Cobra Maneuver
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
You'd have to be in very close range and in a very bad disadvantage, which honestly doesn't last long (you'd blow up very fast) and when you start decelerating you become a very easy target to hit.
And after your opponent overshoots--you just lost a ton of energy--and energy is everything in aerial combat. Energy is the currency you spend to maneuver, and you've just spent it on this hail mary.
The idea is, to be able to make the kill, after you are now behind. Then it does not matter, if you are too slow.
But wikipedia indeed says, this manoever has never been confirmed in real air combat, so yes, its usefullness is quite limited.
I would also point out both aircraft are in straight and level flight, basically in formation, with the pilot composed and prepared. This is not how a dogfight looks like.
That's what HMD's are for: (ignore the shit music) https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194
I get that it would be hard to aim - but can't computers do that?
An AIM-9X can do this, but the kill probability drops rapidly as you move off boresight.
but in a dogfight (where this move is presumably useful) the target is not stationary, it's moving towards the missile. if all the missile does is accelerate to stay still, it will still hit the target at 700mph
If you fire it forwards, the missile has to accelerate through whatever air resistance you're both already experiencing through even more air resistance to get to the target. That's hard.
If you fire backwards, the missile uses air resistance to accelerate towards (i.e. slow down) towards the target. Even when it goes through 0mph relative to the air and continues to accelerate, the resistance will be much less as it approaches an even higher closing velocity in a shorter period of time.
So the optimizations and tradeoffs are in sensing and targeting further away or being able to rotate a sensor to target an enemy off bore.
[1] They should use rear-facing lasers!
But in the plane's frame, where both planes are roughly stationary and the wind is moving 100s of mph backwards, bullets fired backwards move faster.
And for aerial combat I would argue the plane's frame is the important one.
If the target is moving at (or nearly at) the same speed as you then those velocities effectively cancel out
I am guessing mostly space and weight are at a premium in an airplane.
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/exclusive-former-buff-gunner...
We do it with helicopters (complete with automated aiming), and we used do it with bombers in WW2, after all.
I’m sure the answer has to do with aerodynamics, and the general rarity of close-range dogfighting in the first place, that make such a design impractical.
It's both aerodynamics and mass. The main guns on most western fighters is the M61 Vulcan which is a 20mm rotary gun. The F-35 mounts a 25mm GAU-12 rotary gun. These are both pretty big guns and are typically mounted internally on the jet. Trying to fit one in a turret would not be practical, it would have tons of drag. In order to be able to rotate and elevate the gun it would need a lot of heavy duty motors to be able to actuate at fighter jet speeds.
Even if such a thing nominally worked, that space and mass could go to missiles. Missiles are far more likely to be used than some gun turret. A bore sight mounted canon is far more useful since the pilot is already going to be pointing the whole plane.
The need for the fighters to have a good aerodynamic. Non-fighters and multi-role fighters have the gun pods.
https://www.weaponsystems.net/system/1049-HH13%20-%20SPPU-22
The 20mm cannon on an F-16 is the entire assembly labeled as items 63, 72, 73 and the ammunition is 78.
How do you envisage this as other than a fixed installation?
It's the square-cube law in action (twice over). Going from a 12.7mm to a 20-25mm bullet... twice the diameter, four times the crosssection, eight times the mass.
Air combat is rarely 1vs1 so being slow means you get killed by someone else.
Even beyond that, the general impression I get w.r.t stuff like supermaneuverability is that it's a much better use of money to ensure that most fights never even make it to the point where the stuff like the cobra seems like a good idea. Given the choice between 1) "marginally improving survivability in comparatively low-energy corner-case states" and 2) "increasing the odds that the fight never makes it to the merge," #2 seems like a much better choice in terms of money spent and pilots kept alive. (Though a counterpoint, I guess, based my my casual understanding, would be that making the judgment too heavily in favor of #2 was part of what hampered the USAF and Navy's air-to-air combat capabilities in Vietnam)
The delta v between the attacker, and the cobra’s aircraft is typically doesn’t allow enough time to get a missile off or guns. bin mind that dog fights happen in a one or two circle high g turn as each fighter attempts to out turn the other, cobra maneuvers require that the (losing fighter) exit the circle.
