I have asked in game but best advice was basically to use KH-3HMT. But does US CAS have any answer against those high range SPAAs? I tried lobbing glide bombs but they can shoot me from 25 km distance it seems. For reference, targeting pod distance limit is 30 km in game.
What all jets you got for CAS?
Sorry, forgot about my lineup. I have basically unlocked all planes. You can give suggestions about any US top tier.
Depends on the map, but in general fly low and get close, pop up and shoot/drop munitions at them and dive back down to hide. Their missiles might have long range but they don’t maneuver well at closer ranges.
Gone are the days of CAS clicking targets from the space huh? With the free daily respawns, we can see 4x SPAA spawns from the same enemy dedicated SPAA player.
Well, currently there is no weapon in US that you can use at 25km+ range and get kill consistently
For dealing with such SPAA what you can do is
Fly at deck until you are around 12-14km (use f-15e with AGM 65 and multiple GBU-39). Immediately climb and start launching all your GBU-39 at the location of anti air to distract them from you AGM-65. After launching all your GBU-39, launch your mavrick and then immediately dive down
SAM player would likely focus on intercept your 16 GBU-39 and would run out of missile before they start intercepting your AGM-65
Also if the enemy SAM is in IRIS-T SLM and you are under 12km then start spinning and flare, this is a very effective way to defeat IRIS-T and not die to it even if it intercept all your A2G weapons
i will try this combo. Can they see if i am sending rocket or bombs? Maybe I send gbu-39s first to exhaust their missiles, then send in the big boys. But any decent SPAA would prio my AGMs over GBUs, if they see the ordnance type I assume.
It’s SPAA clicking targets out of the sky now. SPAA is way too powerful, and not even fun to play. Everybody has a free SPAA, even those who bought their way to the top, so it is truly pointless to research SPAA anyway.
Yes they can see that you have launched your A2G weapons
Do that. They cannot see the name of A2G weapon so they don’t know if you launched mavrick or GBU 39
But they can see the size so a decent player should target large A2G weapon first. But not an average player
They see “SMALL” for the GBUs and “ROCKET” for the AGM if I recall correctly.
Gotta try, one thing I noticed is if I am in the AGM range and plan to start with GBU-39s, by the time I start my climb I become a target immediately . Even if I send GBUs really fast and try to switch to AGM, missile will be quarter way towards me. But let’s see.
You can designate from the map and launch; if terrain permits, this allows you to attack the enemy without ever entering LOS (ideal scenario). Really depends on how high the terrain lets you go without being visible to enemy radar. Probably just spam them at enemy spawns, or alternatively, take a quick pop-up and peek with your targeting pod in LOS to accurately find where the enemy SPAA is standing. Looking at the US lineup, I feel that the F-15E with full GBU-39 (20x) and GBU-62 / 64 added is the best loadout for this.
The GBU-39s can saturate the enemy air defenses, but may be too small to damage the enemy SPAA given a wide spread. Here the 62 or 64 can help you with that, and have sufficient range due to also gliding. Consider that all 3 GBUs I mentioned will loft at 5 degrees above horizon and descend for target elevation of 65-70 degrees below horizon, so it is easy to throw them over mountains.
AGM-65s are extremely slow, often even slower than bombs, and require time to launch, so it is best as an addition to taking other things. The range of AGM-65 is abysmal. The 84H and 154A1s are somewhat of a letdown considering their real performance, but have their special uses. I don’t play US tree, but coming from my analysis of US top tier CAS, The general problem with the US top tier CAS is that all of the munitions are way too slow, which is extremely unfortunate and must be worked around.
It depends on how I plan to pepper enemy bases though. for example, I have found that, on level flight, GBU-39 is roughly flies as far as 8x of my A10C altitude. I don’t know how plane speed affects the GBU-39 glide speed. But If I ever plan to drop 39s into different spot, i need to use laser targeting pod, which means if there is terrain between me and the enemy base, i will get seen by the enemy.
There’s also the tactic of using the weapons view camera and adjusting your fire from there (correlating with the map position). But they removed squad markers here, so you would have to be decently familiar with the map positioning.