AWACS
GOON Human AWACs Command Basics
1. Purpose 2. BRAA Calls and You 3. Picture Calls and You 4. Basic Brevity Glossary
1. Purpose
The purpose of this document is to provide a basic structure of how you must interpret calls from human AWACs so you can find and shoot at things. I want to preface this document by saying you DO NOT NEED TO USE BREVITY, it only makes it easier and gets everyone more erect, I’ll work with you even if you don’t know anything, brevity just makes all the communication much more compact.
2. BRAA Calls and You
The most common call you’ll have from both AI and Human AWACs is the BRAA call, which stands for Bearing, Range, Altitude, and Azimuth. The BRAA call will tell you, in order, which direction the bandit is from you, how far away they are, what their altitude is, and what direction they’re moving in relation to you. It is important to stay with your flight leads so that this information is accurate and relevant to the entire flight.
The only non-self-explanatory portion of the BRAA call is Azimuth, which is the enemy’s direction of movement in relation to you. For this we have a few different brevities calls you should learn:
Hot Cold Beaming (Left/Right) Flanking (Left/Right)
Hot indicates the bandit is facing and moving towards you or in an intercept towards you, these types of bandits should be considered first and will be called out first if there are multiple groups.
Cold indicates the bandit is facing and moving away from you, they will be called out last if there are multiple groups.
Beaming (Left/Right) indicates the bandit is moving perpendicular to you on the X plane, meaning they’re moving to your left or right by a large degree. This may mean they are in your radar notch or attempting to defend if you fired on them.
Flanking (Left/Right) indicates a halfway between hot and beaming, the bandit is still closing on you but may not be attempting to intercept you, or you’ve fired on them and they’re defending by attempting to get in your radar notch.
What you do with the information is up to you, but this will give you information as to where the bandit is and what their intent may be if you are unable to get your radar on them or if you’re already engaged. To request a BRAA call you could say “[AWACs callsign], [your callsign], bogey dope”. This will request a group from the AWACs, who will provide you the closest or highest priority group. An example of this call if your callsign is “Hornet 1-1” and the AWAC’s Callsign is “Screwtop” would be: “Screwtop, Hornet 1-1, Bogey Dope” “Hornet 1-1, Screwtop, BRAA: 345 for 35 (in miles), at angels 35 (35,000 ft.) HOT (indicating they’re moving to intercept or are coming directly towards you)”
3. Picture Calls and You Picture calls are just a group of BRAA calls if there are multiple bandit groups to give you a “picture” of the AO to help you track multiple groups at a time. The only new brevity for this that we’ll be using is “monitor”.
Monitoring is a call the AWACs will give if there is a bandit group in the picture that is not actively attempting to intercept your group or another friendly group and is too far away to do any aggressive action. This tells you that I’m watching them but you don’t need to worry about them at this time, here’s an example of how it will look:
“Screwtop, Hornet 1-1, picture” “Hornet 1-1, Screwtop, two bandit groups, group 1 BRAA: 345 for 35 (in miles), at angels 12 (12,000 ft.) flanking left (they’re moving perpendicular left in relation to you), group 2, Screwtop monitor” 4. Basic Brevity Glossary Hot: Bandit group is moving towards you or is in an intercept vector, should be considered hostile with intent to fire upon you.
Cold: Bandit group is moving away from you, either in an attempt to run away or defend from missiles fired at them.
Beaming: Bandit group is moving perpendicular to you, may be notching your radar, either in an attempt to defend or they are unaware.
Flanking: Bandit group is moving towards you at an angle, may be notching your radar, either in an attempt to intercept you or possibly attempting to defend against missiles.
Monitor: AWACs brevity to indicate bandit group is not actively in the AO or intercepting friendly forces, AWACs is monitoring contacts and will call if they become a threat. Shotgun: Indicate to the AWACs you are out of viable munitions to engage bandits.