Target Fixation

By lex, on January 30th, 2012

In strike aviation, especially in the old days, before smart weapons made the task of identifying and destroying hard targets easier, a principal risk to the striker was a phenomenon known as “target fixation.” This typically involved a low altitude attack which took advantage of direct and indirect terrain masking to approach a target, followed by a pop up to identify the target and a shallow dive to employ upon it.

There would be a desperate few moments when the striker was on his back in a hostile environment, seeking the target and growingly aware of his exposure to a variety of threats – one of the problems of being within gun range is that the enemy is too – and then a sense of exultation as the target is acquired and the weapons run begins. That was where target fixation could creep in: A striker might press the run too close, and place himself within the frag pattern of his own ordnance, or worse, hit the target with his own airplane (typically a little long).