S1E15: Overview of BVR

Dusty joins us to discuss BVR in Falcon BMS and answers questions from the community.

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
You've tuned into The Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things Falcon BMS.
Welcome once again to another episode ofThe Tactical Frequency. This is another
special edition episode. We're going tobe chatting with Dusty on the subject of

(00:30):
BVR, So sit back for anotherhour and a half as we take you
through some of the basics and maybeeven some advanced concepts related to beyond visual
range combat. So, without furtherado, let's jump right into that interview
with Dusty. Joining me now isDusty. Dusty has been flying Falcon BMS

(00:52):
for years. He was co commanderof Grief during the Team versus Team twenty
twenty one event. He also makesFalcon BMS YouTube content as well. Thank
you Dusty for joining me today.Great to be here, Thanks having me.
I'm sorry things didn't work out thelast time I'm tried to get you
on here with the Team versus Teamepisode. It was a great episode and
we really missed you. Yeah,it was a total shame. Life was

(01:17):
very hectic during that time, butyeah it was. It's funny twenty twenty
one and that TVT feels like alifetime ago, but great, great times.
Most recently, I listened actually tothe podcast episode just on campaign sort
of antics, and it brought backa whole bunch of memories of us flying
together, not in the tvt butjust yeah, the great experiences and the

(01:40):
immersion that just flying with some buddiesin the dynamic campaign can bring. Well,
today we're here to talk about BVR, so I should ask you what
does BVR mean, what does itstand for? And what is it in
Falcon BMS. BBR stands for beyondvisual range and it really is that simple
in my opinion. It's certainly amultifaceted type of combat in a Falcon BMS,

(02:06):
but it's literally the practice of shootingtypically amram at a bad guy beyond
the range that you can actually acquireit tally. Now, I think a
lot of people envision combat flight simsas dog fighting, getting in close,
seeing the other guy, maybe evenlooking at him face to face as you

(02:27):
pass by really close. I guesswe can blame media for that, different
movies and things like that, butis that really the way it is typically
in an aired air engagement in amonern theater in Falcon BMS or is BVR
the standard? Yeah? I thinkBVR is definitely the default sort of engagement.
And that's I think a real positiveto Falcon BMS the simulator and how

(02:52):
it plays out is that I honestlythink like there are lots of other great
combat simulators out there that are onefull in their own right, but BMS
is so good at portraying the BVRfight it's I honestly think second to none.
And that's not to throw shade onany other simulators, because there is.

(03:12):
You know, they're all great,but BMS has a real sweet spot
and it's got a real sort oflike magic mix of It's not just like
the missile performance or the avionics orthe AI. It's not any one thing
in particular. It's just how theyall work together to provide a really good
experience, either against the AI inBMS or also doing a player verse player

(03:34):
type of engagement. When I lookedat BVR years ago, someone was trying
to get it through to me thatit's a lot more structured. You got
to give a lot more thought toit. There's a lot more in terms
of calculations numbers that go into itthan just jumping out there and firing am
rams. So I have to askwhat is wrong with us just getting to
the air without any sort of plan, locking a bad guy, chucking an

(03:58):
amram at the enemy while flying atthem, and only turning away when our
hardbr starts beeping at us that we'vebeen launched on. Well, look,
honestly, that there's nothing wrong withthat, so to speak, Like most
new guys who get into BMS aregoing to have quite a lot of fun
just doing that, you know,charging it at the adversarya and shooting missiles
and split assing it the last second, and you know, it's still fun.

(04:21):
But that's the neat thing about BMSis that you can apply some of
these sort of real world tactics andtechniques that you can read in publicly available
documentation and you can apply it toBMS with really good effect. And you
can find out quite quickly by reviewingTAC views and all this, that and
the other that you can, yeah, certainly be more effective and you can

(04:44):
be better at the whether you're doinga tactical engagement or playing in a campaign
or doing PvP. You can justsee how much more effective you can be
by learning some basic principles and BBI. Obviously it's a an academic topic.
If you wanted to dive right intothe manuals like the Career BM, which

(05:04):
I think we'll talk about a bitlater, and some of the other documentation
that's out there, so it canbe a bit dense, but you can
just take some of those concepts andapply it to flying and you'll see an
improvement and you'll hopefully get more enjoymentout of the BBR engagements and be able

(05:25):
to understand what's going on a bitbetter. So would it be fair to
say that if we're flying in let'ssay two versus two, if one side
understands all the concepts behind BVR andthe other side does not, it's almost
a guaranteed victory for the side thatunderstands everything else being equal, that's a
good question. I mean, yeah, I think so. I think if

(05:47):
you've got two guys who are completelybrand new to the concepts of shooting AMRAM
versus to experience people who know howto maximize the advantages of their aircraft and
their missiles, that you should seea pretty pretty clear victory from those who
know what they're doing versus those whowho don't. And it's a lot of

(06:10):
different things too, Like it's aboutunderstanding the missile performance and the overall sort
of general kind of kinematics of missiles, but also understanding how you can best
employ your radar and the relation ofwhere you point your nose, all that
sort of stuff. It can makea huge difference. That's where like in

(06:30):
some of the first tvts that Iwas in and people were shooting me at
incredible ranges and their missiles had somuch more energy, and I was like,
what going on? And then that'swhat sort of initially spurred me to
try and figure out what they weredoing and how I could learn that sort
of stuff myself. Let's talk alittle bit about the am rams, since

(06:50):
that's the main weapon that we areemploying in the F sixteen in FOULC and
BMS in BVR. What are someof the basics in understanding how to use
the AMRAM effectively? Basic AMRAM employment. I guess it comes down a lot
to knowing the avionics of the Fsixteen or I guess now the F fifteen,

(07:10):
if that's your platform of choice,but understanding that when you shoot an
AMRAM initially is supported only by theradar lock that you support the missile through
dartlink, So the AMRAM only goesactive. Okay, it turns its own
radar on at a specific distance fromthe target, So you've got to it's

(07:33):
not a true fire and forget weaponlike a Maverick auderground missile. There's a
lot more to it than just sortof shooting it and turning around. So
yeah, there's a lot of stuffthat we could talk about in terms of
like avionics and all that sort ofthing and timelines, which we'll talk about

(07:53):
a bit later, but basic principlesare that you need to support an AMRAM
to get the most out of it, and by support you mean maintaining your
radar lock on the target that youlaunched a correct Yeah, and since BMS
four point three six, new guidancemodels have been introduced, sometimes controversially as

(08:18):
to the accuracy of AMRAM and howit's supported. But I think right now,
in the current version four point threeseven point three, we're sitting in
a pretty sweet spot where the guidancelogic makes a lot of sense. And
so the radar mode that you usehas an effect on how accurate the AMRAM
guides and how the targets maneuver.So understanding a lot of it's a lot

(08:46):
to understand but you can boil itdown to some sort of some simple,
simple concepts that you can apply toget the most out of it. Let's
define the term advantage in the contextof an isolated one versus one a snapshot
of time as being who is morelikely to score the kill during that particular

(09:09):
exchange of missiles. So if twopeople are going to fire an amram at
each other and the one person ismore likely to get the kill, then
I would define that as saying hehas the advantage. So what makes it
better for me to be flying atlet's say twenty five thousand feet at mark
one versus an enemy flying toward meat ten thousand feet at mark point five.

(09:33):
Well, yeah, you've definitely alludedto the most important factor there,
which is you know, one vone, which is obviously a very isolated
example. Energy is king. Soif you are higher and faster, you're
going to be able to shoot amuch more lethal missile at an adverse at
an adversary than if they were shootingat you from a low altitude because the

(09:56):
s the nr higher and the missileswill fly faster in the thinner air,
and that way you can have amuch greater advantage if by the time your
missile goes active, it's still doingMark III versus their missile, which might
be doing you know, just overmark if they're shooting at you from lower,
thicker air. What factors can weuse to influence the advantage in BVR?

