Thousands of people work daily to train the world's best pilots. The Navy is looking for a young person who is highly trainable and motivated. The Navy will spend about $6 million molding you into a fighter pilot and then maintaining your proficiency. They need someone they can count on not to squander the taxpayer's money. They want you for your brain, body, and eyes; the rest will be provided by the thousands of talented personnel who will eventually put you out on the tip of the spear to protect our country.

If you are willing to work incredibly hard while in Navy Flight School, you will discover that you may very well become a fighter pilot. But you will be unable to reach your final goal without the help and assistance of thousands of others. Each of these people takes great pride in the fact that they help mold the world's greatest fighter pilots. Without their help, instruction, and guidance, you will never reach your ultimate goal. Always remember as you climb into your cockpit and prepare to scream into the heavens, you are a product of thousands of dedicated and proud Americans

Navy Pilots and Air Force Pilots are quite different. They are the products of very different histories, philosophies, and traditions. This fact is brought to your attention so that you may make an educated decision early and decide whether the Navy or the Air Force is right for you.

The Navy trains its pilots to think for themselves. It gives its fledgling student pilots incredible responsibility from the beginning. For instance, Navy student pilots fly most of the same tight formations that the Blue Angels fly; Air Force Student pilots aren't allowed to do any close formation flying. The Air Force tends to always keep tight controls on its pilots, even after years of service.

Both Navy and Air Force pilots are highly trained. They are both the highest trained and proficient pilots in the world. But the responsibilities bestowed upon the pilots from the two branches of service are diametrically opposed. They are as different as night and day.

The Navy will train you to be the best fighter pilot in the world. Then it will give you an F/A-18 and tell you and your squadron mates to go defeat the enemy. It is your job to figure out how to do that. While in combat you are allowed to make your own decisions as to the best way to prosecute the enemy. You are the final authority. The Navy trained you to be creative and to think on your feet. They provide you with incredible support and assistance, but you are the warrior, you make the final decisions.

While at sea, you will frequently be far from command centers or supply lines, and you must ensure mission accomplishment with only what is at hand. You will discover that at times you will be required to do much with little.

In your pursuit of mission accomplishment, you will be required to make many command decisions, which will exercise your ability to be assertive, flexible, and creative. You will relish your independent authority. The fact that the higher command structure encourages and even expects this decision-making process elevates confidence and capability within the Navy.

The Air Force is quite different. The Air Force will train you to be the best fighter pilot in the world also, but the similarities between Navy and Air Force end there. The Air Force philosophy is to give you a "Cook Book." It's a manual describing exactly how they want you to fight the enemy. You may not deviate from the cook book under any circumstances. You will be sent out to fight the enemy the way the Air Force wants you to fight. You must always reference the cook book to make sure you are allowed to do something. If you can't find it in the cook book, then you aren't allowed to do it.

The two different philosophies of the Navy and Air Force didn't occur by accident. The Navy has always operated independently. For two hundred years Naval Officers have been expected to make wise decisions while thousands of miles of water separated them from their commanders. This tradition has trickled down into Naval Aviation. The Navy allows its pilots to operate independently because of the type of operations they have traditionally been involved in. Historically the Navy has sent its pilots out hundreds and thousands of miles over inhospitable blue water. The pilots were expected to operate independently and return back to the aircraft carrier victorious and alive. A Naval Aviator is quite adept at reacting to constantly changing tactical conditions and aircraft carrier environments. Making quick and intelligent decisions as situations become unpredictable is a solid trait of a Naval Aviator. That skill will be instilled into your subconscious beginning on your first flight as a student pilot, but especially as you begin your Intermediate Jet Training.

The Air Force philosophy is just the opposite of the Navy's. The Air Force was established after World War II as a giant organization, an offshoot from the Army. Because of the immediate huge size of the Air Force bureaucracy, it was imperative that instruction manuals were written for absolutely everything. The Air Force had little tradition that they could fall back on and therefore cookbooks were written for absolutely everything. If the Air Force had been allowed to grow from a small force as the Navy was two hundred years ago, their philosophy would probably be more in line with the Navy's.

