F-22 Total Air War / Air Dominance Fighters

It’s been a while since I posted a new topic. Recently we flew 2 missions in the far best Digital Image Design (DID) game ever, that means in their magnum opus title, respectively F22 TAW 2.30 modification which contains full games: F-22 ADF + its extension Red Sea Operation (RSO), and F-22 TAW with their 10 original realtime dynamic campaign which unfortunately doesn’t support coop like a Falcon 4.0/AF/BMS.

Despite that a player can play coop all canned ADF missions and RSO missions which are still partly dynamic, not as in older games where everything is almost static or used the efficient tool TAWBC (Total Air War Battle Commander) where a player can make its owns mission as wish.

The group of virtual pilots who love old games are currently part of a Discord channel Air Dominance Project (ADP) and here are report AAR from two ADF missions which we flew with 2 and 3 teammates coop.

This game is still fantastic despite the old graphic presentation and other things that I wish to have there. The flying model is now of course outdated but still fun. Since 2017, I have been flying almost only the BMS coop campaigns so I’m capable compare.

The ADF first mission: Prelude
We finished the armed recon mission with 100% success on medium difficulty. Keeping the low-level flight (between 30-300 ft) with EMCON 1 was the key point here to pass waypoints 6/8 and to avoid being hit by SAMs or enemy CAP 2x Su-27 Flanker. We switched to Push 2 and chose the AIM-9X (capable fire at the EMCON 1) and always kept our eyes on Flankers if they closing or not. We saw on ours defend MFDs the range of powerful Flanker radar searching targets but because of emission control level 1 they were not capable found us (fortunately).
At waypoint 11 we were high altitude (32 000 ft) but despite that SAM (two SA-6) fired at least twice at Goblin and at least 3 times at me. Luckily we were defensive using maneuvering, chaff, and flares without being hit by SAMs. It was my mistake as a flight leader because I thought we were safe at 32,000 feet. We weren’t. Fortunately, we survived that incident without being hit.

Note: EMCON 1 = Emission Control level 1, which means: the radar is off, almost all active electronic systems are off, unable to fire Mavericks, HARMS, LGBs, or the most important AMRAAMs.

2 in positon

Keeping our attention (eyes) on Flankers (CAP role)

Made sure that we passed the right waypoints

SA-6 is firing at us, we are defending

On the route back

2 in position

Goblin Maverick moment. Yes, Ma’am because I was inverted.

Egyptian monuments

Finals

Mission completed

The engines are off, the canopy is opened

Debriefing report
No kills but it was not a goal of our mission. Remember: Armed reconnaissance mission.

The ADF second mission: Sudan Strike
That mission was much easier for us because no one threatened us when we flew over the target and there were 2 flights of Eurofighter Typhon, each with 4 planes in ESCORT and Wild Weasel (WW) role. Our STRIKE mission started almost 20 min., after flights (two EF, one F-22) which got the clearance to taxi and take off before us. Rush traffic on the big airfield like on the highway in peak hour. It looks like the Alpha Strike, 16 planes took off step by step.
Of course, we finally shot down a package of enemy MiG-21 and Su-27 as well as a transport flight close to the target because of the enemy airfield.
To use dumb bombs to hit targets in CCIP mode was a challenge for us, the most of the builds require to be hit more than 2 bombs to be finally destroyed.

Lead

3

Heavy traffic in the air

As well as on the ground, many planes taxiing. The first EF flight took off

Second EF flight took off

Third F 22 flight airborne

Lead, fourth flight (STRIKE) take off

Enemy Su-27s destroyed in air battle

Formation, 2 in position

The enemy package, EF flight ESCORT is doing its job, and it’s releasing way to the target area for our flight STRIKE

Lead IP, Running In

Flew over a city to identify targets

CCIP mode, 2 attacking

Cooling towers need to be hit more than twice.

Another ground attack

Check a situation around, all clear

EWR building and plate are hit and destroyed

The power station is hit and destroyed

Still with remains AG, later released (jettison store)

All targets destroyed

Amigo, it is the right time to go home

Rejoin formation

ILS HUD closing to landing

Formation landing

Taxiing

Debriefing

14 Likes

The ADF campaign mission: SAMs

The original mission is designed for 4 players: 2 as part of the SEAD (flight role CAS) flight and 2 as part of the CAP (flight role Sweep) flight.
This mission seems to be simple but the opposite is true. We had to fly this mission several times to find which SEAD tactic is the right to use here in the DID F-22 ADF/TAW game because I can fairly say there is a big difference between a SEAD mission in Falcon BMS and F-22 ADF/TAW because in BMS you can simply use stand-off weapons like JSOW and keep yourself safely outside of SAM circle but that is not valid tactic here.

