Cobra Maneuver

The Herbst maneuver and the helicopter maneuver are similar post-stall maneuvers that are often executed by 4.5th Generation and 5th Generation fighter aircraft employing thrust vectoring. The maneuver has many names, but it is most commonly known as the cobra or the cobra maneuver in the respective language; for example: Russian: Ко́бра, German: Kobramanöver. In Sweden, the country which presumably was the first to discover the maneuver, the maneuver is traditionally known under the name kort parad, the Swedish term for the fencing maneuver "Beat parry", in which an incoming attack is deflected using a beat, leaving the enemy open for a riposte. With time, as their air forces were stationed in Syria, the maneuver spread to both the Pakistan and Egyptian air force, who also began using it as a standard defensive maneuver for their MiG-21s, as well on their Chinese counterparts, Chengdu F-7s. The cobra maneuver may have been performed in combat by an Egyptian pilot during the Yom Kippur War, but the theory is based on a quote from an Israeli pilot that only mentions an Egyptian MiG-21 apparently standing on its tail while trying to evade an attack. In the cobra roll, the aircraft initiates the cobra but instead of returning to level flight, the aircraft uses its ailerons and rudder to initiate a barrel roll at the peak of the initial nose climb which ends the maneuver with a barrel roll. The cobra hover is an extension of the original maneuver in which an aircraft initiates the cobra but remains in the "Cobra state" for a longer period of time by the use of thrust control, thus achieving the "Hover" part of the maneuver. One simple defense-into-attack maneuver is for the opponent to split-S, pass under the cobra aircraft, then half-loop again to bring the cobra aircraft into the cone of fire.