SEAD/CAS AI flights do not launch ARM

[Jambock]

Since the last update, most SEAD/CAS AI aircraft do not launch ARM.

The F-4E only fires ARM against the P-15/19 (Flat Face).

For some reason, AI does not perform the attack or carry it out partially. Then, RTB. Eventually, some fly to a random location on map and crash.

AI SEAD CAS ARM.trk AI SEAD CAS ARM.miz

[Northstar98]

Not sure what's going on here, as I'm unable to reproduce in my own missions

However, there are a couple of things I'll mention:

1. I ran into issues using attack unit/group with ARMs a few updates back, it seems that if the radar is not able to be engaged immediately upon activation of the task (for instance, if it isn't illuminating you) the AI will drop it. It's better then to use the SEAD task or the search then engage tasks, as the AI will constantly evaluate these and won't drop the task unless it reaches a stop condition (which you have to define yourself) or until it runs out of waypoints. This can be somewhat inconsistent though - I've seen identical missions sometimes work and sometimes not when testing this today.
2. The EWRs you're trying to engage are 55G6s, these radars cannot be engaged by the HARM, as the HARM's minimum frequency is greater than the frequency they operate at (or put another way, their wavelength is above the maximum that can be received by the HARM). The limitation comes from the fact that, because the HARM's diameter is fairly small, the conical spiral antenna the HARM has isn't large enough to receive such long wavelengths.

I've attached some tracks below showing AI SEAD/DEAD aircraft launching ARMs (to get the mission file, simply make a copy and change the extension to .miz instead of .trk).

AGM-45A_S-125M_AttackGroup.trk AGM-45A_S-125M_SearchThenEngage.trk AGM-88_S-125M_AttackGroup.trk AGM-88_S-125M_SearchThenEngage.trk ALARM_S-125M_AttackGroup.trk ALARM_S-125M_SearchThenEngage.trk

[Jambock]

Thank you for your answer!

[Northstar98]

13 hours ago, Jambock said:

Thank you for your answer!

No problem

Just be wary that behaviour can be somewhat inconsistent mission to mission (even within the same mission) and sometimes a particular way of setting it up works no problem and sometimes it doesn't.

But keeping fairly simple set ups, grouping radars together and using one of the search then engage tasks seems to work the best.