how to identify a bogie

[fulcrum28]

if a ground radar detects a bogie(yellow) which is the best way to identify (friend-green/hostile-red) without switching ON RADAR of your own fighters? Just use EWACS aircrafts? or another ground based radar? or only by visual (Mk1.eyeballs) approach moving yourself close to the target from rear/below area?

[Dragon029]

That depends on the scenario; some bogies can be identified from a long distance by a modern jet with a good ESM / EW suite (if the enemy has radars or older-generation jammers in use), some jets might have an IRST that can identify a target from tens of nautical miles away. Ground units (short range air defence systems for example), especially those with EO/IR sensors might be able to identify a threat from tens of miles away as well if they're roughly in the bogie's flight path. AWACS aircraft can also be used to identify threats with their radar though depending on the era and threat the bogies might have to get somewhat uncomfortably close. Also I know you said without switching the radars of your own fighters on, but some modern jets can operate their radars without giving themselves away due to high-end LPI / LPD technologies.

[fulcrum28]

thanks a lot for your reply. I was playing the tutorial, the air combat ones with Israel against some Mig-29/Mig-23/Mig25, but there were also some bogies that turned out to be friendly(green) aircrafts so I wanted to know some techniques. So in that scenario my planes are F-16 and F-15.

[thewood1]

In scenarios after the 80s, civilian aircraft should all have transponders to ID themselves. For some reason, a lot of scenario designers don't use that capability. Although, you might still have ROEs that visual ID is required.

[boogabooga]

There is something to be said for just observing yourself as the player. Look for giveaways that a contact is probably military in nature. For air contacts this might include:

-Unusually high speed. Definitely supersonic and practically anything over 500ish knots will rarely be civilian. They call it military (Mil) power because airliners don't have that
-Formations or groups. Civilian aircraft should almost always be single.
-Military emissions (radar or sonar). If it has a fire control radar, that means it must have something to fire, etc.
-It actually fired a weapon or engaged someone.
-It took off from a known enemy airbase (or was seen refueling from a known enemy tanker, etc.).

Don't forget that you can manually assign a side ID to the contact.


I also agree with thewood1. If the process of sorting the civilians from the hostiles plays no actual role in the scenario, then authors should consider using the auto side ID setting for the player's side.

[DeHav]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

In scenarios after the 80s, civilian aircraft should all have transponders to ID themselves. For some reason, a lot of scenario designers don't use that capability. Although, you might still have ROEs that visual ID is required.

Transponders aren't always enough - just look at MH17 or PS752. In CMO it's easy to forget that you're omniscient, where in the real world an individual unit only has access to a fraction of the information that you use to ID an unknown unit. It's not like an isolated MANPADS unit will be checking for transponder signals. I think it's reasonable not to use auto side-ID for civilian aircraft to account for this.

I personally believe some nations wouldn't be above using fake civilian transponders to disguise their military aircraft anyway. I doubt that transponders alone would be trusted during a major conflict.

[BeirutDude]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

In scenarios after the 80s, civilian aircraft should all have transponders to ID themselves. For some reason, a lot of scenario designers don't use that capability. Although, you might still have ROEs that visual ID is required.

I usually don't check "Auto-Track Civilians" for them for two reasons.

1. I got the impression it causes some performance issues (and for that reason also make them "Blind")
2. More chance of a miss-id (that never happens in places like Iran or Syria [&:] ) and gives the player a bit of a problem to sort out. Is one aircraft an RC-135 along my coast or is it KAL-007?

Ships too, with AIS Marine Tracking Software/transponders yeah most civilian traffic is a known entity, but I've been known to have a pack of civilians traveling in/near a shipping lane that could resemble a task group on radar from a distance. [:D]

[thewood1]

I agree on all your points, but an AWACS would have a pretty good handle on civilian aircraft. And the false transponder issue can easily be addressed through orders, ROE, and events built by a scenario designer.

Transponders are not a be all end all for ID, but it should be a baseline to work from.

[BeirutDude]

Transponders are not a be all end all for ID, but it should be a baseline to work from.

Agreed. And perhaps in scenarios where I don't want to risk an accidently downing or masking of an asset I will make more use of the auto-tracking feature. Just something that crept into my design methodology.

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: thewood1
In scenarios after the 80s, civilian aircraft should all have transponders to ID themselves. For some reason, a lot of scenario designers don't use that capability. Although, you might still have ROEs that visual ID is required.

