A4 Skyhawk Dogfight - I'm pretty sure most of you remember the Top Gun movie scenes with F-14 Tomcats fighting A-4 Skyhawks around the mountains. Those scenes were filmed around NAS Fallon, Nevada, not far from where the footage below was taken some 30 years later.
Footage shows a US Air Force F-22 Raptor battling an A-4K Skyhawk at the Nellis Test and Training Range. The Skyhawk is one of the jets belonging to Draken International, a company that supports military training around the world with a fleet of 80 tactical fighter jets. Extensively upgraded in the early 1990s to F-16 Mid-Life-Update-like standard with 1553 digital bus, APG-66v7 radar, RVR (Warning Radar Receiver), HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) controls, HUD (Head Up Display) and MFDs (multifunction displays). In other words, although not the most advanced aggressors in the world, at least what is needed to play the role of an opponent against 4th and 5th generation fighter jets.
A4 Skyhawk Dogfight
As an F-35 pilot explained last year, the dogfight against the A-4 is still relevant today for several reasons:
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Anyway, the handling of the video, as our friend Tyler Rogoway suggested when commenting on the same video in his article in The War Zone: "It's not entirely clear if one Raptor is circling and waiting while the other F-22 flees the A-4 toward its leader — a classic predatory trap — or there was only one F-22 present and it was waiting for the Skyhawk to come into range before swooping in behind it and killing it."
Update: We've gathered more details about the raid. First, it was the VSI (Weapons School Integration) mission. The F-22 was part of a package that made 4k F-22s and 4k F-15s doing CAP (Combat Air Patrol) and clearing the airspace for incoming attackers. There were 2k A-4s (one not in frame) and an F-22 came down from 40,000 feet to hit 2 low A-4s!
If you look closely at about 00:27 seconds, you can see the F-22's side weapons bay briefly open and close: in the Raptor's side door is an inclined trapezoid that F-22 Raptors use to launch missiles into the air stream. I am not sure the reason why they are open during this engagement.
The Raptor's side weapons bay is used to carry AIM-9Xs, a Sidewinder variant that was integrated on March 1, 2016, when the 90th Fighter Squadron (FS) of the 3rd Wing, based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, officially first the Raptor combat operational unit that equipped the F-22 with the latest variant of the IC-guided missile.
Hawk In The Sky\
As explained several times here, most modern US fighter aircraft use AIM-9Xs with helmet displays since 2003: with HMD (such as the US Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System - JHMCS), informational images (including aircraft speed, altitude, condition weapons, aiming, etc.) are projected onto the visor allowing the pilot to look in any direction with all the necessary data always in his field of vision. The HMD allows the pilot to use the full HOBS (High Off-Boresight) capabilities of the AIM-9X and engage the target simply by looking at it.
However, the AIM-9X will not be connected to the HMD, as the Raptor is not equipped with the type of helmet that provides basic flight and weapon information via line-of-sight images. In 2019, the Air Force plans to equip the F-22 with AIM-9X Block II, the F-22 is likely to fill the gap as the most advanced variant of the Sidewinder is expected to have a post-launch lock-on capability with a data link, for High Off-Boresight without helmet (HHOBS) at medium range: the air-to-air missile will be launched first and then directed at the target even if it is behind the launch aircraft.
David Cenciotti is a journalist from Rome, Italy. He is the founder and editor of "The Aviationist", one of the world's most famous and widely read blogs about military aviation. Since 1996, he has written for the world's major magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft and many others, covering aviation, defence, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyber warfare. He has reported from the US, Europe, Australia and Syria, flying various fighter jets with various air forces. He is a former 2nd lieutenant. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a computer science graduate. He wrote five books and contributed to many others.
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Email us at sales@ if you would like to support this site by purchasing the original patch, only available through this page! The Topgun student-turned-instructor tells us all about flying Tomcats, Skyhawks and Tiger IIs in dogfights and what it was like to learn and teach at the legendary school.
At the height of the Cold War, and just months before the public's perception of US Navy tactical aviation would be forever changed by the blockbuster action film Top Gun, F-14 Tomcat pilot Paul Nickell arrived on Topgun's doorstep. After graduating from the elite Combat Weapons and Tactics School, Nickle would become an instructor there himself, flying against student pilots in the same F-5s and A-4s that only months earlier had pushed him and his Tomcat to the limit.
In the second of our three-part detailed series on Paul's experiences flying fighters for the US Navy in the 1980s, he tells us how he fought and won in some of Topgun's most iconic aircraft, and what it was like to attend and later teach at the legendary US Navy Gunnery School.
I think it was the second oldest hangar in Miramar, but it was labeled as Hangar One. It was located on the east side of runway 24 right, north of the short holding line. Most likely built in the 1950s, it was gone in the early 1940s when my father was stationed at what was then Camp Kearny as a B-24 radio operator. He survived a burning unmanned F-8 Crusader that crashed into him in December 1969, a tragedy that claimed 14 lives.
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Across the north side of the hangar, facing the road, in large dark blue block letters was the word “TOPGUN. At the time, Topgun was not a buzzword. The average American had no idea what it was, but that was about to change. After parking in the parking lot across the street, we walked past the large trash cans on the side of the parking lot entrance, crossed the street, climbed a few steps, and greeted the gatekeeper back. About 50 feet away, in the northeast corner of the hanger, was an ankle-width blue metal door. Above the door was a white metal sign affixed to corrugated gray metal paneling that read "WELCOME TO THE NAVOR FIGHTER WEAPON SCHOOL" in black stenciled letters. In the middle of the board was a large sticker with the Topgun emblem.
When we entered the door, we were on a staircase that went halfway up and then came back to complete the journey to the second level. The stairwell walls were painted bright white and were covered with neatly arranged red silhouettes of MiG kill planes from Vietnam. Below each were the names of the crew and the date of the kill. In addition, there were recently two silhouettes of Libya.
At the top of the stairs, we turned left and headed down the hall. The right side was solid and was the outer wall of the hangar. To the right was a single opening, about the size of a double door, with a metal accordion device over it so that no one would accidentally exit the opening and fall 20 feet to the ramp below. The rest of the wall was covered with a small group of pictures of current Topgun personnel and plaques. There were several rows of slabs running the length of the passage, probably 100 yards or more. Each plaque was a gift from a team that attended training at Topgun, and each one had a unique story behind it. There were literally hundreds of them.
To the left of the corridor were the squadron quarters. The CO and KSO offices were the first
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