JCM3000
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ORIGINAL: Gunnn
4. What's the best way to assign airplanes to escort other airplanes, such as fighters escorting an AEW? Or to get anything to follow anything else? I haven't toyed around much with grouping yet, but it often tells me what I'm not allowed to group stuff so I've kind of ignored it. Can you group a fighter flight (or individual fighter) with an AEW perhaps and then have them move as one?
I must caveat by saying that I'm relatively new to COMANO as well, but I thought I might add my 2 cents and expand on the responses to this a bit.
For AEW Aircraft, since they are generally just running in a box or racetrack flight path at a relatively fixed location, it's usually pretty simple. I just set up a CAP Patrol in close proximity to the AEW's area along the expected threat axis, with 1/3 rule and be done with it. The CAP should automatically engage any hostiles that approach the area.
On the other hand, I've found that the best strategy to protect/escort your strike aircraft can vary from scenario to scenario depending on your mission goals and the expected opposition.
1) The Escort function in the Mission Planner:
I've found that the built in COMANO Escort function has some disadvantages, but also some clear uses, depending on the scenario.
The disadvantage of using this function is that unless they spot an enemy and decide to leave the strikers and engage other aircraft, your escorts will fly the exact same route and altitude as the strike aircraft. This means they'll go low level with the strike aircraft, putting them at a disadvantage if attacked by fighters coming in at a higher altitude. Also, the fighters may need to have their radars on to adequately defend your group, which would also give away the location of your strike aircraft. I find that using this methodology is best suited for situations where you are striking a target with stand-off weapons and stealth isn't the primary goal, as the goal is just to get your attack aircraft to a particular point, launch everything and go home. Examples are heavy bomber raids with cruise missiles, or long-range anti-ship missiles, etc.
In these cases you can just assign your fighters to the mission, then select them as "escorts" and then define the mission doctrine for them. There is a separate mission doctrine for the main strike aircraft and for the escorts within the same mission plan. For the escorts you'll likely allow them to ignore waypoints when attacking, whereas for the strike aircraft you might not. You might also want to set different EMCON and different WRA settings for the escorts as well.
2) The "Bait and Sneak" approach:
This approach is predicated on using your fighter escorts as "bait" to draw out enemy fighters and SAMs to allow your strike aircraft to sneak in at low altitude from an off-axis direction and hit their targets. You'll need to set up two separate missions for this.
I'll usually create a CAP mission right at the edge of, or just inside the enemy's longest SAM range. At this extreme range it's low probability that enemy SAMs will actually be able to down your fighters. Just be careful of doctrine settings, or use a prosecution zone to prevent your fighters from straying too far into the enemy SAM envelope. The goal here is to attract the attention of enemy fighters and get them all to come to you, so having your fighter's radars on, and ECM if they have it, is a no-brainer.
Then create your strike mission to come in from 90 degree off-axis at tree-hugging altitude so that it's very unlikely that enemy fighters coming out to engage your CAP will see them, and the ground clutter will minimize the chance of the high altitude fighters picking your strikers up. Besides, if you design this right, the radars on the enemy fighters should be pointing in the wrong direction anyway.
However, in case your strike is spotted, and enemy aircraft begin heading in that direction, be prepared to break off some of you fighters to chase. I usually reserve two fighters with long range AAM, set those fighters WRA to only allow manual targeting with their long range AAM (but allow them to engage as they see fit with their other weapons and allow all of my other fighters to engage using all their weapons as well), that way no matter what happens in the air to air engagement, I always have a few long range AAMs available in reserve in case I need to send those two fighters off to chase down enemy aircraft that vector towards my strikers. Bear in mind you often times don't need to kill the enemy fighters, just get them to go "engaged defensive" long enough for your strikers to get on target. So the closer you can get your strikers to the target before detection, the better. Use the terrain.
This strategy works very well for SEAD strike missions and other scenarios where you expect the air space to be heavily contested.
3) The Air Superiority approach:
This involves just creating a second strike mission (Air Intercept) that essentially tracks the path of the strike group.
You'll create a Strike mission with Waypoints parallel to, or slightly ahead of, the actual land attack strike mission. To do so you'll create the Air intercept mission and assign it a target nearby or within the target group of the strike mission. That way waypoints will automatically be created that are hopefully similar to the ones created for your original strike mission. You can adjust as needed after the two missions are created. Set the appropriate doctrine, EMCON and WRA, launch the aircraft in the missions and adjust waypoints accordingly.
The disadvantage of this approach (compared to option 1) is that it requires more planning and management. The advantage is flexibility. You can separately control the escorting aircraft as they approach the target area, and you can have them maintain high altitude to engage enemy aircraft even if the primary strike mission has a hi-lo-hi profile. This also has the benefit of giving you better ability to defend against aircraft coming from a different direction than the target (for instance if the target is a naval base, or oil refinery and you're expecting enemy aircraft to come from an airbase 50nm away in some other direction). You can set your waypoints of the escorts so the they are along the threat axis in between your primary strike aircraft and the direction of the expected airborne threat. This also has the advantage (over option 2) of keeping your escorts in closer proximity to the actual strike aircraft. The disadvantage of course is it's more likely your strike aircraft will be detected as enemy aircraft coming to investigate/intercept will be more likely to be able to see your strike aircraft flying below and/or in close proximity to your escorts.
4) A note about OECM Jamming aircraft
It's often useful, if you have them available, to send one or two jamming aircraft with your main strike force assigned as "escorts". You can set the doctrine so that their OECM activates at the Initial Point waypoint. by having them flying with the strike aircraft it makes their jamming more effective as they are in close proximity to the strikers. This has the benefit of making it harder for any SAMs to target your strike aircraft, as well as harder for them to target the weapons that your strike aircraft launch. The advantage of having your OECM with the strikers as opposed to in a standoff position is the increased effectiveness of OECM based on a) proximity, and b) directionality (jamming is often more effective when the jamming signals are coming from along the same axis to the enemy radar as the aircraft it's trying to protect/obscure). The disadvantage of this approach of course, is that your jamming aircraft are very vulnerable high value aircraft, so you'll have to weigh the risk vs. the reward of stand-off jamming vs. having the jammers "escort" your strikers.
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