A2A Tanker Support advice

[HalfLifeExpert]

One aspect of Command that I'm pretty weak on is setting up tanker support for aircraft flying long range missions, particularly strike missions.

What's a good rule-of-thumb/technique to determine how to set up Tanker support missions (i.e. if an aircraft's unrefueled Strike or Intercept Radius is "X" approximately where between the airbase and the target should I set up the tankers?).

To have an example from an official scenario, take "Commerce Raiders" from the Red Tide campaign. In that scenario, there's a setup for French aircraft in Cameroon to strike targets in Angola upon that nation engaging in hostilities on an off-shore French task group. There's tankers available for them, but I've found myself usually struggling to set up an efficient support using them for the French attackers to comfortably get to the targets.

Any advice/sources would be welcome.

[Nikel]

In case is useful, C Schmitz recreated a flight plan for the B-2s strike in Iran.

No scen though, just the pics.







That was after the event, because he has predicted the possibility some days before.





Or from Diego Garcia/Guam.

[lumiere]

Although I have no idea best disposition of tanker after years of play, here are my thoughts...
-for obvious reason you cannot place tankers where enemy can spot/attack them. Somewhere back of SAM or fighter CAP zone, or at least outside of enemy surveillance area (radar).
-if you fly multiple tankers at the same time, flight size must be 1 = DO NOT group them ( receivers gather at just one tanker in group)
-In Tanker planner window (in strike/patrol mission editor), adjusting "Receivers start looking for tankers when down to X percent of mission fuel" and "Airborne receivers can book tankers within…" will avoid fighter/attackers flee to tanker in face of enemy. Aslo check refuel-related doctrines

IMHO Wooden Leg standalone scenario is best tutorial to learn AAR. your F-15 cannot go and back from Israel to Tunisia without refueling, but just setting tanker at the middle of Mediterranean without any thoughts results in F-15 endlessly back and forth tanker and target, or they do not refuel in egress run and crash off Tel Aviv

https://forums.matrixgames.com/viewtopi ... 0#p5214440 (or, if you search forum "Wooden Leg" and "refuel" or "tanker") keyword you will get some interesting posts)

[thewood1]

I have a sordid and poorly executed history with AAR. But this comment from above "Receivers start looking for tankers when down to X percent of mission fuel", plus tanker positioning and REALLY knowing the detail of the flight plan of the aircraft is immensely important. In the current CMO environment, planning around those details is a top priority. It took me realizing I had to practice AAR in a bunch of different configurations to get to the point I can plan a mission reasonably well.

A simple patrol mission extension using tankers is not that hard. But as soon as you get to multiple flights, multiple tankers, complex flight plans, etc., I use a spreadsheet and a practice scenario to get close enough to let it run. I still make a lot of mistakes. It makes very much respect people that do this in real life. At least my mistake doesn't cost lives.

And one more critical parameter...load outs. I think most player way underestimate how critical it is to know the impact of loadout and altitude/speed defaults of each loadout.

[SunlitZelkova]

And one more critical parameter...load outs. I think most player way underestimate how critical it is to know the impact of loadout and altitude/speed defaults of each loadout.

This is probably the most important. A lot of (perhaps all) strike loadouts, for example, will have the aircraft conduct the attack at military or afterburner, sometimes at very low altitude. This of course eats into fuel massively. I learned this the hard way when trying to attack some ships in the East China Sea with F-2s based in Kyushu; they began their attack run and then broke off to refuel before launching their weapons.

Personally, nowadays in that kind of case I will just micro-manage everything and watch the "time to bingo fuel" very closely. I'm not savvy enough with math or spreadsheets to figure out the exact parameters I would need to set to automate the whole thing, and the red team has so few tankers it's not something I have to worry about when setting up their behavior.

In a recent long-range strike scenario I did make, I just set up the tankers as close as possible to the combat zone and counted on aircraft refueling on their own in a reasonable way, hopefully with as few as possible disruptions given their proximity to the battlefield. This worked pretty well, but I was only able to do it because the red team was North Korea... in a high-end scenario, I wouldn't have (give myself) such an advantage.