Comment Re:What took them so long? (Score 2) 206
I'd actually argue with recent advances in low observability in fighter jets that the risk of bumping into each other close range is higher than ever. The only reason it's not really happened recently is because the US has had a near monopoly on stealth aircraft.
As soon as China and Russia's 5th gen fighters start entering the market I suspect close in combat is going to become a big deal again.
I read a book not so long ago about British Sea Harrier pilots in Yugoslavia, they genuinely feared the MiG 29s that the Serbs had because it could significantly out play them in terms of missile range so they were potentially sitting ducks if they ran into one, but they were aware of a vulnerability in the MiG 29's radar system such that it would only continue to detecting targets that were moving on a horizontal plane and would filter out non-moving targets. They developed a strategy and practiced it against ex-East German MiG 29s before arrival whereby the Harriers would fly in incredibly tight formation pairs so they'd appear as a single radar blip, when they detected a MiG 29, one would literally just drop vertically whilst the other would break off, the MiG wouldn't detect the one dropping vertically because it wouldn't appear as though it was moving and so would chase the one that broke away, this meant the MiG would chase into range of the one dropping off that wasn't visible on radar who could pull up hard and take it out from below in much closer combat where it's radar wouldn't see it coming.
I think this scenario proves that it's really not as straightforward as the layman often thinks; the idea that you can just see something on radar and press fire - it's not like that. See also the way Wild Weasel units work, their entire basis is getting SAMs to fire at them so they can evade the missiles and take them out; if missiles were that great the whole Wild Weasel concept would just never work. Part the reason Wild Weasels historically had no choice but to work this way was because SAMs outranged their anti-radiation missiles like the Shrike, so they literally had to fly into SAM range to be able to pop off a missile at the SAM and that usually meant the SAM getting a good few shots off before they even got to fire back; often Wild Weasel units, certainly Vietnam, ended up raking NVA SAMs with machine gun fire just to make sure the job was done.
The effectiveness of missiles is much more nuanced therefore; sure we hear about Syrian MiGs being shot down by Turkish F-16s like it was nothing, but that's primarily because Syria is utterly hopeless at defending it's forces against hostile aircraft - you only have to look at the ease at which Israel regularly bombs shit in Syria to see that. In this respect it's much the same way that when insurgents like the Taliban attacks US compounds by the hundreds they usually die in the hundreds with minimal to no US casualties, but this isn't a statement on the uselessness of hand to hand combat for US troops, on the contrary, when US troops have been pulled into battle on the terms of insurgents hand to hand combat has been incredibly important - Fallujah in 2004 was a prime example of this. The point is therefore, that whilst missiles work great in ideal conditions; when you're up against an opponent that isn't competent enough or isn't capable of evading them or doesn't have any training or technology for evasion, then they're basically easy mode; up against a more serious opponent? dogfighting will still always be relevant.