Read this paragraph carefully, it describes the true essence of the two different philosophies: The Air Force has a big book that explains exactly what a pilot must do in every situation. If an Air Force pilot can't find it in the book, then he is not allowed to do it. On the other hand, the Navy has a little book that explains what a Navy pilot is not allowed to do. As long as the Navy pilot doesn't violate what is in the little book, he can make his own decisions and do whatever is required to get the job done.

Now that you are aware of how the Navy and Air Force operate so differently, you will be able to make a much more informed decision as to where you would rather fly. You will have much more fun flying in the Navy though!

The United States Navy trains the best pilots in the world, nobody will disagree with that. It takes a rare individual with incredible flying skills and courage to take a supersonic fighter jet into combat, then land back aboard an aircraft carrier, especially at night.

Okay, so you've watched Top Gun twenty-seven times and can recite every line in your sleep. You've decided that "you feel the need, the need for speed" and that you won't be happy unless you're flying
Mach 2 with your hair on fire. Okay, we've established that you want to fly fighters for a while but you really want to learn more before you jump in. Well let me tell you, from a guy who lived the movie, but never shot anyone down, if you liked Top Gun, you're going to love flying fighters. The real thing is a lot better than the movie. They did a great job making the movie, the dogfighting scenes aren't realistic in the fact that the jets are so close together, but Hollywood would have had a tough time filming an actual dogfight, so the movie is really good at relaying the feel and the energy of the dogfighting environment.

In the movie the Fighter Pilots spent an inordinate amount of time taking showers. Maybe the showers were required for Hollywood, I don't know why they did it, but Fighter Pilots NEVER take showers after a dogfight. I don't know of any squadron in the Navy that even has a shower.

But overall, the movie was about as good as Hollywood has ever got it. So if you liked the movie, you will love being a Fighter Pilot.

So if you're still interested in becoming a Navy Fighter Pilot I'd like to add my Welcome Aboard.

You're about to gain an understanding about Fighter Tactics that will take you far into your Fighter Pilot Career. As far as I know, nobody has ever taken the time to write out this information for the aspiring Fighter Pilot to take advantage of to propel his career; you're the first to gain an in-depth knowledge about fighter tactics, performance, and principles.

What you are about to learn is first taught to Navy Air Combat Students in Advanced Jet Flight School. Then it is later reinforced at the F-18 Flight Schools and then numerous more times during a Fighter Pilot's career.

So Future Fighter Pilots, Let's get started!

"A steadily increasing percentage of the young and inexperienced pilots were shot down before they reached their tenth operational flight."
Lt. General Adolph Galland, Luftwaffe

Today's Fighter Pilot is a student of tactics. He endeavors to be the greatest in the world at his trade. Every day the Fighter Pilot refines and improves his Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM)/dogfighting skills so that one day, if presented with the opportunity, he will rein victorious in Air-to-Air Combat.

As Viper said in the movie Top Gun, "In Air Combat, there's no trophy for second place", and that's what drives Fighter Pilots to be the best. Once engaged with the enemy, there's no turning back, you both are in a battle to the end, and one of you has to lose. Knowledge, flying skill, and temperament, all play major roles in the outcome of a fighter engagement.

Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the famous Red Baron of World War I, once described the basic scope of air combat maneuvering as Fighter Pilots roving in an area allotted to them, spotting the enemy, attacking, and shooting him down. This mission statement is grossly oversimplified when you take into account all the principles of today's multiple aircraft maneuvering, along with modern technology and sophisticated weapons systems. The statement does, however, point out two key concepts in ACM:

1. The basics of ACM have not changed since the early days of aviation.

2. A Fighter Pilot must maintain constant aggressiveness for success.

As the Red Baron would say, "All else is rubbish."

As we move through Fighter Pilot Ground School, we will discuss ACM fundamental maneuvers and the aerodynamics that the maneuvers are based upon. These maneuvers represent the foundation for what all Navy Fighter Pilots build and improve upon during their careers. During this course you will gain a foundation of ACM knowledge that will go with you through your Fighter Pilot Career.

