How do I insure that my target is not a friendly target.

[Pinefang]

Can someone tell me how I can insure that I am not shooting a friendly down? So few are on Teamspeak that you can't find out by talking to anyone and I know that the round dot on the radar is friendly but are the dashes all good targets? I don't want to commit fratricide for lack of knowledge.

[pr1malr8ge]

Dashes are FOE in DCS Regaurdless.. How ever in the real world it's not that simple..

 

Read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_incident

[SkyCap]

Depending on your situation there are several options available to you. The biggest factors we have are time and level of communication. As you have already said they are not on teamspeak but maybe we can raise them via the ingame chat function (If we can it's VERY important to use the team chat mode as any little scrap of information can help an intelligent hostile to improve their strategy).

 

So first of all we can coordinate ourselves with our team. We keep up situational awareness, knowing where our friendly aircraft are and where the enemy have been. This is extremely important when flying with others. Exchanging BRAAs and communicating what we are doing/going to is really the difference between winning and losing in many circumstances.

 

Next and probably best we have our radar. As you know our VSD will tell us that our target is a friend with a circular shape and an enemy with a horizontal rectangle. 99% of the time this is correct and I have never personally killed a friendly when firing on something that the radar has told me is a hostile (we must be careful locking up a target if it's a target rich environment, we may accidentally lock up a friendly aircraft). A few people in my division (TAW) have told me that if you fly in the correct formation you can trick the SU-27 into thinking you're a friendly (Not seen it myself though).

 

Once we have a lock we will see the target reticule on our HUD. This is a circle that is placed over the object we are tracking/locking. If the circle is clear, then we are ok to fire and kill what we have locked (ignoring any ROE that may prohibit this). If there is however a cross going through the circle this means that we are locked onto an aircraft with a friendly IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) signal and we must NOT press the weapon release button (Note that in the DCS F15-C there is no launch inhibit function, so even if we are locking a friend up we will be able to fire a missile at them).

 

A big problem and a place where I have seen a number of people make mistakes resulting in blue on blue attacks is when we are using the AIM9 heat seeking missiles. As these have no IFF system built in we are not told if we are locking up a friendly or not. What we need to do when using these is employ our situational awareness and if at all possible communicate. We can monitor the other aircrafts behaviour to help us tell if they might be a threat, for example if they are turning into us, locking us up and deploying countermeasures we can be quite sure that their intention is not to our benefit. If we are in a position where we have time and are quick enough we could lock them up in say VSS or boresight mode to rapidly find out their IFF status, however this will alert them to your presence and if the pilot is skilled enough they might be able to react fast enough to escape/kill you.

 

What if our target is jamming though? Here again we need to communicate. There is a system that a lot of pilots know that we can use to find out if a jammer is friendly. Firstly we lock onto the jammer, then we say in teamspeak or in-game chat "Raygun", then if a friendly notices that they have been locked up at the same time you declared Raygun they have a good idea that this is you locking them up and they will respond saying "Buddy" (They can further improve the reliability of this by checking their RWR spikes). This is not ideal though when there are hostile aircraft scanning the same area, as the lock warning might come from them, which would result in you identifying a hostile as a friendly (Which is very bad). We also have the problem with pilots who are not chatting, don't know the procedure or can't speak English because they will not respond to the call, meaning that this method is not always going to tell you if the jammer is a friend or not.

 

Finally we have our friendly eye in the sky, AWACS. We can request target information from them to cross reference with radar returns we have found. Alternavitly, if we do have at least 1 person who we can communicate with they can act as an impromptu AWACS. They can fly high and call out targets whilst you manoeuvre to engage them (This does require a level of coordination not suited to text based chat though).

 

You have to remember while employing these techniques what information you might be giving away to the potential hostile. Such as when you put your radar on they can see that you have and know a general direction. Or if you are constantly locking up a jammer from 80 miles away, this would tell an experienced enemy what kind of pilot you are and allow them to change their technique to fight you accordingly. The more communication you can establish with your team mates that higher your chance of survival.

