Flight Outlaw 47 is part of a four flight SEAD mission. They have just launched off the carrier and are approx 350NM from nearest emmitting targets. I notice they are for some strange reason sitting at 200ft altitute and set to engaged offensive.
Clearly that's nuts. They are not even anywhere near their patrol zone (marked in red) or their prosecution area. I check the Speed and Mission parameters box and whatever I set this to. They ignore - Dimitris, this is another example of the AI doing stuff the player seemingly has no control over despite it being tactically illogical.
Your flights are engaged offensive because the Prosecution Area is full of radar emitters. There is no requirement in SEAD Patrol missions that radars must be ground-based to be targeted.
The "Attack Dist." seems to logically conflict with the Prosecution Area concept; I'm not sure how that gets resolved. I did notice that if you set "Attack Dist." to 0 (unspecified) AND set "Attack Terrain Following" all of the mission's flights will climb to 12000 ft. The terrain following dependence seems like a bug; the other stuff might be WAD, but I'm not sure what "Attack Dist." is supposed to do. This all might have to do with resolving whether to fly to mission parameters or loadout parameters, as the HARM loadout prescribes a SL attack while the mission prescribes a 12000 ft attack. You see both behaviors under various circumstances.
Finally, watch the doctrine setting for follow course when attacking...
The boogabooga doctrine for CMO: Any intentional human intervention needs to be able to completely and reliably over-ride anything that the AI is doing at any time.
