You can categorize aircrafts in 4 types:

CAS - Close Air Support (Air to Ground Combat)
CAP - Close Air Support (Air to Air Combat)
SEAD - Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (Air to Anti-Air Combat)
Multirole - CAP or SEAD capable to fight A2A


Of course we can sub-categorize those classes and thats what we'll do now.

CAP
-> Interceptor (aircraft with long range radar guided A2A missles)
-> Air Supiority Fighter (agile fighter with SA midrange missles and IR guided close range missle)
-> Dogfighter (very agile fighter with close range IR missle and low costs)

CAS
-> AGM Fighter (aircrafts with a guided Air to Ground Missle)
-> Bomber (aircraft with different bombs for different purpose)
-> Rocketpod Fighter (cheap aircraft with low rearming/repair time that fires unguided missles)

SEAD
-> Long Range SEAD (aircrafts with 2 long range Anti-radar missles)
-> Mid Range SEAD ( aircrafts with more then 2 mid range Anti-Radar Missles)
-> Multirole SEAD (aircrafts with Midrange SEAD and IR guided A2A Missles)


here a shortlist of other terms and a short list of different weapons:

-> F&V - Fire & Forget. Press the fire button and the missle will find its target on its own.

-> SA / SACLOS - Semi Automatic Controlled Line Of Sight. you must aim on the target to gudie the weapon on it. constant line of Sight reequired.

-> RGM - Radar Guided Missle (Air to Air) with a range of 10.9km - 12.8km range and low accuracy.

-> SA Missle - An A2A Missle with a SACLOS targeting system and a range of 6.4km - 7.2km. Very accurate.

-> IR Missle - An InfraRed guided A2A Missle. Means a heatseeking Missle.

-> AGM - Air to Ground Missle those are F&V or IR guided missles that are fired from planes with the pure purpose of destroying ground vehicles from supply trucks to Main Battle Tanks (MBT).

-> JDAM / Paywave / LGB - In this game it means all the same. The Paywave that the Nighthawk use. But Paywave is a targeting system that is laser guided. It drops a LGB (Laser Guided Bomb) on the target which is commonly know as JDAM (Join Direct Attack Munition), which is basically a bomb with a devasting blast radius.

-> Bombs - There basically 3 kind of Bombs [NAP] Naplam bombs, [CLU] Cluster Bombs which hitting a larger area and the ordenary unguided bomb.


And last but not least you have 3 different types of AA Units you can encounter:

-> AAA - Anti Air Artillery which fires bullets/Grenades into the sky to shoot down an enemy plane with kinetic damage.

-> Mandpads - Infantry with Anti-Air weapons. Those are always IR guided with the exeption of few SACLOS gudied Missles.

-> SAM - Surface to Air Missle. A guided Missles (Radar or IR guidence).


PS: Different Evac's

-> Evac requested - the player used the evac button or the pilot evacing by himself because his planes recived critical damage

-> Evac Winchester - The Pilot will return to base to rearm. Means all his primary ammunition (bombs/missle for CAS, SEAD and Multirole, all missles for CAP) is depleted.

-> Evac Bingo - You might already heard the term Bingo fuel. Does not mean the pilot has no fuel anymore it just means the pilot has only enough fuel left to safely return to base. If he stays longer in the area he will pass "point Binge" aka the "point of no return".

If you google Air supiority you will find some comment that stake that Air supiority mean to have more planes in the air then the enemy. THIS STATEMENT IS CRAP, at least in this game.

Air Supiority in this game means to sucessfully controllign the airspace and denying the enemy to use the airspace. This does not mean you have to be able to fly where ever you want at any time. It mostly means you deny the enemy to use his aircrafts at his own will. That he has to sue airplanes at your grace and conditions. Easier said: that you are able to blast him out of the sky befor he can do any damage.

The easiest way to do it is to lure the enemy over allied Anti Air Defence units. But that way you will msotly allow him to drop bombs at allied units. Every CAP aircraft has a higher speed, range and accuracy then any Anti Air unit. So what we need to do is to learn how we fight Air to Air Combats.

To fight Air to Air Combats you need CAP Aircrafts. And you need enough of them that you not just can controll the airspace at any time but also that you can take casulties and still win every engagement. 2 CAP aircrafts are far to less to do so. Espacially you will never get Airsupiority with only bombers thats why those bomber only players so easily fail. they can bomb the enemy but the never get the Air Supiority and therefor are easy prey to enemies (Ch)airforce.