(10:22):
In that case we mentioned speed andaltitude. Is there anything else well?
I think situational awareness is a greatplace to start with because if you
have a high level of situational awenwith awareness, you can position yourself and
your flight better to capitalize on theadvantage of that. There are also things
like radar modes. For example,in the F sixteen, you can leverage

(10:46):
things like VSR mode to take locksthat at greater ranges, provided the bandit
is hot. So, yeah,starts with situational advantage. I think if
you know where all your friendlies areand you know where the bad guys are,
you can then maneuver to put yourselfin that position of advantage where you've

(11:09):
got more energy on your missiles.Let's say I'm flying towards the enemy and
suddenly I realize he's got the advantagein every respect. He's faster, he's
higher, he's maybe got an equivalentjet to mine, So there's no real
redeeming factor of what I'm doing atthe moment. What should I do at

(11:31):
that point? Well, there's acouple of things. So if we're still
talking about the one v one typeof scenario, which is not typical of
the dynamic campaign, but you canstill use amram defensively so you can buy
yourself a window to escape, becauseif you do realize that you're at a

(11:54):
serious disadvantage, you want to startthinking about exiting the fight. Because there's
the really same as BFM and ACM, BBR is similar in that if you
realize that you're at a disadvantage,it's time to think about exiting rather than
pressing a bad position. So inthe one v one scenario, you can

(12:15):
still thankfully employee amram hopefully effectively tothen, like it's probably going to be
a low PK shot if you're ata great disadvantage, but at least you
can create or cause the bandit todefend and then you can make your out.
But really what it boils down tois that BBR is a team sport

(12:39):
in my opinion, Like it's neverreally one versus one. It's always about
how you use your team to outmaneuverand outplay the adversary. So, in
a realistic kind of campaign scenario,if you realize that you're at the disadvantage,
that's when you start to need tostart think you about tactics and teamwork.

(13:01):
So how do you best employ yourwingmen to help you get out of
that situation? Tactics and teamwork.Indeed, we're going to be discussing this
when we come back. All theactions right here on the special edition of
the Tactical Frequency. Don't go anywhere. We'll continue after this break. When

(13:28):
you want to join a flight,doesn't matter which member of the flight you
join. It does in some sense, each seat in the flight has a
particular role. We can break thisdown. The first member of the flight
the number one. He's the lead. He's in charge of the flight and
he must ensure that the tasking forthe flight is carried out. Number two
is his wingman. He's an extensionof number one. He will probably be

(13:54):
flying some formation most of the time, at least until the action hits.
Number three is the element lead andnumber four is his wingman. If number
one gets shot down, the numberthree takes over the flight. In a
four ship, one and two forman element and three and four form an

(14:16):
element. You can think of afour ship as two elements, mimicking a
sort of two ship relationship. However, you can break down each element into
two separate aircraft package two five fourzero roll call on the tactical frequency.

(14:54):
Welcome back once again to the tacticalfrequency. We're chatting with Dusty about BVR.
Let's transition then into talking about theteamwork. If you've got multiple pilots
all on the same side, howdo they coordinate, how do they begin
to engage the enemy together? Yeah, I guess we're getting into the meat

(15:15):
and potatoes of the conversation now.So it starts with a good briefing,
So understanding the roles of everyone,like whether it's a two or a four
ship. It's really important for theflight lead to execute a good briefing.
And it doesn't have to be likea four hour long conversation on the ins
and outs of BVR and missiles andall that sort of stuff, but it

(15:39):
is great to establish what your tacticis going to be and how you expect
your wingmen to execute that sort oftactic. So if you want to talk
about it. Now, we couldget into some of the basic concepts of
applying it or using a four inBVR and some of the concepts that go

(16:03):
with that. But yeah, definitelystarts with a good, good briefing.
Yeah, let's delve a little bitinto the details of the briefing. What
type of things would we brief what'sthe general plan? How does this work?
Well, some basic concepts of BBR. When you talk about employing as

(16:26):
a foreship, which I guess isthe standard sort of standard, like the
best, the most fun out thatyou can have when you're doing BBR engagements
is having a four ship and ahuman GCI to work with. But we
can talk about that later, buthaving yourself and three buddies is just the
best way to do BBR. Andone of the I think the simplest way

(16:48):
to explain BBR in that sense isthe Hero who people might know from the
Ultimate Launcher, which is now sortof the semi launcher of BMS, and
as a coder on the BMS teamhis squadron in Japan I joined a few
years ago now, and we're goingto reference a document that he wrote where

(17:15):
his squadron sort of took all theideas and things that they'd learned about BBR
and condensedment to one great document.And he states when he's talking about BBR
tactics that quite simply, BBR isa continuous cycle of commit when you're heading
towards the adversary, and it boughtwhen you're turning away or hot and cold.
And so that's kind of like thebasic concept of BBR is that it's

(17:40):
this sort of dance where you're flyinghot and flying away, and it's how
you shoot and maneuver in that sortof dance of being hot and cold that
the magic really happens at BBR.So when you're talking about that, there
are two overall tactics. There's walland grind, And basically a war all

(18:00):
refers to when all four aircraft areflying together in unison, heading towards the
enemy or all heading away at thesame time. And then the grind is
when you split your four ship intotwo elements, where you'll have two heading
hot and two cold, or you'llhave sort of depth between the elements so
that you can continuously have aircraft facinghot rather than all turning cold in the

(18:26):
wall. And then once you've talkedabout that, tactic so that you know
the flight lead would be briefing like, hey, I want to start in
a wall, and then under thesecertain scenarios we might go to a grind
or maybe you start in a grind, and it all depends on the threats
and your aircraft's kind of strengths.But once you've established the wall or the
grind of it, then you canstart talking about the flow. And the

(18:51):
flow is as an interesting one todelve into, but basically there are two
different types of flow. There's likelaunch and leave or launch and decide,
and so launch and leave tactics.Typically when you leverage the advantage of the
AMRAM and its ability to go active, you know the sort of launch and

(19:12):
fire and forget concept of it,but you basically shoot your AMRAM. You
crank whilst you're supporting the AMRAM,and then at a predetermined distance you make
your outmanoeuver to keep yourself safe fromif the bandit's shot at you, and
then you've got your launch and decidetactic, which is a more aggressive and

(19:32):
more risky tactic, but that's wherebyyou shoot, you still crank, but
then instead of going out, yousort of assess whether you've been shot at
or not, and if you haven't, you turn back in and you keep
going hot, so it's more aggressive, and then you keep sort of pushing
further towards the enemy, so certainlyriskier and can create advantage, especially if

(19:56):
you're in an offensive type of scenariowhere you need to keep pushing the enemy
back. And then other than that, there's the timeline, which we alluded
to before, which is basically justa tool that you can use to measure
how you're going in terms of thesevarious tactics like launch and leave distances,

(20:18):
and I guess we can talk aboutthat in a little bit more detail next
if you like. I will justmake a point of saying that the documents
that you're referencing will be located atthe tactical frequency discord in the topic for
this episode. So for those ofyou listening, if you'd like to look
exactly what are we talking about,which diagrams are we referencing, will refer

(20:40):
to them. The wall and grindertactics are shown in one of these documents
in the BBR timeline document on pagetwo, and the timeline I believe is
on page three, including the flowand the timeline and all of that that
Dusty had mentioned. It expands onthat in further pages down later in the

(21:00):
documentary. Let's try to get someof the terms out of the way,
because I think that's probably the mostconfusing when people don't understand the terms being
discussed, especially like if they jumpinto a briefing and they hear something like,
Okay, we're going to go intoa grinder and then element one is
going to shoot, They're gonna crank, they're going to pump, and then

(21:22):
element two is going to take over. And I think if they don't know
what crank, pump or grinder is, they're going to be a little bit
lost as to what that even means. And it kind of surprised me that
these are very simple terms, butthey they're meant in a specific way,
So let's cover them all. Socrank is after you fire at the enemy

(21:47):
and then to turn aside, notall the way out, but to turn
so that the edge of your radaris still holding the lock, but you're
not closing the distance as fast aspossible. Is that correct? Yeah?
Absolutely. I think everyone who's flownand shot Amram will realize when they're shooting
at a bandit as soon as itdoesn't as soon as that guy turns away

(22:10):
from you. Even if it's notall the way, you can see the
DLZ and you can see like thekinematics of your missile going to have a
much harder time if they're not facingdirectly towards you. So that's the idea
of the crank is that once you'veshot your missile, you have no business
necessarily continuing straight towards the bad guy, because you're only going to make their

(22:33):
shot easier. So once you shoot, you crank. Yeah, either left
or right, depending on what yourflight leader's sort of direction is, and
you're going to preserve as much distanceas possible from you and the bad guy
whilst your AMRAM is smashing through thebososphere waiting to come down and destroy that

(22:53):
aircraft. So, to add tosomething that you said earlier, if I'm
flying higher and faster, then whenmy DLZ the indication for the am RAM
quality of shot, if it's tellingme I've got a good shot, then
my opponent must have a worse shot, all things being equal. Again,
if he's flying at F sixteen withan am RAM and everything, he's got

