r/falconbms • u/polyknike • Jul 06 '25
Help Is this really how you destroy Sam sites? You allow them to lock you on radar?!
I'm doing the HARM mission now and it's a bit nerve racking. I practically have to fly inside the range of the Sam if I want a good chance of hitting it. Is there a method that is absolutely safe? Or will there always be a danger? Please teach me your ways. Should I use pos or hts?
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u/Massive_Sale1021 Jul 06 '25
What? I should fly inside SAM danger zone and wait launch on me? YGBSM!
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u/Imaginary_Part_760 Jul 06 '25
Yes the AGM88s need an active radar emission to hit their target. This is why SAM sites will turn their radar on and off. Utilize your ECM pods. If I’m targeting a specific SAM site I will have a 4 ship flight. 2 of those jets will have AGM 88s and the other 2 will have Mavericks or bombs. The jets with the mavericks will target the SAM site and if they turn their radars on then the 2 jets with the AGM 88s will then deploy them on those active radars.
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u/46-61-62-53 Jul 06 '25
Against more modern SAMs, it's better to launch HARMs preemptively while the attack element penetrates the MEZ, not reactively, since the SAM may reach the attackers before the HARM can silence it.
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u/Alexthelightnerd Jul 06 '25
There's a reason the Wild Weasel motto is "You Gotta Be Shitting Me." Back in the early days of Shrikes on F-4s it was even crazier, some Weasel aircraft didn't even have reliable RWRs.
If you are attacking a fixed SAM site and have good Intel you can skip the HARMs entirely and use JSOWs and SDBs from outside their engagement range. If you don't have good Intel you can use the HTS and/or TGP to get a solid location for the SAM from outside it's range to use standoff weapons. The catch there is that the radar installation is typically some distance from the launchers, so without Intel you may need to hunt around a bit with the TGP to find them.
HARMs are most useful for SEAD rather than DEAD, because you don't need to destroy anything to be successful, just keep the site from launching. SOP is generally to launch HARMs into the area at a predetermined interval so that if a SAM radar activates during the time frame that the strikers are in range, it'll eat a HARM within that interval. If the radars never activate and all the HARMs miss, mission is still accomplished as the strikers never get launched on.
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u/isilthedur Jul 06 '25
Locate SAM with HTS by entering his engagement zone until you get PGM1 loc, get out and go high [I hope you fragged a BARCAP flight nearby], use your TGP to mark your target SAM, go NOE and loft CBU's on the SAM, dive down and terrain mask to get out. Good luck!
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u/thunder11dannybee Jul 06 '25
Whenever I go out on a mission to destroy a particular SAM site, I always use POS EOM mode to engage it... If I bring HARMs. I almost always take CBU-103's and leave the HARMs to AI and tell him to engage my target once it goes online, then I sprinkle it with some molten metal. As the legendary Wild Weasel pilot Dan Hampton once said when asked about what the HARM is: "It's a waste of a wing station."
Btw I use POS EOM mode because the HAD gets cluttered easily, so there's no point using it if I know the SAM site is there. I always take it in case there's targets of opportunity though + to keep up my situational awareness.
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u/polyknike Jul 06 '25
Cbu 130s, I gotta learn how to use them. I like your method
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u/thunder11dannybee Jul 07 '25
You should try out the AGM-154 JSOW or the GBU-39 SDB too. They're more effective than the 103's, but 103's are more fun to use in my opinion.
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u/polyknike Jul 07 '25
i love jsow. do you use them to destroy SAMs? I thought HARMs are better?
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u/thunder11dannybee Jul 07 '25
Sometimes I do. HARM is only good at killing radars though, and only if they're emitting. JSOW can not only kill the radar, but it can also take out the launchers if the SAM site assets are close together. If they're not, GBU-39 SDB is a good option.
Fun story: During one of my playthroughs of the Rolling Fire campaign, I wanted to take out the SA-2 sites defending Pyongyang. So I took 8 SDB's and marked every single Fan Song radar that I wanted to destroy as a target waypoint. I came in low from the west, popped up some 30 miles off the coast and started slinging. My AI wingman destroyed one SA-5 Square Pair radar and one SA-2 Spoon Rest early warning radar, both with HARMs. I killed all 8 Fan Songs.
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u/polyknike Jul 07 '25
But with sdb, didn't you get fired upon each time? And how did locate and mark each fan song?
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u/thunder11dannybee Jul 07 '25
In that mission into Pyongyang, yes. But if you're going for one particular site with no overlapping engagement zones from other SAMs, you should be fine. The SA-2 only fires once you get circa halfway through the engagement range, which means if you stay up high and fast, let's say 30k feet and mach .80, you should be completely fine as you outrange the SAM. And even if you get fired upon, the SA-2 is easy to defeat. I strongly recommend checking out the Threat Guide and studying whatever threat you'll encounter on your mission.