Out of experience i know that you should have at least 4 CAP aircrafts to to gain Air Supiority. Some Setup i like to use on US side are following stuff:

2x F-15C + 2x F-14
2x F-15C + 4x Wild Weasel
4x F-14
2x F-15C + 2x F-18A / F-18C
2x F-15C + 2x F-18A / F-18C + 4x Wild Weasel

At this point you proberly going to realize that Wild Weasel nor the Hornet/Super Hornet air CAP fighters. they are Multirole but in that mass they will be a treat to any aircraft. I use different setup's of my CAP capabilities according to the enemies I encounter. You'll learn the names of the good players quite fast and against good players wou'll need more Air to Air Combat capabilities then to bad players or "Bomber Spam Noobs".
Also you might ask how to get 4x F-14 Tomcats. The secret is quite simple: Category C Decks (pre 1975).

The real trick now is to understand the role of every CAP plane and use them according to their role for maximum effect. As you might remember out of the terminology is that we have 3 different types of CAP while only 2 CAP are intresting for us.

1st Air Supiority Fighters - that are that workign horse of our Airforce. In US decks we have basically only 2 real options for it: F-15A Eagle (140 pts) and the F-15C Eagle (170pts). We can take up to 2 cards F-15A á 2 units per card or 1 card F-15C á 2 units per card. they not differ much but the F-15C is 30 points more expensive but offers for that the way better accuracy. that makes the choice quite easy. if you can afford it take the F-15C. Use them in a dogfight to focus on one plane after another and shoot the enemy one by one while you directly controll those aircrafts.

2nd Interceptors - that are our partol units and snipers in aircombat. The US only offers 1 plane the F-14 Tomcat. It has a very long range with it missle but lacks on accuracy. So why take the F-14 at all? first at all thanks to the long range it can fire a missle from a safe distance and can hit that way even planes that are behind enmies Air Defense Grid. Also it does mostly about 80% damage per hit to enenmies leaving the enemy 20% HP left which are easy delt with anything else. It also stuns a plane so that this plane doesnt drop its payload or not firing in retun. Its not enough damage tho that the enemy aircraft will automatically evac (evac requested). If the enemy player does not quikcly react it will still fly straight foward to your position and above your allied Air Defense Grid. But it will not fire unless the player tabs Evac (evac requested). In groups of 4 they fire enough missle to effectivly shoot every thing down.
You should order the F-14 to a save point where enmy Air Defense cant hit it. let the plane camp there so that it will continue to fly circles. It will automatically shoot at any aircraft which enters the range of its weapon. Avoid at all cost to get dragged into a dogfight at that close range a F-14 will always lose. What i like to do is always keep 1 Tomcat in air to have vision at the whole air space and call in the F-15's and other F-14's if an enemy aircraft enetrs the airspace.


How to fight a Dogfight:

There 2 ways to fight it. you hamemr into the enemy aircraft head's on. Make sure to manually select the target and focus on that target one by one. This will endager tho to get hit too while it is the easiest way to shoot down bombers.
The other way you will need espacially vs. other CAP aircrafts. you use 1 aircraft on the front and wait till the enemy manually select that aircraft as target and flying foward to it. at the point you break away and lure the enemy aircraft into a setup. The setup could be an allied Air Defense Grid or flying a T. you flying in a 90° angel through the flight path of an allied air supiority fighter. do not fly directly towards it because then those air supiority fighter will pass each other and can evac. If you are able to fly the T tho your Air supiority fighter in an ideal position will be able to do a 90° turn and be right behind the enemy aircraft and an ideal position to shoot down the enemy while not be at risk to take fire in return. If the enemy tries to evac you still be able to fly behind him and have enough time to blast him out of the sky. Note that you should use Evac on your bait to raise it defense vs missles.

By the title most of you proberly thinking of SEAD's your right but there is more to it then just using SEAD planes. Using SEAD planes should be in anycase the LAST resort. Always remind that SEAD planes only can find Radar guided units withan active Radar.
The importance of supressign enemy Airdefence is quiet simple. No enemy Air Defense means a wider safe zone for your planes and making ti easier to gain Air Supiority and enabling your entire team to bomb the enemy at will.

The most important think you need to know is the range of the enemy Air Defense Units.

While encounetring pact there only 3 Units you should take a special caution with:

Buk - 4.2km range quite accurate
Buk-1M - 4.6km range highly accurate
Tunguska (all versions) - 2.8km range while offering IR missles and radar cannon (which will be deactivted by any decent player).

You might ask now why i not mention the rest like the Kub? I will come to this now.

First lets come to our long range SEAD aircraft the F-111A Raven. most players make the mistake and flying foward into the enemy air defense. if the Raven taking fire you did something wrong. Good players will elt them circle at safe distance and then advancing a safe 50-100m per circle. If the enemy has Radar AA it will get sniped by the Raven at maximum distance while the Raven stays outrange of the enemy AA. and know we come to the cruicial point: The only units that cant be outranged by a raven are the Buk and the Buk-1M. So if you engaging those Buk's you taking the risk to take fire and lose your Raven thats why we need to look at an alternive method to kill enemy AA.