(23:15):
to have a worse shot than meright, well sort of yes and no.
Like being up as high as possibleto give your aircraft the best chance
of a healthy shot is certainly whatyou want to aim to do, but
you do need to be aware thatputting yourself up in that thin atmosphere also
puts yourself at risk. I thinkpeople will know from flying the F sixteen

(23:38):
that as soon as you get upinto the thirty thousand foot block, it
doesn't perform very well. You know, it flies like an absolute brick.
So whilst it's great to get upthere and should a missile from forty thousand
feet, you probably don't want asan F sixteen, at least different for

(23:59):
an F fifteen sixteen, you don'twant to be living up there, So
take advantage of the high altitude thehigh mark when you can, but understand
how to modulate that. So basicallythe advantage is when you know you're going
to shoot, you want to behigh and you want to be fast,
But as soon as you've shot,you want to be descending back down into

(24:19):
the thicker atmosphere to protect yourself fromthe enemy's shot. So whether or not
they're high and fast as well,it doesn't really matter so much because if
you're going to keep just motoring aroundup at forty thousand feet, you will
be more susceptible to their missile.All right, let's cover another term.

(24:41):
Let's cover the term pump. Isee on page two of the BVR timeline
document. It defines it as abrief to maneuver to minimize closer to threat
or geographical boundary with the intent tore engage, and it goes on from
there. Can you simplify that whatis basically pump pump is nightsense. Pump

(25:03):
just means fly away from the badguy. So this is a good point
to talk about too, because thepump, and we spoke before about how
the Jahiro's basic definition where he's talkingabout it's is just a continuous cycle of
hot or cold or commit and abought. When you pump, you just
turn to basically put the threat atyour six o'clock. So that can be

(25:26):
applied as a flight lead might saythree four pump, And it's just such
a quick, simple way to tellyour second element to go away and create
some separation. And the other thingthat people who are new to BVR may
not realize that flying away from theenemy. Obviously, it depends on the

(25:47):
kind of the scenario and what you'retrying to achieve with the mission. But
flying away from the enemy is justa great thing to do if you lose
essay or if you need to regroupor fix it formation, because if you
do that when you're flying towards theenemy, you're putting yourself at much higher

(26:08):
risk of just getting swatted by oneof their missiles. But if you fix
things when you're in that pump andyou're flying away, it makes life easier.
It means you're going to be moresurvivable because as soon as you're flying
away from the enemy their missiles they'renot going to catch you for the most
part, Like if you've maintained abit of separation, as soon as they

(26:30):
turn away, or rather as soonas you turn away, their missiles are
probably or at least they're probably notgoing to shoot you. Because as you
will notice, as soon as aguy that's on your radar, if he
turns around, you'll notice that youprobably get the little X in the middle
of the hid showing or in themiddle of the circle on your hid showing

(26:51):
that it's an invalid shot. Sothat's the same thing's going to be happening
in their cockpit and they're going torealize, Oh, I can't shoot this
guy. So that's the the benefitof just flying away. Given everything we've
been discussing about pumping and cranking andtactics and teamwork, how do we put
all of this together now? Oncethe flight leader has briefed their sort of

(27:11):
their tactic, whether you're going tobe a wall or grind, all that
sort of stuff, and they've talkedabout what kind of objective you want out
of the mission, how you putit all together in BVR is to understand
a couple of things, and Ithink there are a few things that we
can take from some of the realworld documentation like the BM and some of

(27:33):
these like BVR timeline and the documentsthat you've linked in the discord. Is
to tie it all together is understandthe sort of the sequence of BVR.
So typically what will happen and Iguess we can mention doesn't really matter whether
you have a human a wax orif you're using the AIAX in this sense,
but say is king to start with. So the first thing you're going

(27:56):
to choose is whether or not tocommit to shooting someone like a group or
a bad guy, And so thatdistinction can happen. Maybe if you're a
flying in multiplayer, the person who'sbriefed the mission or planned the mission has
given you commit criteria that's like,hey, so basically we're going to if

(28:19):
anyone gets if any bad guys getwithin this sort of boundaries, we're going
to shoot them. That means they'rea factor. Or maybe if it's in
an offensive counter air, if anyonepops up within the target area, you're
going to need they're going to bea factor, so you're going to need
to shoot them. So whether ornot to actually bother engaging someone is a

(28:41):
big place to start. You don'twant to get taken off the mission,
but just because you've seen some guyspop up at one hundred and twenty miles
on the right hand side of yourscope, So understanding who to commit on
first is important and usually the easiestway to make that distinction is sort of
geographic boundaries. Then once you've decidedto commit, the flight lead and again

(29:04):
this doesn't matter whether you're in afour ship or if it's just two buddies.
You know, playing BMS is tofigure out the targeting. So targeting
is the process of the flight leadassigning who's going to shoot, who are
in the bad guy groups. Sothat can be done sometimes just purely by
using the IDM, which is neat. You know, the flight lead can

(29:26):
point out guys on the FCR oryou can use communications over the radio to
do that. And then once that'sdone, once you've targeted, you're going
to start shooting, like we talkedabout there, so trying to get a
nice, high, fast, goodenergy on your missile is important. Then
you're going to employ your crank andthen you're going to start flowing cold.

(29:48):
So this is the pump that wetalked about. And once you've shot your
missiles and they've achieved either they're huskyor pitbull state and you're flying out,
now's actual one of the most importanttimes of the whole BVR flow when you're
cold. There's a great sequence ofthings that people can apply to their own
BMS, and number one that isn'tdone very often is a spike status.

(30:12):
It's a really quick way to gainsituational awareness on the effectiveness of your missiles.
So flight lead might call out allright, one's naked or one's spiked,
and two might call out that they'renaked or they're spiked. But you
can very quickly or very rapidly likerattle off even in a four ship the

(30:33):
status of each aircraft's RWR, andthat will give the flight leader really great
essay as to what might need tohappen next. So an example of that
might be you've been in a walland all four aircraft have shot a missile
at various targets, you've cranked,and you've gone out, and the flight
lead goes, all right, spikestatus. One's naked, and two says

(30:56):
I'm naked, and then three andfour both say they're sp So that says
something pretty similar or pretty quickly tothe flight lead like, okay, well
three and four are in trouble becausethey've shot their missiles but they're still being
spiked, and myself and two arenaked. So what would the next logical
step would be to have three andfour continue to pump because they've got guys

(31:19):
bearing down on them, and oneand two turn back in to engage.
The other thing that you can dois once you're getting once guys are getting
good and they're really aware of theiravionics. There's the missile timeout, so
you'll see obviously, once you've shota missile, you've got countdown timers on
the hard and the FCR to tellyou when your missile has achieved husky or

(31:41):
pitbull or when it's timed out.So the next important thing to do would
be for people to call time outwhen their missiles are timed out, because
once that has happened, then youcan understand a little bit better as to
what's going on. So if oneand two call timeout and they're still naked,
that means and say their missiles haveprobably done what they needed to do

(32:01):
because the guys that were facing themeffectively like maybe they're running cold, maybe
they've been splashed, but they're notpresently a factor. So these are two
things, the spike status and callingyour timeouts. Even before you talk to
a wax, get a new picture, or call Bogie dope, you've already

(32:22):
gained a whole lot of situational awarenessas to what might need to happen next.
So based on that, that's whenyou choose the recommit. And so
the recommit is obviously really important becausethat's when you turn back in and you
start taking your next shots, andthe neat thing from there is that once
you get to the recommit, you'resort of back at the first step of

(32:42):
the whole BBR process. So you'vegone through all these things and you're back
at step one and you do itall over again. So that's the general
sort of like blow of all ofthose things. If you start adding like
human AAX, you can get evenmore like into it and interesting things.
Typically, the AVAX will give youthat initial picture and will help you during

(33:04):
the targeting process, So the flightlead will be like, hey, two
target this group, and if twogoes, oh, I don't see that,
then the AVAX can come in andhelp to to cue his radar as
to where that group was. Andthen when you start shooting, that's when
the AAX will be quiet. Andthen when everyone's flowing cold again, that's

(33:25):
when the flight lead can start talkingto AVAX again to help rebuild that picture
or make the new picture so thattheir situational ANNA stays as high as possible
so they can really effectively come backin and start shooting again. You mentioned
a spike status figuring that out onthe way out. That seems to be
a very good thing to do inthe wall formation, if all four of