There aren’t available JSOWs or something like that. In both cases, the problem is a bigger range of SAMs (SA-6 and SA-11) and they always start to track you when you are approaching them and always will start fire at you sooner than you are in the range of your weapons. EMCON 1 is not too useful here, because with external load (4x AGM-88) you are always visible for enemy radars, regardless of low or high altitude.

So after several fails we had to develop new tactics to use climbing to 15 - 25 000 ft and accelerate to high speed (MACH 1,3-1,5) to provide to SEAD flight energy for maneuvering, decrease time to close to be in range of weapons and max. our score to survive. High altitude in combination with high speed is key here because you can fire HARM before is in weapon range and HARM will very probably still hit the target because of energy.
Another point is a first SAM shoot which is critical to be not hit (in a better case your avionics are working relatively properly but always facing a fuel leak, in the worse case you are deceased), so have to maneuver hard (turn to left/right with changing altitude) and always use chaffs and flares.

So in this mission, even you can see me as a lead, it was Goblin who was lead and WinchesterDelta 1 was in CAP role with AI wingman. The WinchesterDelta1 high-speed tactics known from DCS World were the key point here but despite it, the wild weasel role is not an easy job because to avoid being hit by a first SAM shot is very difficult! We realized that the first fired SAM has a high probability of kill (Pk).

The mission is starting in the air. The navigation lights are turned off when Radio Frequency 2 is chosen.

Black hawks are already on the way but we have to clean targets in the air and ground

Two in formation

Lead IP, Running In

Goblin is a shooter, I will cover

HARM or Maverick can be fired in EMCON 1 mode

HARMS released, switching to AA role

MiG-21 was a hit and destroyed by AMRAAM

Situation check

On the way to landing

Final

Engine off, canopy open

Lead (Goblin) out of fuel is landing on the road

Successfully

CAP flight on the final

Taxi

Result

Well, so 2 of my HARMs hit buildings around instead of SAMs, so maybe they were placed close to buildings.

We need a more drill, still space for improvements. Thanks for flying guys!

ACMI analyse

CAP flight under pressure

HARMs on the way to targets, we both are maneuvering to avoid overfly target area

SA-6 is tracking Goblin

Unfortunately, Goblin got a hit

Goblin destroying another SAM (SA-6)

SA-6 firing to Rapier

Rapier is firing the rest of the HARMs and destroying two ZSU-23/4

6 Likes

ADF mission Close Hostiles

I’m so frustrated by that ADF campaign mission. Difficulty is still hard (and confidence is also high), and it’s so difficult to survive in air combat and protect Antonov 70. Despite tactics when we climbed to the altitude between 30000 ft to 50000+ ft, the enemies were not on our radar (EMCON 5, we tried all possible combinations of EMCON, speed, altitude, etc.) until they did not spawn in the air. There were in theory 3 flights that needed to be killed (each has 4 planes) but there were other (at least 1 additional, maybe 2!) flights spawned in the air if we were too fast and advancing over the sea to the enemy to protect our plane. Based on several ACMI analyses we realized that enemy flights are always tracking the leader (me) and open fire against a leader. So as you can see in the screenshot above we also split to focus on a left group (me) and a right group (winchesterdelta1) to save as many as possible AIM 120R/C to other incoming waves. The hardest for me was doing the right defense maneuver in the first fire because a key point here is to survive the first shoot, and then keep pressing to the enemy. Sometimes enemy avoided AMRAAM like a TOP GUN and it was hard to believe was possible. In some of these attempts, I fired 8 AIM 120C to hit and they destroyed only 2 Rafale! TWO enemy planes. Yesterday I also used my gun dogfight skill and shot down Rafale in the dogfight (there were 2 focusing on me) but I was hit 30 seconds later by another Rafale in the next vertical circle during a head-on meeting, unfortunately. Incredible match. Anyway, if the enemy fired AIM 120 at ANTONOV the mission is over.

10+ attempts still without success. Is hard to believe we survived the first attempt the previous night. Unfortunately, my human wingman was in so close formation when he hit my plane and was immediately deceased.

The mission looks easy, just kill 3 flights and survive.

Two in position

Dangerous couple

Attack formation

Enemies are not stupid, they split formation, and they are trying to take us to pliers

My (left) target group

Ou hell yeah!

On the way home, a mission is completed

How that is possible? Because, when we flew back my wingman was in so close formation, the game evaluated it and a wingman died, unfortunately. My plane was not hit but I closed a mission before landed. We were so close!
I was hosting the MP session, and after a mission, I noticed I kept as usually a difficulty is set to hard. Hard to believe we survived 3 air combats.

Other attempts, all unsuccessful.
I got hit.

Doesn’t matter. Antonov was shut down.

Result from Rafale guns dogfight

Analyse ACMI
A few seconds before I maneuvered AMRAAM.

3 Likes