The Air Combat Evaluation (ACEVAL) and the Air Intercept Missile Evaluation (AIMVAL) were two back-to-back Joint Test & Evaluations chartered by the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

that ran from 1974-78 at

Nellis Air Force Base Nellis Air Force Base ("Nellis" colloquialism, colloq.) is a United States Air Force military installation, installation in southern Nevada. Nellis hosts Aerial warfare, air combat exercises such as Exercise Red Flag and close air support exerc ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

. Both the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy participated, contributing a team of F-15 Eagle and

F-14 Tomcat The Grumman F-14 Tomcat is an American carrier-capable supersonic, twin-engine, tandem two-seat, twin-tail, all-weather-capable variable-sweep wing fighter aircraft. The Tomcat was developed for the United States Navy's Naval Fighter Experi ...

fighter aircraft and using the local F-5E Aggressor aircraft as the Red Force. The fundamental question that needed to be answered was one of "quantity vs quality". Mock engagements showed that cheaper, lower-technology fighters armed with all-aspect missiles were able to destroy the more advanced, expensive F-15s and F-14s. These results of the AIMVAL/ACEVAL testing led to the Air Force decision to structure its fighter forces with a balance of cheaper F-16s along with the more expensive F-15s, and the Navy took a similar strategy in procuring cheaper F/A-18s along with the more expensive F-14s. The results had other impacts as well, such as decisions regarding missile development.

Purpose and Findings

ACEVAL looked at the effectiveness of the tactics utilized by high-performance U. S. aircraft against simpler, threat-type aircraft equipped with

all-aspect An all-aspect air-to-air missile can track a target no matter which way the target faces relative to the missile. In other words, an all-aspect missile can be launched against a target not only in a tail-chase engagement, but also in a head-on eng ...

missiles. The conclusion was that a cheaper fighter such as an F-5 could engage the more expensive jets like F-14 or F-15 that carried big radar and SARH missiles such as the

AIM-7 Sparrow The AIM-7 Sparrow (Air Intercept Missile) is an American medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile operated by the United States Air Force, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and various other air forces and navies. Sp ...

. The high-tech jets could easily fire a Sparrow against the F-5 but, because of the requirement to maintain the lock from launch till impact, the cheaper fighter could fire an all-aspect heat-seeker missile before it was shot down by the Sparrow. And because the heat seeker was

fire-and-forget Fire-and-forget is a type of missile guidance which does not require further external intervention after launch such as illumination of the target or wire guidance, and can hit its target without the launcher being in line-of-sight of the tar ...

, in reality the expensive, high-tech jet was taken out by a much cheaper F-5. However, this situation occurred because the F-14s and F-15s larger and longer range radars could not be used to their full advantage due to the engagement rule that a pilot must visually identify its target before firing a missile. ACEVAL as such set the requirement for an true active homing, fire-and-forget missile, which became the

AIM-120 AMRAAM The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) ( ) is an American Beyond-visual-range missile, beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. It uses active transmit-receive radar guidance ...

series. AIMVAL examined five missile concepts under consideration as replacements for the AIM-9L Sidewinder. AIMVAL findings were that the new missiles were no better than the AIM-9L, resulting in termination of the Navy AIM-95 Agile off-boresight/

thrust vectoring Thrust vectoring, also known as thrust vector control (TVC), is the ability of an aircraft, rocket or other vehicle to manipulate the direction of the thrust from its engine(s) or motor(s) to Aircraft flight control system, control the Spacecra ...

air-to-air missile An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft (including unmanned aircraft such as cruise missiles). AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid-fuel roc ...

program, which was under development at the time. Actual seeker hardware was utilized in AIMVAL.

Implications

ACEVAL/AIMVAL resulted in development of AMRAAM, but did not recommend development of a high off-boresight short-range missile, opting instead for a European-led effort to develop

ASRAAM The Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile (ASRAAM), also known by its United States designation AIM-132, is an imaging infrared homing air-to-air missile, produced by MBDA UK, that is designed for close-range combat. It is in service in the ...

. However, the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

did develop such a missile and fielded the Vympel R-73 by 1985, taking the lead in short-range missile technology and performance for the first time since the Sidewinder entered service. This caused a number of countries to develop short-range missile programs to counter it, such as Python-4 in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

, MBDA MICA in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, AIM-9X in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, and

IRIS-T The IRIS-T (infrared imaging system tail/thrust vector-controlled) is a family of short range infrared homing air-to-air missile, air-to-air and short to medium range surface-to-air missile, surface-to-air missiles. It is also called AIM-2000. ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. It was claimed that the Soviet Union benefited more from ACEVAL/AIMVAL than did its Western counterparts. Additionally, part of the evaluation was to determine if the technology of the day had progressed to such a point that

situational awareness Situational awareness or situation awareness, often abbreviated as SA is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. It is also defined as the perception of the elements in the envi ...

was no longer a factor in air-to-air combat. The natural expectation in the

beyond-visual-range missile A beyond-visual-range missile (BVR missile) or beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) is an air-to-air missile that is capable of engaging at ranges around or beyond. This range has been achieved using dual pulse rocket motors or b ...

trials was that hardware advantages would drive engagement outcomes. Actual test results, however, proved otherwise. As in both historical combat experience and AIMVAL/ACEVAL, situational awareness proved to be "the single most important factor affecting engagement outcomes." For both sides, being aware of and avoiding adversaries' weapons envelopes while trying to maneuver adversaries into their own weapons envelopes proved as important and dominant as it had been in ACEVAL.

References

* *Tomcat-sunrise.org, Hoser Chronicles
The Reformers (Air Force Magazine, February 2008)RED FLAG: HOW THE RISE OF “REALISTIC TRAINING” AFTER VIETNAM CHANGED THE AIR FORCE’S WAY OF WAR, 1975-1999
by BRIAN DANIEL LASLIE, PhD Dissertation, Kansas State University {{DEFAULTSORT:Aceval Aimval United States Department of Defense Military aviation exercises