(33:52):
you are flying out together shooting,turning away, figure out where you're at
there. How does it different froma grinder? Then you talked a little
bit about that before, but takeus through some of the details how said
grinder work. Yeah, it's agood point. I think every flight lead
who's flown in multiplayer with maybe anew Dash three or maybe a DASH set

(34:15):
that they haven't flown with before mightfind it initially a bit challenging to sort
of get that level of communication workingwell between the two elements, because there's
nothing more frustrating than say, ifyou're the hot element who's about to start
shooting, or you know you've gotone of you spiked and all this is

(34:37):
all happening, but the other elementthat's behind you all is cold their hog
in all the radio space. That'sreally frustrating. So I think in the
grinder the spike status is another Reallyit's still still important, but probably more
important than that in the grinder isfor the flight lead to set some expectations

(35:00):
as to when he wants the DASHthree to be talking and how much sort
of autonomy he wants the DASH threeto have. Maybe you've got a really
experienced four ship flight lead who basicallyjust wants DASH three to follow his lead,
and he will call them in whenhe wants and he will call even
their targeting for them. And nowthat we have things like LINK sixteen for
the F fifteen, you might seea bit more of that with a flight

(35:21):
lead really able to sort of micromanagefour ships. But in the F sixteen,
with the less essay that we havewith the IDM and all, that
spike status I think is still veryimportant because when let's say, for example,
one and two are flowing cold andthree and four are in. If
one on two's missiles haven't been effectiveon the group that they've just shot and

(35:44):
they're still bearing down on them,Dash three will need to know whether,
I wonder if the guys that oneand two just shot, like, are
they still going to be a factoror are they about to be exploding any
second now? And so if Dashone and DASH two can still do a
quick spike status after they've come out, it'll give the element lead a good
idea whether they need to delouse oneand two or whether they look further afield

(36:07):
for the next group of interest,and I imagine the timeout calls really are
effective at that point as well.If one and two can say that their
missiles have timed out and yet they'restill being chased, like you were saying
earlier, this is a clear indicationof what needs to be done. So
I imagine all this dovetails really nicelytogether. Yeah, definitely. And I

(36:30):
guess that's one of the nice thingsabout BVR, especially if you're flying with
a few mates, is once youstart doing all this and your colms start
getting better, you'll notice the wholeflow of VR becomes more enjoyable and it
makes more sense, and you're ableto be more efficient and you're not stepping
on each other as much on theirradios and all that sort of stuff.

(36:51):
When we come back from the break, Dusty and I are going to discuss
the BVR timeline. Don't miss it, don't go anywhere. We'll continue after
this break. What's the proper wayto ID in air target You actually have

(37:14):
multiple methods VIID, the targeting pod, IFF, NCTR, and a WAX.
Let's talk about them briefly. ViID or visual ID. It's just
the basic pilot eyeball. If you'rein a campaign where aircraft types belong to
one side only. This is enoughto idea target the targeting pod it can
display a white hot or black hotin for an image of your target.

(37:35):
For even better magnification, you canswitch to TV mode. IFF is a
way of iding a probable friendly bymeans of interrogation. Despite the acronym,
it does not actually identify foes.You should not automatically shoot an aircraft that
doesn't respond to IFF queries NCTR.This is a special method of identifying the
type of aircraft that you have lockedup. It's not very reliable, but

(37:59):
when it works, you'll be givingthe aircraft classification. A WAX the big
radar in the sky. You canask a wax to declare your target.
If a WAX replies that it's hostile, then you're authorized to shoot it.
Falcon one, Dragnet one. We'rekeeping you informed on the tactical frequency.

(38:32):
Welcome back to the tactical frequency.We are going to resume our interview with
Dusty. Let's get to it.Let's talk about the BVR timeline. What
is the timeline? So the timelineit's I guess kind of interestingly labeled as
a timeline when really it's sort ofit's based off distances from the adversary or

(38:55):
kind of the target of interest,if you will. But basically, timeline
is a tool that you can useto make sure that you're hitting certain criteria
to get the most out of yournot only your AMRAM but also your sort
of staying on brief with what theflight lead wants. So an example might

(39:21):
be and we can get into allof the various sort of like checkpoints on
the timeline in a second here,but basically we talked about the two different
or we talked about launch and leaveversus launch and decide tactics. There are
two sub variants of the launch andleave tactic known as skate and short skate.

(39:43):
And effectively skate is when you sortof shoot and defend further from the
bad guy than a short skate.And how do you do that, well,
you would use a timeline with thevarious rangers, you know, the
tick marks along the timeline to tryand to stay on timeline so that you
can meet the various tactic or theflow that you are that you're aiming for.

(40:07):
So, for example, a skatetactic or sorry, a skate flow,
I should say, typically has youshooting at what's known as the transition
range and defending you know, startingyour pump before desired outrange, whereas a
short skate has you shooting at againyou could depends on the flight leader's tactic,

(40:30):
but it has you shooting typically closerthan the transition range, but you
defend it what's known as the MRor minimum of boat range, which is
definitely something that I think people herequite commonly like if you don't have to
use a full on timeline to beeffective in BBR, I don't think and
sometimes in like you'll hear in variousonline communities, people simply just briefing the

(40:54):
maar for various different threats out there, and sometimes that's totally enough, just
understanding that if you're going up againsta flanker, the minimum of boat range
is going to be greater than ifyou're going up against a SU twenty five
or something like that. So yeah, basically, the timeline is something that

(41:15):
would be briefed each flight, andit's based on distance from the adversary and
you use it to fulfill the differentflows. Skate, short skate or barns
eye. Let's cover some of these, I guess we call milestones on the
timeline, So obviously, mar Ithink is probably the most important for people

(41:38):
to be introduced with because given thatit is the minimum of boat range,
is it fair to say that ifI cross that distance that now I'm actually
in mortal danger to the enemy.Yeah, pretty much. If you don't
respect the minimum of boat range,you're going to find yourself going to nasty

(42:00):
situation and not necessarily like obviously it'sso dynamic too. So maybe I think
that when people hear about a timelinefor the first, you know, the
first time they hear about a timeline, or maybe they jump into a multiplayer
mission and their flight lead saying allright, guys, we're gonna we're gonna
skate and we're gonna shoot it thisdance and boil this danceance then shots get's
going to be this, and theirheads like, ah, what this is?

(42:21):
This is not the Sunday afternoon kindof chill flight sim session I was
expecting. But the reality is thatthe BVR is so dynamic and the actual
rangers are completely dependent on how highand fast you are and how high and
fast the enemy is. So reallyit should just be used as kind of
a rule of thumb rather than beinglike, oh, shoot, well,

(42:45):
you know, flight leads said marfor this aircraft at thirty thousand feet was
twenty seven aautical mile, So damn, I got to twenty six point five
nautical mile, So I may aswell just deject now, Like it's not
that kind of stringent, if youwill. It's more just a helpful tool.
But one thing you will notice,and this can even go back to
the one V one that we spokeabout in the in the beginning, is

(43:07):
that perhaps in that scenario where youtalked about the experienced guy versus the brand
new guy, and say, forexample, an experienced guy is using his
own little timeline that he's got inhis head, and so he's respecting the
MAS. So he's shot his ARAM, it's gone husky or whatever, and

(43:28):
he's hit his MAR and he's turningout, whereas the inexperienced guy is kind
of just reacting on that IWRS bikeand so he's getting the M on THEWR
and he's immediately like split sing andfull ab and descending to like ten thousand
feet you know, to try anddefeed that missile. And he may well,
you know, defend that missile ifhe does a high performance, you

(43:49):
know, split s and roll outat five thousand feet. But the concept
there is that because the experienced guyhas used his timeline and he's gone out,
it is at his MR, hehasn't needed to go full ab and
split s down to what could belike a manpad wes. He's able to
turn out and maybe even stay upin the twenty thousands of feet so that

(44:14):
he set himself up for success sohe can turn back in with more energy
and put a more lethal shot onthe bad guy you know, who's maybe
split s down to five thousand feetand as soon as he's shaken that m
off Therwi, he's turning back in. But he turns back in to see
the guy that he's just shot atb at like thirty thousand feet again and

(44:34):
he's down at five thousand feet.So you're going to use a timeline to
basically give yourself the confidence to nothave to make last ditch maneuvers, or
you know, if you do trespassyour MR and you realize, oh,
well, I definitely need to splitand make a maximum effort sort of a

