Close Air Support

[Tazak]

Brought Air Battle Central Europe recently and it's a very good read of how 2 ATAF would have worked during the 1970's and 80's.

While reading it, 2 questions popped into my mind

Fratricide: Should there be a element of risk to aircraft of friendly fire from MANPADs??, I mention MANPADs rather than SAM as I assume that most if not all vehicle mounted SAM systems would have some form of IFF whereas MANPADs your relying on the operator not to be overly trigger happy at the nearest thing flying in the sky. And the book only talks about the element of that to NATO aircraft....think of the size of the issue for the soviets

Targets of worth: Would an A-10 really target a single jeep with maverick or cluster bomb if it couldn't spot a tank or other high value target, during the Normandy invasion we know of examples where FB/CAS would roam the French countryside looking for anything to attack but that was in a time of total air supremacy which wouldn't have been the case in a modern war.
Should there be a chance of a aircraft not carrying out an attack, with the failure be attributed to the pilot not spotting a worthwhile target when travelling at 300+ MPH at 100 foot while trying to avoid enemy (or friendly - see above) MANPADs or other AA assets?

[Mad Russian]

Fratricide is more an issue of gun armed AA units. There should be IFF units to help protect against SAM weapons. Maybe not, but that's my initial feeling.

Good Hunting.

MR

[CapnDarwin]

Tazak,

We will have to work on adding the fratricide element in 2.1 for MANPADs. Really a good point. As for target selection of airstrikes, we already have a routine that selects targets if more than one are in the assigned target area and if the target moves the unit does abort the run. The ability to hit the targets is wrapped up in how the unit is doing in terms of readiness/morale and also the avionics of the aircraft.

Good stuff!

[jenrick]

The actual missile in most SAM's systems does not have an IFF interrogator, usually it's just the launching system. Also IFF in wartime is hit or miss, particularly in a truly contested sky no positive friendly signal means a missile is launch. There are a whole bunch of reasons why an IFF interrogation might fail too. To safe guard against this, there are usually safe corridors established through out the day that aircraft get a bit more leeway to fly through, and occasionally if we're talking joint operations, are true no shoot corridors as there may be IFF interoperability concerns.

The Soviets were much more strict in terms of free-fire and no-fire corridors. The air defenses in a no-fire corridor were quite literally turned off. This did two things: it kept the AD assets from being targeted by NATO, and it prevented anyone from getting a case of the stupids. On the flip side the rest of the front was a free-fire zone. It didn't matter what your transponder said you were getting engaged. The Soviet centralized flight control system made this work fairly well, as the pilots flew where they were told, how they were told.

-Jenrick