Operation "ELLAC"

[0405 Andrew]

Cheers Alien, absolutely agree with your comments.

I was hoping you would be on cap prior to the 3f turning up, it looked like it just worked a minute or two to late.

I should have stated to you that we need a Cap on station by 03:20:00 or something like that, is that possible with carrier location? Next time I will, In fact 11f were the only one's without a TOT in the FRAG.

A quick chat to reiterate the pertinent points and orders of the mission would be wise and for squadrons to put and answer any questions. I think this could be done on the main welcome channel prior to the mission, for all to hear but with only nominated squadron members to speak. I usually find that no one interrupts asking pointless questions. I'd say that everyone listens to the brief in a very respectful manner.

[0405 Andrew]

RT can definitely be improved, I don't know what to say myself and have not done any training on it on the server. I would imagine it's covered in the RAF Air SOP that I'm about to dig out. But with all these things it will take practice.

[Flyco]

Most points relevant to A-10s already addressed.

There was a minor cock-up in the taxi timing, but that was resolved by the 2 units. The absence of the external view, prevented ground activities being monitored. The A-10s taxied about 5 minutes before required entry, but only after I had transmitted on Akrotiri ATC to check whether there was any one about to taxi. A quick glance at an airfield display would have solved that. As it was both flights were within a minute of planned take-off.

The A-10 target area was a bit simplistic, with no effective ground defence (although Paul managed to find some!). After 15 kills my Pickle finger was getting quite sore. Would also have been useful to have put a ‘sanctuary’ area in the vicinity for us to run to - perhaps among the blue ground forces 5 nm south of out area. But perhaps a few man pads for the Reds (only a few, obviously), or even a Shilka or two.

Biggy of course was the F-16. Showed on radar as an F-16 (i.e. friendly). I put the missile launch warnings down to all the rockets we were firing, right up to the 15 seconds or so that it took the bugger to hit 3 of us (bloody impressive incidentally). I don’t recall seeing any warning on 251.0, although we had got the usual earlier warnings of a bandit at 100 nm!

I note that all the above have already been mentioned and are being reviewed. This input is made in a spirit of helpfulness and amicability.

[Red Rooster]

A couple of observations from me on top of what has been said: -

Should there have been a fragged code to be issued once our SAM6 targets had been destroyed at Incirlik? Last week we had one for the SAM11 target.

Was I supposed to let 41 sqn know that the target SAMs were destroyed?

If we have relatively short start up and taxi times would it not make sense to put the first sqns off closer to the start of their runway?

Is there anyway of silencing the auto ATC? On t/o and recovery it was constantly changing it's messaging which further cluttered up comms.

We had quite a lot of friendly fire kills so work is probably needed on IFF and use of self homing missiles in friend filled skies.

[0405 Andrew]

Alan please double check your keybinding for the external views, I'm pretty sure it was turned on last night. Thank you for your input.

Red rooster, good point regarding destruction of SA6. A call should be agreed and transmitted. We will look at adding that.

Only way to silence ATC is if we FRAG a different frequency for the airfield and disregard Dcs ATC completely.

[Neil Willis]

Good mission last night. It is however a pity that DCS are taking so long to get the supercarrier bugs resolved. Launching remains a lottery for some of us, which does detract from the experience.

Comms Andrew, we can go over in some of our own training sorties, but as you say, there is an awful lot to soak up when learning to fly and fight a 4th Gen combat aircraft operating from a carrier.

Overall, the mission seemed pretty good. Timings for us were nigh on perfect given the delays on launch, upping the airspeed just slightly made our TOT on the button. It might be better having our target groups more spaced out, to give a little more time to register individual aiming points, but that can be solved with more intricate planning from the Squadron to give easier run ins on the targets.

I took a hit on the first target, and had fun keeping the aircraft flying while trying to lock up a couple of SPGs for the next run in. Unfortunate that my PC locked up right in the middle of the mission, but I shall be examining the logs to see what caused it.

Planning wise, yes, very much a work in progress, but I hope the Squadron Commanders will appreciate what a lot of staff work goes into fragging everything. I think the 1 week lead time will help of course, but we are just humans.

Nice work Ade and Andrew.

[Roon]

41(F) Sqn AAR

We had a small traffic jam when heading to the runway, but hand in the air I had programmed the wrong freq into our jets for Akrotiri so we didn't hear the A10 call. That will be fixed for the next time, my apologies to the A10 crowd who were kind enough to make space to let us through.

Once airborne and in formation, it was just a question of staying low, fast and radar and radio silent whilst monitoring the situation developing around us. Our SOP is that if anything turns hot within 40Nm we detach a pair and engage while the others push on and target progress. We appeared to be invisible, tucked under the wasp's nest above us. We did get a few Buddy Spikes but non became a threat and some we called to make sure. We didn't get attacked by our own side so good job the air defenders!

As we entered the bay East of Incirlik, we heard chatter about SAM-6 but couldn't make out what. We called for clarification whether the SAM-6 was down and got part of a major situation report that was trodden on three times. RT with so many urgent calls being made on one freq must be disciplined and short by necessity. Only answer the question asked..."Is the SAM-6 down"...."Negative, SAM-6 is up". This is not natural for normal human beings, we are used to being polite and adding detail, but please, in the air, say the minimum to pass the info.

Being fuel critical in the last leg of our flight plan, we couldn't hold and orbit to give the second wave of F16's time to have another go, so we aborted and RTB'd. Adding another tank for this flight may give us enough fuel for an orbit on the next one, but the fuel used to carry the third tank almost negates it's benefits at this range at low-level. We'll review our fuel for this mission as a result.

RTB gave us a whole set of SOP's to bring into the flight as a 180 STBD put No 7 in the Lead and he had to come up with a plan for RTB and landing, plus watching the overall situation. Well done Bob!

Some lag on the server put one guy into the sea, so we returned with 6. All in all we enjoyed it a lot, it gave us situations requiring some thought and minor changes to the plan on the hoof. Keeping an eye on the madness above, looking out for a red dropping in added to the fun! I think this is going to be very good with a few adjustments. Thanks to all for a good mission.

[Beanie]

3(F) AAR

As promised Ford 1 began to taxi at 0307 to runway 10 and take off at 0315 which went amazingly despite having framedrops to <10 a few times so changed our take off from 2x2 to 5 second delays (just in case) followed by Ford 2 a few minutes later.

We took to the skies full of hope and frivolity hoping we would be totally invisible untill at least the EWR spotted us at around waypoint 3-4. We lost one sead aircraft to Davey Jones locker after rubber banding for a bit. How my joy at sticking to TOT changed to absolute panic when I saw 6 x F-16’s winging their way towards Ford 1 at mach 1.5! A call was made on 251.00 to see if anyone was around to scare away those pesky vipers. However, I received no answer. Now down to 3 x F16’s the 6 x Reds just peppered us with 120’s taking all but one of us out. It was at this point I disconnected saying to myself “5 days planning for a 20minute failed flight, what’s the “***%#^%” point”.

Our one remaining SEAD aircraft managed to squeeze through and make it to Incirlik and launched an 88 at the SA6 and in turn doing 50ish percent damage. However, couldn’t communicate his success due to SRS issues.

I’ll let Danny communicate how Ford 2 and 3 got on as I wasn’t there to see.

[Flyco]

Andrew, you are right - I did malign you. It would have been the Map key (not the external key, which was working) which I tried, so as to get an airfield view of where everyone was.

[0405 Andrew]

Andrew, you are right

Malign me all you like.