How to Be an Aggressive DCS Fighter Pilot Fast!
How to be an aggressive DCS fighter pilot and why you should make it all about winning fast! Survival and of course is better than losing, and the longer your in a 1v1 battle the more chances there are of another fighter unseen by you killing you! Yes, EGO is not a dirty word in the DCS fighter pilot community ,so lead the charge and score kills faster than anyone else can!
The most effective fighter pilots know their aircraft, they know their enemies aircraft as well as tactics. Knowledge is king when it comes to defeating your enemies, so know how to defeat them in basic fighter maneuvers in an express fashion. Fight your fight! Dictate the fight when possible! Win! Be aggressive in your flying!
Online BFM 1 v 1 and Multiple Aircraft Arenas.
If your flying on DCS Dogfighters server or a similar BFM focussed server, you need to get into this mindset fast to really improve! I really enjoy the BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers) Servers where it’s one on one in most but not all scenarios. Here you need to be aggressive in your flying to do really well. The time you take working out what your plan is will give your opponent time to act on their plan and kill you in a 1v1 arena scenario.
There are more multiple aircraft scenarios when there could be 5 to 10 aircraft in Red and Blue teams. Determining the enemy from friend is complicated here then its about killing an enemy fast! While your doing this casually flying after your chosen prey their mates see you and slip in behind for a quick kill! Yeah! I’ve been there a bit lately and Im trying to fulfill my own blogs ideals!
I’m definitely NOT saying you need to be an arrogant idiot, far from it! Strutting around the virtual ready rooms professing your abilities will make you less than popular! Even in real ready rooms you don’t get away with being the MOVIE Hero arrogant pilot! You’ll be shot down there very fast! Be an aggressive in how you fly and fight with your chosen platform or platforms in DCS! All I’m saying is that when you get into your stead of choice such as the Mig-29, F-18 Hornet or F-15 Eagle, you want to fly the wings off it! From the first second till the last breath! Kill your opponent as fast as possible to be efficient.
Servers Are Great!
On DCS Dogfighters server you will find lots of a guns only arena’s to practice 1v1 as well as missile optional arenas to fight 1v1. Here is an ideal place to learn to kill an opponent fast and first. The multiplayer guns only arena is amazing and a real furrball! When you enter there is generally aircraft flying in tight high G turns with guns blazing or following them! In this environment the longer you take and focus on one enemy aircraft, gives his friends time to get behind you and hill you as previously mentioned! In these arenas you can use the discord server for voice communications so you can bet when they can they are working together as a team when they can to kill you!
I would recommend giving yourself a target to kill opponents in under 60 seconds or disengage and leave the fight to get another perspective on what’s happening and dive right back in again. This keeps you safe and with the objective planning to survive if you don’t get a kill fast! Leaving a fight if given the opportunity to reset the battle is smart thinking even in the real world of combat! Real pilots always talk about having the option to extend from the fight as an option!
Know How to Fight Your Aircraft First.
Winning your BFM engagement starts well before you even enter the cockpit and start moving those throttles to FULL AFTERBURNER! You really have to know the answers to the following questions, this is even before entering the dogfight environment!
- What are your best performance numbers for my aircraft? What is your best rate speed?
- What is your best Instantaneous Turn Speed or my aircraft?
- Is your aircraft powerful and can use the Vertical With Ease?
- Is your Jet better Rate or Radius Fighter? IE. Degrees per second around the circle or Minimum radius circle and great nose authority normally at lower speeds?
- Is your jet AOA limited (F-16)? Are you carrying External tanks or weapons that could impact your fighting ability? Jettison or Keep them (Decision).
- Is your opponents aircraft better in a One or Two CIrcle fight?
- What’s your energy state?
- What Should you do as a first action? On the merge do you initiate the turn or react to your opponent?
To determine the above there are EM or Energy Maneuverability charts to study to understand both your aircrafts best sustained or best Instantaneous turn speeds which are different animals, for very different situations. Knowing these as well as the myriad of maneuvers from Vertical loops, Barrel rolls, Hi yo you and Lo Yo Yos are super important to allow you to react to the opponent’s movements.
EM Diagrams (Energy Management)
An Energy Maneuverability diagram is specific to a particular aircraft, specific weight and drag coefficient depending on loadout! An F-16 Viper clean and with a full fuel load is a different animal when its lost half its fuel load! Accordingly, it’s a different situation with a single fuel tank and a load of missiles for combat against a clean or near clean jet with a lower fuel state. Weight, Speed and Drag all play their parts in this balancing act in EM diagram performance.
In DCS WOrld the F-16 Viper is said to turn best at about 425 – 450 Knots. If you keep the aircraft in this speed band you will do well in a dogfight! Aiming for a nose to tail rate fight also known as a TWO CIRCLE fight would be the Vipers best game plan generally speaking. Real world pilots also profess the same speed band, so the DCS Viper is somewhat consistent with real world.
There are plenty of YouTube videos explaining these magical diagrams so check one out and get enlightened to the magic contained within. Suffice to know the speedband of 425 to 450 Knots is where you want to be pulling 9 Gs in your nice shiny Viper! Get the kill!
