Vehicle/Aircraft Operations

In almost all missions here at Coalition, vehicles will be used in many different capacities. It is important that you understand both ground and air vehicle operations if you plan on using them within sessions.

Ground Vehicles

Ground vehicles can range from an ATV to an M1A2 Abrams main battle tank during sessions.

Transport

Transport vehicles range from anything between light cars to heavy transport trucks. They are vehicles with very little to no combat effectiveness that are used to transport troops or supplies.

Transport vehicles are used to get from point A to point B. While most vehicles we use will be armed, you should not rely on them to provide as a frontline combat unit. With little to no armour and no crew protection, they make for easy targets. Instead you should try to use them as a base of fire, or to partially dismount and advance with the infantry.

Combat Capable

These are armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks. Refer to vehicle identification for a detailed list of such vehicles. APCs and IFVs are capable of transporting troops into the battlefield with added protection.

Your role when you are crewing a combat capable vehicle is to support the infantry. The infantry will keep anti-tank crews away from you, while you support their advance and knock out any armor they encounter. You should never lead a push into a city or through hedgerows without infantry support. You have a mutually beneficial relationship with the infantry so use it to your advantage against enemy forces.

Air Vehicles

Rotary Wing

Helicopters are a complex but powerful tool for the Platoon. Platoon leaders need to understand their capabilities in order to make effective use of them. Pilots, especially, need to know how to properly fly the airframe in question before taking its slot in-game. It's a major downer for everyone when the pilot crashes early or can't use an important weapon system.

There are some common technical considerations to operating helicopters in-game:

Your object view distance for transport should be at least 1500m to aid spotting the LZ early enough to make a safe and fast approach. For attack, set it to the range of your farthest-reaching weapon (usually the Hellfire, at around 4000m). However, it is highly recommended to double these numbers for best situational awareness if your CPU can handle it. Make sure you know the key bindings to deploy landing gear, sling-loading functions, countermeasures, and so forth. A head trackers is extremely useful but not necessary. Use the training server to become familiar with all of these functions before flying in a session.

Finally, it's highly recommended to create keybindings for the left/right display panels. A useful combination is NAV on one side and SENSOR on the other.

Now that your settings are suitable, let's consider the many different types of helicopters and the different strategic and piloting considerations relevant to them.

Transport Helicopters

Transport helicopters provide the PL with the ability to put soldiers on the ground almost anywhere at anytime. However, great care must be taken to remain low (so as to avoid radar and IR AAA systems), fast (so as to avoid small-arms fire), and precise (so as to avoid spending more time in danger than necessary). The ideal approach to an LZ is flown at the lowest safe altitude, fastest possible speed, directly to and away from the chosen spot. You must learn to slow your aircraft down rapidly without gaining altitude, otherwise you will expose yourself to fire when flying slow (when you least want to be shot at). Every helicopter requires a different distance to slow from maximum speed to zero.

Light helicopters are small, unarmored, and unarmed, but very easy to fly and land almost anywhere. Therefore, they are most useful for inserting fireteam-strength elements very close to the enemy, even, if necessary, on the roof of their building. They can also sling-load supply crates.

Medium helicopters have limited armament and armor but can carry a squad-strength element into a lightly-contested LZ if necessary as well as sling-load small vehicles.

Heavy helicopters are often heavily armed and armored and can carry two squads or sling-load light armored vehicles.