TE Question: Tanker Assignments
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Hello all,
When designing a TE with multiple flights which will need refueling, and which has multiple tankers up and available, is there a way to “assign” a particular tanker to a flight? For instance, if I have three four-ship flights (Strike 1, 2 and 3), and three tanker flights supporting in the tanker track (Chevron1, Exxon2 and Sunoco3), is there a way to tell the AI “Strike 1 is to use Chevron1, Strike2 is to use Exxon2, and Strike3 is to use Sunoco3.”?Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Regards,
TC2 -
Try to add one flight plan point on tanker path and change it to refuel.
See if tankers get allocated correctly…
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You might also want to separate the tankers into 3 separate, parallel tracks as a bit of spacial “distancing” will help with avoiding confusion about which flight uses which tanker. I don’t think Max’ suggestion will work when all three tankers circle in the same box.
With three separate tracks, simply assign the “refuel” steerpoint somewhere in the middle of each track for each flight and also do not forget to set the station time sufficiently so there’s enough time on the steerpoint for the entire flight to refuel (15m should suffice for 4-ship).
All the best, Uwe
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@maxwaldorf
Hello Max. On my first attempt, I had all 3 strike flights in one package, and the three tankers in a seperate package. All the strike flights had a waypoint set for refueling, but all got allocated to the same tanker (the last one in the tanker flight). I thought about it last night, and next I am going to try putting one F-16 Strike flight 4-ship and one tanker in a package , times three. I think that will properly allocate each 4 ship to its “package-mate” tanker. I’ll give that a go and see if that works better or how that inhibits comms between the three flighs (if it does). I can “program” the right IDS to allow for SA between the various flights/tankers if I do it right.
Appreciate the input.
Regards,
TC2 -
@hoover
Thanks Hoover, great suggestions. That was another thought I had of more physical seperation between tanker tracks. I’ll see what works best and report back.
R/,
TC2 -
@tomcattwo This probably won’t work (putting your strike flights into the same package as the tanker).
Three (or maybe two, if you can live with the delay refuelling causes, as AI flights will line up nicely if they have to wait for another flight to refuel off the same tanker first) different tanker tracks might be the ticket here, and don’t put your strike flights into the tanker package (comms nightmare )
All the best,
Uwe
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@hoover and all,
I tried both methods last night (assigning a tanker and a strike flight as a package x 3, and keeping the strike flight together as a package and using geographical seperation for the tanker tracks package) and Hoover was definitely correct.Using the geographical seperation method, all three tankers were available to both the AI flights and my human flight, though I still could not “assign” a particular tanker to a particular strike flight for refuel even though I had set up the flight plans to have each strike flight go to a different tanker track.
In fact, I was lining up my human flight on the tanker it had been “assigned” (by virtue of me plotting its flight path for refuel to that particular tanker’s track), but another AI flight got there first and “snaked” my tanker! No problem though. I just changed frequencies and got vectors to a different tanker from AWACS and used that one. All in all the timing still worked out for all 3 strike flights (2 AI and one human). I gave it 45 minutes for all flights (3 x 4-ships, 2 AI, one human) to conduct refueling, but could have been easily done in 30 minutes.Key to all of this working is for the players to know and understand the tanker frequencies and TACAN channels, preprogram the frequencies in the DTC into empty slots (to make it easier to switch freqs) using AWACS for assistance in locating open tankers, and most of all, developing good situational awareness (SA) of who is where in the scenario. That is part of what makes Large Force Exercises (LFEs) such “fun”
Thanks Hoover for the good recommendations.
Regards
TC2