The incredible Cobra Manoeuvre (Pugachev's Cobra)
Why Aviation Stack Exchange recommends it
Aviation Stack Exchange users link it as a concrete example of extreme angle of attack flight and of bleeding off speed to make a pursuer overshoot in a dogfight.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2020 to 2022.
What it is
A short MiGFlug explainer on the Cobra manoeuvre (Pugachev's Cobra), in which a fighter pitches its nose to 90-120 degrees angle of attack at moderate speed and then drops back to level flight. It covers the history from Viktor Pugachyov's 1989 Paris air show demonstration, the engine power needed, and its limited use in dogfights.
What people said
Cites Peter - Reinstate Monica · 2020-07 · Aviation Stack Exchange · on “Is it practical to intentionally stall an aircraft to execute a fast, controlled descent?”
In a dogfight emergency you can use it bleed speed; [this video] for instance, if you want to be *behind* the opponent instead of in front of them. You need vectored thrust, and your wings must be designed not to come off though ;-).
Cites Koyovis · 2021-12 · Aviation Stack Exchange · on “What are the advantages and disadvantages of fluidic thrust vectoring on aircraft?”
What is shown in first video is thrust vectoring, the second video seems to be of no practical aeronautical engineering value at all. Thrust vectoring has two major applications: 1. Vertical take-off [LINK] Image source including license, cropped photo [LINK] Redirecting thrust vertically, for vertical take-off and/or landing. Like the subsonic Harrier does, with four nozzles that can rotate over a range of 98°. Advantage: tiny runways required, enabling building much smaller and affordable aircraft carriers. Disadvantage: Four nozzles required, splitting the exhaust from a single engine. Difficult engineering problems as demonstrated by the XFV-12, and piloting problems by having to keep th
Cites U_flow · 2022-07 · Aviation Stack Exchange · on “Can fighter jets drift on air, and if so what does it look like?”
That depends a bit on how you define drifting. I don't think that the definition of motorsport drifting [LINK] can be applied to a (flying) aircraft. However if you relax the exact definition a bit, you could say that drifting is roughly that your vehicle points (severly) in a different direction then the direction it is travelling . Therefore the vector in which the aircraft points, is (markably) different from its speed vector.l If you accept this definition, then the answer is: All the time. A key concept for an aircraft is that of the Angle of attack, which is defined to be the angle between the incoming airflow and the center line of the aircraft. You can see it clearly in this picture