I made this as an addition to the following beginner's guide when it got too big to include there.

https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1374061499

Sometimes you command some units to attack and they just keep circling around or sitting there without doing anything.


Is this INSUBORDINATION?

No! Fortunately mutanies are not part of the simulation though I suppose a scenario creator could simulate one with scripting, but that's not what's happening here.

What's happening is their incompetent commanding officer has given them conflicting orders which they're unable to completely carry out. Oops! Better correct that fast before this mistake causes an incident and ends up in your permanent file.

Seriously though, don't worry about it. Everyone gets confused by this in the beginning since you don't usually get alerts or notifications telling you what's wrong.

Here's a typical situation:



Here we have a flight group with some rather long range standoff glide bombs. Hey! Looks like that SAM site is within range of the bombs. Lets get em! So we hit Shift-F1 and click the target. Looking at the Suitable Weapons pane in the weapon allocation window we see:



Looks like we're too low to the ground. (As it turns out there's something else wrong but we will find out about that in a bit. Hint: notice how large that big red uncertainty area is.)

Previously we ordered the flight to hug the ground in order to avoid getting shot down by that SAM site and they'll stay at the ordered altitude until we do something about it. Unfortunately for our plans this is way too low to launch the glide bombs. If we had just hit F1 (auto attack) then they'd keep buzzing around along the ground never firing and we wouldn't even have seen this.

We can allocate weapons right now if we want but they won't fire until they can get up to 10,000 AGL (Above Ground Level, not ASL - Above Sea Level). So lets go ahead and allocate these weapons, knowing they won't fire yet, then try to degrade the SAM site enough (using some anti-radiation missiles from another flight group, not shown) that they can safely climb to release the bombs (or alternately just take our chances on getting them shot down) and order them to climb.

So we do this and order them to climb to a suitable altitude.



Still no bomb release.


"Uh, sir...."

Now at this point if we just sit and watch we will be wondering (possibly forever) what the problem is. So lets hit Shift-F1 again and click the desired target to see if we get any helpful infomation from the weapon allocation window.



Oops. This is a GPS (satnav) and INS (Inertial Navigation System) guided glide bomb. It's not going to visually identify the target by itself, or home in on emissions. It has to be programmed with a specific static geogaphic coordinate that it will fly to and detonate at.

And we don't have a specific coordinate for a target. Your pilots have been ordered in their briefing not to waste this munition by sending it off to a coordinate that they believe might be more than 0.1nm from the actual target, and the center point of our fuzzy target area is almost certainly more than 0.1nm from the actual target.

Yes, these are professionals. They won't do things that make no sense.



Our various sensors from our various air assets seem to think they've narrowed down the location pretty well here (the red box is the area it could be in and it's kind of small) but still not good enough. We need a cordinate that's within 0.1nm so now we're going to have to send in a recon plane to spot it visually or otherwise find some way to get a sensor close enough to get an exact location.

If they don't have instructions to the contrary then the bombers will usually head over to try to pinpoint the target themselves, using their eyeballs if necessary. This would be unnecessarily dangerous though and it defeats the purpose of stand-off weapons. So we will plot a course for them to maintain stand-off distance and ensure that "ignore plotted course while attacking" is NOT enabled under Unit Orders->Attack Options.

We send our poor unfortunate recon plane over (at afterburner speed, making sure to keep him at an altitude that's hopefully safe from whatever anti-air weapons that the SAM site still has) and fortunately he both manages to spot the target and avoids getting shot down by MANPADS.




Woohoo! Finally we have given the stand-off pilots some orders they can actualy follow and it's bombs away.



The target is destroyed and you've successfully avoided the People's Army Special Firing Squad for Gross Incompetence for another day.

Using just F1 to attack is fine but if it isn't working, always use Shift-F1 (manual attack) to find the reason why units aren't firing weapons when you expect.

Also, keep in mind that the weapons allocation window will only inform you of one issue at a time even if there are multipe problems that are preventing weapon release.

For a full list of possible reasons why units won't fire weapons and what to do about them, see:

• 6.4.2. MY @#%^@†% WEAPON WON’T FIRE!!!

in the Command Manual, p 45. (Yes that really is the exact heading.)

One last note about this. There is a Rules of Engagement setting (can be set in Side, Mission, or Unit RoE settings) that sets the rules for ambiguous targets. In the above situation we were using the Pessimistic setting which assumes that vague coordinates will be completely worthless and demands maximum precision. The "Ignore" setting, in the example above, would have just dropped the bombs in the middle of the target uncertainty area almost certainly resulting in wasted bombs.

See page 32 in the Command manual for a full explanation, but for now just leave this on Pessimistic all the time because in most cases the other settings will just result in a wasted munition or worse (damage to neutrals or friendlies).

This work © 2019 by NimrodX on Steam Community is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0[creativecommons.org]

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