What's air combat?
Well, if you don't know
this, then you are really a newbie. Air combat, to be put up in simple
words, is combat that takes place in the air. No one had thought of this
in the 16th century. Neither was it thought by the men who invented
airplanes. The Wright brothers never thought of putting a canon or even
a gun into their aircraft. It wasn't until the Germans made the
breakthrough. They went up with bombs and dropped them over the enemy
targets. This method was far more safer, effective and had more chances
of survivability than the ground troops. Then were the French to arm
their aircraft with machine guns that could fire through the propeller
blades without hitting them. Now what, the forest fire had begun, many
new aircraft came into existence with various role performances. We,
over here won't talk much of those old wooden planes of 1910s and those
rusty planes of 1940s. What we are actually going to talk about is
Modern Air Combat.
Aircraft
Design:
It matters
significantly in Modern Air Combat. The design decides how capable the
aircraft can be in various roles. Design would simply refer to the
structure of the aircraft, wings, fins, tail-planes, air-intakes etc.
Over here the most important design aspect would be of the wings. There
are different categories of wings, Swept-Back, Variable Geometry (Swing
Back), Delta (Triangular), and the latest, Forward swept wings. Aircraft
with swing wings are supposed to be the most versatile ones, i.e. they
can be implied in various roles. Extreme agility is achieved with the
Forward swept wings (FSW). FSW was first experimented by the Germans.
The most widely known models with FSW are the U.S. X-29 Retaliator and
the Russian Sukhoi S-37 Berkut (do not confuse with Su-37). Delta wings
are seen on Dassault Breguet Mirage 3, 5, 2000, 2000-5, and the Rafale.
Even the MiG-21 has delta wings.
Avionics:
It includes
whatever provides information to the pilot. All the cockpit instruments,
RADAR, and onboard computers are included in it. Most of the Western
aircraft have very Superior avionics than the Eastern ones.
Aircraft in
Modern Air Combat - Click
here
