Planning a sortie requires a thorough assessment of several factors, such as terrain, weather, target, time of day, air defences and aerial threats, coordination and communication with other assets, and much more. If the mission is flown at low level, then planning becomes even more critical.
Before discussing these aspects, it is worth reviewing history to understand in what settings low-level operations were more common and why, and what techniques were used and we will use to achieve the desired result.
From high to low, to medium
The development and deployment of radar-assisted air defences in the 1950s, both missiles and gun systems, drastically changed aerial tactics. One of the most memorable events occurred on the first of May 1960, when an American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down by Soviet air defences whilst flying at the impressive altitude of 65,000 ft.
The political repercussions of the event were huge, but possibly not as massive as the military planners’ headache.
During the Second World War, big bomber formations dealt with almost spray-and-pray flak and relied on mutual support and escort for safety. Fast forward only 15 years, and they now faced accurate ground fire and guided missiles. Electronic warfare and Suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) were still in their infancy compared to modern times. The new conditions forced planners to adjust, resulting, among other innovations, in a shift from high to low-level operations.
Intuitively, terrain masking is a basic but effective form of protection as it denies hostile forces the ability to detect and engage friendly aircraft. In conjunction with the high speed at which jets can fly, low-level strikers can effectively penetrate enemy territory to attack assets and positions without exposing the fighters to unacceptable risks. At least in theory.
Parenthesis: the V-Force
Not all of them were apt at flying at low level, and the Vickers Valiant was retired from this role shortly after due to signs of fatigue.
The status quo remained fundamentally unchanged for several years. For example, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s showed the strike aircraft often grazing the ground en route to their targets.
Low-level operations partially died down in the last few decades, and an interesting case study is the employment of the Tornado by British and Italian forces during Desert Storm. Tasked to attack airfields and other installations, the Tornado dashed across the desert and attacked using loft and dive toss with general-purpose bombs or flew over the runways to release their JP233s. Although quite effective, this tactic caused several losses, both during the war and before, during the operational buildup. Flying at high speed and extremely low altitude is a dangerous task.
As the operations against Iraq proceeded, tactics changed. As aerial superiority was achieved and enemy air defences were mostly neutralised or suppressed, the Tornados changed their tactics, now attacking from a medium level.
DCS is a game open to all sorts of tactics, but flying close to the ground in eras where look-down shoot-down capabilities were limited increases the chances of fulfilling the mission. The vast majority of players seem to neglect this type of gameplay for various reasons. Hopefully, this study will convince some players to switch to the low-level side!
Dead Reckoning and Pilotage
In an era when GPS was not as ubiquitous and Inertial Navigation Systems were a long way from today’s standards, navigation was closer to an art than a job. Map reading, numbers to be mentally adjusted on the spot, and celestial navigation were only a fraction of the skills Navs had to master and single-crew aircraft pilots learn to manage in their busy routines.
As technology advanced over time, the navigator role passed the torch to the figure of the Weapon System Officer. Some passages from the retired Wing Commander C. G. Jefford’s brilliant book, “Observers and Navigators: And Other Non-Pilot Aircrew in the RFC, RNAS and RAF”, only hint at how time and technological progress affected the Nav profession. This book is a fantastic source of historical information, and I strongly recommend it.
“This writer was trained as a navigator in 1960, but the equipment he used and the techniques he was taught would have been very familiar to his predecessor of 1943.”
“By the 1970s navigators undergoing basic training were being taught to handle Doppler radar and analogue computers.”
“by the late 1980s it was becoming difficult to foresee a situation in which a crew might have to revert to the relatively primitive manual techniques of yesteryear. In other words, the traditional ‘navigator’ was rapidly becoming redundant.”
“in August 2000 the Air Force Board Standing Committee announced that the navigator, AEO, AEOp and air signaller specialisations were to be combined.4 In future, they were to be known as Weapons Systems Officers or Operators”
In a game like DCS, where almost any era can be used to create a scenario, the “primitive manual techniques of yesteryear” are still valid, or at least partially so. Ergo, navigation by means of a clock, a map and a compass is still practised. It is a solid skill to learn and a great backup in case technology fails. This technique is called “Dead Reckoning”.
The basic concept of dead reckoning is to fly along a determined heading, for a certain amount of planned time and at a defined speed. With such basic methods to drive the flight, the crew can easily end up off course. Several techniques to recover will be discussed in later videos. Still, the primary means is extremely intuitive: looking outside the cockpit, and using visible landmarks and references to monitor the aircraft’s position. This is where a common companion of dead reckoning shows up: “Pilotage”. From Ancient Greek to English through French and Italian, this word, in our context, indicates the ability to determine the aircraft’s position by looking at landmarks and reference points and comparing them to a map.
Low-level: next steps
It should be intuitive how the combination of dead reckoning and pilotage can enable low-level operations in a game like DCS without requiring excessive training and infinite hours poured into navigating. As even the very first attempt at following a low-level flight plan will demonstrate, overfixation over time and heading is often unnecessary. Landmarks can help to understand and correct the track, and time inconsistencies can be addressed, for example, by flying slightly faster or slower. This is the most basic approach to low-level navigation and operations.
After a first, simpler look at planning and execution, this study will cover more refined techniques to correct and compensate for errors, along with input and suggestions from real crews who flew this sort of mission.
The DCS module used is the F-4E-45MC. This version of the Phantom II does not feature the DMAS upgrades, ergo no fancy ring laser gyros for us! The F-4 is also the best module in the game, simulation-wise, and being a dual-seater multirole can better represent a variety of missions and situations.
FlyAndWire 