“get their a@@ kicked in dogfights all the time though, it seems.”
Might be true.
But it’s irrelevant: the maneuvering portion of the average air-to-air engagement is only a couple percentage points. The winner is the one who gets the drop on the other guy.
Been the case since 1937 or so. Airspeeds and weapon capabilities exceeded human vision and reaction time about then; pilots became helpless without a communications net and centralized control. Even fighter pilots, who have always been convinced they were superior to everyone else.
that makes a lot of sense. thanks