 

I hope this is clear. If you or anyone else wants to fly with me sometime so I can demonstrate something specific I would be glad to, just drop me a PM.

[QuiGon]

I hope we will get a more realistic IFF environment someday, where we can make use of the IFF-transponders already implemented (but not functional) in e.g. the A-10C and UH-1 and can use different IFF-modes and codes and correctly interrogate IFF signals of unkown contacts.

 

I'm not quite sure how this is handled in the MiG-21 though. You have to push a button to check if a radar target is friendly or not, but I don't know how this is implemented? Is it just "asking the game" for the status of the target (I guess that's how it works with everything that is not a MiG-21 itself) or is it really interrogating the IFF-transponder (in case the target is also a MiG-21)? The latter would mean you could change your IFF-code to fool the enemy (and also friends).

[SkyCap]

I don't think it's simulated fully. There is no way to adjust your IFF in the Mig21 it is as simple as pressing a button to show if they are friend or foe on the radar for a few seconds.

 

It is difficult for the developers to program because these systems are top secret.

[QuiGon]

I don't think it's simulated fully. There is no way to adjust your IFF in the Mig21 it is as simple as pressing a button to show if they are friend or foe on the radar for a few seconds.

 

It is difficult for the developers to program because these systems are top secret.

 

Oh, there is! It's on the right wall panel, just below the flight recorder switch. The big brown thing, where you can select a channel, is actually the IFF channel selector. But I don't know if it's working.

[SkyCap]

Oh, there is! It's on the right wall panel, just below the flight recorder switch. The big brown thing, where you can select a channel, is actually the IFF channel selector. But I don't know if it's working.

 

I think that is just for radio communication?

[QuiGon]

I think that is just for radio communication?

 

Nope, the radio channel selector is the orange cross further to the front of the cockpit, also on the right wall panel.

[SkyCap]

Nope, the radio channel selector is the orange cross further to the front of the cockpit, also on the right wall panel.

 

Ah, checked the manual I see what you mean now. I don't see anything that suggests its operational. In fact its's barely mentioned at all in the manual. So I would presume it's more like the F15 IFF where its always correct.

 

Are you even able to adjust it in game?

[QuiGon]

It's working so far, that you can actually select channels, but I don't know if that has any effect. Once in a MiG-21 multiplayer event someone said we should make sure we are all on the same IFF channel, so I thought it's implemented, but I've never tested it. I might check the MiG-21 forums for that since it's slightly off topic here.

 

Anyways, like I said, I hope the IFF environment becomes more realistic someday for ALL aircraft (except FC3 maybe). I'm aware, that the exact workings are classified, but at least some rudimentary function should be possible. E.g. beeing on the same IFF channel and having the IFF-transponder activated or something like that. It would still be a huge improvement to what we have now.

[blkspade]

Something I read somewhere indicated, on modern US systems at least, is that the IFF system is encrypted with changing keys. So there would never be a situation where you could fool the enemy. You might succeed in fooling friendlies though, which wouldn't do you any favors.

 

I hope we will get a more realistic IFF environment someday, where we can make use of the IFF-transponders already implemented (but not functional) in e.g. the A-10C and UH-1 and can use different IFF-modes and codes and correctly interrogate IFF signals of unkown contacts.

 

I'm not quite sure how this is handled in the MiG-21 though. You have to push a button to check if a radar target is friendly or not, but I don't know how this is implemented? Is it just "asking the game" for the status of the target (I guess that's how it works with everything that is not a MiG-21 itself) or is it really interrogating the IFF-transponder (in case the target is also a MiG-21)? The latter would mean you could change your IFF-code to fool the enemy (and also friends).

[Frostie]

A few people in my division (TAW) have told me that if you fly in the correct formation you can trick the SU-27 into thinking you're a friendly (Not seen it myself though).

 

Good one, i'm not going to say why that won't work, just let them carry on with it. :D

[pr1malr8ge]

Good one, i'm not going to say why that won't work, just let them carry on with it. :D

 

 

Only possible way I would think it might possibly work would be a tailing in stack trying to emulate the RU IFF on sceen. How ever Most likly it would only show up as one bar.