Introduction

The primary purpose of this document is to establish a standardized method to keep communications brief and increase situational awareness (SA). The secondary purpose is to outline two basic tactics which, if followed, should complement communications especially just prior to and during combat. Good combat tactical comms are both brief and clear. As combat sims go voice, the mark of a good sim pilot will be not only his stick and throttle skills and his voice comms as well.

For the purposes of demonstrating communications, the following conventions will apply throughout this document: The example flight name is Banshee Flight. All examples of communications will be written in italics. The person speaking will be indicated in bold face. Responses to communications are given on the lines following the initial communiqué. Different examples are separated by a line.

The Basics

All communication between pilots and air controllers (ATC/AWACS/JSTARS/TANKER) should be as follows: Controller Name/Callsign, Pilot's Flight #, Request/Comment.

• Banshee Two Eisenhower, Banshee Two, Request landing clearance.
• Eisenhower ATC Banshee Two, Eisenhower, cleared for landing. New heading is zero four eight. Wind 12 knots - South/Southeast.

• Banshee Lead Gremlin, Banshee Lead, Standing down.
• JSTARS Banshee Lead, Gremlin, Copy.

This is, however, fairly esoteric because most of these communications are "canned" (preprogrammed) in most flight simulators. The truly important communications come from pilot to pilot interaction. Thus, the following rules should help simplify communications and keep things brief.

Click to continue . . .

When a flight leader is addressing the entire flight he should say the flight name followed by the necessary command. Pilot responses to lead, should indicate their flight number followed by the appropriate reply.

• Banshee Lead Banshee Flight, Music on.
• Banshee Two Two.
• Banshee Three Three.
• Banshee Four Four.

• Banshee Lead Banshee Flight, Status.
• Banshee Two Two, Defensive SAM.
• Banshee Three Three, Neutral.
• Banshee Four Four, Defensive Triple-A.

Not unlike pilot/controller communication, whenever a pilot addresses another pilot, he should give the callsign or flight number he is communicating with, his own flight number or callsign and a directive, request or information specific to the pilot being contacted. The flight leader is always flight number one. The word "lead" should always replace "one" in every situation.

• Two Lead, Two, Joker fuel.
• Lead Two, Lead, Copy.

• Pinch Faust, Pinch, Bandit on your six!
• Faust Pinch, Faust, Tally bandit.

Note however that pilots in the same flight or section become familiar with each others voices and many times comms are even briefer especially if the are all on a single isolated tactical freq. On more general freq, eg, strike, tower, marshall, they use fuller callsigns but in tactical situation they rarely use full calls. Also, individual calls are an even more common way to communicate with a flight tactically. Example:

Pinch:

• Faust, check six
• Faust: either, "tally" or "s#!t"

Sometimes the situation is such that a pilot needs to give information to the flight in general. The greatest percentage of time this occurs is to provide SA in a combat situation. Thus, the fact that the entire flight is being addressed is understood if only one callsign or flight number is given followed by information. There is no response required whenever such information is given.

• Faust Faust, Splash!
• Pinch Pinch, Spike three o'clock.

• Two Two, SAM eleven o'clock!
• Pinch Pinch, Fox One.

Continued on Part III