That's what the HMD and R-73 are made for: (ignore the shit music) https://youtu.be/-D9ZhmFxz3M?t=194
The only time fighters are in direct contact in this situation is a dog fight. Which the above video is not. Checkout the YouTube category for “DCS BVR” as well as “DCS dogfight”. There are a few videos analyzing cobra in both as well as the use of terrain. TL;DR there are some interesting uses of terrain at the end of both engagements, however in a realistic setting the pilots would head home rather than risk dying to a “maneuver kill” where they accidentally crash into the ground while trying to “out rate” or “out turn” the other fighter.
Losing your speed and showing your belly / back to the enemy, when you cannot shoot, never looked like a reasonable thing to do.
Combined with some sort of chaff/decoy release, I could see this causing the seeker's kalman filter or whatnot choosing to go after the return which stayed on the same trajectory with the same signature.
Without a decoy, or with smart enough seekers (eg combined mm wave with IR), I think you are probably still going to be hit.
But that doesn't require any vectored thrust, 'supermanouverability' or such. In fact, you should make the turn smooth to conserve energy.
We can't really call the resulting maneuver a clean airshow version of the "Cobra" anymore; but that's OK: it's a bit more deadly!
The airshow version merely demonstrates the aircraft's abilities. An actual pilot practicing combat maneuvers creatively applies those abilities to an actual situation at hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM
Otherwise it’s just a pretty display at air shows.
Gotta wait for the AIM-260.
Continuing wikipedia spelunking, AIM-120D has a range of >160km (and has apparently already entered service), AIM-260 200km, and R-37M 300-400km. However, as everyone who has played flight sims (or seen youtube videos of them) knows, the actual usable range is much lower than the quoted max ranges. And given stealth technology, one wonders whether the actual capability of the missile is more related to the radars, both of the launching platform and the radar in the missile seeker, than to how long burning rocket motors it has.
Since that threat never occurred, it is difficult to say whether it worked out. The discontinuation of the platform has more to say about the change in the threat than it does in the merit of BVR missiles.
Even worse: Advancing missile technology has mostly invalidated the need for aircraft in a major war since a long while, and drones will literally sweep what's left of it.
The Iranian drones' amazing performance in Ukraine shows that warfare has changed forever. The drones can travel 1700 km autonomously, very hard to jam, and they are cheaper than the missiles that are used to shoot them. So that at this point you could bankrupt an enemy by just sending drones. If they can destroy them, they go bankrupt due to missile costs. If they cant or dont, you hit all the targets.
The only way to deal with this will be miniaturization of warfare, ie creation of mini drones and mini missiles to hunt drones. Which is still difficult to do and yet to be done because miniaturization is difficult.
Aircraft are old news. If you can destroy a target by sending an autonomous drone that travels 1700km, which costs less than a fraction of one sortie of an aircraft, leave aside the cost of aircraft, its armament and pilot training, it means that drones rule warfare now.
Do you have more information on that?
So just like you wouldn't expect RT to cover Russian losses except perhaps in the most general terms, you shouldn't expect our own countries' losses to be covered by our own media other than in passing (even if it's obviously not as directly controlled as RT is).
Such stuff wouldnt be in mass media ever because first, it reduces the competition chances of US armament makers, and second, its something that Iran did, who is obviously evil according to such corporate Angloamerican media like the Politico.
I have to add, following anything from such mainstream corporate Anglosaxon sources is as foolish as it was back in 2003. Back in 2003, there was more effort on the part of the establishment and the corporate media to keep a degree of reliability and trustworthiness. Today, its just emotional manipulation.
Mass media with global reach exists that is headquartered in, and has as much relationship to local arms makers as exists in the US media in countries whose armament makers are the competition to US armament makers, so that explanation seems inadequate and parochial.
> Anglosaxon
Pro tip: you’ll look less like a propaganda shill if you don’t start using contextually unusual and inaccurate labels that contribute nothing to the substance of your message right after the same regime whose propaganda substance you are echoing does so prominently with the exact same terms the same way in its propaganda.
The basic tenet of the US military-industry has been destroying local arms makers in any way they can to replace them. What was done to German and British air defense industries during the Cold War are examples of them. Moreover, the majority of mass media have networked shareholders which include US entities. The immense pushing of US foreign policy in all mass media even in Europe is an indicator of how extensive the control is.
