After the very-near friendly fire yesterday, I figured I should update this with another lesson on Preventing Party Disunity:
How to call in Close Air Support such that you don't schwack the wrong guys.
First off, for the most detailed look into the matter that's still relevant to ArmA, I can do no better than to point you to the "Close Air Support" section of
Dslyecxi's TTP2. It groans a bit under some burdensome brevity terms that aren't really needed in a typical FA operation, but it's extremely comprehensive.
To summarize the salient points though:
When calling in CAS, be ready to tell your pilot the following information at the bare minimum:
- What's the target?
- Where are friendly forces?
- What landmarks will guide the pilot away from friendlies and onto the target? (Remember, these need to be clearly visible from the air!)
- What's the terrain around the target?
- Are there anti-air defenses around the area?
All this information is important to how the pilot performs their attack run. Using this information alone, the pilot could feasibly come up with an attack run that suits everything, and in a high-intensity situation where you've got to shoot someone rather than talk, then that's exactly what they should do. If, however, you have the time to yak a little more, you, the guy calling in air support, can help your pilot immensely.
A good Forward Air Controller gives their pilot a complete tasking, simplifying the pilot's task such that all they have to do is follow the FAC's instructions and await a BDA from the ground. An example would be:
"Hey Special_Soup, I got a target marked CAS1 for you. There's an enemy MMG team atop the hill due west of Team 1's current position. Approach down the valley from the south and egress northeast to orbit. You'll have friendlies 600m to your left and enemies to your right, but no effective anti-air to worry about. Look for tracers heading right to left across your nose from the top of that hill. Use cannon and save your rockets for a bigger target."
The South-to-North attack run brings Special Soup's L-39 in on a slashing run such that he's not shooting towards or over friendlies at any point - this is important, because cannon rounds ricochet and rockets can drop short quite easily - both of which are bad when an over/under of 1-degree might mean hitting friendlies. I picked South-to-North because this way he can see any potential AA / SAMs as they're fired at him upon approach. An egress of Northeast lets him loop behind friendly lines in relatively safe territory, though it comes at the cost of exposing his tail to any enemy MANPADs during egress. Tracer fire from the enemy MMG team is visible from the air, and combined with a good idea of where friendly and enemy forces are, serve as a good indicator of "what to hit". As to selecting weapons, an MMG team is soft - no need for rockets when one on-target 10-round-burst of 23mm will do the trick.
Thank you if you've been diligent enough to read this far! Hopefully this will lead to more effective fireworks without friendlies on the wrong end of them!
~ Ferrard
: What's wrong with this picture?
: I see dead people.
: What am I about to do wrong here?
