Anti Air Aircraft
 

What about radar and IR guided anti-air weapons for aircaft?

These could be called in to take out choppers.

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

Like perhaps the AIM-9 Sidewinder (#132 USA OOB), for instance???

besides the air-to-air fighting, conducted at greater and greater ranges these days, is outside the scope of a ground based, battalion sized wargame like this one...

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

The guns might need to be re-classed.

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

Aircraft just plain don't have the capability to perform air-to-air combat as that's totally outside the scope of WinSPMBT plus there is never more then one aircraft on map at the same time.
On rare occasions aircraft do attack helos, but its merely because that's what they saw first and the helo had been stationary the previous turn.

On top of which there's no way to designate a specific target for aircraft in WinSPMBT.

Until they get about 3-4 armor helos are pretty fragile, in fact with 0 armor (as most have) it's often argued too fragile. Once they get 4 armor they become very very difficult to damage with MPADs or even .50 cals, one of the things that makes Hinds and Apaches so "fun".

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

Pretty sure aircraft dueling with each other has been covered before and if it were possible would have been added to the game. Considering the level of airstrikes indicates air superiority I'm happy with that.

As for ATA weapons, the AIM-9 is available but the best weapon against choppers I feel are radar guided AA and before that's common they have to get pretty close anyway to launch their rockets or whatever stuff they're putting out there. Helo's are decent once they have reasonable ATGM but once those come around than the environment becomes pretty deadly to fly in anyways so that massive investment in 4 Apaches becomes a bit of a risk.

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

So this thread got me thinking about using strike aircraft to target enemy helicopters. I set up a test and ran it. I modified US F-22s and F-16D COIN fighters to carry sidewinder ATA missiles. I then sent them against some stationary Chinese scout helos on a flat map. The missiles never launched at greater than a 17-18% probability of hitting. I tried modifying the aircraft's stabilizer, fire control, etc. ratings. This helped with the Gatling gun on the aircraft but not with the missiles. It didn't seem to matter to targeting or accuracy whether the missiles were weapons 1, 2, 3, or four. Regular vs. COIN aircraft didn't seem to make a difference either (I interspersed some low value ground units in among the helos to check).

These anti-helicopter fighters would probably be even less effective in more realistic conditions with terrain and moving targets, but even so a scenario designer could make good use of them to give the player an option to punish an opponent just hovering his gunships stationary some place. They might even be more effective then some SAM units if the player could target them effectively.

Anyway, just shows the versatility of this game to do things not even really within its scope!

Edit: Just to clarify- I'm not suggesting these be added in to any OOB. Just pointing out that a scenario designer can easily create a strike fighter to target helicopters, at least in the US OOB.

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

I suspect there are two or three reasons your missile accuracy was poor:
1) The EW rating of the helos
2) The EW rating of your aircraft
3) You were moving fairly fast (as all aircraft automatically are are)

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

I think 3) is the reason. No way to get around the speed of the aircraft and the structural ceiling on fire control and stabilizer ratings seems to mean it won't be overcome. The Chinese helicopters I used were Z5s, outdated aircraft with no EW, so I don't think that factored in this case.

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

As a suggestion...Try the same test with the aircraft speed adjusted downward . Add some test aircraft with the same test weapons but with the speed 1/2 then 1/4 of standard ( that would be 12 and 6 in the case of the f16D )

That's the way to know if what you think is correct

Re: Anti Air Aircraft
 

As your just playing don't think it will make that much difference but copy the weapon to another slot & boost the accuracy rating though I am guessing its already 100+

It will almost definitely be a speed thing, the few times I have had helo battles moving more than 1 or 2 hexes kills accuracy just like when you fire ATGMs from them.