> Pro tip: you’ll look less like a propaganda shill if you don’t start using contextually unusual and inaccurate labels
Pro tip: Anglosaxon is a long-standing history and political science term. And those who are students of either won't stop using it because a certain segment of the Angloamerican public now has an aversion to the term because a certain enemy of their establishment used them. It describes a certain social, political and economic construct, and the term still remains valid today.
If you are offended by such a widely used term in history and political science, heaven knows how much you would be offended by some other terms that are used in those sciences. Here is a 300-year old example.
Social media video footage is a very good way to receive whatever emotional message the person who shot, edited, and published the video wants to convey.
Its much less useful as a basis for strategic analysis of the value of weapon systems.
BTW, people in Ukraine call those Shaheds "mopeds" because of their engine sound.
If we go by Ukraine's claims, they should have been at the gates of Moscow at this point. So, just forget that.
> 12 hit their targets
You don't seem to be aware that even if we trusted that number from Ukraine itself, it would still qualify as a majestic performance since the drones are dirt cheap.
> They had a benefit of surprise when they started being used, but not any longer.
The actual videos from the front tell a different story.
Ukraine has never claimed an intent to enter Russian territory, so that is clearly false.
> You don’t seem to be aware that even if we trusted that number from Ukraine itself, it would still qualify as a majestic performance since the drones are dirt cheap.
It is a demonstration that Ukraine’s air defenses have focused on what Russia had and was using previously, and not this particular threat. Israel’s performance against this and more advanced Iranian drones (and the fact that Israel keeps jets even though it is the world leader in this class of munitions) are pretty good signals that while these kind of munitions have a role in modern combat, they aren’t magic trump cards that replace manned jets in general, or even just for ground strike roles.
This thread is a pretty good breakdown: https://twitter.com/Justin_Br0nk/status/1574414714469335046
Edit: apparently Russians have advanced but uneconomical drones, Iran strikes a better balance!
From there comes the advantage of the Iranian drones - they make a lot of noise and you can hear them from miles away. But they are WAY cheaper. So you can just swarm the air defences using them. And if the enemy actually uses missiles to hit them, it evaluates to a result like the Iranian drone having shot down the more expensive defense missile because the drone is way cheaper.
...
Iran defense industry just proved that in the current environment there is no need for drones to be that advanced like Russians' drones: The existing defense setups are SO unprepared and so behind in countering drone technology that you can just use simple, cheap drones to hit targets. And even more when you use swarms.
Then again, that's good engineering. It means that Iranians well-engineered their drones according to the existing circumstances.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/07/26/ukraines-ge... Or build new, similar systems. Should cover it pretty well. Or use down graded versions of the various ship-mounted anti-missile systems.
Drone vs. drone dog fights sound like fun. Thinking of it, didn't the Yakuza and Tokyo police have some of those?
“Loitering munitions”, which sensationalist media refers to as “suicide drones”. Basically, slow, long-range, very-small-warhead prop-driven GPS-guided missiles.
Not “drones” in the “reusable unmanned aerial vehicle” sense.
> Also funny that Russians are so behind the times that they need to buy advanced military tech from Iran.
These aren’t particularly advanced. They are pretty old tech with commercial GPS added for guidance. They have a pretty narrow niche, but its one that is particularly relevant to Russia’s current situation, especially given political constraints relating to Ukraine’s operations and the equipment they are being supplied with.
A Javelin can take out a tank, but not replace it. A drone, or cruise missile, can take a ground target, a missile can take out aircraft, but they cannot replace their roles.
The reason tanks get destroyed left and right in Ukraine is a combination of bad docteine / tactics and deployment, the use of quasi obsolete models and the large scale use of last gen anti-tank weapons. The reason nobody has airial superiority is somewhat similar, near equal tech, decent air defence and comparable numbers.
