Combat SAR

Combat SAR

Combat SAR (combat search and rescue) makes a downed pilot worth flying for. In stock Retribution an ejection is a flat loss: the airframe is gone and the aviator is written off. This fork turns that moment into a mission. When a human pilot ejects in the operating area, you can launch a rescue — a CH-47 goes in, lands at the survivor, picks them up, and flies them home. Deliver them to any friendly field and the campaign spares that aviator at debrief: you still lose the jet, but the experienced pilot returns to the squadron instead of being killed off.

It is a bespoke flight type (FlightType.COMBAT_SAR) built on the MOOSE CSAR runtime engine, and it is distinct from the SCAR SOF-recovery CSAR task (see SOF and Commander Capture) — though, as below, a Combat SAR helo can also extract a stranded SOF team.

In-game-pass status: the whole feature is built, wired, and passes CI, but it has not yet had a cockpit pass. Checklist rows G8–G13 and H2 are all currently UNTESTED. Treat it as flight-ready but unvalidated — everything below describes how it is built to work.

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The two roles: rescuer and King

Combat SAR is flown as a two-element idea, modeled on a real HC-130 + helo package. Both elements are player-selectable when you build the package, and both fly a support-style orbit anchored on the front line — the same FLOT-anchored racetrack that AWACS and tankers use, sat behind the threat rings rather than over them.

Element	Airframe	Role
Rescuer	CH-47Fbl1 (the player-flyable ED Chinook)	Orbits near the FLOT behind the threat rings; flies in, lands, boards the survivor, and delivers them to any friendly field or FARP. Carries a door-gun fit (port + starboard M60D) for self-protection on the ingress.
King	C-130J-30	Flies the overhead HC-130 "King" on-scene-command orbit: lights the homing beacon and runs the survivor locator. It never lands at a crash site.

An AI CH-47D is the fallback rescuer (no weapon stations). The King is overhead presence and command, not a tanker — the C-130 cannot act as a DCS aerial-refueling tanker, and the Chinook couldn't take fuel from it anyway, so the King role is deliberately never wired into the refueling system.

Because the rescuer reuses the support-orbit flight plan, its loiter altitude is clamped to the campaign's helicopter combat altitude automatically — you do not tune it.

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How a rescue works, step by step

1. A human pilot ejects in the area. The MOOSE CSAR engine catches the ejection event and spawns the downed pilot on the ground with a beacon. (It only reacts to human ejections and only to ejections — not AI, not ordinary crashes — unless the AI standing alert is on; see below.)
2. The King lights an air-tracking TACAN beacon. This is the single homing solution: it follows the King's moving orbit, and every rescue helo carries a TACAN receiver. (An ADF radio beacon was considered and deliberately dropped — MOOSE's radio beacon is fixed-point, so chasing a moving King with it would buy nothing over the TACAN.)
3. The King's crew can press an F10 Combat SAR → LARS — Locate Survivors button. LARS reads the live downed-pilot table and reports each active survivor nearest-first: position, plus bearing and range from the King — exactly the readout the crew relays to the helo.
4. The CH-47 homes on the King's TACAN, flies to the survivor, lands (or hovers at the pickup height), boards them, and delivers them to a friendly field/FARP.

The whole pickup is driven through the helo's own F10 CSAR menu, which MOOSE adds to any human helo in the mission. Plugin options let you tune the feel:

Plugin option	Default	Effect
autosmoke	off	Auto-pop smoke at the survivor
loadDistance	75 m	How close the helo must be to board the survivor
rescueHoverHeight	20 m	Hover height that counts as a pickup if you don't land
messageTime	15 s	How long CSAR radio messages stay on screen

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Rescue scoring — the payoff

The point of a rescue is to save the pilot, so the loop closes inside the campaign model:

• When the helo boards a survivor, the engine records that pilot's original ejected aircraft (by the exact unit name DCS reports in its crash/kill event).
• On a successful delivery to a friendly field, those pilots are credited.
• At debrief, each credited pilot's loss is resolved so the airframe is still attrited but the aviator survives — the kill on that pilot is skipped.

Two properties make this safe:

• You have to actually bring them home. A rescue helo shot down with survivors aboard never reaches the delivery, so those pilots are never credited.
• Fail-safe. If nothing is rescued, the result is identical to today's behavior — the pilot dies. An empty rescue list is exactly the pre-scoring outcome.

See Squadrons and Pilots for why keeping an experienced aviator matters over a campaign.

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AI standing alert (optional)

By default Combat SAR is something you plan and fly. You can also enable an AI standing alert with the auto_combat_sar setting (HQ automation page, default OFF). With it on:

• the planner auto-plans one Combat SAR orbit per turn for blue, ASAP, so the alert is up before the first losses; and
• the engine is told it may commandeer an orbiting AI CH-47 to fly the pickup — which also makes AI ejections rescuable, not just human ones.

Airframe scarcity self-limits the alert: no CH-47 available, no orbit planned. Combat SAR is blue-only — the engine is built for blue, so a red Combat SAR would just fly an inert orbit and is never auto-tasked.

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Extracting a stranded SOF team

The same rescue helo can extract a stranded SCAR SOF team in-mission. When the SCAR commander-capture feature is on and a team has been stranded by a botched grab, the generator emits that on-map "downed SOF team" and the plugin spawns it as a MOOSE CASEVAC ground pickup at its strand point. A Combat SAR helo boards and delivers it exactly like a downed pilot, and the campaign credits the recovery — refunding the bought team.

This runs alongside the dedicated FlightType.CSAR air-assault recovery, not instead of it; a team recovered by either path refunds only once. The pilot-sparing channel and the SOF-recovery channel are kept distinct (routed by a SOFRESCUE name prefix) so there is no double-counting and no double ejection-handling. See SOF and Commander Capture for how teams get stranded in the first place.

With the AI alert on, an AI Combat SAR helo can be commandeered to extract a team too — and it will penetrate deep enemy territory to reach the strand, which is risky by design.

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Settings reference

Setting / option	Default	Effect
FlightType.COMBAT_SAR	player-selectable	Plan a rescuer (CH-47) or King (C-130) orbit by hand
auto_combat_sar	OFF	AI standing alert: auto-plans a Combat SAR orbit per turn and makes AI ejections rescuable
King beacon	TACAN-only	Air-tracking TACAN the helo homes on; F10 LARS reports survivor positions
loadDistance / rescueHoverHeight / autosmoke / messageTime	75 m / 20 m / off / 15 s	CSAR pickup feel (plugin options)

Tips

• Put a King up if you can. The helo can be rescued without one, but the TACAN homing and LARS readout make finding the survivor far less of a needle-in-a-haystack.
• Bring escorts. The rescuer orbits behind the rings but the pickup itself often pushes toward the fight; the door guns are for self-defense, not for clearing a hot LZ.
• Deliver to the nearest friendly field or FARP — allowFARPRescue is on, so you do not need a dedicated MASH; any friendly airfield/FARP scores the save.

See also

• SCAR
• SOF and Commander Capture
• Squadrons and Pilots
• Air Defense and the Air War
• Mission planning