The MERGE & TCS Entry is Critical!
When you approach another aircraft and pass each other this is known as the merge! Ensuring you do this well can often determine who controls the fight and who wins it! There are many options here for you to choose from concepts like the pre-turn, which is about starting to turn your aircraft towards the enemy before they pass you. How you do this is watching when the aircraft starts to rapidly move rearward on your canopy. This is the time to turn and get your bandit. If they pass you and your not moving they are going to gain angles on you. Conversely if they start to turn you better be ready to counter with a turn of your own.
This initial turn if done correctly can help you get a head start and make up some angles before the enemy starts any turn. A great way to get ahead of the curve! Being able to do it at the correct time is known as Turn Circle Entry and this applies at any merge angle. Read about the TCE entry here on another blog for more information! You need to know this! Click here to go to my blog page on TCE!
Do you have any turning room between you and your opponent. If they leave you room so your parallel paths have a gap then you have turning room and combined with pre-turning you can get on your opponents six o’clock much faster and kill them.
One or Two Circle – A Winning Strategy.
The turn circle is line in the sky you and your opponent make when turning around each other. If your right on your opponent’s turn circle they won’t be able to point at you unless they out rate or out turn you! If your flying nose to nose your in a ONE CIRCLE fight but if your chasing each other nose to tail then your in a TWO CIRCLE fight.
Circles however can be offset also which will allow the fighters to point nose to nose during each revolution of the circle. This is why getting your turn circle entry {TCE} correct is so important! More detail on this Turn Circle Entry is available here in a previous blog post.
TCE Review.
As you approach the other aircraft will remain relatively stationary in your canopy view until it gets close. Watching the fighter and note the point it starts to rapidly accelerates rearward on your canopy. THis is known as LOSR Line of sight rearward movement. Now you need to be turning at max performance behind the enemy jet. Get onto its imaginary 1 or 2 circle in the sky by selecting to turn towards them and make a one circle or turn away from them to create a two circle fight! If you achieve the correct turn circle entry you just need to fly your best rate speed and Gs to run up behind and kill them!
One Circle or Two Circle Fight? It’s Your Choice!
Two Circle – My Favorite.
The two are very different fights with specific aircraft favoring specific choices of 1 or 2 circle. In an example of two different types of western aircraft, the F-16 Viper. It is an amazing rate fighter being to run any aircraft down nearly any aircraft while chasing it because of its superior real world rate performance. It can rate at and above 18 degrees per second, so every second it advances 18 degrees around the circle.
If the defending aircraft is only rating at say 13 degrees per second, much like an F-5E Tiger II or Mig-21, then the advantage is 5 degrees per second! This is massive which means in a mere 31 seconds time the F-16 will make up 180 degrees of circle difference and be right behind the F-5 Tiger or Mig-21. This makes the Viper a mean jet to dogfight against in the real world!
Unfortunately DCS World is not real world, although many want to believe it is that accurate. Eagle Dynamics, the creators of DCS world can only go on publically available data and word of mouth by real pilots isn’t always enough! To change the flight dynamics most of the time they want hard open source facts. In DCS World the Viper does not perform quite as dominantly as per real world in DCS but is still exceptional module to fight in.
One CIrcle Fighters
The One Circle fight suites aircraft like the F-18 Hornet, with its incredible low speed handling and incredible high AOA capabilities is amazing. It can fly in excess of 50 degrees of high AOA authority at very slow speeds. It’s incredible to see it at work, and I personally love it. The Hornet is no slouch in the Two Circle regime either in DCS World. It is possible to out rated the Viper for some time now, but its advantage is reducing with both flight models being tuned more towards real life over time.
The Mirage 2000 is also is an incredible fighter able to pull amazing AOA as well as Rate fight incredibly well in good hands if needed. The Mirages delta wings act like brakes in a right turn so it can be fast then super slow in no time forcing a chasing fighter to overshoot. The Mirage with its 30mm Defa cannons will make mince meat of you if it gets to shoot you with those massive rounds. Once on the deck it’s in trouble in a Two CIrcle fight most often. The Mirage will always be diving while trying to out turn you as it needs to manage its energy aggressively. If it gets to the hard deck slow its easy to kill so make it react to you costing energy and take advantage of your own performance.
These aircraft like the one circle fight, and will do their best to make you in your shiny Viper get slow. As you wallow at low speed not able to pull any real AOA to shoot at them the Hornet can point its nose with ease and kill you! Know your jet and your opponents!
Energy States Recognitions.
Reading energy states in a battle is life changing! Aircraft like the F-14 Tomcat tells you its ENERGY state with the angle of its wings. If they are back, its fast, If they are mid then its slower and getting close to rate speed. If the wings are forward then its ready to dance with you!
With other aircraft like the Viper and Hornet produce vapour trails from bothe the fuselage to wing blended strakes as well as wings themselves. The vapors coming off the aircraft when turning will help you understand the enemies energy state quickly. If its low energy then the vapor will be rising in a more upward direction and not as defined. As it gets slower the effect even in DCS World is still very visible. Should the fighter be high in energy state then when its turning the vapor trails from the wing roots and wings will be more refined and stream backward along the fuselage and remain quite close and not separate.