As far as dogfights are concerned, they were declared dead prior to Vietnam. To the point fighter jets didn't get cannons anymore. Vietnam caused the creation of Top Gun, when the Navy realized their pilots were not up to par in airial combat. Stealth, and I am not a real proponent of that and still have to see the advantage it gives you, means one of the following scenarios will happen (assuming near peer adversaries):
- Gen 5 vs. Gen 4 (stealth vs. non-stealth, or rather low detectability): Gen 5 sees Gen 4 first, shoots multiple missiles, Gen 4 takes losses before they can counter attack -> Gen 4 retreats / is out of the fight (no dogfight) or Gen 4 is cought, numerically superior, closes in with Gen 5 and you have a dogfight
- Gen 4 vs. Gen 4: Everyone detects everyone at a large distance, missiles are fired, some losses occure (everyone can react so becasue they are not surprised), parties close in, you have a dog fight (assuming no onr retreats first)
- Gen 5 vs. Gen 5: Parties detect each other very late and close, you almost have a dogfight from the get go
So no, fighters aren't going away nor are dogfights.
Same goes for aircraft.
I wouldnt go THAT far yet because there are still some uses for the aircraft. Especially very long range missions are economical by using aircraft. Ie, 2000 km and more ranges. Including interception and air defense. There are missiles that can travel such distances, but they are expensive still.
However true, very soon that kind of range will also be covered by drones, making aircraft totall obsolete.
> As far as dogfights are concerned, they were declared dead prior to Vietnam. To the point fighter jets didn't get cannons anymore. Vietnam caused the creation of Top Gun, when the Navy realized their pilots were not up to par in airial combat.
That was a time in which the missiles were still in their infancy. Hence the miss rate and the need to dogfight. Today its not like that.
> one of the following scenarios will happen
I propose that none of those scenarios will happen. Existing air defense systems now can reach distances up to 500 km and shoot down literally, actually anything. (S-500 and above). Suicide drones can travel 1700 km. Strike drones even more.
There is no need to have any aircraft take off and do mission at a long distance, in which they would get promptly shot down by advanced air defense systems. Just spam drones.
As long as someone needs something on the ground been blown up from up close, or protect infantry from being blown up frok up close, tanks are your weapon of choice. You want something on the ground blown up from a distance comparatively cheap? Artillery, idealy self propelled for mobility, is your friend. You want to blow up stuff on the ground far away, and fast, you go for fighter aircraft. Or if you don't want to your enemy to do just that, as those are fast, can cover a lot of groind and controlled locally, so no jaming of any kind. If you want to do the same thing from really far away, use a cruise missile. Or in contested airspace where your piloted aircraft are too valuable? Use a drone, same for long endurance surveillance of uncontested airspace.
> So that at this point you could bankrupt an enemy by just sending drones
Even without heaters, I can be extremely aggressive on a guns attempt because an overshoot in the vertical isn’t nearly as risky - few aircraft can capitalize on an overshoot uphill. Almost all defenders in that situation (if they live through the attack) will be forced downhill anyway.
My only guess is that dogfights don't actually happen much anymore.
I.e., it might be easier to out-maneuver it this way than to shoot it.
Check out Stroke 3. This is an F-16 strike on an oil facility in Iraq. Stroke 3 avoided six Iraq (Russian-made) SAMs /without/ deploying any counter measures. Simply amazing to listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uh4yMAx2UA
And here's a visual illustration of the entire strike package that went out. 76 aircraft as part of Package Q.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRgfBXn6Mg
Fun (?) fact -- the first strike in Desert Storm was performed by eight Apache attack helicopters with two Pave Low helicopters leading them at NAP of the earth level at nighttime.
Even if you don't hit the guy you just pull back and go for your station because without rockets you will be gone if the other guy somehow survives 2 and you don't have any.
Dogfights like in the movies don't happen.
The Northrop P-61 had a turret, which wound up being used in the locked forward position due to it being unreliable.
If you look closely at the moment of shoot down, you'll see the F-16 has its air breaks fully deployed (and I'd assume both leading and trailing edge flaps almost fully down) to slow down enough.
So not quite "backwards", but dang close. With that being said, beyond visual range (BVR) engagements for gen 4 and higher fighters (gen 4 would be F-16 (the best plane ever produced, and everyone here knows it ;), F-18, MiG-29, Su-27; gen 5 would be F-22, F-35... and somewhat arguably Su-57) should be the norm. The USAF/US Navy is a bit behind on this with the AIM-120C/D being a medium-range missile where as some of the Russian-produced missiles have a longer reach. The USAF currently has a program to produce a long-range variant of the AIM-120C/D (our last long range missile was the AIM-54 Phoenix, exclusively carried by the retired F-14) with the designation of AIM-260 -- the AIM-260 is expected to replace the AIM-120.
