World: War at 33 Miles a Minute

“Bogeyl Contact! I have a Judy at 2 o’clock! Splash!”

That clipped series of radio messages—from an F-15 pilot reporting a “kill” during a training mission—tells much about modern air combat and why the planes best at it are in demand. Translated, the pilot’s message is that his radar has locked onto an enemy plane—a “Judy” in U.S. airmen’s jargon—67° to the right of his aircraft and that the missile he fired sent the enemy spiraling into the sea. Flying at speeds of up to 2,000 m.p.h.—33 miles a minute—the pilot got his splash faster than it took him to tell about it.

No foreign fighter in the air today, including the Soviet Union’s MiG-25 Foxbat, is deadlier than the twin-engine, $16 million F-15 that the Carter Administration wants to sell to Israel and Saudi Arabia. “It’s beautiful,” says Brigadier General John T. Chain Jr., who has been flying F-15s since they became operational three years ago. “It’s the-first fighter aircraft that has all the capabilities a pilot wants: high thrust, tight turning, great visibility and every switch in the right place in a cockpit designed for the pilot,”

Among its weapons is the Sparrow air-to-air missile. It can destroy an enemy plane at a distance of about 28 miles, compared with the two-mile range of the smaller Sidewinders carried by the F-16s that Israel may also get and the F-5Es slated for Egypt. The F-15 can also carry a wide assortment of weapons, including nuclear bombs—though the planes to be sold to the Saudis and the Israelis will not be equipped to carry these. Managing this arsenal, while also flying at speed and keeping track of other craft, can be a handful, which is why pilots are particularly fond of the Heads Up Display panel, or HUD. This is a device that projects all the computerized combat-and flight-performance data right onto the windshield in a green phosphorescence that stands out even in strong sunlight. Thus the pilot does not have to look down at his instruments and can keep his eyes on the sky ahead—with an occasional glance at his rear-view mirror to see what may be behind him.

The smaller, lighter, single-engine F-16 is much different—”a fighter pilot’s airplane,” says Air Force Colonel James Rider, chief of the F-16 test program. At $8 million the F-16 is half as expensive as the big F-15 and much more maneuverable. Although the plane does not have the F-15’s speed or payload, it can outmaneuver any other plane in the sky. Among other advances, it has computer-controlled wings that automatically change shape during tight, fast moves, allowing a pilot to shake off a pursuing plane and most missiles in wrenching operations, like 360° revolving turns. Fortunately, F-16s have a special seat that tilts back 30°, like a barber’s chair, to ease the punishing pull of gravity in sharp turns and loops. As a result, says Rider: “you are as comfortable in a 7.5-G turn in the F-16 as you were at about 5 Gs in the F-4 Phantom.”

Because the F-16 is so quick, a pilot swooping down to shoot up a column of trucks is apt to see a brown blur as he races over the ground. So, for strafing runs, there is a computerized control system that will hold the F-16 on target as its guns fire away, 6,000 rounds a minute.

The F-5E fighter-bomber that the White House proposes to sell to Egypt is the current version of a design that is now 23 years old and has no advantages over the F-15s and F-16s except price (as little as $5 million). But the planes are already the work horses of the Royal Saudi Air Force and could be useful to Egypt at least for defensive purposes. Since they carry two 20mm electric machine guns and 7,000 Ibs. of bombs, they can also be used effectively to support ground troops. Egyptian pilots who trained in Soviet aircraft with Russian instructors may get a shock in the U.S.; the Air Force has 50 first-rate F-5E instructors who happen to be women.