Squawking the right modes and codes is definitely important. I think the thing that concerns people is how to model is correctly. There's many different transponder modes. Modes 1 and 2 are military only. Mode 3 is the normal everyday civilian transponder. Mode 4 is encrypted military only. Military aircraft may be squawking one, some or all of those modes, depending. Civilian aircraft would only squawk mode 3. The thing is, just because someone isn't squawking the right modes and codes, it might tell you a unit is friendly, but squawking the wrong ones doesn't mean they're hostile, just that you don't know.

Another name for the transponder is secondary radar. For civilian aircraft, there's no good reason to not want everyone to be able to see where you're at. Even VFR aircraft squawk 1200 on Mode 3. There's actually a button that will make your blip big on the radar when an air traffic controller needs to pick you out of the crowd. They'll say something like, "Cessna 1234 squawk ident." When that happens you push the button and your blip gets big. If something goes wrong in the plane, you want to be found by emergency services. So, when a properly equipped radar pings transponder equipped aircraft, the transponder responds with "Here I am! This is the code I'm squawking! My altitude is this!"

Military aircraft might want to be less obvious, so they use different modes, and might not be squawking at all in order to avoid revealing their position when their transponder is pinged. That means that sometimes they might have their transponder off. That being said, civilian aircraft aren't REQUIRED to have their transponder on all the time, so they might choose to fly without one. An example might be if my transponder is broken, and I wanted to move my plane from a place where they can't fix avionics to an airport where there was a shop. Of course, there'd be constraints on that which depended on airspace regulations.

So... transponders are a bit of a puzzle. They don't tell you everything you want to know, but they might help eliminate a few aircraft out of a crowd.

[AKar]

I'd say that the most of combat aircraft flying today lack means of interrogate civilian transponders. I predict this situation to be changing, though, as I suspect more military combat aircraft getting equipped with ADS-B equipment capable of showing airborne targets so equipped and broadcasting.

[thewood1]

The ADS-B is only going to cover a very narrow timeframe in CMO. But most GCI radars and large air search radars in the military can request a squawk from transponders and read the civilian frequency responses from them going back to the 1960s. While it takes training and following procedures, as well as a cooperative civilian aircraft/agency, civilian transposers have been available, installed, and standard for decades.

Non-cooperative countries and agencies can still be a problem, but international standards will put the blame on the civilian pilot, airline, agency, or country if they aren't using them. That combined with exclusionary war zones should make un-IDed civilian aircraft not much of a factor in most scenarios. Things like non-cooperative aircraft and the lead up to war with no exclusion zones are all real possibilities, but can be handled by hard and soft ROEs from a scenario designer.

[kevinkins]

Wait a second. If a war is declared and lasted a few days, would not sectors of airspace just be off limits and become free fire zones? Transponders would not matter until state departments cleaned up the mess. How much commercial air would travel into a war zone?

[thewood1]

Hence I mentioned them here..."That combined with exclusionary war zones"

But they only work so far. With the range of SAM and ASM weapons, you could easily fire on a mis-IDed aircraft or ship.

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: kevinkins
How much commercial air would travel into a war zone?

It depends. If you look at a flight tracker like FlightAware, there's plenty of commercial flights in Ukraine, for example, but not much near Donbass or Crimea. Some of that is a function of international sanctions and some of that is a function of the MH17 shoot-down. Another good example might be Syria. There's some over flights, but not a lot landing there. Libya doesn't have that much either. Things are relatively calm in all these places right now, though. If things heated up, it might be different.

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: AKar
I'd say that the most of combat aircraft flying today lack means of interrogate civilian transponders. I predict this situation to be changing, though, as I suspect more military combat aircraft getting equipped with ADS-B equipment capable of showing airborne targets so equipped and broadcasting.

Transponders are also known as IFF. IFF is very common on combat aircraft. ADS-B remains uncommon on combat aircraft. How ADS-B fits into the task of air surveillance and intelligence gathering is probably a very interesting question, however the problem with ADS-B is that unless you're ADS-B OUT equipped, it won't broadcast your position and identity. Some combat aircraft definitely have ADS-B. You see Internet posts from airplane watchers occasionally, showing things like P-8s, RC-135s and C-17s doing all kinds of things. Most fighters don't, though. If you're going to be penetrating enemy airspace, you probably don't want ADS-B OUT telling everyone who cares to listen where you're at.