AIM-120C/D "maddog" call -- now that'd be an interesting air-to-air engagement -- "maddog" is the call for firing the AIM-120 without the aircraft having radar lock and whatever the missile picks up on it's terminal guidance radar is likely doomed.
Ahhh I played way too much Falcon 4.0 and the DCS F-16 module.
In WWII unescorted bomber losses were quite catastrophic even with gun turrets pointing in every conceivable direction like the B-17. Ultimately it was long range escort fighters like the P-51 that brought down the loss rate to an acceptable rate so that long range raids could continue.
Post-WWII bomber design evidently came to the conclusion that, except in some cases a tail turret, all these guns weren't worth the weight and drag, and got rid of them. And then missiles came on the scene, further reducing the usefulness of defensive guns.
> My only guess is that dogfights don't actually happen much anymore.
Modern short range AA missiles have 'off boresight' capability, meaning that the pilot has a HUD mounted in the helmet, he doesn't need to point the nose towards the target to shoot. And yes, longer range AA missiles are apparently nowadays expected to be amazingly effective to the point that actual short range dogfights would be very rare.
Necessity, the mother of invention.
The machinery, ingenuity, and eventual incorporation of some of that technology into civilian life is important and possibly the only way to get funding for new technologies by the (US) government.
The NRO offered two spy satellites (I believe rumored to be Keyhole family satellites) to NASA back in 2011/2012 -- neither have launched yet, but they have the same sized mirror as the Hubble, but with a better focal length giving the satellites a 100 times wider field of view. The now-named Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch by Nov 2026 on a Falcon Heavy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
The NRO also donated Keyhole satellite mirrors to create the Multiple Mirror Telescope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMT_Observatory#Multiple_Mirro...
NASA was the last to fly the SR-71 as a research platform.
Unfortunately, the military is often what pushes technology forward.
The second time was towards the end when they're fending off the SAM attacks -- Rooster is in trouble with no flares to launch, and Maverick simultaneously pulls off a Cobra Maneuver while launching his own set of flairs, resulting in his own aircraft being hit.
First time: https://youtu.be/zlWmeo-4ulw?t=72
Second time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwBwJiyQ_g
Tom Cruise is kind of a weirdo but his films are incredibly entertaining.
Which do nothing for radar-guided SAMs... but pumping out chaff wouldn't be very visually impressive (if you could see it at all).
And of course, the strike package would have been accompanied by the EA-18G Growler to jam SAM radar.
Well it should have been preceded by a Wild Weasel mission to take out the SAM radars and launchers. The Growler mission would just be extra SAM defense. There also should have been a counter-air element to deal with the enemy fighters flying CAP.
There was enough intelligence available for the mission every fixed SAM site should have eaten a couple Tomahawks in addition to the airfield. It's also a mystery why the whole facility wasn't just leveled by some B-2s loaded with GBU-37s.
There would have been fewer dog fights but that probably would have been ok.
Of course, the country in question would have to be Iran due to the F-14... though the Felon hasn't been shipped outside (or inside of...heh) Russia.
And of course we come back to 'it's a movie' :-)
But the movie's mission not including any SEAD was 100% suspenders of disbelief. The whole mission seemed to be planned by people that were the pilots' life insurance beneficiaries.
The same goes for the tailslide. It illustrates properties of the air intake and engines.
Sure the pursuitor jet won't (rather should't) be in such close proximity position, unless intending to shoot the enemy with his handgun. Thus with reasonable separation, this at best may force a break of the lock, but at the same time slowing down and with extra fuel loss.
It is fun to watch at shows, though these days these wows are awarded to the vectored thrust tricks.
In the case of a flat plane, you're dumping airspeed but you don't stall the aircraft. This guy explains it way better then I can, describing the maneuver as a Rudder Reversal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ab6Ek1UCcM. Skip to 2:07 to see him demonstrate it with model airplanes.
