F-15 Re-engagement procedure best practice

[coolts]

Guys

I am having trouble in the FC2.0 F-15 campaign towards the end. This is my current BVR procedure. Please feel free to pull it apart as I am keen to learn better ways of doing things.

1. Take off and wait for wingmen to form up, head to assigned waypoint climbing to assigned altitude.

 

2. AWACS call bandit group bearing and range (assume a flight of 4 Flankers here vs 4 x F-15).

 

3. Acquire bandits on radar; put ECM off nose so I am not closing too fast.

 

4. Once AWACS calls bandits within 40mn, assign one wingman to engage my HOJ signal. Radar can’t differentiate HOJ strobes and always seems to lock onto the same one so I can usually get one wingman engaging here.

 

5. Once I hit ECM burn through, and following Vens strategy, (from his excellent AAR’s), I assign 2 more wingmen to targets and one to cover me. I will launch on at least two targets in TWS if I can just to give them something to think about whilst my wingmen go in.

 

6. Once I have launched, I crank to my radar gimbal limits to maintain lock but make his missile do more work, slowing down and losing altitude preparing to notch. Once my missiles have gone pitbull, I will notch the inevitable SARH missiles heading my way.

 

7. Once I have notched the SARH, at this point I usually hit the deck and run dumping flares and swivelling my head for IR’s following me, letting my team do some of the close in fighting as with labels off, I can’t see anything until it explodes!

 

8. I call AWACS and once the fight is about 10-15 mn behind me I do a high G turn at corner speed to re-engage. I have the AWACS general bearing to the bandit group but if I set my radar to 10 or 20mn, I have such a narrow vertical scan zone available that unless I guess the bandits altitude accurately and set my radar accordingly, I will probably miss them and bumble straight into their sights. If I switch to boresight scan, I can only find the bandits if they are within my tiny boresight cone and that rules out vertical scan as well.

I have tried using vertical scan and pulling my lift vector across the horizon but that rarely works and of course the AI knows exactly where I am, (or seems to). (In any case, bore-sight and vertical....thing.. are only for close in dogfighting really.)

 

If I run to 20-30mn and turn, I can get a better view, but by that point the initiative has been lost, my wingmen are dying and / or our escort duty has failed.

 

So my question is. How do YOU re-engage from 10-20 nm? You only have a few seconds to acquire and launch as you will be in the NEZ and living very dangerously!

 

Ps. the Ka-50 data link makes this sort of SA maintenance much easier!

Edited June 9, 2010 by coolts

[GGTharos]

Auto guns ...

[coolts]

Auto guns ...

 

Could you expand on that please? :book:

 

Assuming you mean, "AUTO GUNS (GUN) AACQ Mode", then this is exctly what i want to avoid in the F-15. With a load of AIM-120C's under my wing i don't want to be in a close dogfight.

 

I want to know the best way to get back to a decent launch range,(how far to go), and how best to re-aqquire. So far, using vertical scan and dragging along the horizon quickly, usually locks up a wingman or gets me shot down.

Edited June 9, 2010 by coolts

[GGTharos]

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. The one mode that scans and automatically locks anything within 10nm, and you to 30 deg off your nose horizontally and 10 vertically ;)

 

Unfortunately there's no real way to set up an intelligent air to air strategy with the AI. My suggestion is that you have them attack first, and trail them about 5-10nm, shortly after they begin launching engaging, order them to retreat, and you are in position to pick up their targets now on what is basically a second pass.

Edited June 9, 2010 by GGTharos