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Planning a "fire and forget" strike mission

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:26 pm
by DracheTek
I would like to plan such type of strike mission that aircraft employ fixed amount of munition to target and disengage (drop said target) immediately. It seems that strike mission settings alone does not allow such type of mission. Any good ideas?

RE: Planning a "fire and forget" strike mission

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 10:18 pm
by DWReese
Either I'm not sure what you are saying, or you aren't aware of the game's capabilities.

For example, I can easily assign a plane carrying four bombs to hit four different structures with one bomb each. Or, I could single out just two targets and have it hit each of those with two bombs. Or, I could have the plane drop all four on just one target. You do this through WRA, and you can tell it how many weapons to use and what targets to hit.

Now, as I said, if you are talking about something else, then I do extend my apologies for misinterpreting your message.

Doug

RE: Planning a "fire and forget" strike mission

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 10:35 pm
by KungPao
You can make this happen in Mission's doctrine setting.
On upper right corner there is an option called Weapon state, pre-planned.
"Shotgun: one engagement with BVR or stand-off weapon, disengage immediately" is the one you are looking for.

RE: Planning a "fire and forget" strike mission

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:45 am
by cmanouser1
I like the following settings in the doctrine window for the strike if the environment is dangerous (e.g. Downtown in Damascus mission in the Shifting Sands pack).

1) Weapon state, pre-planned -> Shotgun, One engagement with WVR or Strike weapons. Disengage Immediately

2) A/G Strafing (gun) -> No
You don't want your strikers to turn around and keep shooting at the target with machine guns!

3) Automatic Evasion -> No
The logic for this one is that automatic evasion on a strike will often start a negative snowball, the strikers will forego their objective to avoid the incoming menace, exposing themselves even more and losing their momentum. Better to continue at high speed on their nice strike curve and flee to base then.
EDIT: note you can specify doctrine for each strike waypoint by right-clicking on a waypoint, so you can disable evasion only for the final legs!

Regarding the amount of ammunition, it can be defined in the WRA window of the doctrine for the mission.




RE: Planning a "fire and forget" strike mission

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:48 am
by DracheTek
Just tested with "Weapon State Pre Planned" set to "Shotgun One Engagement......" and "Weapon State RTB" to "Aircraft leave flight and RTB", but the outcome does not meet my intention.

Why I am coming up with this question:

I noticed that anti-radiation missile can pinpoint the location of a radar station or a SAM site, which is true in DCS (HARM missile does come up with an aiming cue on HUD, which COULD be further pinpointed by targeting pod. Russian ARM missiles SHOULD have similar ability). So I came up with an idea, that is firing a pair of ARM missile and let them scout out ground based SAM site for my SSM missile group. To do this, I need to order my flight to fire two ARMs and leave the source of emission from then on.

HOWEVER, if I try this with a STRIKE mission, here is what happens. The nature of STRIKE mission is that assigned units will keep engaging target until target is wiped out(for ARM that is "no more emission detected"), and even if one single aircraft reaches pre-planned weapon state, other aircrafts will carry on with strike and keep beating the SAM site that will soon be eliminated by tactical missile in my plan.

Currently the workaround that I came up is to write up a special action that lists target, and assign missiles quasi-manually using AttackContact function.

RE: Planning a "fire and forget" strike mission

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2020 1:20 pm
by cmanouser1
True; I tested the behavior you describe using an attack with slow cruise missile delivered from a plane, and it's indeed weird: the plane shoots the cruise missile at range (100nm+), then the missile flies towards the target. Because the target isn't destroyed AND the aircraft doesn't fit any weapon state trigger, it keeps flying towards the target, at a similar speed to the cruise missile; they reach target at roughly the same time, then because the target is destroyed the aircraft turns back [:-]

Seems like a weapon-state "fire one salvo then disengage" is what you're after