The Cobra you do enter into a stall (the airflow departs the top surface of the wings) and are instead relying on other some other aspect of the plane to control the aircraft and get the plane back into the fight.
Note that this is just what I know from superficial memory, I never studied it in depth.
I really like Draken, it is a beautiful plan. And I love this picture :D The timing and composition is perfect and I wounder what the person in the canoe thought haha.
http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/boydaerialattack.pdf
There's also the classic Dicta Boelcke:
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-unknown-story-of-the-syr...
> Braking could cause a chasing aircraft to overshoot and present itself as a target for the Harrier, a technique formally developed by the USMC for the Harrier in the early 1970s.[33][34] This technique was much discussed in the media before the Falklands War in 1982, but ultimately not used by British pilots in that conflict.[35]
The F14 scored 130 kills… for the Iranians. The F15 has an impressive 100-0 kill ratio (mostly by Israel); zero air to air losses, but 175 losses to accidents.
F16’s have about 60 kills (almost all by Israel again, they really love American jets).
F18 two kills, I think.
Soviet airframes are pretty much the same. Almost all their kills are in the hands of Middle Eastern third parties (Syria, Egypt, Iraq).
These are wars from decades ago, and we don’t have any modern examples of large scale air combat, or of combat that wasn’t highly one-sided. F22’s have hardly ever been used, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happens with the F35. Too damned expensive to take out of the box.
But I don't understand why it's not deadlier today- given some things
-Your Su 35, 37(there aren't many)- Felon, and Raptor have thrust vectoring - without doing post stall tricks, they can nose point extremely WELL
-Next- The Flanker series does a trick- this applies to the old Su 27 without thrust vectoring that can Cobra- where to do any of this they disable a AOA limiter that lets them pull AOA up the wazoo- being able to instantly rotate your aircraft and nose point anywhere- means your opponent, near 100% of the time, can be looked at then shot at- with guns, or ....
#3. high off boresight missiles. Your Aim 9X, or even better yet...if what i've heard is true, the IRIS T missile, to an extreme degree- i'm talking turning 60 degrees or more to chase and kill a target- which would start to look as nutty as the SAMS from Behind Enemy Lines, the missile will keep turning to chase you
-One circle or two circle- if one circle, you just pull up, line up and shoot- and your HOBS missile can be cued and shot at the opponent regardless. Now yes, they might be starting to close hard on you- but that's just a matter of how good the missile is with high kinetic energy changes and leading and reacting.
Two Circle- you're in a rate fight on the deck, just disable your AOA limiter, turn tighter until you're looking at him, and let your Fox 2's (IR missiles fly- they shoudl ,especially if HOBS missiles, just chase and get him. Or you could go for guns, but....you have to line up on them, and that's where the 3D thrust vectoring, or Maaaaybe rudder, help sometimes. And a gun system that can put a lead piper on a target who might not be that close-
But, slow shouldn't matter as much when you can be shooting at the opponent 100% of the time. As for sinking or recovery- Thrust weight ratio high enough? You won't sink. Recovery? If it's thrust vectoring, you just cna keep twisting at will- so you can just keep shooting at your opponent, or if they fly past you, immediately rotate FAST- then shoot at them, and yoru missile being a HOBS missile can be off at them before you finish rotating your plane, even quicker.
The counter some might think to this, would be- missiles aren't all that good yet, - But i think the Cobra was the first half of lopsided dogfighting. The 2nd half, is High off boresight missiles.
-Admittedly, in a Raptor(I've heard they can change their flight control system ,not sure if they can flat out disable AOA though like the Flanker and Felon Family)you have enough nose pointing ability and a mean enough turn rate that you are almost always looking at your opponent anyway- But it still helps to have that ability no matter what
I'll admit, i've also heard that in at least the early flankers- not sure on the rest- Disabling the AOA limiter would disable the G limiter , which would be risky if you were too fast- and could risk G -LOC. I have to think more modern planes with the ability to uncap AOA and let you rotate freely at will- might keep the G limiter perhaps- if it doesn't restrict you when you're pulling AOA and just rotating your plane backflipping while still heading in the original direction.
Close range shouldn't be needed given every weapon should be able to be used from this state regardless of what you're doing, unless we're talking strictly guns, since guns aren't guided onto targets using targeting systems on planes.