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Airforce Basic Training

The Chairforce is the primary air defense unit of the Manokan Arms. Air superiority is crucial to the success of any mission, providing NLOS attacks on enemy's and invaluable intelligence data via reconnaissance on enemy forces. Gaining an entire dimension over your enemy provides you with the tactical and strategic flexibility unmatched from any other source, and preventing your enemy's from gaining this same advantage against you is crucial for succeeding in any modern conflict.

This remains an incredibly difficult task. Planes are relatively expensive and difficult to maintain, and as a result, a finite number of aircraft and aircraft operators can exist at a given time. Airforce generally play a crucial, yet supplemental role to the over all forces, as they exist in smaller numbers, and do not quite have the discrimination offered at close quarters by smaller, lower altitude forces.

Yet, their vital role is no less complex than general forces. The airforce can be divided into three main categories; transportation, air superiority, and attack aircraft. Air superiority units fight to gain control of the skies, to allow the the other two to perform their activities wherever needed. Attack aircraft generally serve in a bombardment role, attacking enemy units on the ground or at low altitudes, while air superiority units generally tend to focus on keeping the sky clear of targets that could impede these missions. Transport aircraft tend to deliver all forms of cargo, including medical supplies, general food and resources, and even people directly on the battlefield. All three provide crucial and invaluable support to troops, when not engaged in direct combat with opposing areal forces.

Drones, helicopters, fighter planes, bombers, and transport areal vehicles all provide a form of air related activities, thus providing a certain degree of flexibility in their operations. The airforce can take many roles, but no matter which job they take on they shall do so with excellence and, from the air!

General Tactics and Strategies

Basic Tactics!

There's not a whole lot to transport and bomber planes; just fly to the target and drop off the payload. While flying is somewhat difficult, as long as you keep your wits about you and have common sense you'll generally do okay (and also know what the buttons look like). When flying, you obviously don't want to tilt too much unless under stressful scenarios, and depending on your cargo may have to fly safer or slower.

The most difficult scenarios come from being attacked, the most complex being dogfights. While ordinary evasive maneuvers include strafing, moving back and forward, and generally gaining altitude and trying to be hard to hit, dogfights can be more complex and provide an ever increasing dangerous scenarios. As planes gain the ability to match each other, evade each other's missiles and gain close quarters, they increasingly need more and more one on one capabilities. Thus, despite the notion that "dogfights are dead", with planes of similar caliber in terms of accuracy, stealth, and missile guidance systems, dogfights play an ever increasing role in global combat.


Dog Fights
Perhaps the most popular and interesting characteristic of flying an aircraft, dogfights involve two or more aircraft fighting each other for air superiority. This generally occurs between to fighter aircraft, but can occur between helicopters and bombers, as well. While this will take generally common sense of aircraft and their capabilities, as well as the ability to adapt to a scenario, some general guide lines are listed below.

In general, you want to engage the enemy before a dogfight happens, utilizing the superior advantage of range with your guided missiles to do the fighting for you, taking out the enemy before they eveb get to you. If this is option is unavailable for some reason, say you run out of missiles, simply overwhelmed by enemy forces which can close on your own forces too quickly, or if they manage to sneak up on your own forces, a dogfight may ensue. While rare, they are still not impossible in modern conflicts. Numerous skillsets and capabilities, from speed, to maneuverability, and raw firepower help to determine the outcome of a dogfight, but instinct and wits alone are often what determine the success of such a battle.




High altitude
Gaining altitude on your opponent is the easiest way to ensure victory. A higher altitude generally prohibits the enemy from even reaching you, and allows shorter range missiles to extend their range, as well as make missiles harder to reach you. Gravitational acceleration allows your missile to travel further with the same amount of energy, and enemy missiles travel less of a distance as they have to combat gravity, rather than be aided by it.You also gain the advantage of speed, as you can lose altitude quickly and move in on an opponent even with similarly constructed aircraft. While the advantage of altitude is not always a possibility, it is one you should always try to gain and exploit.

The F-22 for instance gained an unblemished kill ratio against other planes in tests, largely due to it's high altitude.

Strafing
Strafing is largely common sense, as moving around a lot makes you harder to hit. By being a moving target, you make it harder for the enemy to lock on to, and by exploiting your agility and seemingly chaotic behavior, you can gain an advantageous position on your opponent in what appears to be random movement. Thus, by moving around a lot, side to side, up and down, going into large spins or loops or spin, you can not only avoid fire, but potentially trick your enemy into a vulnerable position.

Being behind the enemy
You always want to be behind the enemy. By being behind the enemy, you have the ability to shoot at them, and fire, by facing them, but virtually nullify their capability to respond back by them not facing you. Since no major aircraft fires missiles or machine gun rounds from the back of the plane, and almost always from the front, you generally do not want to be tailed by your enemy as you lose the offensive advantage, and you generally want to tail your enemy to gain the offensive advantage. Thus, the advantage of tailing your enemy is the best position for avoiding fire, and delivering fire. While you cannot always choose your engagements or your position, you always want to try to be behind your enemy.


