E-MANAGEMENT SERIES PART VI
NEGATIVE ENERGY STATE MERGE

Today's topic is the Negative Energy State Merge.
In laymen's terms this would be "I'm screwed, how do I get out of it?"

A Negative merge means just that. You have merged with the enemy and
he/she has an energy advantage over you. Most commonly, this occurs
because they have more altitude. As you well know this can happen in a
variety of ways. Another common scenario for a negative energy merge is
that your opponent simply has a better plane than you do. Bomber pilots
typically face this situation.

OK, so you are tooling along and suddenly a quick  check shows a bandit
high over head by at least 1000 feet. In our example let's assume is to our
high 5 o'clock about 1000 feet up and 1000 feet back. In case you were
wondering this is really, really bad--not a Happy Place. What do you do?
Well, your first thought is to disrupt any potential easy line up shot you may
be giving the enemy. The best way to do this is to turn and get directly
underneath them. Why? Remember back to the common mistakes people
make when they hold an energy advantage? One of the "mistakes" was
failing to maintain adequate horizontal separation thereby forcing the
Positive plane to perform High-G BFMs in order to line up. Well, if you are the
lower aircraft you can force the issue by turning your plane and getting
underneath the bad guy.

Back to our example--bandit is at high 5 so I react by making a hard right
turn and....ooops, I'm dead. What happened? The hard right turn is what
happened. When at an energy disadvantage it is imperative you not blow
any E if you can help it. Make a right turn but do so at a minimum energy
loss. Keep the nose level in your turn, make as tight a turn as you can
without losing speed. Do NOT dive or turn hard because if you get slow the
other guy will pounce and kill you. While making your turn you will have to
keep an eye on him , your VSI and your speed. You will be
flicking back and forth between all the views so having those joystick
hotbuttons really helps here.

"But, Sensei, trying to watch all those things at once is hard!"

So? Air combat is hard. In a negative energy merge you are already dead for
the most part. You are going to have to do everything right to survive. That's
just the way it is. Learn the skills it takes to survive and you will. If you are
looking for a "quick trick" that will turn the tables go back to playing X-Wing
vs Tie Fighter or watching Top Gun. What I am attempting to show here are
the tried and true methods of surviving an encounter like this with the same
techniques that have been taught to fighter pilots since WWI. This is a game
where you can screw up and get a second chance the next time up. Many
real life pilots never got a second chance.

So, you make a good right hand turn and now you are directly underneath
the bandit. He had to abort his first pass because of your maneuver so now
he attempts to re-position. Be aware he is going to try and get you to
commit to high energy bleed maneuvers. Hopefully, for you, he will be so
busy watching your maneuvers he doesn't notice his own. Keep your turns
low load and stay underneath him. If you are able to make a really good low
G turn take the opportunity to climb a bit. Grab alt whenever you can
.
YOUR NUMBER GOAL IS EQUALIZE THE ENERGY STATE.
I emphasize that because many people feel or look for a way to reverse the
situation. That will only happen if your opponent really, really screws up
royally and that seldom happens these days. One reason for grabbing alt is
that you may need to reconvert it to speed in the event you do get forced
into a high G turn. Great, so you have managed to stay under him and he
made a boom pass at you but only got a wide deflection shot that hit
nothing. He is now zooming up to alt again on your 6. At this point, if he is
indeed behind your 3-9 line you want to turn again to face him. When in
doubt force the head on from a disadvantaged position. While you are
turning around and he is climbing you do a small spiral climb as well. In fact,
make it a habit of grabbing alt when he does. Don't over do it and yank back
on the stick or your speed will drop too low, just grab what you can. During
the fight it is important to remember that his goal is to KILL YOU. Your goal is
to KEEP HIM FROM KILLING YOU. Your goal is not to kill him. Believe it or not,
in most cases there is more pressure on him to complete his mission than
there is on you to stay alive.

