Modern fighters carry missiles that can hit a target they will never see. Radar finds it, a data link tracks it, and a missile covers the last 50 or 100 kilometres on its own. Yet for most of the jet age, one of the most important rules in air combat has been old-fashioned: before you shoot, get close enough to see what you are shooting at.

That rule is called visual identification, or VID. At the end of September 2026, Poland moved to relax it, allowing its pilots to engage aircraft, drones and missiles coming from the east on the strength of radar and sensor data alone. To understand why that matters, it helps to know why pilots were told to use their eyes in the first place.

Why Radar Was Never Enough

The long-range air-to-air missile was supposed to end the dogfight. It did not. According to a 2005 paper by USAF officer Patrick Higby, cited on Wikipedia, western air forces scored only four beyond-visual-range kills out of 528 air-to-air kills between 1965 and 1982. Most were made with guns or short-range missiles. The main reason was not the missiles themselves. It was that pilots, and the people who wrote their rules of engagement, did not trust a radar contact enough to shoot at something they could not see.

The fear was simple. A blip on a radar screen does not tell you whether it is an enemy fighter, a friendly jet with a broken transponder or an airliner that has strayed off course. Identification friend or foe (IFF) systems help, but they can fail, be switched off or be set to the wrong code. The only way to be sure was to fly close enough to see.

Sky News with an RAF quick reaction alert crew, on how intercepts are flown and when a shoot-down could be ordered. Video: Sky News.

When Eyes Get It Wrong

Visual identification is not foolproof either. The clearest proof came on 14 April 1994 over northern Iraq, during Operation Provide Comfort. Two USAF F-15 pilots picked up two slow, low-flying contacts on radar. Their IFF checks did not confirm them as friendly, so they made visual identification passes. The lead pilot flew past at about 450 knots, 500 feet above and 1,000 feet to one side, and called "Tally two Hinds," meaning Iraqi Mi-24 attack helicopters.

They were US Army UH-60 Black Hawks carrying 26 people, including American, British, French and Turkish officers and Kurdish civilians. Both were shot down. Everyone on board died.

The investigation found a long chain of failures, from the helicopters' IFF codes to an AWACS crew that did not intervene. But it also showed the limit of the human eye. A fast pass at a camouflaged helicopter low in a valley, with an expectation of seeing the enemy, produced a confident and fatal mistake.

VID in Peacetime

Today, most VID happens with no weapons fired at all. When NATO fighters are scrambled toward a Russian bomber over the North Sea, or when NORAD F-16s chase a light aircraft that has blundered into restricted airspace, the job is to get close, read the markings and report what is there. Quick reaction alert crews photograph the aircraft, note its registration and escort it until it leaves.

That approach works when the threat is a large, crewed aircraft that is not trying to attack. It works much less well against a small, fast drone or a cruise missile flying at night, which is exactly what Poland now faces.

Poland Changes the Rule

On 23 September 2026, Poland's deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk announced plans to let pilots engage without seeing the target, and he repeated the plan on 28 September. Under the new procedures, pilots and commanders would be able to rely on radar readings and other data entering the air defence system. Tomczyk said such authority is usually reserved for wartime, but that daily incursions leave Poland no choice.

Polish fighters were in the air again the same day, as Russia struck targets in western Ukraine.

The trade-off is the oldest one in air defence. Shooting later and closer reduces the risk of hitting the wrong aircraft. Shooting earlier and farther reduces the risk of letting a real threat through. For fifty years, VID tilted the balance toward caution. Poland is betting that sensors, data links and the reality of drone warfare now justify tilting it back.

Sources: Wikipedia (1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident; Beyond-visual-range missile), USAF Aircraft Accident Investigation Board, The Kyiv Independent, Grosswald, Sky News, Dowództwo Operacyjne RSZ on X. Featured image: Royal Air Force / MOD, OGL