There 2 other ways to kill AA units effectivly. 1 by Attack Helicopter and 2nd with Artillery. I dont think i need you how to use artillery (or if if you do: select your artillery and oder it to fire on the enemy AA... wasnt that hard was it?).
Do you think you misread while you read Attack Helicopters? No you didnt. The US offers us with 2 valuble Attack Helicopters: The Apache and the Seahawk. you should know that both are armed with the every accurate and hard hitting Hellfire (2.8km Range). There 2 Weapons which going to be dangerous for you: the IR guided missle of the Tunguska (3.1km range) the primary cannon of the Tunguska (2.8km range) and the Buk-1M (2.8km range). The Buk (2.65km range) will also be tough but you got more then 100m safe distance to snipe it with a hellfire. Note that the Radar SAM's having a high distance vs planes but all lack on enough range to shoot down choppers. So Buk-1M is actually the only unit that cant be sniped from a Raven nor a Hellfire at safe distance. So you need to take it out with artillery unless you are willing to risk you units to take fire.

So lets conclude that all other Radar AA can be safely sniped from Ravens and Hellfires or any other IR AA sniped by Hellfire. There is another way to kill IR AA (also Tunguska) very effectivly: the Nighthawk. The Nighthawk is not only stealthy but it has a very small Evac radius. So it will hit most IR AA Units (and AAA) and evacing befor it get into the range of their lockon radius.


Finally there is a direct charge on the AA left. Means you will directly atatck AA units with your planes. but it will promise you that it will be dangerous and may ending in sever casulties on your side. youc an do it with cheap rocketpods bomber (35 points) which can be suicded vs any AA unit while still being cost effective (dealing more casulties then its deployment cost). Or you do a spearhed charge on it. Timing ehre is cruicial. You sending in cheap SEADS (Prowler or Wild Weasel) followed by Bomber 100-200m behind them. the SEAD planes will take fire first but have the highest survivability chance thanks to their good/exptional ECM). Make sure to evac them as soon as the enemy starting to fire on them (lockon phase not when they already pulled the trigger). this will raise the dodging chance of enemy fire and rais the chance to survive them greatly. while the SEAD taking fire your bomber are able to hit all the targets you gave them (preferable the enemy AA). Like i said the timing is vital. is the bomber come in to soon the take fire instead of the SEAD and if they come in to late they will take fire as they evac while the SEADS are already left the AA range.
In anycase you can imrpove your chance by stunning the enemy AA befor attacking them. the easiest way to do that is firing with Rocket Artillery on them (MRLS). This will prevent the enemy from firing or if they fire to have less accuracy and a longer reload and aiming time.

After (and only after) you achieved Air Supiority and sucessfulyl suppressed the enemy air defense you total airspace control. Now it is the time to commence the fun part: the bombing. Now we can bomb the enemy as the guns bear (planes bear?). Alot of players (espacially new ones and the real abd ones) like to bomb from the beginning on and loosing alot of planes. But since we did a great job befor the enemy ahs nothing which will be able to shoot down our planes and we can bomb safely without risking to lose our planes. and therefor we have enough points for other planes then just bombers (or other units then planes).
Important thing you should know about bombing: always atatck the ground directly beneath or right next to the target unit. do not tell the plane (with exeption of A-10 Thudnerbolt) to attack a unit directly. the will make the plane fly at low altitude and attackign it with the maschien gun. Only the A-10 gun a maschinegun where you actually can kill stuff with it.

So we got now different kind of Bombers we could use:

-> Napalm Bomber (Phantom II). drops an array of bombs in a long line and burns everything? Want to make a barbecue? Then Phantom II is all you need (dont forget to put spices and herb on the bomb befor dropping them).

-> Rocket Pod Bomber you might have someleft from you engagement with enemy Air defense (if you picked any at all) they will wawrd you with a fast reload time. Endless ammo + nearly no reload time garuntee alot of fun.

-> Regular Bombers (F-16C) will be efefctivly to kill light armored vehicles and heavily damage tanks. The rest is above average so as regular CAS the most players choice.

-> Clusterbombs (Aardvark) is a clusterbomber that hit alot of unit in a long line. works best if you hit a street with them while te enemy tries to bring in reinforcement. Since this unit only work effectivly in that specific scenario i would not recoomend to use it. There more important planes.

-> Nighthawk you still should have left from your bombing of enemy IR AA. The work good against everythign which is not armored. High flying choppers or hiding infantry it does not matter afterwards there wont be enought left of them that they could ♥♥♥♥ in their pants.

-> AGM Planes (Thunderbolt and F-18C) are good to kill everything that the nighthawk missed espacially MBT's liek the T-80 series. After those planes are done firing on them you shoul give the enemy a short break to enjoy the view all his burning wreckages where his expensive tanks stood shortly befor.

And last but not least: your Helicopter are still left to finish up what your planes missed.