The overall goal of ACM is twofold:

1. To gain a firing solution and destroy your opponent.
2. To deny a firing solution from your opponent.

The overall goals of ACM appear so simple. But what appears so elementary from the outside is possibly the most complicated form of flying that exists. ACM is an extremely dynamic environment and requires your brain to make thousands of instantaneous calculations every second.

To dogfight well you must be excellent at aerobatics, instrument flying, and multi-tasking. You must be very well prepared for the rigors of the high-G environment, which requires top physical conditioning and building up a high-G tolerance through practice. You must have keen eyesight, which today can be corrected through certain Navy approved eye surgeries. And you must be intelligent and creative. You have to be able to think ahead of both your and your opponent's aircraft and drive the fight, not react to it.

Fighter Pilots find that ACM is the most gratifying type of flying there is. Like snowflakes, no two fights are ever the same. Every dogfight presents an opportunity to excel and out-perform your opponent. When we say that Fighter Pilots are capable of flying to the edges of the performance envelope it simply means that they are trained to operate their aircraft during flight from zero airspeed up to the supersonic limits of the aircraft structure. Stall speed doesn't mean much to a Fighter Pilot, he or she can control stall through use of G. He is trained to control his aircraft down to zero airspeed, which many times is a tactical requirement to win a dogfight.

An ACM engagement almost always begins with a series of high-G turns that are similar to loops performed in the horizontal, oblique, or vertical. During the early stages of a dogfight, Fighter Pilots never really turn; they loop in the direction they wish to go. When an airshow pilot does a loop, all he does is fly straight ahead, add full power, and continue to pull the stick into his lap until he has done a loop - similar to what you had your Hot Wheels cars do on the orange track when you were a kid. As a Fighter Pilot, you bank your fighter in the direction you want to turn, then you pull the stick back and apply the G. Then you monitor your G, airspeed, Angle of Attack, fuel, and your opponent. When you are in a dogfight, your goal is to get on the other guy's tail (his six). To achieve that you must be aware of the performance turning capabilities of both aircraft.

So today you're going to learn about different types of performance turns. All Fighter Pilots are very knowledgeable about the turning capabilities of both their aircraft and their opponent's aircraft. By knowing these numbers, a good Fighter Pilot can capitalize upon his knowledge by driving the dogfight to speeds and altitudes that are advantageous for him and detrimental for his opponent.

Understand that you never get something for nothing. Energy management is a constant balancing act for a Fighter Pilot. You have an incredible amount of energy if you are at high speed and high altitude. Kinetic energy is the energy of speed; potential energy is the energy of gravity, or in our case, altitude. The high speed gives you high kinetic energy and the high altitude gives you high potential energy. When you add both your kinetic and potential energy together you get what is known as your "Total Energy Package".

So what do Fighter Pilots always want more of from the aircraft designers? You guessed it. Thrust! The bigger the engines, the more thrust, and the more thrust, the more excess energy available to them, and the greater the thrust to weight ratio. When dogfighting you're always at max afterburner, unless fuel becomes a factor, which it often does, so then you have to reduce power to conserve fuel, which unfortunately also compromises your dogfighting capability.

Energy management in a fighter is just like skiing. If you are waiting at the top of the mountain to go skiing, you have high potential energy and zero kinetic energy. But once you push yourself off the top of that mountain you very quickly begin trading your potential energy for speed which is kinetic energy. When you begin going too fast down the mountain you turn, allowing your skies to grab hard into the snow which creates drag. You're then trading kinetic energy for turn performance, which slows you down. Flying a fighter is just the same, but during a dogfight you don't turn hard to slow down, you turn hard to get behind your opponent. The unfortunate result of turning hard in a fighter is the same as when you ski, your wings grab hard into the air, creating drag, which slows you down, which decreases your total amount of energy.

It would seem to the outsider that you would want to enter into a dogfight at the highest possible altitude and highest possible speed. After all, we've all heard the term, "speed is life." Oh not so fast, read on, there are so many more things to think about.

