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CSBA | TRENDS IN AIR-TO-AIR COMBAT
FIGURE 13. AERIAL VICTORY CLAIMS, 1965–2002
While the frequency of aerial combat has declined greatly compared to the 1960s—1980s, the number of aerial victory claims registered since 1990 is sufficiently large to permit simple quantitative analysis of the kind presented throughout this chapter. The left-hand panel of Figure 13 reveals a continued shift in the mix of weapons employed in aerial combat during the post–Cold War era. The first thing to note is the virtual absence of victories credited to guns. The database includes two gun victories; the last was a Venezuelan AT-27 Tucano armed trainer shot down by a Venezuelan F-16 during a coup attempt in November 1992. Taking a longer perspective, the data shows the continued utility of guns in aerial combat through the 1970s and their rapid eclipse by missiles beginning in the 1980s.38 In fact, the use of guns in aerial combat virtually ended after the Yom Kippur War in late 1973. Out of 498 victory claims since that time, 440 (88 percent) have been credited to AAMs and only thirty to guns.39 The last gun kill of one jet combat aircraft by another occurred in May of 1988 when an Iranian F-4E downed an Iraqi Su-22M with 20 mm cannon fire. Also of note is the near-disappearance of the rear-aspect-only IR missile victories and the reduction in proportion of victories achieved by all-aspect missiles such as the AIM-9L/M. Over the past two decades, the majority of aerial victories have been the result of BVR engagements where the victor almost always possessed advantages in sensor and weapon range and usually superior support from “offboard information sources” such as GCI radar operators or their airborne counterparts in Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) aircraft. This is significant, as it suggests the competition for SA is heavily influenced by the relative capabilities of the opponents’ electronic sensors, electronic countermeasures (ECM), and network links between sensor, command and control (C2), and combat aircraft nodes. The next section examines the details of aerial victories achieved by coalition pilots during the First Gulf War in 1991 with the goal of illustrating the dramatic influence of more realistic
38
Gun utility seems to have diminished greatly following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Of the 520 gun kills identified in the database, 490 (94.2 percent) occurred prior to November 1973.
39
The remaining twenty-eight credited victories were attributed to other means—usually the opponent maneuvering the aircraft into the ground.