The great leaps of v1.11: ORBAT recon of air/naval bases

March 13, 2016 · Posted in Command

The v1.10 update for CMANO was released on Feb 26 to widespread acclaim. The dev team is already hard at work preparing the next upcoming major release, version v1.11. After the panoply of new features in past updates, what new tricks do the CMANO devs have up their sleeves? Let’s take a peek.

ORBAT recon of air/naval bases (a.k.a. “I want to spot those planes on the ground!”)

Like pier operations, this too has been a popular request that we are happy to bring to fruition. Aircraft, ships and submarines can now be spotted on their host facilities during a BDA/recon attempt by a friendly unit.

There are two ways of spotting hosted units:

1) When a unit with a visual/IR/radar sensor performs BDA on a naval or air base, it also performs recon on its open-air air (revetments, parking areas, pads, runways etc) or docking (piers, docks, drydocks etc.) facilities respectively.

2) Assets under cover are not completely safe from observation either: If an aircraft enters or exits an enclosed air facility (e.g. a fighter that has just landed is entering a hangar to re-ready) *while a unit is observing this facility*, the aircraft is also spotted (the same holds for e.g. a submarine entering an underground base). This means that “persistent” recon/intel assets (anything from a SOF team parked outside the base, to a stealthy RQ-170/180 loitering overhead or even a satellite perched far up in HEO/GEO orbit) are essential for keeping track of under-roof traffic and inventory.

Units spotted either way are kept on record and classified/identified as per the normal detection/classification rules. This is also reported on the message log. A “spotted hosted unit” record also contains age info so that the player is aware how stale this spotting report is (a “5 mins ago” observation obviously holds different value than a “2 weeks ago” one).

On the map, friendly facilities that host units AND contacts on which hosted units have been spotted are displayed with a “black triangle on yellow box” symbol. This allows at-a-glance awareness of which friendly assets (and contacts) host units:

Night over Bandar Abbas, Iran. A stealthy RQ-180 recon UAV is getting dangerously close to the airport facilities (and anti-air defences scattered around) in order to catalogue the base’s aircraft inventory. A few aircraft have already been spotted (notice the black/yellow mark on some of the parking tarmacs). No doubt more are in enclosed hangars and shelters. Will the UAV get lucky and spot any of them coming in or going out?

If a unit gets close enough for a re-recon of a contact with spotted hosted units, the existing spot records are re-evaluated and refreshed, and any now-missing units are discarded from the recon reports.

Spotted unit records are listed on the “Contact Report” window, on a new “Hosted units spotted” tab:

Three J-7s have been spotted on this tarmac. Not a great catch, but the more high-value units are no doubt inside shelters. A SEAL team under cover would be really useful to catch those; the UAV is already hanging perilously close to the base and must withdraw promptly or risk detection and destruction.

So, how will you exploit this new intelligence capability? Will you use it to finetune your targeting on your next airbase / naval base attack? Will you revise your frontline tactics with the knowledge of what the enemy is (even temporarily) keeping away from the front? Something else entirely? As with most aspects of Command, the possibilities are endless.

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