Air combat

#Beyond visual range (BVR)

The fight usually starts tens of kilometres apart, on the radar.

1. Climb. Height gives your missiles range and you speed. At 10 km an R-27ER reaches about 57 km head-on; at 1 km about 40 km.
2. Radar on, BVR, a wide scan (R, 2). Point the antenna elevation at where you expect him. See Radar.
3. Find and lock him. Your lock lights his warning receiver: he knows.
4. Close to the zone. Fire the R-27ER inside Rmax, better inside the no-escape range.
5. Crank. After firing, turn about 45° off him, keeping him on the radar (within 60° of your nose). You keep guiding your missile while the range closes more slowly.
6. If he fires first, defend: notch, terrain or run (see Defending against missiles). Then turn back in and lock him again.

Heat-seekers are rarely useful head-on at long range: their seekers can't see far into the front of a jet. Keep the R-27ET for a target running away from you or in afterburner.

#Within visual range (WVR)

Inside about 10 km the fight turns.

• WVR (3): the radar goes to VS and locks the first non-friendly it finds within 10 km. Use BORE (7) to pick one straight ahead, or HUD (8) for the HUD's field. Then the R-73's seeker looks at the radar's target.
• Watch G and α on the left of the HUD, not your speed. The R-73 can be fired at up to 8 G: ease the pull just enough to get it off.
• Get behind him. From behind, heat-seekers see him from 12 to 20 km at normal power; head-on from only 4 to 6.
• The gun (5) inside about 1 km: see The gun.

#Energy and turning

• The starting jet turns best around 650 to 800 km/h (350 to 430 kt): see Speeds and limits. Below that you run out of lift; above it you hit the G limit.
• Every hard turn bleeds speed. Afterburner helps hold it. Dive to gain speed, climb to trade it for height.
• Lighter is better. Firing missiles and burning fuel lets you pull more G. DGFT is the light load-out for close combat.
• With the limiter overridden (K) you can point the nose further and faster, as in the Cobra, but you lose a lot of speed and can stall, depart or overstress the wings. See Flight controls.

#Being hit

A missile bursting close to you: a bang, fragments striking the airframe, the structure groaning, and a jolt through the jet. Farther away, a crack and a smaller jolt.

Gun hits: the sound of shells striking metal.

What follows depends on what's damaged:

There are no damage messages: you read the jet like a real pilot, from the lamps, the gauges, the sounds and how it flies. See Warnings.

#What counts as a kill

• A jet only counts as destroyed when it hits the ground. Nothing explodes in the air: a hit jet burns, breaks up and falls.
• Offline there's no score or kill message. You see the hit, the fire, the falling wreck and the explosion on the ground.
• Online a kill feed at the top right shows " shot down ", or " crashed" with the reason (terrain, water, impact...) for a jet that went down on its own. The kill goes to whoever damaged the jet last, if it was within the last 3 minutes. Lines involving you are in orange; "You" means you. Each line stays 8 seconds.
• Respawning (Backspace) before a damaged jet hits the ground means it never crashes, so nobody gets the kill.

After being shot down, press Backspace (or RESPAWN / RESTART AT RUNWAY in the pause menu): you're back on the runway with a repaired jet and your chosen load-out.

#Friend or foe

• Offline, with training traffic: red bandits are hostile, cyan EAGLEs friendly. See Training against bandits.
• Online there are no teams: every other pilot is yellow (unknown), and anyone can shoot anyone.
• Nothing stops you hitting a friendly (except the offline EAGLEs, which can't be damaged): missile fuzes, warheads, shells and heat-seekers don't know whose side anyone is on. A blind R-77 takes the first aircraft it sees.