(44:54):
Borto maneuver here. That's kind ofhow you can apply that to your your
BBR to get the most out ofit. So I'm looking here at page
three of the BBR timeline document andthe this is a beautiful diagram, and
this is the one that's I've beenupdated, by the way. I believe
in the other documents there's an errorin the between the minimum bore range and

(45:19):
the decision range, but I believein this one it's the accurate one.
And so the first part that Inoticed here is MTR minimum targeting range.
What happens there, Yeah, that'syou. You make a really good point.
If we swap to the o CA DCA tactics document on page twelve,
there's a BBR timeline there is thatis slightly reverse. It's basically got

(45:43):
decision range and the NAR flipped onthat one. But minimum targeting range is
it's actually it's kind of a goodone even to use casually. So minimum
targeting range is typically and to behonest, jeez, I'm a bit rusty.
It's the definitely of MTR I thinkis in this document, and also
it comes from the b E M. But how you could apply that to

(46:07):
your flights, you know, maybeas a more casual flight simulator player is
that the minimum targeting range is.Typically once you get to that range,
the flight leads should have achieved theirtargeting like, so everyone in the flight
should know who that they are goingto be shooting at. And if you

(46:29):
get within that range and you haven't, you know already established who's going to
shoot missiles at who, you're infor a sort of a bad time perhaps,
But to brief that as a flightlead, it's really helpful for your
wingmen because, as we all know, chaos and choose when you do.

(46:50):
When you find the dynamic campaign,groups will pop up out of nowhere.
If you don't have a human awax helping you, you might not realize
a group of twenty months popping outof an airfield that's close to your flight
plan. And by briefing a minimumtargeting range, you sort of give some
confidence to your wing men to realize, oh, shoot, okay, this

(47:10):
group's just popped up and we areinside minimum targeting range. So once you
are inside that, the women havekind of autonomy to shoot out whoever they
see is as a threat, providedthat they are able to idea them as
hostile. So sorry, just torecap minimum targeting range beyond minimum targeting range.

(47:31):
So let's just say, for example, minimum targeting range in this scenario
is forty miles. Outside of fortymiles, the flight lead's going to be
going, all right, we're approachingforty miles. I need to say,
hey, to target this group.Three, Target this group, four,
target this group. But then ifthat hasn't been established, and wing men

(47:52):
see groups pop up inside forty milesand they were able to identify them as
hostile, they can sort of tomedically target and shoot those groups in accordance
with the flight leads set of gameplan. So it's just a helpful tool
for the flight lead to organize thisflight, but also gives women a bit
of sort of autonomy to be lethalif you will. All right, And

(48:16):
then the other points that I'm noticing, I guess the highlights that would take
in the launch and leave section ofthis diagram. You mentioned that the two
different flows skate and short skate,and I'm seeing the key points on here.
The desired outrange is the first onethat we come across, and then
the minimum board range is the nextone. So we need to fire and

(48:39):
be out when we're doing skate bythe desired outrange. But if we're doing
short skate, we need to launchand be out by the minimum board range.
Is that correct? Yeah, thatis certainly. Yeah. I think
that's the best way to do itin my opinion. So, yeah,
the document here has the short skatehappening, the abort maneuver happening, happening

(49:02):
at decision range. But sometimes soobviously the actual timeline and the figures on
the timeline are going to depend heavilyon the threat. So sometimes the decision
range and the minimum A boat rangemay be quite similar in in in their
in their numbers in the figures there. But but like you alluded to,
ya, typically a skate would happenwhere you're shooting at transition range and you're

(49:28):
you're your out by a desired outrangeand short skate as you out by the
minimum a boat range, that shouldkeep you pretty safe. Now for the
other side of this, the launchand decide, I'm seeing a word written
here in the diagram bonzai. Whatis bonzai? And when would we want
to do that? Yeah, it'sa great question. So we've talked to

(49:52):
Yeah, we've talked about the launchand leave taxis and then launch and decide,
Like so, why would you notwant to go out if we've just
talked about how and the pump andhow you can use it to credit advantage.
Well, there are certain scenarios whereyou want to be as aggressive as
possible and keep pushing the enemy backas quickly as you can. So the

(50:13):
first scenario that comes to mind isyou're doing an OCA package and you're going
to strike an airfield. So ifyou're fighters, like you're sort of your
escort or the car cap kind ofgo out and they just do launch and
leave tactics all day, and they'revery conservative. They might not punch enough
of a hole in the airspace andthey might not clear enough bandits to allow

(50:36):
the strikers to actually get into theirtarget. So sometimes you have to accept
more risk, which is what you'redoing by doing the barnseye. And I
think we mentioned it a little bitearlier on but yeah, launching decide,
So you're going to shoot at aparticular range, You're going to crank still,
but instead of then making your pumpinover at DIA or mar we talked

(51:00):
about, you're going to decide.So this is when decision range or dr
comes into play. Once you hitthat range, from the bad guy,
you're going to enter the notch.So you're going to put the RWR indication
of the person that you're you know, the bad guy that you're shooting at
on your beam, your three onnine line, and you're going to hold

(51:22):
that notch for fifteen seconds. Ifat any point during that fifteen seconds you
get an m spike or you getspiked and maybe even like a semi active
missile launch warning, you're then goingto abort because obviously if you don't react
that you're probably dead. But you'retaking advantage of the possibility that the bad

(51:46):
guy is now defending your missile that'sgone active, or defending your wingman's missile,
and instead of making an a boartmaneuver and then having to sort of
you know, expend that energy ofthen turning back in and all that sort
of stuff, you're just leveraging thatyou're naked, you're probably untargeted, and

(52:07):
you can turn back in and youcan put a much more healthy missile on
the bad guy group. So certainlyyou're accepting more risk, but it's kind
of a calculated risk, and ultimatelyit's going to result in your flight being
able to push back the red airfaster than if you kept doing launch and
leave, and it will possibly leadit into a much higher PK follow up

(52:32):
shot. Would you say that itwould require a more experienced pilot to more
successfully employ launch into side tactics?Yes, yeah, like well yes,
and no. I feel like it'sif you're doing this with just you and

(52:55):
one wing man, it's certainly abit more simple because it's going to be
easier to communicate. I think communicationis still key in this sense because what
happens when you do this is there'sthe likelihood that you sacrifice a bit of
mutual support in order to get thisfollow up higher PK shot. So,

(53:15):
for example, if you and dashtoo and you both enter your notch,
and typically what you do is younotch and you can see it depicted on
the diagram there. You'll notch awayfrom each other in order to if just
one missile's in the air, hopefullythe missile, you know it will go
for one one friendly aircraft rather thanthe other, and so you won't both

(53:37):
have an m spike on your IWRand cause you both did afend, one
of you is clearly going to besort of soaking up that missile. If
you will, and the other onewill be untargeted to turn in. So
it definitely requires a bit more communicationand you want to execute it well.
But in theory or in practice,it's it's not that technical of a maneuver

(54:00):
sort of achieve I think everyone canconsider employer not employer notch quite effectively.
I think the main trick with BVRand employing as two or more ships is
just the communication side of things.So once you, once you learn to
communicate well with your with your withyour team, with your friends, you

(54:22):
can be pretty effective at pretty muchall these maneuvers, in my opinion.
We'll be back with more content hereon the tactical frequency. Don't go anywhere.
We'll continue after this break. TheBMS experience can be improved with additional

(54:46):
software. In no particular order,here are four programs that, while not
strictly necessary, are incredibly useful.One Weapons Delivery Planner. This lets you
set in game knee boards and helpsyou plan your missions to a much greater
degree. Two Mission Commander. Thisis useful for editing campaign saves, adding

(55:07):
new aircraft, deleting squadrons, basicallyallowing you to customize your campaign saves.
Three Voice Attack. This program letsyou speak to the AI, including your
wingman, A WAX, the tanker, and ATC. You'll need a voice
profile for it. However, thereis a free version with limitations four tack

(55:29):
few. This lets you watch thereplays of your flight. This is a
must for thorough debriefs. There isa free version and there are paid versions.
These programs don't come with Falcon BMS, so you'll need to download them
from their respective websites. Drag Netone Single Group, BEM North. This

(55:52):
is the tactical frequency. I hopeyou guys are having a blast listening to
the tactical frequency in this interview withDusty on beyond visual range combat. Let's
keep going right here. On thetactical frequency, let's talk briefly about human

