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.

As a transport pilot, it's very important to communicate effectively with the ground-pounders regarding what they want, when they want it, and where threats might be. Remember that you might have to deal with three different radios (343 for crew, 152 for platoon, and 148 for air) so make sure you're comfortable doing that.

Attack Helicopters

Attack helicopters require a completely different set of considerations than transport helicopters.

The attack helicopters must be close enough to see the enemy while remaining far enough away to not get shot down. This requires a very careful balancing act by the pilot and great situational awareness of the local friendly and enemy forces and their makeup.

The first consideration must be anti-air threats, as these will prevent you from helping your teammates if you ignore them. If possible, always use terrain to hide yourself while you look for and eliminate anti-air threats. There are two types of anti-air threats: AAA and MANPADS.

AAA: These can be tracked vehicles, like the Russian ZSU series, or just huge machine guns mounted to a truck or emplacement, like the Russian ZU series. A ZSU often is coupled to a radar and uses it for finding you and ranging its air-burst munitions or for targeting its missiles. Any radar emitter will show up as a yellow circle on your SENSOR display panel so make sure you keep and eye on it. Do not get closer than 3km to a radar-equipped AAA threat unless you are actively attempting to kill it.

MANPADS: possibly the most dangerous threat to helicopters because they are very difficult to find and can hit you with little warning. They don't emit radar or significant IR signatures so the only way to find them is to see them optically. Generally, pilots should always assume an enemy force has MANPADS and never get closer than 2km to known enemy forces until they are sure it's safe to do so. A nice thing about MANPADS, though, is they typically can't carry very many missiles.

Note on avoiding any missiles: The trick to avoiding missiles is three-fold: 1) release countermeasures early 2) change your velocity relative to the missile as much as possible and 3) never get shot at from short-range. Missiles don't turn well, so if you confuse them with countermeasures and require them to turn you have a good chance of evading them. If you're within 1.5km and moving slowly not only will your countermeasures not create a sufficient spread but the missile probably doesn't have to turn to hit you. So don't risk getting that close to a target unless you know there are no AA missile threats.

The second consideration is supporting friendly infantry.

TBA