User Guide

TRAINING MISSION 4
In this mission, you practice dogfighting in a one against two formation. You will be handicapped,
loaded with both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons.
This time, select two enemies in a single group. Start with MiG-21s or Mirages at first, and work
your way up to MiG-29s, Su-27s, or other F-16s. To practice with your plane weighted down, pick
your normal wingtip missiles, Sidewinders or AMRAAMs on the light hardpoints, and a stack of
Mk20s or Mk82s on the medium and heavy hardpoints. If that’s just too much weight, try
Mavericks, or maybe just a pair of GBU-15s on each set of hardpoints. Once you’re loaded (and this
is as heavy as it gets), get on the runway to fight your two much more maneuverable opponents.
It’s good to practice fighting against numerically superior enemies because you are about to enter a
world in which such situations are the norm. In multiple plane furballs, you have to make kills
quickly, or be killed. Your most valuable weapons, AMRAAM missiles, should be launched one per
target, before you make visual contact. Target the planes with the highest closure rates first, since
those guys will be down your throat in a hurry.
Standard military doctrine says that if you are bounced on the way to a ground strike, you are
supposed to jettison the bombs so you can maneuver, then engage the air enemy if you think you
can win, or disengage and run if you are outmatched. The Wildcats operate under a very different
set of rules. The ordnance you are carrying is valuable and you can’t complete a given mission
without it. If you want to fly for the Wildcats, you have to be able to fight your way through the
opposition to reach your target, hit it, and get home in one piece, maximizing kills made with cheap
weapons.
Breaking Missile Lock
After you have the head-to-head attack down, let the enemy get behind you. This situation should
result in an almost immediate missile lock on your aircraft. Don’t panic. This is practice. Practice
breaking missile locks by cutting the afterburner and dropping flares, then bank sharply. Dropping
flares will not usually be enough to distract a modern IR homing missile. You have to radically
change your IR signature and maneuver. Breaking radar homing missile locks is a similar
procedure, except that they are usually fired from longer ranges and from the front in the initial
phase of the engagement. The tactics are the same: Drop decoys and turn at the last moment. Just
bear in mind that the AMRAAM and the radar guided SAMs are much faster than the IR homing
Sidewinders.
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