(56:15):
a WAX or GCI as we callit in the Falcon BMS multiplayer communities that
I'm part of. I had eagleeye on the tactical frequency earlier as a
guest, we were discussing the benefitsof human AAX. What does human AAX
specifically add to BVR. Well,apart from the fact that it's just way
more fun to work with the humanAAX, it certainly gives you much better

(56:40):
situational awareness. At least a goodhuman AX will give you better situation better
situational awareness. Sometimes, you know, maybe a bad human AAX or someone
who's new to it might actually makethings a little bit worse. But you
know, it's at the end ofthe day, it's still all fun and
a learning experience. But it reallyit comes down to that F sixteen with

(57:06):
its IDM, you know, nothaving the link sixteen capability, So when
you're cold, when you're flying away, you really have not much of an
idea what's going on behind you andhow the red air, how the bad
guys are sort of maneuvering. Sothat's when the AVAX comes in real handy
and they can basically rebuild your mentalpicture so that when you do that CRUCI

(57:30):
will recommit, you know exactly whatyou're pitching back into. You know that
the West group has done this,or this group has likely disappeared. So
that way you can maintain that highlevel of essay and that sort of cohesion
within your flight so that you afterthe first commit, you haven't all scattered
in different ways. You're able tomaintain mutual support information and turn back in

(57:53):
because the human AVAX has seen saidlike, hey guys, this is what's
happening behind you, and you're likesweet, okay, got it, and
you turned back in and you remaineffective. I wanted to walk you down
memory lane a little bit. I'mnot sure if you'll remember this, but
a number of years ago you andI were in a flight. You were

(58:15):
the lead. I was number four, and I believe two was Cactus.
Three was Van. We were anescort flight for a strike and Fruity's was
the GCI and I still remember thatmission to this day. You have a
video of it on your YouTube channel, which I'll link on the discord.

(58:35):
But I think that cap flight thatwe had, or escort, if you
will, it was one of thebest that I was ever part of in
terms of the air to air operations. The radios were constantly busy, but
it wasn't with pointless chatter. Wewere all communicating. Number three was talking
a lot, and he was effectivelymaking sure that I was still with him.

(59:00):
We were coordinating, and you wereleading the flight. And I just
wonder if you still remember that flightand if you had any comments on that.
I'm glad you brought that up becauseyes, I do remember that it
was a really fun, very memorableflight. It was nighttime, which made
it tricky too. I don't rememberwe were doing sort of One thing that
we didn't even talk about is thedifferent types of tactics in terms of visual

(59:23):
mutual support or link kind of support, where you use the IDM and you
sort of fly further apart, andat nighttime you sort of default into that
sort of like link or sensor mutualsupport formation where you can't see you wing
men. The mvgs are kind ofhopeless and it's dark and all that sort

(59:45):
of stuff, So you fly justreliant on the IDM to keep track of
where your wingmen are, so youressay is always already a bit lower than
it would be during the day.And then yeah, add to that,
we had Baltic, which is oneof those theaters where the Russian flank of

(01:00:06):
threat is just relentless. And yeah, we had Fruiti's on the GCI,
and I'm pretty sure we did whoseLands as well, and we were in
the north side of the battle space, and there was another flight in the
south side of the battle space,And to be perfectly honest with you,
I think we tried to employ somedifferent flows in that light. So I

(01:00:29):
think when we briefed, we talkedabout skate and short skate and the ranges
that we wanted to try and shootat and all that sort of stuff,
because we were up against things likeyou know, SU thirty five's with R
seventy seven, and that was definitelyI was brand new to those sorts of
concepts then, So I think lookingback at that video would be cringing particularly

(01:00:51):
hard as to when we decided tosort of short skate or barnseye. But
it was a lot of fun,and I guess it brings back to the
point that when we've talked about,you know, the different flows, but
then when when do you actually applythem? What's the correct way to do
that? And I would say backthen, I had no freaking clue.

(01:01:15):
We were just sort of winging it. But it was a lot of fun,
and I think all four of us, you know, came home and
it was a successful mission. MaybeI can't actually remember, but it was
definitely a lot of fun. Andeven though I'd say there would have been
a lot of debrief points as tohow we decided to do things, I

(01:01:35):
think at one point, remember somebodygot merged, and we pitched back in
to see if we could help themout, but they were like they were
already merged, so we couldn't shootAmram, and it was dark and it
was all kinds of chaos. Buteven if we didn't sort of execute a
flawless b ther game plan, westill had a lot of fun doing it.
So that's the most important thing.I'd like to run some questions by

(01:01:59):
you. I put out the topicon the Tactical Frequency Discord asking people for
all of their beyond visual range combatquestions. I'd like to post some of
these to you now, Yes,let's do it. First question is when
should you not grinder or put inother words, when does the grinder not

(01:02:19):
work as a tactic. That's areally good question, and I think that
follows on from what we were justtalking about really well. So obviously the
advantage of being in a wall formationis that you have one hundred percent of
your firepower facing downrange. So whenyou when you're grinding, you've only got
that's assuming we're talking about for ship, you've only got fifty percent of your

(01:02:43):
fire power down range or facing downrange. I should say, so you limit
yourself if you. If you electto say grinder straight off the bat,
you limit your ability to target inasimuth. So let's say the initial picture
is a four group wall. Well, then two guys who are hot are
going to struggle to effectively put missileson all four groups, rather than if

(01:03:09):
you had all four of you facingdownrange, you could all you could make
the targeting happen a lot easier.So basically, you would prefer to perhaps
start in a wall in most scenarios, not all scenarios, but most scenarios
because it gives you the chance tobe a bit more flexible with how you

(01:03:29):
assign targeting. So yeah, whenyou're in a grinder, you limit yourself
to target in asthmuth. There area couple other things too, but I
think the main point is that ifyou've got a lot of hostile groups that
are spread in a wide asthmuth,you would prefer to have more of you

(01:03:51):
facing downrange so you could try andattrit as much of the leading edge of
the bad guy kind of picture first, then figure out when you're all flowing
cold, and then from there perhapsyou elect to grind, but you get
that first volley of effective shots hopefullyfrom a wall rather than a grind in
that pature where it's like a fourgroup wall or a five wall or something

(01:04:15):
like that. Next question, whatis offensive canteraer and defensive canter air and
how does each shape how you fight? So, honestly, it's probably something
we should have talked about first,but that's a another great question from Potato.
Two very different BVR mindsets when you'redoing offensive camera versus defensive canterrara.

(01:04:38):
So we talked about the different flowsand accepting more risk with the barnse eye.
But basically, when you are inoffensive counterere and you're trying to push
forward into bad guy territory to hita target, maybe you've got some strikers
or you know, ded flight seedfight that they need to get to their

(01:04:59):
target area. But if there's awall of red air between you and that
target area, the escort or theBBR guys have to do something about it.
Excuse me. So in an okasort of scenario, you're more likely
to want to escalate to those riskierbarnzai or launching to side tactics sooner where

(01:05:21):
versus if you're in a defensive canterair sort of the you kind of,
It's like you're on a home homeground offensive in the defensive canter Air,
so you can get away with justkeeping the enemy at bay, and you
can do that by employing your skateand short skate effectively rather than having to

(01:05:43):
accept that higher level of risk andbarnzai kind of. Conversely, though,
in a defensive Cauntera scenario, youtypically have like a mission failure line,
like perhaps you're defending an AVAX oryou're defending a home base, Like if
the Red Air is able to pushyou all the way back to the point
where they're about to be able toshoot at your AOAX or drop bombs on
your air base, then you'll probablyneed to ultimately elevate to those launching decide

(01:06:09):
tactics as well. So yeah,different mindsets for both both OKA and DCA
OCA. You want to be aggressiveearly and you want to leverage those like
launching decide tactics earlier. Versus DCAyou would attempt to position yourself to use
launch leave tactics to greater effect andfor longer. I suppose I could add

(01:06:34):
to that that you mentioned home advantagein the DCA, so the SAM systems
will be friendly, they'll be onyour side and you might be able to
force the enemy. If he's goingto push, he has to push into
the SAM coverage that'll help you,versus maybe if you're out in enemy territory,
it won't be so won't be sogood. The sands will be shooting

(01:06:56):
at you totally, totally. It'syeah, that's put that on the wish
list for maybe future BMS whereby awax players can you know, select which
age that would be a pretty neatwith That's come up in discussion recently actually
about I mean, do we goso far as you call it a BMS

(01:07:20):
combined arms? No, that's ridiculous, But like, wouldn't it be cool
if your a wax player could sortof manipulate some of those extra assets and
you get the full you know,the real full, the full deal,
the full feeling of how those scenarioswould play out, because yeah, in
the real world, you're absolutely right, it would be such a multi layered

(01:07:41):
defense like Sam's aircraft, you know, electronic warfare as well, all that
good stuff all happening together. Ithink Potato also noted here he said,
or your SAM sites will shoot youdown, at least in real life you
always run that risk in BMS.Right now they know how to identify.
But I mean, I think evenin the tactical reference I'm not mistaken.