Of course, you will get no argument that you never want to be at the lower end of the spectrum, as Fighter Pilots like to say, "Outta airspeed and outta ideas," in other words, low altitude and low airspeed. At that energy state you're a sitting duck. But as a dogfight progresses, each Fighter Pilot makes thousands of decisions on how he or she will trade precious energy for turning performance. Some decisions are wise, others are not. High performance turns rob incredible amounts of energy. The harder you turn the more energy is lost, or exchanged in the form of turn performance.

Have you ever heard of the term "Overhead Break"? This is where jets come in over the end of the runway or carrier for the "Overhead Break". A common recovery technique for Navy Aircraft at the airfield and especially at the aircraft carrier is to conduct a break turn directly over the landing area. This allows the aircraft to fly to the airport fast, slowdown immediately, so that all of the aircraft can be recovered expeditiously.

How does the overhead break work? You fly straight at the airport or aircraft carrier at a speed just below supersonic, say 600 knots, at 800 feet above the ground or water. You do this to get there as fast as possible, and you are low so that you don't have any excess potential energy to get rid of. Then, when overhead the end of the runway or boat, you do a break turn. Basically a 360° maximum performance (about a 5G's to 7G's) turn that quickly reduces your airspeed to landing speed. Where did all that speed go in such a short period of time? It was traded for turning performance. Just as in a dogfight, you made a decision that turn performance was more valuable than a high-energy state, and you quickly traded your 600 knot high-energy state for a 360° break turn that slowed you down to 160 knots so that you can land.

Maximum-performance turns may be classified by two types, instantaneous or sustained. Instantaneous is a turn capability that an aircraft can only maintain for a few seconds while in level flight. Also know as a break turn, it is a turn that produces the aircraft's maximum turn performance, but is only used as a last resort to defeat an oncoming missile, or overhead the boat or field during the Break when slowing down for landing. Fighter Pilots are extremely aware that they are robbing themselves of precious energy if they execute a maximum performance turn that provides instantaneous turn performance. However, they use it often in another regime which I will explain later.

Sustained turns are high-G turns that the aircraft is capable of performing for a longer duration of time while in level flight. Fighter Pilots will enter a dogfight and eventually maneuver their fighters to a speed and attitude that will provide them with the best sustained turn performance. Unlike civilian aerobatic pilots who operate in high-G environments for short periods of time, Fighter Pilots operate in a sustained High-G environment. Sustained turns put the Fighter Pilot under continuous high-G conditions for long periods of time. The body reacts differently to sustained G's than it does to instantaneous G's. This is the reason for anti-G suits because grey outs and black outs are much more common under the long sustained High-G environment which may last for as long as a few minutes.

All turns can be measured and described in three ways.

1. Load Factor - G load is a good indication of the turning performance of the aircraft.

2. Turn Radius - The size of the turning circle. The smaller the better.

3. Turn Rate - How quickly an aircraft can turn around the circle. It is measured in degrees per second.

If you are interested, these three turns are mathematically related as follows (for higher G Loads):

Load Factor (G) = Turn Rate ÷ Airspeed
In other words - the greater the turn rate and the lower the airspeed, the higher the G. Therefore, the aircraft that can pull the most G's at a certain airspeed will have the quickest turn rate and the tightest turn radius.

Turn Radius = Airspeed squared ÷ G load
In other words - the tightest turn radius is accomplished at very low airspeeds or at high G loads.

Turn Rate = G load ÷ Airspeed
In other words - The aircraft that can pull the highest G at any given airspeed will have the best turn rate.

So in a nutshell, what do these three equations tell you? That the more G you can pull at any given airspeed, the tighter your turn will be and the quicker you can turn around.

So what do you want your fighter to do? You want it to be able to sustain the highest G possible at the lowest airspeed. Unfortunately you can't change the design of your aircraft. You signed for this jet and this is what you have to live with. You have to learn to maximize what the aircraft designers have given you. You have to know where you can find your minimum turn radius and maximum turn rate. And you have to know where your opponent's optimum airspeeds are too.

