Will Beyond Visual Range Combat Dominate Future Air-to-Air Engagements?
Beyond Visual Range Combat Vs. a Peer Competitor?
Russian MIG-31’s Can Carry AR-37M Vymple Very Long Range Air-to-Air Missiles
Over the last 50 years the percent of air-to-air kills achieved at Beyond Visual Range is a tiny fraction of those registered at Within Visual Range.
It is WVR weapons, such as the heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles, that have dominated air-to-air combat. Addtionally, in what may come as a surprise, more air-to-air kills have been made with guns at close range than with missiles detroying other opponents fighters at beyond visual range.
Sure, longer-range radar guided missiles have achieved a number of kills as well, but almost all of these kills have been acheived at WVR ranges. And no, a kill acheived by a BVR weapon at WVR range does not count as a BVR kill!
Note: It is misleading ast best to state that a kill was achieved by a BVR type missiles, but leave out fact it was achieved at WVR range.
BVR Kills Against Peer Competitors?
We have almost no examples of BVR kills being achieved against peer competitors in a real live conflict. The only possible example I can think of is Russia firing a super advanced super long range R-37 BVR missile from a very advanced Mig-31 to take out out a legacy Ukrainian Mig-29 fighter caught by suprise.
Was this really a kill achieved against a peer-to-peer competitor?
Not sure how effective the R-37 would have been against any of our Gen 4.5/Gen 5 fighters supported by AWACS.
Likewise, not sure how effective our BVR missiles fired at BVR ranges will be against modern Russian figthers with strong jamming and other electronic missile countermeasures supported by AWACS of or even AWACS-supported Chinese fighters.
Identify Friend or Foe
Further, in any large-scale combat, identify friend of foe (IFF) becomes a big issue. i.e. targeting friends who appear as a blip on a radar is something you want to avoid. Avoiding this is no simple issue. And this issue is exacerbated by jamming designed to cripple/obscure IFF signals. This, along with other factors, has led to vast majority of past air-to-air engagements being WVR. And until proven different in air-to-air combat against peer oppoenents, it would be a mistake to assume that the vaste majority or even a majority of future engagement will be decided at BVR ranges.
A VERY DEAILED BREAKDWOWN OF WVR VS BVR COMBAT
In 2005 Lt Col Patrick Higby, USAF, (now Lt. General) wrote this very important paper for the Air War College analyzing the effectiveness of our fighter-based beyond visual range weapon systems. As noted above, he found that despite the investment of hundreds of billion of dollars into buying and supporting beyond visual range fighters, true BVR kills were rare with the vast majority of kills being recorded at within visual range distances (WVR). Further, when BVR weapons actually recorded kills, they usually did so at WVR distances.
The paper is well-documented, informative and is a good primer on the factors necessary to successfully employ beyond visual range combat. (see below for pdf)
Promise and Reality: Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat
By Lt Col Patrick Higby, USAF, AIR WAR COLLEGE, AIR UNIVERSITY, 2005