[AKar]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

ORIGINAL: AKar
I'd say that the most of combat aircraft flying today lack means of interrogate civilian transponders. I predict this situation to be changing, though, as I suspect more military combat aircraft getting equipped with ADS-B equipment capable of showing airborne targets so equipped and broadcasting.

Transponders are also known as IFF. IFF is very common on combat aircraft. ADS-B remains uncommon on combat aircraft. How ADS-B fits into the task of air surveillance and intelligence gathering is probably a very interesting question, however the problem with ADS-B is that unless you're ADS-B OUT equipped, it won't broadcast your position and identity. Some combat aircraft definitely have ADS-B. You see Internet posts from airplane watchers occasionally, showing things like P-8s, RC-135s and C-17s doing all kinds of things. Most fighters don't, though. If you're going to be penetrating enemy airspace, you probably don't want ADS-B OUT telling everyone who cares to listen where you're at.

Yes, the civilian SSR transponder shares its roots with military transponder / IFF systems, even if the specific capabilities have since diverged. Nowadays most western fighter aircraft have independent Mode 4 IFF interrogation capability, but it is not that long ago in CMO's scope that not nearly all did. (Presence of interrogation capability is often easily distinguishable visually, as the related antenna array consists of characteristic "bird slicer" blades over the aircraft's nose.)

I don't know but would suspect that current production combat aircraft would at least optionally come with ADS-B in/out, if for nothing else, to reduce risks in operations mixed with civilian traffic.

Depending on the specific time frame and the scenario in question, what complicates the matter further is that even when not in actual shooting war, quick reaction interceptors often fly to meet their targets with no emissions - nose cold, and no radio transmissions whatsoever.

[thewood1]

Again, its not just the aircraft having IFF, its also the GCI radar and its ability to recognize/read/interrogate commercial traffic. If the AWACS can ID a civilian airliner, whatever fighter they are directing should be aware. IIRC, the shootdown of the Iranian Airbus by the Vincennes was a good example. The Vincennes had all the equipment and info to tell that their target was a civilian airliner. But a combination of stress, software glitches, and poor decision-making led to the shootdown. And that was in 1981.

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: AKar

Yes, the civilian SSR transponder shares its roots with military transponder / IFF systems, even if the specific capabilities have since diverged. Nowadays most western fighter aircraft have independent Mode 4 IFF interrogation capability, but it is not that long ago in CMO's scope that not nearly all did. (Presence of interrogation capability is often easily distinguishable visually, as the related antenna array consists of characteristic "bird slicer" blades over the aircraft's nose.)

That's true, and it's long been acknowledged by the developers that lack of IFF is a shortcoming of the game. The thing is, there's other ways to determine the friend or foe of an aircraft that aren't just electronic. If it is observed taking off from a hostile airbase, for example, it's probably a bad guy.

I don't know but would suspect that current production combat aircraft would at least optionally come with ADS-B in/out, if for nothing else, to reduce risks in operations mixed with civilian traffic.

As I said before, it depends. So far, I'm unaware of any fighters that do. There's other ways to avoid civilian traffic, like altitude deconfliction. It's generally a lot easier for a fighter to get out of the way than it is for an airliner, so it isn't really an issue. One of the things I had to laugh at, is that the aeronautical rules give the right of way to an aircraft refueling another aircraft. If my little Cessna managed to get up that high, I say they need to give way to ME.

[AKar]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

Again, its not just the aircraft having IFF, its also the GCI radar and its ability to recognize/read/interrogate commercial traffic. If the AWACS can ID a civilian airliner, whatever fighter they are directing should be aware. IIRC, the shootdown of the Iranian Airbus by the Vincennes was a good example. The Vincennes had all the equipment and info to tell that their target was a civilian airliner. But a combination of stress, software glitches, and poor decision-making led to the shootdown. And that was in 1981.

In reality, it is all about having the picture transmitted both to and from the guy with finger on the trigger. Most targets, especially in non-shooting war or low intensity conflict, are ambiguous by nature. And even visual identification may result in false, as is evident by numerous blue-on-blue incidents. That is, hitting actual friendlies, not "neutrals" / civilians. It is not like a positive ID established by linking the military ground control picture to the civilian air traffic control's one is always immediately updated to the airborne interceptor, and correlated with whatever the pilot of that might see on his systems. Of course, only lately we have been going into that direction with all the networking - if functional. In CMO, the color of the HAFU is changed automatically - in reality, there is somebody having to make that decision on one-to-one basis. And not only on the theater level, but on the individual combatant level as well.

Mistakes do happen.