Watching for these subtle clues can help you decide if you should climb up and over to them as their energy is too slow to follow you. F-14’s like to do this as well as F-15’s with their massive power to weight figures. If you go up, you can come down on top of your opponent and kill them. Mirages 2000s do this a lot on servers!
Looking at an enemy with lots of energy then depending on what your aim is you have options! Stay fast and try to out rate your opponent by keeping in your best speed band. The next option is to keep changing direction making the opponent keep turning slowly dragging their energy down with each turn. Then when the time is right force the opponent out with a flat or rolling scissors or Yo Yo’s to make the overshoot happen. Knowing these tactics and maneuvers is so important to win a fight.
Know Your Aircraft.
It’s not recommended to try and fly several different aircraft in my opinion! Es[ecially while trying to learn to dogfight well multiple jets with different characteristics can get confusing. Learn one and know every capability of its BFM and BVR performance before heading to a new stead! In BFM you want to know and practice flying initially in flat circles at your rate speed till you get good muscle memory. You don’t need to be looking at your speed all the time while tracking your opponent. If you lose energy you die! If you lose sight you will die!
Next fly your best corner speed or rate speed in a raised circle say 20 – 30 degrees high on one side of the Egg that you see pictured. This will take you the same depth below and above the horizon. The next step is do it vertically till you can do it efficiently. Learn how the aircraft feels as it loses some energy then regains it as you head down. Climbing gives you potential energy you can spend to kill your opponent! Also a faster turn is possible with the extra one G gravity assist on you get on the top turn of the egg.
Hey your looking at me with those “Are you kidding me eyes“! Yeah I know, but if you venture into this amazingly realistic world and want to excel in dogfighting these training flights will take you to a new level of efficient. You need to practice before you get into combat really or be decimated! Consider how many hours a fighter pilot has to fly before they even get to fly in formation. It’s not 10 minutes and then dive all in!
Bring the training together!
With the above knowledge let’s expand your dogfighting mindset even more. Although we may often think of these one and two circle fights as level turning battles, they rarely are! They can be vertical or oblique turns which brings gravity into play.
Pilots refer to this as the Energy Egg because and aircraft turning in a flat plane is not affected anymore or less by gravity. The change comes when an aircraft is using the vertical which is important in managing your energy state as well.
Climbing up to perform a loop and come back down on an opponent has an advantage in that gravity adds an additional G to benefit your turn over the top. This makes your turn faster at the top of the loop with gravity fighting you at the bottom a loop making your turn slower! Aircraft seem to flip nose down then come on top of you with guns blazing. Mirage 2000’s so this well as do F-18 Hornets.
Heading up when you have the extra energy essentially puts it in the bank for later use as height is potential energy and with a simple dive it gives you that energy back to turn or do whatever you need to! Its a real art to learn to do this well and become a better dogfighter. The energy expended in an oblique turn is not as much as the altitude is not as great but the energy saved is there still to be utilized.
Getting Aggressive with Your New Knowledge!
Now you have a better idea of the factors in dogfighting I’m going to challenge you to make yourself accountable to the clock! Initially you could set up a scenario in your DCS World Editor and have your favorite aircraft module and select another aircraft as an opponent. In a guns only engagement make it a bit easier on yourself initially by only taking say half fuel and let the opponent have full fuel! These is a performance advantage with a lighter aircraft so this can help you push for the kill!
Now put yourself on the clock once you have had a few flights to familiarise yourself! Time yourself with two minutes to make a kill! If you don’t achieve this then reset and try again till you do! If your having issues getting the job done fast then a tool like TACVIEW can help you discover your mistakes, and also where your being out flown by the opponent. I highly recommend Tacview as a training aid to improve your flying skills and debriefing of each flight!
Getting better and 2 minutes is easy hit 90 seconds then 60 and even 30 seconds and challenge yourself!
In Conclusion.
I hope you found this guide to dogfighting and the mindset that comes with it, a learning experience. My hope is just to make you better DCS pilot every time you fire up your PC and dive into our exceptional world of DCS. Enjoy all its many online PVP/{PVE servers and become proficient. I’m no fighter pilot personally but I’ve spent 23 years working on and sometime flying in the aircraft I worked on. I have flown in jet fighters and trainers pulling lots of Gs. Discovered the wold can look strange when turning the sky grey in near G blackouts. Fortunately, I never threw up, which is quite common or even actually blacked! I have seen the world through a greyed out straw on several occasions though. Mach 1.03 is my top speed out of Singapore in a Mirage 3D! What a memory!
Author
Brendon McAliece is a multi lingual expat who brings over three decades of flight simulator/PC building experience as well as over two decades of real world jet fighter experience as a weapons/egress technician. He holds a sport pilot certificate giving him real world flying experience. Hi travels have taken him from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and his home of Australia. He has a passion for travel, languages, flight simulation as well as guitaring and coffee. You can read more in his blogs below.
Learn More @ DreamingGuitar.com – DreamingCoffee.com – LetsFlyVFR.com
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