Commander Robert L. Shaw, USN holds a Master’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering and is a veteran of fourteen years of US Navy fighter aviation.  His assignments have included duty as a carrier based fighter pilot, an operational test pilot, and test director for the Navy’s Air Combat Maneuvering Range. Robert Shaw has flown over 4,000, mostly in fighters such as the F-4 and F-14.  Robert Shaw is the author of Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering.

According to one reader of Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering, “As someone with some experience in the real world of fighter aviation (316 combat missions, F4 Phantom II RIO), Shaw's book is one of the best single-source volumes on the complexity of modern aircraft combat maneuvering. It is not light reading, but fighter aviation is deadly serious - high speed, three dimensional chess where the loss of the game is a very ugly death.

His approach is to begin with the basics (flight sim players might find it useful to consider his chapters "lesson plans" for practicing) and gradually take the reader into greater depth. Readers may find it useful to re-read some chapters - the text is fairly tight and there is much of value in here that might get overlooked.

While individual aircraft systems and weapons vary, the basic principles of aerial killing have not changed since WWI: see before being seen, kill before the enemy realizes he is dead, protect your wingman, and come home alive. Shaw shows you how it is done.

I recommend this book to current fighter aircrew - it is a great supplement to fighter weapons training manuals and courses that sometimes emphasize particular aircraft capabilities while being a bit light on fundamentals.”