Barrel Roll
Essentially, doing a tight roll to avoid gunfire. The advantage of this maneuver is that essentially, the plane can't take the stresses of an immediate or abrupt turn; fast movements, ended too quickly, can create too high of G-forces and immediately stopping on a quick maneuver could damage the plane, even lead to losing a wing. Thus, going into a controlled spin, utilizing the angular momentum of the aircraft to carefully, yet quickly dodge incoming attacks, and let the energy and momentum pan out as you roll around, puts less stresses on the plane, that it otherwise might not have the strength to take, yet allows the plan to quickly avoid fire.

The disadvantage of this maneuver is the potential disorientation and loss of control of the aircraft; obviously a spinning aircraft is less favorable than a stable one. However, it is one of the most classic maneuvers to provide quick manuvering to avoid missiles or gunfire. You can also momentarily gain speed due to the angular momentum.


Loops
Loops allow you to make large changes in your position while not putting you directly in the line of fire. Your objective is to tail the enemy, to avoid being shot at, while shooting at your enemy. Thus by going into a loop, you gain the advantage of moving behind your enemy and being simultaneously hard to shoot.

Loops do make your position a little more predictable, however. Thus a more chaotic or spin filled loop might be ideal to avoid enemy fire of some kind, and make it harder to trail you.


Combat spread
The combat spread is the most basic of maneuvers used prior to engagement. Aircraft will separate, often in different directions, with the second man, or wing man, moving to engage the enemy from a more favorable position, say above, defending the aircraft about to be immediately engaged. Thus securing an advantage in an otherwise head on attack.

The defensive split is similiar to this, but more defensive. The aircraft go in different directions, so that the enemy has to tail one individual aircraft at a time, usually far spread out, so as to prevent multiple casualties in a single attack.


Scissors
The scissors maneuver is essentially attempting to get the enemy to over shoot you. You move around, in a scissor/strafing like pattern, usually vertically, attempting to get the enemy to follow you, and try lock on to you. On the vertical descent you pull back, getting the enemy to be accelerated by gravity, and over shoot you. After they over shoot you, you gain both the defensive and offensive advantage by being behind them, gaining an advantage.

An experienced pilot can expect when they're about to be scissored, and usually slow down or pull out, before they're caught in the trap.

General Aircraft Knowledge


Bernoulli principle


Bernoulli's principle in fluid dynamics, states that for an inviscid flow, an increase in the speed of the fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy. The simple form of Bernoulli's principle is valid for incompressible flows (e.g. most liquid flows) and also for compressible flows (e.g. gases) moving at low Mach numbers (usually less than 0.3). More advanced forms may in some cases be applied to compressible flows at higher Mach numbers (see the derivations of the Bernoulli equation).

Bernoulli's principle is partially responsible for lift. By moving into the air, with a sloped airfoil, you can cause air on top of the foil to travel faster than on the bottom, thus decreasing pressure on the top, and creating lift. Ultimately, Bernoulli's principle relies on the Coandă effect, as air that is struck wants ot stick the surface that is providing energy to it. Thus, by providing some form of energy into the air, the air sticks to the frame, due to friction and a myriad of other factors, and thus travels over it, creating lift.


Drag creates flight
Drag more or less slows an aircraft down, as a result of the aerodynamic issues with the air, creating friction. In fluid dynamics, drag (sometimes called air resistance or fluid resistance) refers to forces which act on a solid object in the direction of the relative fluid flow velocity. Unlike other resistive forces, such as dry friction, which is nearly independent of velocity, drag forces depend on velocity. Drag forces always decrease fluid velocity relative to the solid object in the fluid's path. Due to it's ability to change locations and potentially be compressed, drag from fluid is somewhat different from ordinary friction, as the fluid is often displaced; thus, more aerodynamic patterns emerge, which create the path of least resistance. With a rain drop, a fluid that binds to itself, traveling air, it typically conforms to where it will get the least aerodynamic resistance, since it conforms to it's container this tends to be very similiar to an airfoil shape.

However, drag reduced by aircraft design is often unnecessary drag; all aircraft need aerodynamic resistance in order to fly. While this benefits the Bernoulli principle effect, the Bernoulli principle does not completely explain lift, and it is an over simplification. Lift is a reaction force - an airfoil deflects the air as it passes the airfoil. Since the foil must exert a force on the air to change its direction, the air must exert a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction on the foil. In the case of an airplane wing, the wing exerts a downward force on the air and the air exerts an upward force on the wing.

This follows from the second and third of Newton's laws of motion: The net force on an object is equal to its rate of momentum change, and: To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The air changes direction as it passes the airfoil and follows a path that is curved. Whenever airflow changes direction, a reaction force is generated opposite to the directional change

Glide ratio
In aerodynamics, the lift-to-drag ratio, or L/D ratio, is the amount of lift generated by a wing or vehicle, divided by the drag it creates by moving through the air. A higher or more favorable L/D ratio is typically one of the major goals in aircraft design; since a particular aircraft's required lift is set by its weight, delivering that lift with lower drag leads directly to better fuel economy, climb performance, and glide ratio.

Turbine engine

Rudder, Elevator and Ailerons

Fuselage