I have one more airspeed to tell you about. Don't forget this one. Fighter Pilots talk about this speed often. And they fly their planes there a lot too. It's called "Corner Speed" better know by Fighter Pilots as Corner. They call it Corner for one of two reasons, I'm not sure which. Maybe because the aircraft turns corners at this airspeed better than any other speed, or maybe because it resides on a graph in a very obvious corner of the performance envelope. Whichever, it doesn't really matter, what is very important though is that Corner speed is a speed that is crucial to fighter performance. At this speed a fighter attains maximum instantaneous turn performance. And if you are willing to sacrifice altitude (in other words, dive while turning), for this instantaneous turn performance, then you will max perform your aircraft. Fighter Pilots do everything they can to remain at Corner as long as possible. Eventually the dogfight will evolve into something else, but corner is where it usually begins.

Now let's take a look at a real live situation, Maverick vs. Viper.

It's day one of Top Gun School and Maverick is never happy unless he's going Mach 2 with his hair on fire, or in this case 600 knots. So he meets Viper head on for a dogfight. At the "merge" (when they meet), Maverick is doing 600 knots and when he passes Viper close aboard he pulls 6G's to the left just missing Viper's tail. His turn radius is about 5,500 feet and his turn rate is 11° every second (it will take 33 seconds to fly a full circle). These numbers are physical absolutes. Pilot techniques cannot change the outcome of these aerodynamic numbers.

Now when Viper meets Maverick head on, he arrives at the merge at a much slower 400 knots, which happens to be his corner speed, also turning left and brushing just behind Maverick. He immediately pulls 6 G's, his turn radius will be a much tighter 2,500 feet and his turn rate will be much greater at 16° every second. Now you say, hey I saw the movie, I'm rootin for Mav! Maverick's got to be better off because he's got more energy since he's going so much faster. Just hold on; let's do a little math before you give Maverick the Top Gun Trophy!

Because of Maverick's high airspeed he can only turn 11° every second while the slower Viper who is at corner, can turn 16° every second. So what, it's only a difference of 5° every second, right? Well that's a huge difference! Let's calculate how long it takes Viper to turn a full circle. Only 22.5 seconds. Almost 11 seconds faster than Maverick! Who's going to win that dogfight? It's not going to be much of a contest is it? Just like the movie, Viper is going to turn circles inside of Maverick, go to guns, go back to the squadron, take a shower, then chastise Maverick. You know, Maverick's never going to be happy unless he's going mach 2 with his hair on fire, and that's a pity because he's never going to win a dogfight like that. He's got to get to corner speed.

So when Viper and Maverick meet head on, how long is it going to be before Viper is able to solve a gun solution on poor Maverick! Viper needs to make up 180° of turn to go to guns on Maverick. He has a 5° per second turning advantage so he will need only 36 seconds before he will be able to go to guns on Maverick. Only 36 seconds to a guns kill! Now that's some serious flying!

So what did Maverick do wrong? He showed up at the merge going too fast. Once he started his turn he was going way too fast which caused him to Arc. Arcing means he was going way too fast to get optimum turn performance out of his aircraft. He was way above Corner. It's easy to do, if you're not careful your airspeed can easily get away from you during ACM. So are you getting an idea of how having lots of excess energy might not be a good thing. Maverick had lots of extra kinetic energy but died in only 36 seconds. Now of course, the prudent Maverick would quickly recognize the error of his ways and convert his excess speed to altitude, but only after giving up precious "angles" (degrees of turn), to Viper.

Later you'll learn a reason why Maverick should show up at the merg at 600 knots.

It's been a fun day. You've learned a lot. You've learned all about turning performance. You now know more about Fighter Tactics than most other non-fighter types, but you only know a speck of what a Fighter Pilot knows, but it's still a great start. What you learned today is first taught in the Advanced ACM stages of Advance Jet Flight School, probably the second most enjoyable portion of Navy Flight School, right behind Carrier Qualification! Oh, so much to look forward to!

I put together a manual on how to become a Navy Fighter Pilot. Read this book cover-to-cover, don't skip a page. Even better, read it twice.
The Fighter Pilot Manual
I believe it is the most important book you should read if you are serious about flying fighters.

Check Six,

Tailhooker