Aerodynamic investigation of very closely flying fighters to develop new formation types

New generation fighters act as key-player in the operational environment within the scope of today's technological capabilities. At present, the old generation fighters have to be more challenging against the 5th generation fighters. Considering the improvements for the new generation fighters, to be more successful in an operational area, except those the technological developments, the fighters need to differentiate their level of performance, the performance of subsystems, and the most crucial thing, the concept of operations. As part of system and performance capabilities for fighters, many effective tactical formation sequences used to increase the performance of the fighters in operational environment. This thesis covers the studies to increase the "Survivability" and "Lethality" factors for Friendly (Blue) Force systems by using a new close flight formation sequence against the problems encountered in the targeting and detection algorithms of the Opponent (Red) Force fighters' airborne radar systems. For this scope, single F-16 aerodynamic analyses were performed using CFD methods on ANSYS Fluent to decide on triple and quadruple formation sequences depend on aerodynamic and formation requirement limits. Aerodynamic analyses of close-flight formation of older generation fighters were performed using CFD methods for triple and quadruple F-16 arrays. Finally, RCS calculations were made for the new formation sequences and the predicted results were obtained. The results have been interpreted with the Operational Analysis perspective to analyse the effectiveness in the operational environment, and new tactical developments and operational perspectives were gained on the effectiveness of the 4.5th Generation Fighters and older generations in the operational environment.