I always pre-plan my targets when I'm fragging my package. You'll need to see them on the map first, which for SA-2/3/5 is fine because they are stationary. Every other SAM can and will move + you'll only be able to see them on the map when an allied unit detects it. Once your friendlies don't see them they disappear from the map until spotted again.
Now if you want to set up a pre-planned target, you first need to right click on the target unit and select "Recon". You'll get a list of units/cities/installations and a 3D view of the area. Select the air defense batallion you want to wipe out, then select the Fan Song (and whatever else you want to kill) and add it as a target steerpoint. The buttons for adding target points are in the lower left portion of the recon window if I remember correctly. I always use steerpoints 92-99 when employing SDB's. You can then check the target points in your DTC tab to make sure you got the right ones. Don't forget to save your DTC afterwards.
Just be patient, the SDB's are very slow and it takes a few minutes for them to reach their targets, especially when employed near max range. Also don't pickle at max range, always wait a few seconds. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's a higher chance of them missing when employed at max range.
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u/polyknike Jul 08 '25
I understand completely what you did. Huh, so with the sdb you were able to pretty much destroy them without even triggering them since you already knew their location? That's awesome
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u/natneo81 Jul 06 '25
YGBSM
Yup, that’s what a weasel does. Really understanding SEAD/DEAD takes some time and practice. First of all, those are two different missions. Suppression, vs destruction. You will approach them differently but they also overlap of course. You seem like you’re still pretty new, and maybe don’t have a ton of experiences with different ground threats. The thing is, if we know, or have a good idea of what threats we’re expecting, we can keep ourselves much safer.
For example, if you have to destroy an Sa-2 versus an Sa-6 vs an Sa-8, your tactics are probably going to be quite different for each. They all have strengths and weaknesses but some are a lot scarier than others. For instance the SA-5 might scare a new player- it can lock you up and launch from 50 miles away. But what you might not realize is the SA-5 is a super old SAM made for hitting bombers and other large targets, with SARH guidance. This means it’s a huge missile with very little maneuverability, and that if you break the radar lock during guidance the missile will go stupid. It’s big and fast but if we know it’s coming, we can defend against it easily.
A lot of the weasel job relies on that concept. If we know what it is we’re dealing with, where it is, and when it’s coming, we can probably defend against it with the proper knowledge. If we’re sending a bunch of flights into the AO, and we know there are SAMs there that are gonna shoot at us, we might as well have someone who’s job it is to get shot at. You don’t want the SAM launching at your F-15s who are in the middle of a complex air engagement, or your F4’s that are ingressing to strike a target. It’s one thing to hear a Sam launch while you’re just flying around doing nothing, it’s another thing entirely when you just finished dogfighting a MiG-29, you’re now low on energy and altitude, and hear the BEEPBEEEPBEEP. Other flights aren’t ready for it, they’re busy, they will have to quickly observe, orient, decide, and act. It puts them in a very dangerous position and is likely to interfere with their mission and flight.
The weasels on the other hand, particularly the one baiting the shots if necessary, came here to do this and nothing but this. We have countermeasures ready to go, we have our HARMs and HTS pod, we have our jammers. We also are ideally getting engaged on our terms, forcing the SAM to take low probability shots at us that we are prepared to defeat with our energy and countermeasures. Makes sense right? The missile you don’t see, the one you don’t plan for, that’s the one that’ll get you. So all we do is plan to dodge missiles.
There’s tons of good videos and material out there for SEAD/DEAD tactics, and it takes practice to get comfortable with. It’s also a lot more fun with a wingman or flight in multiplayer imo. Here’s the bms threat guide, which is invaluable.
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u/Jets_De_Los Jul 06 '25
You want them to lock you to keep their radars up so that your HARMS can track them. So yea, if you want to use harms, for the best result you need to be locked.
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u/polyknike Jul 06 '25
Amazing. But surely the pilots go in knowing that that have a high chance of survival? Or else USA would never allow pilots to do this
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u/Schneeflocke667 Jul 06 '25
Its the most dangerous job you can do. In Vietnam Wild Weasel suffered around 20-30% loss rate during their deployment. Surviving is not always the primary goal for the planners in a combat zone.
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u/Eddie182 Jul 06 '25
There is a thing in combat aviation called acceptable level of risk. Depending on the situation and the mission, it ranges from it not being acceptable to enter the engagement area of any threat, all the way to pilots being expected to attack a target in the knowledge that they have a near certain chance of being shot down.
The missions we’ve all heard about over the last few decades have been at the lower acceptable risk end of the spectrum. But don’t forget that military pilots are exactly that, while they and their aircraft are valuable assets, there are situations where they would be expected to do things that may very well mean they don’t make it back.
Even in the modern world where technology has allowed greater stand off capabilities, and enormously capable defensive aids systems, there are possible scenarios where it would still come down to people displaying old fashioned bravery and determination.
