Combat Flight Briefing

Flight Sims
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Does anyone have a resource that describes a typical flight briefing for a combat air mission? My google-fu is failing me.

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Paging @klarsnow & @boomerang10

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Word has it that they draw a lot of erect symbols on the map and mark locations as “Your maternal family”. Although maybe I might be wrong :wink:

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I do recall a certain Arma 3 briefing that featured such…cough…annotations…

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Mind you this brief is tailored for the unwinged NFO types in training, but this gives you a general idea of flight briefs. The concepts are simplified in some cases for training and don’t always match up with actual tactical aircraft or weapons. Also, since it’s a training flight a lot of time is spent on some concepts that would otherwise be briefed as “standard.”

General flow will have you talk through mission planning factors and admin, such as objective, OOB, weather, kneeboard cards, etc. You’ll move on to tac-admin which covers admin related to the tactical portion of the flight, such as decks and blocks, and finally move on to the actual conduct for the flight. There’s a lot of information that can go into each portion but admin and tac admin will generally be pretty quick so as to spend most of the time on the actual conduct portion.

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ftfy

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I’ll see if I can transpose a simple bfm briefing guide, it will follow everything boomerang said and that video shows but with some Air Force peculiarities. In general now that I’m out of training, the admin and tac admin will be run through as quickly as possible or briefed standard so we can get to the execution part of the brief. Standard time for a brief is 65 minutes tops but once you are out of training it’s more normal for a thirty minute brief depending on the mission set. Bfm or cas is usually pretty quick, acm or any kinda bvr is also usually pretty quick. Highlighting a particular threat, tactic or game plan to meet the flight leads plan. If we are doing a surface attack or interdiction flight these will normally take up the entire time as the attacks and targets and sort and designation game plan are all briefed.

But as always… it depends

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I have some old Air Force docs on the topic. Will fwd when I get home.

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Popcorn… i am pretty sure i saw somewhere that you cant do a briefing without popcorn

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Some notes from the video @boomerang10 posted:

Review of the Mission:

  • Callsigns and roles;
  • Mission type;
  • Mission Implementation;
  • Fuel: Joker, Bingo and Load;

Tac Admin:

  • Bullseye: Tacan, etc;
  • OOB: Threats
  • OOB: Friendlies;
  • Engagement profiles: Callouts, etc;
  • EMCON: Radar settings/expectations for Wingmen;
  • Tacan settings;
  • Loadout;

Adversary Info:

  • Expected/known enemy activity, operations, restrictions;

Tac Conduct:

  • Exected initiation comms;
  • Engagement profiles;
  • Profile to return to mission;
  • Merge rules;
  • Comms rules;

Contingencies:

  • Engagement;
  • Comms;
  • Lost Contact;

Review mission

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I am wondering what briefing templates people use with their missions made for DCS. I am wanting to create better, straightforward, more realistic briefings (at least within the limits of the DCS briefing text boxes) for the missions I’m currently working on. I see Fridge’s summary of the video which actually is quite usable. I’m wondering if anyone has something else out there in another outline format?

What do you guys use in making your missions?

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just two lines:

blue, your role is to get shot at and die.

red, your task is to shoot blue for the glory of pizza!

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The DCS F-15C Red Flag campaign has a fairly concise and useful format. Not sure how authentic, so maybe @klarsnow and others might comment.

SAMPLE

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

  1. Become familiar with landmarks …
  2. Maintain air superiority east …
  3. Protect US and UK aircraft …
  4. Use the vul time to …
  5. Maintain CAP until …

Ford 3 flight is a two-ship F-15C flight …

While Ford flights provide CAP, other US …

MISSION DATA CARD:
Joker:
Bingo:

GROUND OPS:
Taxi: Standard

TAKEOFF:
Runway Lineup: Standard
Formation Takeoff: Standard

ENROUTE:
Ops checks: Radar, RWR, AIM-9 tone/cage/uncage
Formation: Line abreast
Fence: Master Arm ON, RWR ON, AAI SET, IFF codes set, A/A TCN
OFF, MSL BITs run, video tapes ON.

AIRSPACE:
Time: 1615Z - as required
Entry / Exit points: …
Bullseye: …

RECOVERY:
Route: Caliente …
Pattern & Landing: RWY 21R
Initial / ILS: None (21L ILS only)

TACTICAL OBJECTIVES
SCENARIO:
DCA Vul time: 20 minutes (from time of arrival on station)
ROE:
Hostile act
NCTR

ENVIRONMENT:
Sun: WestF-15C 16-2 RED FLAG CAMPAIGN 8
Clouds: Scattered cirrus, 30,000 MSL
Winds: 14/224 @ 1k’, 14/241 @ 26k’
Cons: >28k’

TACTICAL OVERVIEW
CAP SPECIFICS:
Range and heading off BE: 075/70
Legs: 15nm

ALTITUDE / AIRSPEED:
Altitude (MSL): 25k’ to 29k’
CAP airspeed: 420KIAS / .9M
Sweep ingress airspeed: 480KIAS / .95M
Sweep egress airspeed: 540KIAS+ / 1M+

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Ugh, punked again. I thought this was a new thread and saw Einstein’s reply above. “He’s back!?”

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I sure wish he would reconsider and come back. It must be about a year since his departure now?

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I have found some material regarding briefings which helps in putting together something in the DCS Brief box that resembles a good information format. I’ve always wished that when ED has the time (which they probably never will being so busy and getting busier) that they would make the F10 map more of an interactive tool that could be set up by the mission designer to show graphical data like front lines, Area of Operations borders, the routes of your flight plus those of allied support packages etc., the ability to show kill boxes etc. etc. Maybe some day.

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