumping flares), bank and roll while still pulling up and pumping flares. That is: do a high-G pull barrel roll while pumping flares. Now when I say "pump flares", I mean pump them out furiously like your life depends on it, because it does. Not 1 per second. But 5 or more per second.

(2) Your Sidewinders are relatively not so maneuverable and need a good window to hit. Your gameplan after the merge is to maximize separation that allows you a clean shot without needing for either yourself or the missile to pull too much G. Against the AI, planning for this is pretty easy, because they are so predictable: doing these constant large vertical loops, I try to catch them as they are going up (though often this is a tail chase situation, which means I have to be closer) or as they are beginning the lower porition loop. For the latter, you have to give the missile a LOT of lead.

(3) Honestly though, after the merge, it sometimes is easier to maneuver for a guns kill than a missile, even if you have it. Your gameplan has to include staying really close to deny the other guy an opportunity for a missile shot then (assuming he still has some): it's a "grab them by the belt and hang on" type knife fight then.

(4) The help train for this, you might want to keep labels on at first. This will let you see the missile launches at you and track them, so you can tell what it takes to defeat them.

(5) The most common way I die in a fight like this is not on the merge but right after. I am greedily trying get nose on for a missile shot by pulling a high G turn (either in the horizontal or the vertical), and he fires at me before I can get there (those pesky Aim-9X's). I am caught at the top of the loop or wallowing like a pig in the mud and have no energy to defeat the IR missile he sends into my face.

Thank you so much for the tips.

I tried to follow them and that’s what happened in the end.

And I feel that I did something wrong... :(

Tacview-20191203-222756-DCS.zip

Ok, so your SA in parts is there, which is good, you know the speeds, alts, etc... Note: Situational Awareness is everything. Period.

So this is something you need to expand on now, because all those numbers posted above are a tiny fraction and this is where the rabbit hole starts.

In all what you described, it seems like you want a recipe for an amalgamation of a classic transition from BVR to WVR to BFM. And rightfully so, this is the goal. BUT. But, trying to achieve all at once is the wrong way to go about it. This transition will be passed successfully only then, once you honed each of the 3 sections separately.

So let us start with BVR: This is where you should use your stand off weapons, such as the aim54, which on top is fire and forget. It does not cost anything in the game, so use it. No matter how small the target: if it can shoot back, kill it as soon as possible and ideally outside the range it can actually shoot at you. That's your BVR trump card in the Tomcat. You also wanna get rid of the fat missiles before you enter a merge.

Now, the subject of BVR is extensive, really extensive. It is a philosophy of its own, but cranking, reverse cranking, notching, split S, immelmans, recommits, beaming and SARH tactics like snaking should ideally be in your basic tool set. As always and as in any of the 3 sections: the better energy management wins, altitude and speed come in handy here, and most above all - an impeccable SA of what is happening where around yourself. And from that you make a tactical decision: do I crank him? do I employ a long range high alt high speed head on shot? Do I beam his ridiculously long missile, which is no real threat to me? And then turn right back in, or let him close a bit more? Can I keep track of him through all this (your RWR is your friend here) and so forth... If none of this means much to you, feel free to watch this public training session I made ages ago about basic BVR in the F15. The Tomcat adds the long range shots, but the basics apply, Stuge and I talk about how you can sanitize the sky with your radar, how to crank and crank reverse and about winning conduct in DCS, it is long, but you can take it in steps, it will cover most basics you need to know about BVR:

If nothing else, the 3 most important things to take away from it are: 1. You need to use tacview, or you will never fully understand what is happening around you. 2. The answer on any of your questions is: it depends. 3. Fly online and learn with and from others, if only humanly possible. Single player will never teach you the full scope. all of us, who know something, had someone who showed it to us. I had great teachers in DCS, and that made all the difference. You can get there on your own, but it takes significantly longer, and of course: it is less fun.

So next up is WVR, and let us assume here that we are going into a SARH only engagement. Against several opponents this can be difficult, which demands for an increased SA. You may be able to see them, but that does not mean you won't lose sight of them. Especially when fighting more than just 1. You need to have an SA good enough, so you can confidently look away from the bandits, and reaquire them where they would supposedly be, not when you turned your eyes away, but when you look back. Imagining this also not only on a 2d plane but in a 3 dimensional bowl, takes practice and is difficult at first. But forget about ground and sky for a sec, and imagine you are both flying in a glass bowl. Now try to predict where the bandit would/could be at any point in the nearest future. This is an important exercise to boost your SA in WVR.