The number one thing you can do to stay alive is to frustrate your opponent
and make him/her make a mistake.
If they have been denied a good gun pass 2 or 3 times they will begin to get
anxious for several reasons:
1) You may have friends coming
2) After 2 or 3 passes, unless they have been extremely diligent, their
altitude advantage is now less. Especially is you have been grabbing a foot
here and there.
3) The "Thrill of The Kill" will cause an adrenaline rush in the attacker more
so than the fear of being shot down. I'm not a doctor, I don't know why that
is true it just is.
This leads to the most important combinations of things you need to keep in
mind--Patience and Calm.
Be patient! Wait for that dive that goes too low, or the rushed gun shot. Go
back and read the mistakes of the attacker in the previous posts and think
how a potential target would force those scenarios. If you remain calm and
analytical you will buy yourself time. Time will be on your side in this fight.
The longer he takes to shoot you down the more anxious he will get.

"OK, Sensei, nice words but how about some other examples? What else
can I do?"
OK, imagine spotting the bandit at your high 12 and he is diving on you.
Maybe he is hoping for an engine shot or a head shot. What should you do?
Well, the worse thing to do is to turn. The best thing to do is to raise your
nose and meet him head on. Who knows, you might get a lucky shot, but
that isn't the real reason. When doing this be sure to watch your airspeed.
Don't let it get to stall speed. While you raising the nose angle a bit to one
side or the other (left or right) just slightly. While still above stall speed and
as he closes rudder hard over the opposite direction of your initial drift.
Because of all the smash he has going the enemy in most cases cannot
follow the maneuver and he will begin to pull up. If he was going very fast
he might actually dip below you. Let's say your drifting to the right a hair
(3-5 degrees) and hard ruddered to the left.

What do you do then? Good question, remember back to one of my earlier
posts describing the wing-over maneuver? That is the one where you pull up
a bit and roll with rudder in one direction so that you make a 180 degree
turn without losing alt or energy. This is a perfect opportunity to do that
maneuver. Your nme will have either already begun to reclimb or if you are
real lucky, he dipped low and is now reclimbing. You might even be in range
to get a few shots on him. Another option is that after the hard roll you even
out and spiral climb back around. What you have done is negated his speed
advantage by meeting him head-on and also taking away his high
percentage shot.

You may have even forced him to overshoot and get your own shots off. The
key is he lost a bit of E while you gained some and narrowed the gap. BTW,
the drift one direction and hard over into another is oftern called the "flick
and flee". Another technique I have used to a bit of success is an aborted
barrel roll. Let's say I screwed up and the bad guy is diving on my 6 for a
good tail shot and I am too slow to split-s underneath or make any drastic
maneuver. He comes barreling in waiting for me to make a break turn so he
knows which way to high yo-yo. I start by jinking a bit to throw off his aim,
just little bumps left and right/up and down, when he gets fairly close and I
start taking hits I roll hard to the right but at the same time stomp hard on
the left rudder. What will happen is that your plane will look like it is about
to break right, but the opposite rudder will halt it right in mid-air.

The diving bad guy will do 1 of a couple of things. He will pull and high yo-yo
in the direction he thinks you made a break turn. If he does you make a right
low-g lag pursuit turn to get behind his 3-9 line and possibly get a shot.
Another option is he just plows through the air right by you and you get a
nice 6 shot. Option 3 is he plows into you and you both die. Option 4 is he
really pounds your plane hard and just pulls up vertical to restock and
reassess. Obviously Option 4 spells bad news for you. Option 3 is bad in
that you die, but at least you take him out too.

Remember, if the enemy held all the advantages and still died then you win. He
should not have died. The down side to this maneuver is that you will take
damage. It may be too much damage to survive but if you do survive you will
most likely begin to hold the upper hand.

To summarize, the key things to remember in a negative energy merge are
as follows:
1) Stay underneath the nme using low G turns
2) climb when you can but don't over do it
3) relax and THINK
4) keep the bad guy in front if not on top. force the head ons.
5) Don't pull a Top Gun Maverick maneuver. Most of my diving kills are on
people who go straight to vertical in front of me. You will get ripped to
shreds.
6) Remember, you are trying to get CO-E not kill the nme!

Once you get CO-E then use those techniques to get the E advantage. Only
go for the kill when you have the E advantage. I cannot emphasize point 6
enough. Many people have anecdotes about a great last desperate head
shot that wins the fight, but in 99.9% of the engagements that doesn't
work. Don't count on it. Look to work yourself into an advantage before
trying to make the kill.

Sensei, next topic will be on Flight Geometry