Increasing SA through proper briefing
In a previous article we reviewed the importance of the Bullseye in obtaining SA info but of course, there is a lot more that comes into play in the 3D world. However, a good preparation of the flight during the briefing makes you more familiar with the environment in which you will be performing your demanding mission. The aim of this article is to provide you with some hints and tips on how to make good and sound flightplans and reduce the amount of unexpected events during the flight.
Most people see the briefing as the screen where you must put as much lethal loadout as possible on the jet and see where the target is. If this game was an arcade, this would be the way to go. Since it's a realistic sim, it' s a good thing to spend some more time at the briefing screen. A real-life fighter pilot instructor once told : there is only a certain amount of attention you can spend at the time. Some of it goes to flying the plane, an other part goes to executing the mission and yet another part goes to the interaction with your environment. Every single action requires attention so only a certain amount of tasks can be done at the same time. And since unexpected things require much more attention than expected things, it's best to eliminate the unexpected. And this is where a decent briefing comes in.
The type of mission
It might seem common sense but always pay attention to what the object of your mission is. Each type of mission has its own threats. E.g. if you are on a deep strike OCA mission with a heavy loaded F-16, you don't want to be detected by any threat. Even a SA2 can get you out of the sky. On a SEAD strike however, you do want to be detected by the SAMs so you can target your HARMs at their radar.
Evaluate your mission and decide which threats you can or want to handle and which must be avoided.
Your environment
A reasonable part of your mission will be above hostile territory. A lot of people on the ground and in the air are there just to get you down. To obtain good SA during the flight, you need to know where the threats are.
For ground units, your best bet is to call up all 'Air defenses' units on the map. Check which ones are between your base and your target and evaluate their threat (A Shilka is a low threat whereas an SA-10 site needs to be avoided at all costs). There is another option in F4 which comes in handy here, being the threat circles. Call up the high or low altitude threat circles, depending on your flightplan (more on that later on) and see whether your flightplan does not expose yourself to these radars.
Air threats are a bit more difficult to predict. You can render all airborne aircrafts visible but by the time you get airborne, the situation will have changed drastically. A better bet is to call up the 'Order Of Battle' (First click on 'Victory Conditions' on the left and than on 'OOB' at the bottom). Now select all air fields of the hostile forces. You will notice a '+' sign next to some bases. By clicking this '+' a list will expand will all squadrons located on this base. This is quite a handy feature since it gives you all the airbases to avoid during your mission. You don't want to fly over a Flanker base on a deep strike. Of course the planes might be all over the place but the likelyhood of spotting them at their bases is a lot higher.
The flightplan
Now that all threats and the target have been evaluated, it's time to check the flightplan. F4SP3 makes up a default flightplan but this is seldom based on good sense. It's up to you to finetune it. Your flightplan will not only give you the route to follow but also the altitudes and the time/speed. Before altering your flightplan, check your Time Over Target (TOT). It might be that you start altering your flightplan, arrive a few minutes late at the target and the recon mission already passed the area. Check if other flights depend on you arriving on time or not and lock/unlock your TOT accordingly. Now, start dragging the steerpoints, and add other ones if needed, until your route is as low on threats as possible. Be aware that the threat level comes into play as well. It's better to pass three SA2 sites at 300ft altitude than one SA-10 site at 10,000 ft. Since you evaluated the threats, you can adjust your altitudes accordingly. Pass high over AAA and low through SAM enveloppes. Remain high for long distance missions but low for missions in high threat areas.
when adjusting the flightplan, also define which attack method you will be using. Are you going to drop LGBs from high altitude (Lots of MANPADS near the target) or making a pop-up attack from low altitude (High altitude threats near the target)? If you are going for a pop-up attack, calculate your VIP, OA and VRP points as well. Don't forget that you are not alone. You can direct your element to attack an underground factory after you've dealt with the AAA battalion on top of it with some CBUs. In the end you should have a flightplan which exposes you to possible threats for the shortest possible time.
Weapon Loadout
Now it's time to load your jet. You have a mission to accomplish so take what you need to do the job. Don't forget that you have at least one wingman along who can help you but take in account that he can be downed prior to reaching the target. Also make sure you have sufficient fuel. Fuel consumption has been revised on SP3 and can become an issue. This does not mean you have to take tanks. It might just as well be that you need to top off at the tanker when entering and leaving hostile areas. If you're sure you have the right loadout and sufficient fuel, load up on armament to get those threats. Are you flying straight through an SA6 site? Take a HARM along. Done? Now, load the rest of the hardpoints with A2A weapons. Many people make the mistake of taking weapons for the target and filling all other hardpoints with A2A missiles. Keep in mind that aircraft can be a threat to deal with but a lot of times you're better off taking other weapons and avoiding A2A combat.
Review everything
If you've spend this long in the briefing, you want to get airborne. Before you do, go through your flightplan again as if you were flying the jet. This is were you get your SA up. You know where to expect which threat and how to react to it. Just what we wanted to learn. Not only will you expect that SA2 to paint you at stpt 5, you'll also have the weapons to deal with it.