Next you need to fight them, which in SARH engagements adds the difficulty of being able to shoot at only 1 at a time. You can exploit the AI here: once it knows it is fired upon, it defends, means it will stop attacking you. If nothing else, like that you can at least "sort" them for yourself. The question is always: will you play their game, or can you force them to play yours. Set them up like you need them. Sometimes it is better to send the first one defensive and kill the second guy first, sometimes vice versa. Again: it always depends and only your SA and experience in observing your previous wrong choices, will teach you which tactic to choose best. For simplicity let us assume a 1 vs 1 situation, SARH missiles only.

I will disagree here with Sirius, any aim7 fired out of 6 to 7nm unless high alt, high speed head and stupid non reacting bandit, is not an offensive shot, it is a defensive shot. Which can be useful, because AI, but also players, always react on missile warnings. AI it is programme, players it is psychological. Even the most experienced pilot reacts to a missile warning.

We want a kill shot though. So we need a tactic that lets us close in more than 7nm to get in the kill zone of the missile, which in SARH engagements, assuming the bandit fires on you as well, is snaking. Snaking means flying from gimbal to gimbal of your radar, while maintaining lock, defeating the bandit's missiles and firing at him at the same time. Sounds complicated, but really isn't with a bit of practice. You can see how I do it in the vid below. Note, I choose PSTT, I keep the locked bandit above my nose to help maintain the lock, I make full reverses on the radar gimbals before the bandit it is out of scope, I maintain a speed above 450kts at any time and I make sure that I make my reverses with at least 4G pulls and not more than 6Gs while deploying chaff on the edges. This spoofs the enemy missile and increases its flight path, while it bleeds its speed and I can decrease my closure rate to the bandit without bleeding off speed myself.

Important when flying against multiple bandits is again assessing the situation through your SA. Snaking the lead while his wingman is close, makes no sense, because the wingman will fire on you with impunity. So in this case, you fire a defensive shot on one of them from 13+nm, like Sirius said or even further away (if AI, players will notice useless shots), and send him defensive. When you see he is defensive enough, you switch to his wingman, while all the way you have been snaking their incoming missiles. This needs practice and again, above all, impeccable SA. We call that "switch 'n' ditch". A reversed version of that is "shake and bake" where you fend off one guy, while fighting the other, if they have a favourable seperation for that. Means you make yourself a target for the guy who is in a worse position, while the defensive maneuver sets you up for a kill shot for his wingman and so on. When and how to do that exactly is again an "it depends" answer and will often come out of your belly, when you have made the wrong choice often enough. But you need tacview here as well, to understand what exactly went wrong and how to correct it. Feel free to post tacviews here, the community shares a lot of knowledge and discussing cases with them helps. But also here: fly online, learn with and from others. Here's the snake, shake and bake video:

Note how I snake the first guy, while I maintain lock to close for a kill shot. At the same time I shake (and then bake) the second and third guy, by reducing my closure to them through the snaking as well. At all times I was aware of where all 3 were, through visual contact, rwr, projection of their flight patch, spotting their launches, etc... Note how I quickly roll out befor engaging the last mig21. This is to stabilize the RWR picture, and get a last quick read on his position. PAL, your friend, then does the rest to lock him up, and bam. On each shot I have at least a slight offset to the bandit's aspect and at any given time enough speed and altittude to break defensive immediately when necessary. The AI here is on expert. I recommend fighting it only on that, even if they pull ridiculous things, but it is still easy in the end, contrary to fighting against humans.

And finally we come to BFM, and BFM, much like the above sections, is a whole story of its own. Good BFM pilots say it takes about 6 years to gitgud, means competing on top level. And yes, I found that equally discouraging when I got told so at my beginning. But the journey is worth it as much as the outcome: BFM is sheer adrenaline. And it starts with being able to fly a good formation and being able to separate and rejoin formations quickly and elegantly. Because think of it: BFM is basically 2 pilots trying to join on each other's six. Now, formation is just the very scratch of the surface of course, on top of that and most importantly: you need the skill of energy management, means maintaining speed and GS as needed, to get that corner speed (or more if you can kill him, but if you dont was it worth to trade off speed?) and to be the one who "outturns" him, all while maintaining sight of your bandit. Lose sight, lose fight. To go into details here, yoyos, rolling scissors, overshoots, high yoyos, low yoyos and whatnot... is too much. Instead I will post you a series of vids from Maverick against AI on excellent. Watching others do it well, is also always a good source. Well, I guess that was quite the novel, but I hope it helps.