(01:08:03):
It notes that the essay six,when Egypt was using it in nineteen seventy
three in the Elm Kipper War,they shot down more of their own aircraft
than they did Israeli aircraft. Sothe friendly fire can be real, quite
real in real life, very deadly, very dangerous, and very very unexpected.

(01:08:28):
Yeah, totally, like, wouldn'tit be ingesting? This is like
again I'm going down a kind ofa fantasizing about future BMS you know,
capabilities, But if you forget tosay, load your data kat correctly and
put your your IFF codes in,maybe friendly Sam's might take a shot at

(01:08:51):
you if you're not you know,squawking the correct modes and codes. Or
for example, if you took damageout of battle and your transponder got knocked
out, that could be an interesting, you know, extra scenario, extra
layer to add to it. Forsure, We've gone another question here,

(01:09:14):
how far or close should the spacingbe between elements and between wingmen? What
factors should be taken into consideration?Another really awesome question. I note that
the prime who asked that question editedthat question and put it depends Tam,
and he's so right, like itdefinitely depends on the scenario. So the

(01:09:34):
advantages of both were already just talkedbefore about having a night mission and sort
of defaulting into a link mutual supportbecause you can't really see your wingmen at
night. So there are even factorsas basic as daylight versus you know,

(01:09:57):
you know, available daylight might effectwhether you want to use a visual mutual
support where you've got your wingmen andyour elements closer together versus having them spread
further out typically in this day andage, you know, like in the
fifth Generation fight, we understand thatlink mutual support is like the default,

(01:10:19):
and you have all of the wingmenspaced in pretty wide asimuth, and it
makes them more sort of aggressive andoffensive. And I think really that translates
into BMS now, which is whichis great. Like if you have all
four of your aircraft separated by tenor so nautical miles, you present more

(01:10:44):
groups for the bad guys to belooking at. So instead of a four
ship where you've got one and twoclose together and three and four close together,
you're presenting two groups. Now allof a sudden, if everyone's in
a ten nautical mile wall, you'representing four groups for the bad guys to
shoot that. So that's the potentialadvantage there, particularly in the that's in
the sort of higher end of theam RAM type of fight. If you're

(01:11:09):
going against more advanced threats, andyou obviously need some kind of link support
to do that, so you needyour IDM or your link sixteen then to
say you're doing in you know,I t o eighties type of scenario,
then you're probably much more likely todefault into visual mutual support, where you've

(01:11:29):
got one and two and three andfour in a like a visual line of
breast and dash. Three wants tokeep close enough to one and two that
they can still see them. Sowhen you're pitching into the visual fight,
you know you can you can stillreally maintain mutual support. Then when it
also gets interesting is in the sortof middle ground. So maybe the middle

(01:11:55):
ground, let's call it, whenyou're flying F sixteen's with the you know,
with IDM, so it's it's stillyou know, it's a data link,
but it's perhaps not the most advancedand you're like well, okay,
maybe I want to keep you know, we're up against a pretty crazy threat
of let's say day one of anyKTO campaign. So the North Koreans have

(01:12:17):
just a lot of aircraft up.They're not necessarily particularly advanced aircraft like like
MIK twenty nine a's and all kindsof other things. Maybe you want to
maintain the best mutual support possible bykeeping one and two in visual mutual support,
But you want three and four tobe a sort of a bit looser

(01:12:39):
than you start talking about. Okay, well, three and four you can
have this autonomy to go you know, more than or no more than,
say fifteen Nordical miles in asimuth.And if we're going to do a grinder,
I don't want you to go morethan thirty notical miles in depth because
if you start to go beyond thoseranges, then you can't effectively de laus

(01:13:00):
the other element. So you're you'resort of gone. You've maneuvered beyond the
effective range of AMRAM. So usingyour spacing between elements of wingmen depend on
your sort of like link capability andalso your missile capability, and then also
the threat. So yeah, ireyou up against like blankers with good radar

(01:13:23):
and good missiles. Maybe the Chinesesort of threats with the PO twelve,
which is pretty pretty nasty versus Iup against day one of North Korean threats
of tons of mid twenty nine sand sue twenty fives and mid nineteens.
So yeah, so many factors,but I think I hope I've covered enough

(01:13:44):
generic ones there. Big Mo asksabout the topic of shooting am rams.
When should someone launch at the differentranges? And he gives us an example
our arrow R max, RTR,et cetera, And he knows many people
don't know that you can shoot theamram munch farther than the bracket. Implies,
Yeah, that's a that's a greatquestion. And I feel like,

(01:14:08):
so what Figma might be getting atthere sort of marries up quite well with
what we're talking about. Timeline.So often the timeline doesn't necessarily directly relate
to those tick marks on the DLZ, so that's something that may be confusing.
The new parts is like, well, okay, so, but the

(01:14:29):
manual tells me that anything other thana r TR shot is worthless. It's
like, well, sure that maybe true, but you've got to think
about BBR as this like three dimensionalgame of chess where you've got to think
a couple of steps ahead. Soto set up a healthy shot, sometimes
you have to, you know,sort of waste a several hundred thousand dollars

(01:14:51):
missile and not waste it, butyou sometimes you need to take a shot
that is than what you might expectto set up the follow up shot.
So I can't really, I mean, it's difficult to give a specific answer
to that question, but like Figmosays, many people don't know that you

(01:15:15):
can shoot AMRAM much further than thebracket implies. Yeah, absolutely, like
typical, A typical skate flow mighthave you shooting at the transition range,
which could be forty five Nordical miles, so healthy or A good thing to
note right now is that that BBRtimeline document that we were talking about that
came out when we had Career Trainingtheater version one point five I think it

(01:15:40):
was, which was for BMS fourpoint three to five, and it's still
relevant today because the current like AMRAMand PL twelve sort of aero data is
pretty similar to when that document cameout, and in that it goes if
you go to down to the lastpages. So page seven of the BBR

(01:16:03):
timeline document has a timeline against thePL twelve and you can see the transition
range is forty five nautical miles.So against a threat that's carrying PL twelve
and you have an AMRAM, youwant to be shooting at forty five nordical
miles if you're at thirty five thousandfeet, which, to be honest,
if you're at forty five nordical miles, you're you're going to be maybe just

(01:16:25):
within i er, which seems likea silly shot, but it's sort of.
It lends to the tactics of BBRthat sometimes you've got to take that
long shot to set up the nextshot. Mc vidie's asks how best to
use AI wingmen and BVR and whento run away and also how to deal
with jamming aircraft. There's a lotof questions in here, but let's deal

(01:16:48):
with the first one right right away. How do we use AI wingmen and
BVR. Yes, that is athat is a tough question because, to
be honest, like, I thinkone of the weaker points at the moment
in BMS is the friendly AI inBBR, Like it's a bit tricky,

(01:17:08):
but in my personal experience, Idid a lot of testing of AI wingmen
in the early days of when Iwas doing some beta testing in BMS,
which I still am, and Ifound at the time the best way to
employ AI women in BBR is togive them specific targets and to tell them

(01:17:32):
to engage that target. And onceyou hear them call their fox three and
you you're probably shooting at about thesame time as them. As soon as
they have or rather as soon asyou have had your missile achieve an active
state husky or pitbull, get themto rejoin with you or tell them to
hold weapons, and then you willmake your outmaneuver and then they should follow

(01:17:56):
you. So it can be abit, you know, labor intensive,
pressing the various wingmen menus and gettingthem to do this and that, but
it can be quite effective if youspecify who you want them to shoot at,
and you do a healthy amount oftelling them to weapons hold after they've
shot. So you just have tosort of use a bit of a bit

(01:18:17):
of your sort of senses to howwell your missile is doing, which will
hopefully be about the same ranges thatthey are shooting. They do shoot nice
and nice and long range, whichis great. So you just have to
sort of tell them to hold weapons, come cold with you, and then
when you turn back in, getthem to get them to target. Again

