Take command of air and naval assets from post-WW2 to the near future in tactical and operational scale, complete with historical and hypothetical scenarios and an integrated scenario editor.
I am confused about a couple of things. When I assign units to an ASuW patrol, will they engage facility targets in the patrol area? I thought that type of patrol was designed to hunt down mobile ground units and that sort of thing.
Specifically, I'm confused about what's going on in the below screenshot. I've got an ASuW patrol set up for the reference points around chemical plant (Shamal Scenario), and every time I assign flights to that mission, they stray way to the east and get shot at by SAMs that are out of my mission area and would otherwise be out of range to do my forces any damage. Any idea why they don't go to the assigned patrol area? I've checked the mission editor and only the four indicated reference points are part of the mission.
In the meantime, have you unchecked the 'Investigate contacts outside the patrol area'? If the box is checked then aircraft assigned to the patrol will search for targets outside the designated patrol areas.
Yes, thank you, I thought I'd unchecked that but did not. That clearly is the answer to the question about that specific patrol.
More generally, what do ASuW patrols target / attack? If I'm trying to destroy hard to detect mobile SAM platforms, am I better off using SEAD weapons, or things like Mavericks and cluster bombs?
you use the weapon the threat deserves and that you can apply at the time.
ASUW patrols are a general A-G tasking- like you'd get with a air interdiction, battlefield air interdiction, or air support. think of it like your stereotypical A-10 mission- fly to an area, patrol, search and destroy.
you use them when you don't want to strike (IE, known target, in, fire, out) or when you want to oversee a specific area and you are armed (IE, not support)
what exactly you should target a SAM with is a very broad question. emitting, non-emitting? threat to your package, no? strategic target? what airframes do you have at your disposal?
use SEAD if you have it, and if you don't need it for anything else- unless the target is not emitting at which point you will have to use something else.
So in the Shamal scenario, pictured above, I began by using planes armed for SEAD missions to knock out radars and fixed SAM sites. Then I sent in strike missions to take out the assigned targets. Those missions were often engaged by mobile SAM units, such as Roland 2's. They show up as undetected targets (yellow ?). So I created 2 patrol types in the areas of concern. One was SEAD, and I used aircraft armed with Anit-Radiation missiles (and in some cases secondary loadouts of Mavericks). The other patrol type was ASuW, where I used aircraft loaded with Mavericks or Cluster Bombs (and in some cases basic 500lb dumb bombs). I sent in a Jammer aircraft and also a recon equiped plane, hoping that would protect the strike aircraft and help better locate those mobile SAM units. In some cases, the aircraft seemed to engaged the mission targets (buildings and ammo bunkers, etc.). In other cases, they engaged the remaining fixed SAM sites, even if they were no longer emitting. So what I'm curious about is what's the best way to protect strike aircraft from those hard to detect units, in this specific case. In a more general sense, I'm curious about how ASuW patrols are intended to work. I hope that makes sense, thanks for your responses so far.
ASUW patrols will attack anything in their prosecution area that fits the weapons they are carrying.
IE, if they have clusters they will attack (confirmed hostile) buildings inside their prosecution area assuming the WRA allows it. if you want to run an S&D mission with some cluster/maverick equipped units but do not want to attack buildings, alter the mission's WRA to never use those weapons against buildings and draw the patrol as normal.
if you are hunting these types of SHORAD units, i use SEAD or ASUW patrols with specific standoff weapons, with escorting jammers and recon stuff. in particular, your RWR and E-3/8 in shamal will detect the active EMCON of the ROLAND/Gecko units once they are close enough. an ASUW patrol should work well assuming the units you assign to it are capable of tackling the capabilities of these two units.
if you are merely looking for self-defense of strikers, you can use the "escort" function attached to the strike- assign SEAD shooters to that and they will happily engage anything in range on the way to the target with the strike. you may want to alter the WRA of the AGM-88 though- by default they are very liberal with them, whereas in shamal you really want to get the most you can out of every HARM launch.
so basically:
use SEAD escorts when only self-defense is desired
use SEAD patrols when SAM suppression in area is required
use ASUW patrols when destroying TELs, SHORADs, or less capable units with non-SEAD weapons like cluster, irons, and mavs.
i've often played through shamal and my general strategy is to allocate ~80% of my SEAD to patrols designed to obliterate the nastier defenses around the iraqi center of gravity (the chemical plant/refinery thing) the rest will clean up SA-6/SA-8 units in the vicinity of the airfields and then i'll use standoff strikers to destroy the targets there relatively late in the scenario.
the chemical facility is worth a ton of points and is relatively easy to clear up. there will usually be a pretty heavy SHORAD presence there but the weasels can handle it.
Thank you, that is very informative and extremely helpful. I never thought to look at WRA, will dig further into that for sure.
Thanks again,
Chris
PS - My idea is to destroy the 5 big radars Iraq has, the Spoon Rest, the 2 Bar Locks and the 2 Tall Kings, as well as all of the SA-2's right off the bat, using HARMs against them. I've found what you said to be true, the AI will be very liberal with those missiles, so I greatly micro-manage the attacks. If I can use WRA to work on that it would be nice to be more hands off. I'm trying to figure out a way to win this one using mostly missions and little micro-management (just because I find trying to design missions to be fun). Then I try to follow up, as you do, with stand off weapons to clear out the more mid-range SAMs. It was after doing all that and still losing plenty of aircraft (which hurts a lot points wise in this one) that I started trying to find a way to take down those nasty little prowling units before sending in the iron bombs. I'm working on that now.
shamal i generally just use 1 HARM per radar on a side level. game ---> set side, doctrine, EMCON, WRA ---> WRA tab, AGM-88 change "unit's missile defense value" ---> "1 round" in heavier A2AD environments this may suffer as SA-10s will quite happily shoot those down repeatedly, but even the highest-tier iraqi SAMs have marginal self-defense capabilities.
if the HARMs malfunction you'll fail to kill, but your nearest SEAD shooter will allocate another missile as soon as it can and usually this won't present a problem. definitely worth the extra 3+ SAM kills per weasel you'll get with a tighter WRA.
the trick in shamal is to match the targets to the weapons- and knowing your tolerances. you can attack X target with Y munition unless it's defended by Z- then you will need Q SEAD shooters to suppress it and U followup strikers to fully neutralize it- all of this needs to happen as quickly as possible so you can turn all the planes around ASAP and re-assign them new targets.
personally i don't micro barely at all. for me, shamal is a mission creation, rotation and destruction scenario. on my average shamal run i probably create 40+ missions to handle the absurd weight of planes it throws at you.
also keep in mind all those surveillance radars can be knocked out by a falcon 2 ship with irons, assuming they aren't defended by anything else. assuming you have some AEW anywhere near the theater you'll probably find most of the SHORAD units, the ones you don't can be taken down by opportunistic HARM shots from on-station aircraft.
OK, I am trying to set missions up using WRA, and having trouble getting units on missions to fire. I've started a new thread, if you have time to check it out I'd appreciate any feedback you've got.