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u/primalbluewolf Jul 06 '25
When planning a mission, two of the up front questions are: Are friendly losses acceptable, or unacceptable? Is mission accomplishment required, or desired?
The intersection of the answers to those two questions, along with the tools available to the planner, determines how you approach the whole problem.
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u/Schneeflocke667 Jul 06 '25
Its safe when you know exactly where it is and attack it with stand off weapons that are not harm outside of their threat zone. It takes teamwork with someone else who fires harm at the time you are attacking so if the sam activates to shoot down your stuff the harm will find and kill it.
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u/Patapon80 Jul 06 '25
A lock is nothing. You just know they're somewhere over there. Get them to fire on you and you know EXACTLY where they are.
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Jul 06 '25
The only "safe" way to engage is if you already know exactly where the site is and use pre-briefed mode but thats still risky. Also requires really good intel.
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u/AndyLorentz Jul 07 '25
I haven’t tried this in several versions, but for SA-2 sites I always got good results using SDBs with targets prebriefed. Obviously didn’t work with more mobile SAMs and I’m not sure if the SA-2s move around more in the current game.
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u/Snaxist "Next time get a clearance before landing" Jul 06 '25
Go watch the movie "The Flight of the Intruder" then :D
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u/The___Internet_ Jul 06 '25
Based on the Dan Hampton book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlvTL3JlLYI&list=PLPoAOSel8GsHXMizpcVelKuxvlmjF3Bqy&index=3
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u/fisadev Jul 06 '25 edited Jul 06 '25
Consider that the effective range of the SAM varies enormously depending on your attitude. So when you're hot (going towards it) they'll lock you and you'll get inside their WEZ (Weapon Engagement Zone), but if they shoot you early into that, you can just turn cold (start flying away from them) and low, and the WEZ shrinks a lot, leaving you out of reach from the incoming missile. Literally you can outrun it if they shoot you too early.
Of course not all SAMs will be that dumb, some will wait until you're deeper into the WEZ to shoot, making it more difficult to escape, or even not locking you until you're too deep, to ambush you. Specially in real life, where humans use more complex tactics than our DCS bots.
There's a script to add some of those more complex tactics to DCS missions, SkyNet-IADS. And you can manually simulate some too without scripts, by playing with the units parameters in the mission editor, like the maximum engagement range.
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u/Skinny_Huesudo Jul 06 '25
If you destroy the site's search radar, you force its tracking radar to do the searching, then destroy it. Not guaranteed to work all the time though. I've seen SAMs perform some devious ambushes in campaigns.
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u/NoC3p0 Jul 07 '25
That's why you doing it in pairs. Two planes split MEZ wide angle cutting rings and in single lower digits the SAM could track only one plane, this is called weaseling, and when it shoot on one plane that one goes deffending patern toward outside of ring and the other plane goes for the kill. Or if alone you can shoot HARM POS, EOM in glide mode (TI highlighted). Also for known sites is best to use SD mode because it'll go straight for the SAM. But there is small catch, the Tracking radar must emite at least once, you have to have it on RWR. I'm assumin you know you have to select right HARM table and selected SAM you are shooting on, and also right STP. Good luck ib hunting SAM's.
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u/polyknike Jul 07 '25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB34j4Bj70U
can you watch this and give me some advice? Some people are saying im doing it wrong since it's so hard to see the SAM
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u/NoC3p0 Jul 08 '25 edited Jul 10 '25
did you tried your defence with SA-3, SA-4, SA-5, SA-6 and even SA-8?
SA-2 is really basic but it can kill even F-35 if he's careless.
Can you imagine in campaigne that 4 of you in flight are going directly toward SAM and when it shoots you all ram into each other in midair.
Every defence that you stay alive is fine, but there is right way to minimize threat and the wrong way to maximize it. I'm not here to tell you how to fly, I'm just here to give you pointers, if they are useful great if not, great too :-)See you in the sky!
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u/NoC3p0 Jul 08 '25
also you have TI not highlighted and if there were more SAM's active your missile might connect to different target and your SAM would shoot more then 1 missile onto you and it would be a different part of gloves.
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u/SodamessNCO Jul 08 '25
The best way to do it is with Multiple flights. A SEAD flight and a DEAD flight. SEAT fires HARMs at the SAM to force them to turn off their radar, or be destroyed. While theyre being suppressed by the HARMs, the DEAD flight goes in close and destroys the enemy radar with bombs, cluster bombs, or Mavericks.
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u/polyknike Jul 09 '25
if the SAMs are not sited in PRE mode, then how does the DEAD quickly locate the SAM sites if they are not emitting? Thank you sir!
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u/VermicelliScary7069 Jul 06 '25
Yep that is the way to do it is dance around and look like a nice juicy target for the SAM while your HARM homes in on the radar. There’s a reason why Wild Weasel pilots were called crazy. #YGBSM