How to set up an effective AAW patrol mission?

[SchDerGrosse]

So far I havent really used mission and tended to micro my air-to-air engagements.

I have recently started to replay the Northern Inferno campaign and due to the technical limitations of the weapon systems present in the timer period (1975), I decided to try out the mission system.

And oh my God what a sh*tshow! Either I screw up something in the settings (very likely) or the AAW patrol AI is a complete mess.

I sent in 16 F-4C Phantom IIs against 4 MiG23 Floggers and the AI did an abysmal job at hunting down the enemy:

- first, the AI was unable to cope with the fact that the floggers were flying at very low altitudes, so I had to manually intervene

- second, when they finally decided to engage the enemy they did it in the least effective way possible, turning like a slob, all scattering when a single missile was fired on the part of the enemy etc. They killed the floggers in the end but the whole ordeal was pathetic.

See the save file enclosed.

All in all: I would really appreciate if you could share some wisdom on setting up effective AAW patrol missions.

Thanks,

[tylerblakebrandon]

I can't find the post but I recall one of the Devs commenting that with a update (I think it was with Tiny maybe) that without lookdown radars or with limited lookdown radars player would need to implement low lev and high level CAPs as was done historically. Goven the timeframe this might be a major issue here.

[bsmithwins]

The radar that was shoehorned into the F4 early models had a lot of limitations, no look down mode being only one of them. Use F4s more like you would Mig21s - GCI using radar from other assets is how you're going to be most effective

[thewood1]

Without GCI pre-1990, you really need multiple missions, sector-based patrol zones, overlapping prosecution zones, segmented altitudes per patrol, and discrete flight sizes. Throwing a large lump of fighters into a single CAP mission leads to chaos and gaps. You also need a ready reserve that can be activated in an intercept mission where needed.

This is one of those situations where you really have to understand unit limitations. Looking at historical approaches and the theory behind it helps a lot.

[BDukes]

I can't find the post but I recall one of the Devs commenting that with a update (I think it was with Tiny maybe) that without lookdown radars or with limited lookdown radars player would need to implement low lev and high level CAPs as was done historically. Goven the timeframe this might be a major issue here.

Yeah I think so too. I'm sure you know this, but for the OP- you can plug an altitude into the mission editor.

Mike

[Quark73]

For this case it would be handy if you could make a vertical split in Mission or Formation Editor. So it wouldn't take additional CAPs to cover various flight levels. This would help modern platform that work mainly passive too.

[Kushan04]

This looks like user error. I just ran it in B1500 and saw nothing unexpected. 8x Sparrows and 8x Sidewinders expended for the four MiGs. Given the 50% firing range that's not unexpected. Aircraft descended as expected to engage the MiGs.

Couple of problems with your setup.
1. Your flight sizes are way to large. Use 2 or 4 ship flights. Using an 8 ship flight for a CAP is going to make them look and act like a pee wee sport team chasing the ball.
2. The height finder radar on the AEW aircraft is out of range of the engagement, which means that your fighters are having to use their radars look-down, which has limitations.
3. You currently have it setup to have all flights engage hostile contacts. With the large flight size this is further reinforcing the pee wee sports team chase the ball effect. Change this to 1-2 flights. I typically use 1 flight for both investigate and engage hostile contacts.

As others have already said, use smaller flight sizes and create missions with patrol altitudes. I'd put one at 12-16,000 ft and the at 25,000 ft.

If this where a modern scenario (or at least a modern AEW aircraft), this would probably play out a little differently since modern radars have range and height finding on the same radar.