[youtube]https://youtu.be/PIUowqD0uY8[/youtube]

I have the audio of that dogfight on my Hold recording at the office.
Its really cool to listen to.

I think some electron scrambling deleted the recording from my system tho.

I think this has been covered on here before. As I recall reading, the RIO broke their engagement rules, and you can hear the pilot trying urgently to get confirmation that they should engage.

I read on another site that this incident was discussed in training afterwards of an example of how not to conduct an engagement, and described as "professionally embarrassing."

so were they in IMC the whole time or is the video intentionally whited out?

I read that the first missile fired by the RIO surprised the pilot but the RIO didn't have a switch setting correct so it missed the target. Sounds to me like the guy in the back seat was not doing well under pressure.

That is some cool video. Kind of makes a guy proud to be an American!

The Libyans did silly things frequently. Kind of sticking their chest out, but they didnt know when to back down.......unlike our soviet friends. It's all fun and games till someone pokes an eye out

I believe that audio and video was first released in the early '90s.

Vince

Here's a more detailed discussion of the action. Wikipedia also has a detailed discussion.

https://theaviationist.com/2014/01/04/f-14-vs-mig-23-1989/

It's tough to get enough live fire training time with air to air missiles. For one thing, If I recall correctly, the Sparrow missiles are about $100K a copy. Then you have the target (drone) and the range time and so on so you might get to fire one each Sparrow and Sidewinder in a year. Crew coordination becomes a factor when you shoot that sporadically.

In the block F4J Phantoms I flew we didn't have a maneuvering aiming system for the Sparrow but we had a couple of options, one being to have the RIO go "boresight gyro out" with the radar and paint the target with the gunsight pipper set at 35 mils, the Sidewinder setting. This technique put the onus on the pilot to keep the target illuminated continuously from launch to intercept-a challenging task with a bogey that is more maneuverable. The other, better one was to call the RIO to the scope and give him range and azimuth and elevation deflections so he could lock up the target. In a missile shoot once with my new RIO I elected option two and heard him exclaim "I got him". I had the target centered in my windscreen at 2 miles, switched to Radar on my missile panel and counted two seconds (the required settling time for the Sparrow when switching from Sidewinder was 1.4 sec) and hosed off a completely dumbfounded missile! "I got him" to my RIO meant he'd been able to locate the target from my calls in the front seat and had his cursor on him but didn't mean "I have him locked up". Well, duh, I got properly chewed out for that one but it illustrates how mistakes like that get made in the air to air environment.

A thorough and objective post mortem of this engagement probably revealed a dozen or so procedures that needed improvement and I'm sure some criticism was levied at the participants but "professionally embarrassing"? That's a little strong.

I think military pilots are the biggest studs on the planet......serious man crush

Yep they are pipe swinging bad-asses for sure.

So what exactly did the Libyan's do that was hostile? I believe in the right to self defense, but this seems more like a clear violation of international law.

They did not do anything wrong technically, but were stupid in not backing down. This game was played frequently in the 60's and 70's and is even coming back today between Russia and the US. Usually between fighters and reconnaissance aircraft and between fighters and bombers, think Tu95 to Cuba. Russian pilots are very disciplined and it is not usually a big deal. Libya on the other hand was kind of bat $hit crazy and would think nothing of blowing a US plane out of the sky and then make some crap up. Tensions at that time were already extremely high between Libya and US, so essentially the Lib's were poking the bear and got smoked for it. Lesson.............don't poke the bear

I'll preference my comments with saying that I know nothing of the ROE which the Battle Group was operating under during these times in the AOR; BUT, when does that person pointing a loaded gun at you become a threat John?

Is it a range, a time, an act (do you think they should actually have to wait until *do not fire fired upon* ala the TopGun opening scene?

In the world of A/A - the Libyans came rushing at you from across the street to meet you in the public parking lot with a loaded rifle saying they were going to shoot you after they had shot your brother dead earlier in the week.

Sounds threatening to me.