Those are not tutorials as such, but good to watch. And if Mav says "AI is stupid" or "piss easy" it is not to frown on those who fly against AI; but to invite you to fly against humans, where you can develop much better BFM skills. In the end he is right, once you get it, the AI simply is easy. I mean that as an encouragement. When I started, I found it extremely hard, too. You will also notice in the video that Maverick displays two important skills during these engagements, which equally boost his SA during BFM: the ability to look only at the bandit and still fly the plane at the required speed and G load, without looking at the cockpit. And the ability to look at your cockpit when needed and to require the bandit after the short glimpse, or to project where he sould be, when he's out of sight. Being able to do this while maintaining your energy management, is another important ingredient to success in BFM, and the Tomcat is very nice in this case: it's buffeting, rattling, shaking and squeeking indicates "how loaded" she is, how fast she flies, how much G you pull. Being able to read that "blindly" in time, will help you a lot.

Good luck fighting, and don't forget to grab tacview. :smilewink:

EDIT, just saw you use tacview already! My bad.

Thank you so much for the tips.

I tried to follow them and that’s what happened in the end.

 

And I feel that I did something wrong... :(

I watched your tacview. You did nothing wrong here per se. You shot down all three of them. Could you have done things better? Yes. The energy management in BFM follows a bit your "greed for the kill". You should always kill him asap, but you shouldn't always go for it it right away. Being greeady too early can prolong the fight sometimes more than it shortens it, you miss the shot, you bled off speed, you are back to square one. Have the patience to get into a good lag pursuit if you have a firm grip on the offense as you did here. If you are defensive it's different. then you need to defend and think about how to get back to the offensive.

In the second engagement you took a bit of a risk to fly head on into his 27r, but in general these are weak and ezpz, better to train against ERs.

In the third engagement, snaking would have prevented you from losing the aim7 lock (as it looks like), while guiding the missile to a kill shot. The aim9 shot comes late, and put you dangerousely close for a counter r73. If that would have been human, you would have been dead there, too.

The same applies for the last engagement, you got lucky that the aim7 tracked, while you did not really put yourself on the defensive from his 27r. A good opponent missile is also the 530d against mirages, you gotta snake well to survive that. But snaking is key and something you should learn, it will help you alot.

Thank you IronMike for such detailed description of all the steps. :thumbup:

Now I have a flights plan for the coming year at least. :book: :joystick:

Exactly what I need!

Thank you IronMike for such detailed description of all the steps. :thumbup:

Now I have a flights plan for the coming year at least. :book: :joystick:

 

Exactly what I need!

My pleasure, and happy hunting! :)

Great post except I disagree that the AIM-7 can only get kills within 6-7 nm (at least against the AI). Ever since you updated it to the new FM, I can easily get kills with it at 10-12ish nm (again, AI only). I will post a tacview later when I get home from work.

Great post except I disagree that the AIM-7 can only get kills within 6-7 nm (at least against the AI). Ever since you updated it to the new FM, I can easily get kills with it at 10-12ish nm (again, AI only). I will post a tacview later when I get home from work.

The aim7 can also get kills at 20 to 30nm range. Emphasis on can. And as always, because it depends. Assume you fly at angels 50 full mental speed, and so does your opponent and some how the sound barrier made him deaf dumb and blind, a 30nm shot will easily connect.

Step down to angels 20, and if he does not maneuver early enough, if both him and you fly at max speed, then sure, a 13nm shot will connect as well. The Ai sometimes is also very friendly in not really getting the situation, but usually they defend, which is why no matter the possibility, it should consciensly be still used as a defensive shot. If it then kills on top, the better, but do not count on it.

However below 8/7/6 nm is where you get in the definitive kill zone, with slow closure rates and highly maneuvering targets I do not fire unless below 5nm even. I've seen dozens and dozens of aim7s not connect at 3nm even, with an opponent who knows how to dodge em. This is now talking standard close engagement ranges, altitudes and speeds, which are often a result of "secondary flying", means both you and your opponent got fixated on the fighting part so much, that flying came in second and it dragged you both down, or was submitted to a specific tactic like snaking which takes you lower and lower by the mile, etc...

These ranges all change and are fluid, hence best taken as very soft guidelines. They change with speed, aspect and altitude as well as your opponents skill.

The really correct answer is: the aim7 in DCS can deployed anywhere between 1nm and up to 40nm (if you get ultra lucky), but ofc, that doesnt help the slightest bit. Hence it is always good to sort shots into defensive and offensive or kill shots. Sometimes defensive shots can be much more important than offensive shots.

EDIT: I like the aim7 a lot for various reasons, if you are interested, some areas for its use beyond being a kill missile or why to choose it else, I've listed here:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4006090&postcount=13

Fair enough. All I'm saying is, against the AI at moderate altitudes (I think it was at angles 10 or so?), you can be pretty optimistic with your aim 7 shots, which used to not be the case before the missile was reworked.