(01:18:41):
use the use the attack my targetor also if you get into those situations
where you're cold and your spiked,you can get them, you know,
dash to check my six is reallyhandy. They they'll they'll pitch in and
deal OUs you and be a veryloyal wingman in that sense, which is
great. And also I guess listeningto what they're saying too. Sometimes they'll

(01:19:01):
say, you know, unable orto defending missile. That'll give you a
pretty good sens as to whether maybe, Okay, the bad guys are actually
shooting at my wingmen. They're notshooting at me, so I'm pretty clear
to turn back in and dealous them. So don't have a great answer for
that question, but I think justliberal use of getting them to target and

(01:19:23):
then telling them to hold weapons anddoing that sort of repeatedly seems to work
pretty well for me at least.Add two points that I in relation to
what you said about the menu,I would add a program like Voice Attack
where you can literally speak to theAI, and it will enter the menu
buttons for you. That is fantastic. I absolutely enjoy that aspect of dealing

(01:19:45):
with the AI. The other thingthat I would point out is a little
nuggative information in the BMS manuals isthat if you tell the AI attack targets,
not attack my target, but attacktargets in an air to air context,
it will sort the flight for you. So if you're locked on to

(01:20:09):
the lead and you say, ifyou're the leader of your flight and you're
locked on to the enemy lead andyou say flight attack targets, your two,
three, and four will automatically sizeup the enemy and grab a different
target. And so that's a fantaor at least I think. I don't
know how the element does it.I think three might order four to do
something, but the sorting should bepretty much automatic for you at that point.

(01:20:32):
The only negative thing that I reallywould complain about the AI is that
when I was more active in flyingFalcon BMS and trying to get the AI
to work in the latest versions ofBMS that I had flown, I could
not get the AI to work ina multiplayer context. They just would not
fire in single player they would shoot, but in multiplayer I couldn't get them

(01:20:56):
to fire. Nobody else on theserver could get them to fire. They
would just fly and do form withthe enemy. And I'm hoping I don't
know. I didn't get to seeif that was fixed, and update three,
I'm hoping it is. It's definitelyworth investigation. Actually, yeah,
I must admit you've just sort ofidentified a bit of a whole and at
least my personal beta testing, typicallyi'm either flying with the AI, which

(01:21:18):
to be honest, is only wheni'm testing because I'm a big proponent of
multiplayer, fly with your friends,and then typically when flying with friends,
you usually send the AI women homebecause they're useless. That's not all the
time. I know we have specifictests in the beta team to test that
stuff, but personally I haven't donethat in ages, So yeah, I'll

(01:21:42):
be worth checking out. Also,McK viddie's dealing with jamming aircraft. Look
into the different radar modes of theF sixteen FCR and also consider using the
mode where you hold TMS up onthe radar and have its scan a very
near Z row section of space.We'll be right back, We'll be right

(01:22:13):
back after this break. Stay withus. In BMS, we have a
strange requirement colloquially called the click dance. It's a way to make sure BMS
loads everything correctly, including your briefing, commsplan, and IFF plan. You
do this in the two D mapbefore you've committed to your flight. Here
are the steps. Step one,click on your flight in the listings.

(01:22:35):
Step two, click on your blueseat. Step three, open your data
cartridge. Step four. Click onthe COMMS tab and click on commsplan.
Step five, click on the IFFtab and click on the IFF plan.
Step six, click on save tosave the data cartridge. With all of
this clicking, you can probably seehow it got its name. The click

(01:22:59):
dance is reques wired in every multiplayerflight, and you really should be doing
it in a single player as well. In fact, you may end up
performing the click dance multiple times beforeyou commit to your flight. If someone
new never has the right frequencies,chances are he doesn't do the click dance.

(01:23:21):
Falcon one, drag Net one goahead with exceptions on the tactical frequency.
It's so nice to be back intothe swing of things here at the
tactical frequency. I hope we're goingto be able to keep up a decent

(01:23:43):
schedule and get this first season outof the way. I forgot to mention
the intro dusty part of the testingteam for Falcon VMS. That's all right,
I'm a but a mere beta tester. So yeah, well, now
we made a big mistake because everyonegoing to send you any bug that they
find. Right. Next question,Opie Potato asks, what about al R?

(01:24:10):
How does that factor in? Yeah, ALR super interesting. So that's
typically ALAR is something that you wouldexperience if you're flying I guess in multiplayer
with with friends or someone who's briefedit. I know that Tiago, who's
absolutely incredible coder who who's I guesslike maybe relatively new to the BMS team,

(01:24:35):
but he's done so many things,like he's reworked the and we're hoping
to get him on the podcast,but unfortunately timing hasn't worked out. Maybe
hopefully in the future he can talkabout some of these some of these things
incredible things that he's done. He'sworked out ALR that affects the way the

(01:24:58):
BMS campaign engine works. But Ithink what Opi Potato is specifically talking about
is Ali and I should specify.So acceptable level of risk is what LAR
stands for, and that's something thatthe mission briefer would would would specify,
and the ALAR can be different foreach asset. So typically a LAR four

(01:25:19):
things like a wax would be alow like you're not going to go send
your a wax up to to Peongyangon first day of the war kind of
vibes. But an escort or aseed package is going to have a high
or an extreme level acceptable level ofrisk because they're going to be flying into
SAM threat rings, they're going tobe getting close to where the enemy caps

(01:25:42):
are. And as a as someonewho's performing BBR you you would take that
sort of briefed acceptable level of riskand apply that to your decision to use
a particular flow. So maybe youracceptable level of risk is extreme. You're

(01:26:03):
like, all right, we're gonnabanzai straight away, doesn't matter what the
enemy picture looks like, where you'regonna be super risky. We're just gonna
goot missiles. We're not going toturn away. We're just going to notch
everything fingers crossed, hope for thebest. So that's maybe how you would
apply LAR to your own sort ofBVR fight. If your if your LR

(01:26:24):
is is more something like moderate orlow, then maybe you would only use
skate tactics sort of all day long. So that's that's how you you'd apply
that to your to your BBR fight. Last question from the discord, what
is the difference between escort and sweep. So escort is is you're you're escorting

(01:26:46):
you know, a particular entity.So so as a as a BVR you
know, an am RAM shooter,you are going to maneuver your flight in
relation to that entity that you needto protect. So whereas sweep is typically
against a geographic area that you're goingto then go and you know, sweep

(01:27:12):
to look for threats to pick afight with. So escort is definitely more
challenging because you've you've well, Imean, I say that it can all
be depends how the I guess,depends how the campaign engine or the tactical
engagement evolves. But typically as anescort, you know BVR player, you've
got to be really cognizant of wherethat striker or whatever it is you know

(01:27:40):
that you have to protect. Typically, so escort is part of an o
C a type of scenario. Souh, that's when you're you're push pushing
into into into red guy kind ofkind of land. So it's challenging in
that not only do you want downrangeprogression, but you've got to make sure

(01:28:00):
that there are no leakers or redguye groups that are flanking you to get
through to that entity you need toprotect. Whereas Sweep is a bit more,
you're a bit more free because you'reable to you don't need to respect
a particular friendly asset that you needto protect. You can you can be
a bit more liberal with your applicationof how you're shooting and how you're maneuvering.

(01:28:28):
Dusty, thank you so much forjoining me today. This was a
fantastic conversation and it flowed really well. I'm glad you think so. I
feel like it could have gone offthe rails at any second there, And
look, thanks for entertaining my nerdylove of BBR. Like I think,

(01:28:48):
it's it's just fun that we havethis great simulator where you can read some
of the publicly available stuff and applyit to flying around in a BMS and
hopefully it'll make your BBA experience it'smore fun. So thanks hey for having
me. That about does it forthis episode. I hope everyone was entertained

(01:29:10):
and appreciated what we were trying toput together here on the Tactical Frequency.
By the way, if you guysdisagree, if you think that maybe we
could put together the content a littlebit better, or even what if you
consider yourself a BBR expert and yousay, no, that's not the way
we should do it, let meknow. Get in touch with me.
Join the discord. Check the podcastdescription for the discord invity code. My

(01:29:32):
call sign is Bible Clinger. I'vebeen your host for this hour and a
half. I hope you'll join menext time for another episode of the Tactical
Frequency. Falcon one Dragnet one,you are now leaving the Tactical Frequency