Holy crap! I draft YOU to be our weazle.
But whatever was in Paul’s mission was launching sticks that had twice the range of my 88S and 188. I guess I should have checked the log. It was the hardest SAM situation that I have dealt with yet.
That is cool. Do the decoys fly out in some set pattern? Do they have any kind of endurance? Do they show up on friendly RWR? So many questions… 
I love this game/sim. It has so many layers…
So maybe you know the answer to this…if I am getting GPS jammed…I know for sure that some of my GPS guided weaponry will miss…but can I still designate targets with the TSD and have accurate GPS waypoints or do I have to wait for the jamming to quit before building that GPS list?
You can just send them to a GPS-S point or you can send them along a complete path. When they get to the endpoint, they circle until out of gas. The funny thing about Paul’s mission is that I kept sending drones into the hornet’s den that was killing me from 30 miles away. Those drones would survive to the fix and circle! I had them programmed to emulate EF-24s (big radar signatures). Yet the enemy systems somehow saw them as harmless and let them live while totally focused on my murder. The game is an onion. The more you peal, the more you see.
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You asked the question of the right guy and I wasn’t that guy. But I have a theory. Your map is ALWAYS accurate. In other words Charlotte, NC will always be North-whatever and West-whatever. In order for the bombs to drop within their DLZ (or whatever the window for bombs is called), your airplane needs to know its position on that map, ie, a recent GPS signal is desirable. But the IRS position mix that your plane has regardless of jamming should be good enough. The bombs also have an IRS source supplemented by GPS. So, my wild arsed guess is that if you had a good recent signal, the bombs should come close even without GPS. The question, and maybe @jenrick know this, is can the jammer actually fool the receiver into seeing itself in a different position instead of simply NO position? If that’s the case then the bomb could go literally anywhere.
I’m thinking that the MAD4 was the weapon system you were up against. Before you came on I captured the first airfield (quite a fight), but that was a tactical mistake because the MAD4’s located somewhere near the next enemy airfield were within range. When I took out the last target and the field turned blue, an AWACS and tanker were spawned. Once airborne and at a few thousand feet, they were taken out in short order. Lesson learned: MAD 4’s have to be taken care of if they are within 30-40 miles of your airfields.
This mission is also challenging because of the number of fighters that get launched when the enemy detects you. There was also GPS jamming going on near the first field, and I couldn’t find the jamming vehicle.
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The F-46/EF-24 combo is the way to go. The EF hangs back and sends the noise and decoys. The -45 goes in with belly stores of 88s only and nobody’s the wiser until it’s within 10 or so miles. It has a decent jammer as well. I like the way (I forget the name of the mission so I will call it “your mission”, Paul) I like the way your mission allows the helicopter to launch from the field once it is captured. This leaves the helo to do a local cleanup and leaves the jets to start the next objective.
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Am I correct in saying that the MAD-4 radar can also somehow datalink to remote launch sites? I’m pretty sure I have got the “4” RWR symbol…but the missile has come from another location. And I’m also thinking that sometimes those missiles come in quiet…and then go active with just a few seconds remaining. Tricky if true.
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You must be right on both counts. Another good case for the EF or drone to jam the radar.
Hey @BeachAV8R. Regarding GPS jamming and its effects on bombs, there is a solution but it requires that you take a F-45: the GBU-53. It is passed the target via the EOTS and then optically tracks (fire and forget).
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According to the wiki site, there are two varieties of MAD4 missiles… the vanilla MAD 4 is semi-active, so you will get the usual lock on tone from the ground based radar, and then the more frantic, stress inducing tone when the missile itself goes active. It seems the MAD4A missiles are much like the AMRAAM when launched without a radar lock…so you only get a warning when the missile goes active. 
I’m free for a few hours now, so I’ll fire up a session.
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Righto! Coming in.
I agree with @PaulRix’s reply below, that is probably either the LR version of the regular SAM or the MAD4. I don’t think I’ve messed with a MAD4 yet, I need to try out the mission editor so I can setup some test scenarios. Off the top of my head in the EF-24 you’ll want at least 2 jammer pods, for simplicity we’ll refer to them as 1 and 2, and each slot in them as A and B, so you have 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B.
