ORIGINAL: mikmyk
Just doing some reading on Vietnam and N Vietnamese tactics were to use SAMs to kill aircraft but also to drive them lower into the envelopes of AAA etc. This proved highly effective.
I'm not convinced that pilots would place a hard deck limit over the immediate need to not get hit by a missile or salvo of them because the percent hit is so low. If that was the case why did so many US aircraft succumb to this tactic in Vietnam? My sense is you have more info and time to weigh the odds, make a decision etc. where as a real pilot in a fast engagement will pick getting out of the immediate pickle even if having to deal with the next. Its one thing at a time. Sometimes when playing war games you have to kind of accept that you have more info that the warfighters actually do which impacts your impression over what's a good model and what isn't.
Given you can turn evasive behaviors on and off there is no dumpster fire. If we get into turning different behaviors on and off would you guy accept the hit at the UI level to do that? We honestly have a very busy UI now.
Mike
well, often enough this was just because of the technical limitations of the time; RWRs that could detect SA-2 launches were unreliable at best, and useless at worst. visual tally of the smoke was the only way to be sure that you were being shot, and the SAMs were so thick around hanoi as to be impassable to high altitude strikes (unless conducted by mass sorties of B-52 at the end of the war, lead by huge chaff clouds / OECM packages as they were) this isn't necessarily indicative of what you'd do NOW. if an SA-2 shoots at you and you were briefed that there are SA-15s low, you take your chances at 25,000 to avoid the SA-2, mostly by deploying chaff, beaming, changing aspect and running jammer rather than by kinetics. this sort of "no threat high, vast threat low" situation may be comparatively rare, but my wager is that most pilots would stay high. descend a little, sure, from 36,000~ to 25,000~ or so. but below that? personally i never would. maintaining deck is not easy necessarily in combat, but maintaining the approximation of one is not so bad. ducking down into a division of shilkas is always worth avoiding if possible. even in the modern age they are very dangerous.
i do think that some form of logic that would cause the AI to prefer staying high is necessary in CERTAIN situations. whether that's a hard deck setting or something that could cause the AI to realize it has nothing to gain by dropping below angels 25 is of course up for debate, but i think OP is right in saying that it's unreasonable that a much more optimal behavior is now producing WORSE results in situations that are, after all, common enough.
this assumes of course that we are in the modern age where:
RWRs give more reliable launch / tracking warnings, threat type
you have been briefed that there are things below you, but it is not feasible to attack those things directly
you are not tumbleweed
the difference between modern fighter maneuverability and older SAM missile tracking/maneuverability is very high.
you are in a maneuverable fighter type aircraft that will have little trouble avoiding older SAMs (sa-2/3/4/5)
obviously if any of this stuff is NOT true then the whole thing is up in the air again.
anyway obviously this is an extreme broad topic and has many different conclusions. but i think we can assume at least that the following is true:
>modern aircraft generally know where they are
>modern aircraft can be relied upon to know if they are being fired at by old LR SAMs of the SA- type, even without visual confirmation for the most part
>for the most part, modern pilots will be aware of specific threats to them from SHORAD units in their AO, or at least the possibility of those threats existing (better to assume they exist)
>pilots will be aware that SA-2/3/4/5 pose very little threat to them if they are near the edge of their range, and will know to split-S or beam out when fired upon, while also knowing that descending into SHORAD range is very dangerous.
>modern pilots understand this matrix (heh) and can make the appropriate decision, assuming they are given a 5 second window or so to do so and the threat is not extremely near (requiring split second reaction to survive)
this assumes we're talking about the modern era, though. personally modelling this on a per-era basis seems like a really obnoxious rabbit hole to go down. maybe just generalizing it would be the better road. it's a difficult topic for sure. i couldn't cover even a tenth of the subject without writing a book. maybe i will:
how to not blow up: a primer on missile threat avoidance. in stores now.
