The more advanced MiG-21, which was evaluated as equal or superior to the most advanced U.S. By the end of July 1966, the Navy had downed 9 MiG-17s and lost 3 aircraft while the Air Force had downed 10 aircraft and lost 6. pilots found that engaging in close-in, turning dogfights with the old but highly maneuverable gun-armed MiG-17 was dangerous. aerial forces clashed with Soviet-built Vietnamese MiG fighters for the first time. A comparison of Navy and Air Force efforts to adapt their approaches to aerial combat also illuminates who typically drives adaptation, how long it takes, what contributes to success, and what the joint force can do to avoid or minimize future disruptions and to adapt to the ones that inevitably occur. The resumption of the bombing campaign in 1972 provides an opportunity to evaluate how well the two Services adapted to disruption. 3 The cessation of bombing in 1968 gave the Navy and the Air Force a chance to respond to the disappointing performance of their fighter planes. fighters suffered an adverse kill ratio against the most advanced Vietnamese fighter, the MiG-21, losing 18 aircraft and downing only 5. aircraft downed 118 North Vietnamese MiGs and suffered 55 losses, a kill ratio of just 2.1 to 1. The Air Force kill ratio in Korea was 4.7 to 1 from 1950 to 1952 and 13.9 to 1 from 1952 to 1953. Air Force experienced unexpectedly high losses. military’s participation in aerial combat over North Vietnam, both the U.S. Once the disruption is acknowledged, the organization may adapt its tactics, technology, institutions, and policies to deal more effectively with the challenge.ĭuring the first four years (1965–1968) of the U.S.

In order to adapt to a disruption, a military organization must first recognize that the problem exists. The 2018 National Defense Strategy calls for a “rapidly adapting Joint Force.” 2 Successful military adaptation typically consists of several elements. Successful adaptation to such disruptions is thus a key component of military effectiveness. Inevitably, the enemy does not operate as predicted, tactics are not as successful as desired, weapons do not perform as planned, and organizations and policies are not as effective as expected. Simulation results are provided that demonstrate the robustness of the method against an opponent beginning from both off ensive and defensive situations.Military organizations devote substantial effort to anticipating and preparing for future conflicts, yet they rarely get things exactly right. An accompanying fast and e ffective rollout-based policy extraction method is used to accomplish on-line implementation. The method's success is due to extensive feature development, reward shaping and trajectory sampling. Provides a fast response to a rapidly changing tactical situation, long planning horizons, and good performance without explicit coding of air combat tactics.

Optimal policy is given a slight performance advantage. In the version of the problem formulation considered, the aircraft learning the This paper presentsĪ formulation of a level flight, fixed velocity, one-on-one air combat maneuvering problem and an approximate dynamic programming (ADP) approach for computing an efficient approximation of the optimal policy. Successfully carrying out these missions autonomously. Yet, theĬomplexity of some tasks, such as air combat, have precluded UAS from Of the dangerous missions currently own by manned aircraft. Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have the potential to perform many

Air combat tactics and maneuvering pdf