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Is there a way for ships to provide radar support for planes without radar, i.e. AV8B


lascaris

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Ships like the Tarawa carry long range 3D air search radars. Is there a way for them to give bogey calls, like an AWACS? I'm thinking of situations like an AV-8B off the Tarawa where there is not, realistically, an AWACS available but the ships radars should be able to give direction to a Harrier as to directions to intercept.

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Sorry, I don't know the answer to the question that you've raised, but it's an interesting one that I've not been able to test as yet.

Some additional thoughts/ideas on the subject:

 -  Apparently, just after the Falklands war, the Royal Navy used a specific variant of the Sea King helicopter that sounds like it had some simplistic level of AWACs capability.  Here's a link: https://www.seaforces.org/marint/Royal-Navy/AIRCRAFT/Sea-King-RN.htm

 - I did think that members of the SAS were inserted onto the western Falklands islands to act as visual aircraft spotters.  Again, haven't seen a lot of real detail, so I've no idea how many, when, or even if that's true

 - My assumption is that if you setup "fog of war" as a setting for the mission, that you'd have info on the F10 map.  Haven't tested that. 

- Another idea is to use a trigger zone around say an aircraft spotter to look for. and callout enemy aircraft that come into a visible zone.  You could even include an insertion mission into a campaign...


Edited by Mr_sukebe

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On 6/11/2022 at 5:26 AM, lascaris said:

Ships like the Tarawa carry long range 3D air search radars. Is there a way for them to give bogey calls, like an AWACS? I'm thinking of situations like an AV-8B off the Tarawa where there is not, realistically, an AWACS available but the ships radars should be able to give direction to a Harrier as to directions to intercept.

I don't know why, but no Ship in DCS has ["sensors"] in its attributes (while obviously they have and can use them in game...). No way to use Ship with getDetectedTargets function (except for visual detection).

But, out of usual awacs aircraft, you can use any unit that has a ["sensors"] - radar to do that. (Plane, EWR, Helo...)

In attached example a SH-60B, following the Tarawa and that has ["sensors"] (AN/APS-142 - radar), is used as awacs. Select a client on Tarawa (Apache or Harrier) and ask with F10 radio item for picture. (DCS-miscScripts/SH-60B.lua at master · mrSkortch/DCS-miscScripts · GitHub)

To use the script in your own mission, use a mission start trigger, with do script files as actions, loading mist and the scripted awacs script like in my example (you can extract both lua scripts from example using 7zip). Then give a unit - that has radar sensor as attribute ! - the unit name/pilot name : Awacs. Any Player or Client of same coalition in mission will get a radio item to ask for picture to Awacs unit, that will send specific message (BRA) to asking unit.

Relative to Awacs unit sensor capabilities, message can (or can't) define target type, range, altitude. In all cases it will define bearing. (I've cheated for the case of Helo Awacs, allowing for range-altitude to be known, because AN/APS-142 seems unable to get these datas). Also, for example, EWR can detect helos while helo awacs can't (can only detect planes).

Edit : updated script in example.

 

 

test-Tarawa-Awacs.miz


Edited by toutenglisse
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6 hours ago, lascaris said:

Thank you very much toutenglisse! That works perfectly. Kind of fun playing around with code a bit which is something I haven't done in the last 10 years.

Just a note, it works OK if you use any ship as awacs, but Tarawa seems to have an issue with very low radar range detection.

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Cool script.  A couple of questions:

 - you mention being able to set a ship as Awacs, is that as simple as changing the ship name to Awacs?

 - only one asset in game can be given the name Awacs.  It would be really cool to be able to get a picture from multiple sources, eg several ships and helicopters.  Is there an easy way to do that?

System: 9700, 64GB DDR4, 2070S, NVME2, Rift S, Jetseat, Thrustmaster F18 grip, VPC T50 stick base and throttle, CH Throttle, MFG crosswinds, custom button box, Logitech G502 and Marble mouse.

Server: i5 2500@3.9Ghz, 1080, 24GB DDR3, SSD.

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2 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Cool script.  A couple of questions:

 - you mention being able to set a ship as Awacs, is that as simple as changing the ship name to Awacs?

 - only one asset in game can be given the name Awacs.  It would be really cool to be able to get a picture from multiple sources, eg several ships and helicopters.  Is there an easy way to do that?

Thanks. Attached here is updated script (also updated example in previous post).

Now Unit/Pilot name just need to include 'Awacs'. Make as many as you want. I made the needed changes (sub menu with list of Awacs - if more than 10 I will need to add 2nd page sub menu etc...) and I added a function (UpdateAwacs()) in case you spawn new Awacs purposed units. Stand alone, won't interract with other custom radio items. EDIT : except of course if I named my functions with names existing in other scripts...

I removed "cheat" for Helo radar.

 

test-scripted-Awacs-v2.lua


Edited by toutenglisse
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17 minutes ago, toutenglisse said:

Thanks. Attached here is updated script (also updated example in previous post).

Now Unit/Pilot name just need to include 'Awacs'. Make as many as you want. I made the needed changes (sub menu with list of Awacs - if more than 10 I will need to add 2nd page sub menu etc...) and I added a function (UpdateAwacs()) in case you spawn new Awacs purposed units. Stand alone, won't interract with other custom radio items. I removed "cheat" for Helo radar.

test-scripted-Awacs-v2.lua 4.24 kB · 0 downloads

Utterly fabulous.  Does that mean that it'll work for multiple ships aswell as aircraft?

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4 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Utterly fabulous.  Does that mean that it'll work for multiple ships aswell as aircraft?

Yes any unit, whatever the type, that you include 'Awacs' as part of the unit/pilot name. Be sure that it has a radar (script checks for radar detection only, and I didn't put a check for Awacs unit having a radar). It is supposed to work with multiplayers of both blue and red side (everyone gets menu with own side Awacs).

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