I see player spawn spaa as first verhicle in top tier battle counter scout drones or set up tellar verhicle in position. The Buk M3 is big spaa that compensate the weakness with with range.
I would, but I unfortunately never recorded the custom match I was in.
I completely understand what you are saying, but I’m also saying that what this guy in particular was doing was intentional.
That’s highly map dependent, it can’t make use of range on smaller maps, or ones with high mountainous terrain.
I agree.
Relevancy of custom matches
Customs are very different from actual matches. Most customs are in arcade, with enemies already spotted by teammates, or remembered from an earlier spawn, and aircraft being able to spam and quickly reload munitions. Aircraft usually airspawn at a favourable altitude and speed. Additionally, there are often many more aircraft than tanks, overwhelming the SPAA; in real matches, the opposite is usually true. (Clarify if the customs matches referenced were different)
I don’t see this becoming a common tactic. I’m just speculating here since I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve seldom seen SAM interceptions in the killfeed. There are a couple problems here:
Radar missile anti-missile use requires quick reaction times, which are difficult due to the time required to get a radar target lock. Issues with scan speeds, target selection, and lock failures are common; even if you do everything right, it could easily go wrong.
IR missiles are even worse, since effective seeker range is very low compared to use against aircraft. You need a missile with high all-aspect range, that can maneuver right off the rail and accelerate quickly for intercept. This makes a large portion of high tier missiles (AIM-9L/M and RB 74 (M), AAM-3, Python 3/PL-8, R-60M) unsuitable for this purpose.
There are many more general issues as well:
- In practice, the plane needs to fly directly towards the SAM, which means the closure rate will be very fast.
- Top tier IR/ARH SAMs loft aggressively; this can necessitate constant changes in aircraft’s direction to compensate.
- Top tier IR/ARH SAMs are invisible after the motor burns out; it is therefore difficult to determine where they are exactly.
- It is generally harder for radars to detect missiles than aircraft.
- Launch of multiple missiles by SPAA may result in overwhelming the target aircraft:
- Multiple SPAAs from different points result in significant differences in approach direction (angle), which is difficult to respond to.
- SPAAs have the advantage in sheer number of missiles, even in 1v1. CAS aircraft, with less hard points available for interceptors, would be hard-pressed to match them, and even in winning, would have less capacity for CAS duties.
- Intercept geometry. About <20km distance is optimal; aircraft spawn about 25km away. You would need to fly parallel (head-on) to the enemy’s missile path to intercept, fire off offensive munitions at considerable range and speed (let’s say, 15km), and immediately reverse course and dive to evade.
- This necessitates first flying away from the battlefield to gain energy, coating a significant amount of time.
- In the first place, there aren’t many aircraft with both ground attack munitions which can hit from such ranges and radar missiles. The ground attack weapon would need to be both fire-and-forget and >15km range (both seeker range and kinematically).
- You can only defend yourself, not your ordnance, so they could be intercepted anyway. To get through consistently you would need either fast missiles or GNSS bomb spam.
In conclusion, this tactic is probably unsuitable for most aircraft and situations. It has a niche use but is only particularly effective against command-line guidance SAMs (SACLOS and LOSBR). Use against top tier self-guided (ARH, IR, IR+optical) is significantly harder. In any case, this is of little importance to the overall CAS balance debate.
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I appreciate the constructive reply mate, I very well agree with you here. This is the answer I was looking for!