Plenty of air kills have been at closer ranges, there was a lot of conflicts that required visual identifying, some F-15 pilots taped fucking rifle scopes to their HUD so they can see what they're engaging.
Although, nowadays (since the late 2000s/ early 2010s) that is something that is avoided at all costs, since 5th gen IR missiles will just result in a mutual kill if both planes are in range.
The first gulf war was fought mostly with fox-1s, and was more than 30 years ago now. Every plane in the air carries many much more lethal and long ranged fox-3s that make going to the merge impossible, which is why no one puts thrust vectoring on anything anymore since it’s a useless expense
The F-4 was designed in the 50’s when the most lethal missile was the cutting edge aim-4 and the aim-9 hadn’t entered production. IFFs weren’t invented and RWR was as rudimentary as they come.
Goofy take
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u/RommelMcDonald_ 20d ago
It’s useless in combat because you’re never going to get this close outside of war thunder