ACM!

This is Air Combat Manuevering, which basically means the area of tactics that involve more than two jets in a visual fight. I thought that BFM/Dogfighting was the coolest thing I’ve seen, but this is even better. I mean we’re talking about multiple jets up in the middle of a fight. My favorite one was where my flight lead and I were cruising in a nice tactical formation (i.e. line abreast/2 miles apart/ with me 3-4,000 feet higher) and a bandit rolled in behind us. We both made a maximum break turn back around and the bandit was pointed at me so I’m flaring to try and defeat his IR missiles then he switched over to the flight lead so I go max AB and dive to get out of the fight. About three miles away I pitch back in and get a radar lock on somebody but I couldn’t tell who cause there are these two Eagles swirling upwards in a vertical fight very close to each other. I call out for my guy’s status and figure out which one he is but they are too close together so I can’t shoot a missile at the bandit. So I go vertical to preserve my range while keeping sight of them, as soon as I see an opening I flop over and “Fox 2” (fire a Heat seeking missile) to kill the bandit and we separate out to go fight somebody else. On other fights sometimes I end up as the engaged fighter and the other guy comes back in to help out. It’s pretty challenging to fight the one guy while keeping an idea of what the other guy is doing, sometimes though I’ve been able to kill the bandit before the flight lead can get back in to shoot and that’s gratifying.
This is some really amazing stuff. It is really the ultimate of teamwork requiring great communication, complete trust, and instant decisions.