IRL Formation Flying and Combat

[Horns]

I'm curious about what happens when a flight in formation enters combat. Do they hold the formation they are in on arrival, do they transition to a different formation before/during combat or does each pilot prosecute the situation as they see fit (while obeying orders) and rejoin after?

 

Apologies, this must be a basic question, but I haven't been able to find an answer to this anywhere.

 

Thanks for reading.

[IvanK]

In most cases Doctrine and game plans will define what happens as will pre planned circumstance based "Initial moves"

[Horns]

In most cases Doctrine and game plans will define what happens as will pre planned circumstance based "Initial moves"

 

Ah ok cool, that makes sense, thanks

Edited August 25, 2018 by Horns
Deleted erroneous added question marks

[Svend_Dellepude]

Just NEVER LEAVE YOUR WINGMAN!! :D

[RShackleford]

The formations used IRL are pretty different from DCS, mainly due to graphics and resolution (fighters are tiny on your screen, hard to keep track.) Tactical line abreast is the standard for air to air, with >1 mile separation between fighters. With datalink, that formation spread goes beyond 3 miles apart. For 4th gen, mutual support is always a big item so you want to be close enough to back up your wingman, which means maintaining 3/9 line and being close enough to delouse your wingman if needed. For BVR the wingman is supposed to be in position near the flight lead. In BVR to WVR transition, tactics and formation changes so you need situational awareness on which fighter is friendly and which is enemy because beyond a mile or so all two engine jets look about the same to the Mk1 eyeball.

 

I hope that once F-18 goes full up with link16 that we can stop this welded wingman mentality. Most fights I have in DCS I end up just looking at flight lead the 90% of the time rather than crosschecking between formation position and radar with spacing that allows it for a good 50/50%. Can't beat the actual real life looking over to your flight lead to see where they are because it's just not possible until full super high res VR is there, but sensor formations (via link16) are definitely possible when it is implemented.

[falcon_120]

DCS tactical line abreast formation is pretty close to RL. The defaul is around 1mn to 1.5 and if you tell your flight to open up formations the separation will be close to 3mn. No problem spotting your wingmen in VR from my side.

 

How people behave in MP gameplay is a totally different matter.

[Horns]

Just NEVER LEAVE YOUR WINGMAN!! :D

 

Haha, this is actually one of the things I was worried about, I'm completely learning from this and other games I've exclusively played single player, so I didn't want to give multiplayer a go and destroy someone's k/d ratio because I didn't stick where I should have been.

 

The formations used IRL are pretty different from DCS, mainly due to graphics and resolution (fighters are tiny on your screen, hard to keep track.) Tactical line abreast is the standard for air to air, with >1 mile separation between fighters. With datalink, that formation spread goes beyond 3 miles apart. For 4th gen, mutual support is always a big item so you want to be close enough to back up your wingman, which means maintaining 3/9 line and being close enough to delouse your wingman if needed. For BVR the wingman is supposed to be in position near the flight lead. In BVR to WVR transition, tactics and formation changes so you need situational awareness on which fighter is friendly and which is enemy because beyond a mile or so all two engine jets look about the same to the Mk1 eyeball.

 

I hope that once F-18 goes full up with link16 that we can stop this welded wingman mentality. Most fights I have in DCS I end up just looking at flight lead the 90% of the time rather than crosschecking between formation position and radar with spacing that allows it for a good 50/50%. Can't beat the actual real life looking over to your flight lead to see where they are because it's just not possible until full super high res VR is there, but sensor formations (via link16) are definitely possible when it is implemented.

 

Ok, this gives me an idea of the basic form and function. Primary is keeping eyes on lead and knowing where the rest of the flight is during BVR/WVR transition while being spread enough to be monitoring different pieces of sky, and datalink allows greater spread due to better SA. Awesome, cheers

 

DCS tactical line abreast formation is pretty close to RL. The defaul is around 1mn to 1.5 and if you tell your flight to open up formations the separation will be close to 3mn. No problem spotting your wingmen in VR from my side.

 

How people behave in MP gameplay is a totally different matter.

 

Understood, much appreciated. What I'm getting here is that line abreast is the standard formation, and I guess spread would be 1 - 3 nm.

 

So for single player I can go with line abreast with spread of 1 nm so I can see everything I need to, and experiment with greater spacing if effective.

 

Multiplayer I guess I'd be safest presuming line @1 nm, check the spacing between the others and let the lead open up the formation if he wants to. Many thanks :)

[plaiskool]

So there is two main phases in military flight.

 

 

The Admin and Tactical.

 

 

Admin is all the flow that goes with takeOff, joinup, wayin wayout joinup, landing. The "non tactical" if you prefere.

 

 

 

Usually for the "Admin" the Leader will chose proper formation in accordance with the mission, weather and also training.

If there is bad visibility it can be close formation take off, go over the cloud layer as a close formation then spread.

 

Or take of 30" individual for or radar trail, then when over the layer and visual, you can go Close formation or spread etc.

Then for transit you can stay spread or take a more "tactical" formation like what we call "battle"(tactical line abreast indeed) (1.5Nm 3/9 oclock line) so we can work radar and watch each other 6 ocklock, and harder for ennemy to spot both aicraft.

 

 

 

Keep in mind that close formation is more to expedite admin flow like take off and recovery or cross layer clouds.

Close formation is pointless in tactical (excepte resolution cell formation or other pirates techniques) because you can't manouver, the wingy is focued into keeping close formation and not looking at sky, radar, leader 6oclock etc.

 

Then comes the Tacadmin for "tactical" phases (offset trail, azimuth, range, card, box, champain, vic, leading edge etc etc)

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure that you can understand that it will be way more difficult to kill two bandits in 10Nm azimuth, 10Nm range, 10kFt alt separation than 2 bandits in close formation.