IFF AZ/EL and donor aircraft question

[Johnny Johnny Johnny]

Hello

So I am revisiting some aspects of the F18 teaching a newcomer to DCS, but one thing that I either completely forgot or it has changed since I last was learning it. 

So my question is, when you have AZ/EL running in auto and you have donor aircrafts,  like an awacs or another f18 for example, shouldn't the state of bogeys automatically be switched to bandit?  I am fairly sure that was how it used to be, but now as I am doing my testing it only comes up as bandit if I do SCS right,then it changes to bandit instantly. 

Friendlies seems to be idenfied just fine, tried it with a AWACS and a AI f18, same result , was looking in the manual but didn't find any hints of what I was doing wrong, so I decided to ask here instead

Thanks in advance

Forgot to mention I am on open beta, latest version

Edited October 22, 2021 by Johnny Johnny Johnny

[Johnny Johnny Johnny]

Did further testing, now the donor aircraft (Awacs) marks them as bandits on datalink from start, but only one in each group, have 2 group 2 ship and only one of them gets IFF. Is this intended?  I can also see that the auto IFF keeps doing Interrogate on them but 2nd plane in each group does not get IFF , unless I manually target the plane and do SCS right.
 

So not sure if this is just me doing things wrong or is there something wrong?

 

 

Edited October 22, 2021 by Johnny Johnny Johnny

[Harker]

First of all, for a hostile aircraft to be marked as hostile (red HAFU), it needs to be contributed to by two different sources. Either IFF and Datalink or IFF and NCTR (with STT).

IFF alone is not enough, IFF only tells you that someone is not friendly (no IFF reply), not that they're necessarily hostile.

What likely happens in your picture is that the AWACS only sees the two aircraft as one and thus marks only one aircraft as hostile on its end. So, you're closer, your radar picks up all 4 aircraft, you IFF all of them, but you only have two different sources for the two flight leads (marked Hostile) and only one source (your own IFF) for the wingmen, so they're marked as Ambiguous (notice that the top of the yellow HAFU is thick, which means Ambiguous, instead of being thin, which means Unknown).

[Johnny Johnny Johnny]

Thank you, makes a lot of sense.  I had 1 awacs and 1 AI f18 flying behind the enemy planes , so I would assume me trying to IFF + the AI F18 from behind should be enough to identify them as bandit regardless of awacs?  The F18 trailing them should see the same thing I see but from behind, even though I cannot be sure since it is AI.

 

 

[Harker]

Thank you, makes a lot of sense.  I had 1 awacs and 1 AI f18 flying behind the enemy planes , so I would assume me trying to IFF + the AI F18 from behind should be enough to identify them as bandit regardless of awacs?  The F18 trailing them should see the same thing I see but from behind, even though I cannot be sure since it is AI.
 
 

The Ambiguous targets are only seen by you, as indicated by the lack of a datalink contribution part (bottom part) in their HAFU.

So no, the other F-18 is not seeing them. Could be because it's behind them and the detection range is decreased, since they're flying away from him. Switch him to front, next to you and see if something changes. You can also try swapping him for an F-15C, since the AI also contributes to Link 16 IIRC. You'll be able to tell if another aircraft is an F/F contributor by the presence of the dot on its PPLI circle periphery.

Or you can bring the AWACS closer and see if it helps.

[Johnny Johnny Johnny]

1 hour ago, Harker said:

The Ambiguous targets are only seen by you, as indicated by the lack of a datalink contribution part (bottom part) in their HAFU.

So no, the other F-18 is not seeing them. Could be because it's behind them and the detection range is decreased, since they're flying away from him. Switch him to front, next to you and see if something changes. You can also try swapping him for an F-15C, since the AI also contributes to Link 16 IIRC. You'll be able to tell if another aircraft is an F/F contributor by the presence of the dot on its PPLI circle periphery.

Or you can bring the AWACS closer and see if it helps.
 

Switching to the front made it better, only 1 plane was not marked as bandit now , so definitely improvement. Then everything is what it should be i'd say  Thank you so much for your information and help

[Harker]

Switching to the front made it better, only 1 plane was not marked as bandit now , so definitely improvement. Then everything is what it should be i'd say  Thank you so much for your information and help

No problem, happy to help!

[rooster328]

This helps me out as well to figure things out.  Thank you