Flight of two F/a-18s took evasive action to avoid a light civil aircraft while descending VFR to a ...

Narrative:

A two-ship military flight on a training mission was descending to commence [a visual] low-level training route. During the descent; the wingman gained sight of a light civil aircraft overhead the formation flying in roughly the same direction. The wingman directed the lead to 'push the nose over.' neither aircraft had any radar indications of the traffic ahead. It appeared the traffic aircraft never had sight of the military aircraft. The military aircraft were VFR; squawking appropriately; and were in communication with the local FSS in preparation to enter the [visual] route. As it seems both sets of aircraft were VFR; preventing the recurrence was solely incumbent on the pilots. In this case; the military aircraft were rapidly overtaking the civil aircraft and had collision avoidance responsibility. Lack of radar indications and difficult visibility in the forward quarter due to the environment during the descent led to a very short-range visual pickup. Preventing near midair's like this one in the future requires extra vigilance during dynamic maneuvers while VFR.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Flight of two F/A-18s took evasive action to avoid a light civil aircraft while descending VFR to a Visual Training Route.

Narrative: A two-ship military flight on a training mission was descending to commence [a Visual] low-level training route. During the descent; the wingman gained sight of a light civil aircraft overhead the formation flying in roughly the same direction. The wingman directed the lead to 'push the nose over.' Neither aircraft had any radar indications of the traffic ahead. It appeared the traffic aircraft never had sight of the military aircraft. The military aircraft were VFR; squawking appropriately; and were in communication with the local FSS in preparation to enter the [Visual] route. As it seems both sets of aircraft were VFR; preventing the recurrence was solely incumbent on the pilots. In this case; the military aircraft were rapidly overtaking the civil aircraft and had collision avoidance responsibility. Lack of radar indications and difficult visibility in the forward quarter due to the environment during the descent led to a very short-range visual pickup. Preventing near midair's like this one in the future requires extra vigilance during dynamic maneuvers while VFR.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1068842
Time
Date	201302
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.ARTCC
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	F/A 18 Hornet/Super Hornet
Flight Phase	Descent
Flight Plan	VFR
Person 1
Function	Captain Pilot Flying Single Pilot
Qualification	Flight Crew Commercial Flight Crew Multiengine
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 60 Flight Crew Total 600 Flight Crew Type 400
Events
Anomaly	Conflict NMAC
Miss Distance	Horizontal 100 Vertical 500

Flight of two F/a-18s took evasive action to avoid a light civil aircraft while descending VFR to a visual training route.