My initial guess is one jammer (1A) to the MAD4 radar set for noise at max power and another jammer slot (2A) on the radar set to DRFM that you light off as soon as you get locked off again at max power. A third jammer slot (2B) that you have uncommitted preset to high band and noise that you can use the FRAZ to immediately try to break lock on an active missile. My working theory:
1A is a full power noise jam to give you the best chance to close the distance (if this sucker has HOJ, I’ll need to do some pondering) before getting shot at. Once we get locked up we light off the DRFM on 2A. We put the DRFM on the other pod (2A), so when things get interesting and we’re in a hurry we don’t forgot to change the power level and wonder why we’re still locked up (not that I’ve made that mistake before…).
Assuming we have just one system shooting at us (if we have layered radar SAM’s, we should have taken 4 jamming pods), as soon as we get locked up we know we’re at burn through range so no point to keeping up with the noise jamming on 1A, switch the power over to your uncommitted 1B jammer, which is preset to high and noise for active missile defense. Keep a weather eye on the FRAZ for an active missile and if it appears, assign it to 1B and light the jammer off. While you’re waiting for an active missile, your 2A jammer in DRFM is doing it’s best to break the tracking lock which will keep it from guiding SARH. The decision is yours to notch or press on to close range and get a shot off while all the electrons are flying around. I keep the TSD up as my big display in the back seat, use it to get a rough idea of the range you got locked up att. If you can’t kill the radar, on exfil fire up 1A on noise again when you reach that range to avoid getting shot up on the way out.
You do have 1 uncommitted jammer slot that you can use for other radars that might pop up, and 1 partially commited jammer slot you could find something to do with. I am way too task saturated to try and do that while flying and EWO’ing so I just don’t worry about it.
My understanding is that with GPS jamming you go to INS and the coordinates generated are less accurate, not sure how degraded those coords are though. Same for the weapon. If you’re building a target list you’re going to be in the same map block, not necessarily the right building. They’d be great for getting a TGP in the rough area though. Supposedly the INS fix degrades over time too.
All I’ve ever gotten is a “No GPS Signal” on the map, which seems to track off the INS. ATM I don’t think anything tries to spook the GPS signal, that would definitely be a heck of a capability.
You can update them while they’re airborne and give them new routes if you want. They have about 8-10 minutes worth of fuel.
Interesting! How far out where you launching them? Doing some reading the AI apparently is smart enough to discern some decoys, the example given in one spot is a F-46 showing up on radar at 45 NM is going to be ignored because it’s not a realistic detection range. I wonder if you sent a pair of decoys with 1 jamming and the other decoying as something juicy?
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Wow, reading that made me feel like a dog watching TV it’s so far over my head. You are definitely the Mudspike VTOL VR EM SME! 
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I just put a quick mission together with the editor to play with a MAD4 while flying an indestructible EF24. All I can say is that the MAD4 is NASTY. Even with four jammers blasting, it was able to launch and score a hit if I got within 10nm or so.
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Good to know. I was experimenting with the mission editor this afternoon, but didn’t have the time to throw the headset on. Did the main radar transition to STT at any point (ie locked you up before missiles started appearing)? The missile are ARH correct?
The missiles in the test I did are the Vanilla MAD4’s that are SARH, and so the ground station goes into STT until the missile itself can go active. The MAD4A missile is fully active and autonomous once launched…
I just flew the mission again and I did better. Using a mixture of medium and high frequency jamming, plus a decoy in noise mode, I was able to get within 8nm before the MAD4 launched, and it went balistic before it reached me. I then took out the radar with a AGM-88S.
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Hmm, well that means good and bad things. The bad is that the missiles being active, and burn through occurring around 10nm , means the missiles are going to be active very soon after launch. I’m guessing it fires another missile after the first goes active? On the plus side, DRFM can break the STT meaning it should prevent a missile from being fired. So it looks like if the missile loses guidance it just goes ballistic, that’s a very good thing. I suspect DRFM combined with noise jamming might be enough to get in close prior to a missle launch. The decoys are there for a reason though, and if the MAD4 won’t engage them to save missiles, parking them by the site blasting noise is definitely a good use for them.
Another interesting snippet. It seems that the MAD4 launchers can network with multiple radar sources.
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Doing some reading VTOL natively supports complex IADs with decoy transmitters, anti missile systems, GCI/ fighters, etc. Extremely impressive!
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