Electronic Warfare and ISR

Electronic Warfare and ISR

414Ret models scripted electronic warfare and intelligence-gathering through a single platform: the C-130J flying the JAMMING flight type, turned into an EC-130H Compass Call-style standoff jammer and an RC-130H Rivet Joint-style ELINT collector. A ~1,950-line in-mission script (c130j_mission_systems.lua) drives its runtime behavior from the cockpit. This is the only scripted EW model in the fork — the old generic fighter-pod "EW Jammer Script" has been retired and must not be restored.

In-game-pass status: the JAMMING planner side is wired, but the retirement of the generic EW script (checklist G5) still owes a confirmation pass. The runtime EW/ISR behavior is driven entirely by the Lua, which CI can't exercise — treat the in-cockpit numbers below as "as built."

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The aircraft and how it's planned

When you plan a JAMMING task on a C-130J:

1. Make sure your faction has a C-130J squadron available.
2. Create a flight with the JAMMING task and assign the C-130J.
3. The planner gives it an AWACS-style standoff racetrack outside the threat zone with a WEAPON_HOLD ROE — it is a support asset, not a shooter. Position the package so the orbit sits within useful range of the emitters you want to jam or collect against.
4. If no parking is available, the spawner falls back to a runway start automatically.

Treat it like an AWACS or tanker: anchor it where it covers the area of interest but stays survivable, and let escorts and SEAD handle the threats it lights up. Everything else happens at runtime, through the jet's F10 menu.

Suppression is by ROE, not by toggling enemy radars. The script never silences a SAM's emissions directly (doing so crashed DCS) — jamming degrades the enemy's picture, and the C-130J's own WEAPON_HOLD keeps it from behaving like a shooter. Don't expect a jammed SAM to go physically dark.

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Electronic attack (the EC-130H role)

The jammer runs on an energy budget — a capacity pool that drains while you jam and regenerates while you're idle, with an overheat cutout if you redline it. Managing that budget is the core of flying the EW role well.

The three jamming modes

Mode	Footprint	Energy cost	Reach (default)	Notes
Area	Omnidirectional	~3 / sec	up to ~200 NM	Theater-wide but diluted — about 0.65× the focused effectiveness. Jam everything, weakly.
Directional	A chosen sector	~1 / sec	—	Cheapest; concentrate on one bearing. Enable per direction.
Spot	One emitter	~5 / sec	~100 NM (full power within ~70 NM)	Strongest punch — recovers ~half of a system's ECCM resistance — but the most expensive and single-target.

Capacity regenerates at ~5/sec when idle. Holding emitters down with area/directional jamming costs extra drain per suppressed emitter, so the more you suppress, the faster the budget falls. If you push capacity to zero the pods overheat and won't come back until capacity recovers past a reset threshold, and you get a low-capacity warning at ~20%. The practical rhythm is to spot-jam the threat that matters, area-jam sparingly, and let the budget recover between pushes.

Burn-through and frequency bands

Two deliberate modeling choices shape what actually gets jammed:

• Burn-through rises with proximity. Counter-intuitively, a closer threat is harder to jam — its radar return burns through your noise — so jam probability goes up with distance. Standing off helps the jam, not just survivability.
• Frequency bands matter. If your pods don't cover a system's band, effectiveness takes a cross-band penalty (~0.6×). Spot jamming punches through a fraction of a system's ECCM resistance regardless.

Missile spoofing

The script attempts range-banded, per-tick missile spoofing against incoming missiles, with a roughly 3 NM arming distance so it never spoofs a missile still sitting next to its own launcher. The spoof curve is intentionally steep at close range — it is a last-ditch defensive aid in defined spoof zones, not an invulnerability bubble.

EW F10 menu

The jet's F10 EW menu lets the crew run all of this: enable/disable area jamming, pick a direction for directional jamming (enable per bearing, disable), toggle spot jamming on the tracked emitter, and Power OFF / Power ON the jammer pods entirely (e.g. to bank capacity or go quiet).

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ISR / ELINT (the RC-130H role)

Alongside jamming, the C-130J runs a passive ELINT picture:

• Altitude-gated radar detection of enemy emitters — you have to be high enough to see them.
• Up to three simultaneous ELINT tracks (tunable up to ten), each built with a two-phase progressive lock: an initial fix that takes 60–360 seconds depending on range (closer = faster), then a refinement phase several times longer that walks confidence up to 100%.
• As confidence grows, the position error shrinks (from ~50 NM at 0% confidence) and the bearing error tightens (from ~30°), so an early track is a rough cue and a mature track is a precise fix.
• F10 map marks and Bullseye reporting on detected emitters, a coalition-wide ELINT-Lock alert when a track matures, and a displacement alert if a tracked emitter moves more than ~500 m (a mobile SAM relocating).

ISR F10 menu

The ISR menu offers a SIGINT Report (the current emitter picture), Stop All Tracks, Toggle Auto-Triangulate (let the script refine fixes automatically), and Clear Map Marks.

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Coordination — the COORD handoff

A COORD menu produces an EW/ISR handoff brief that can be delivered to any selected friendly group, so a strike or SEAD package can be cued off exactly what the jammer has found — the C-130J becomes the node that owns the emitter picture and feeds the shooters. This is the "talk-on from the big-wing" workflow: collect, identify, then hand the fix to the flight that will prosecute it.

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Plugin options (tunables)

All exposed in the Plugin Options UI under C-130J Mission Systems (default ON):

Option	Default	Range	Effect
EW capacity regen / sec	5	1–30	How fast the energy budget recovers when idle
Area-jam drain / sec	3	1–20	Energy cost of area jamming
Spot-jam drain / sec	5	1–30	Energy cost of spot jamming
Max area-jam range (NM)	200	25–270	Reach of area jamming
Spot-jam range (NM)	100	25–220	Reach of spot jamming
Max simultaneous ELINT tracks	3	1–10	How many emitters you can track at once
On-screen message duration (s)	15	5–60	How long EW/ISR messages stay up

The retired generic EW model

The standalone ewrj / "EW Jammer Script 2.1" plugin is gone. Do not expect F-16 or A-10 ECM pods to create an F10 "Jammer menu" — only the C-130J Mission Systems plugin owns scripted jamming now. Fighter/attack ECM pods still exist as loadout equipment and DCS-native ECM, but they drive no scripted 414th menu, and AI SEAD/DEAD flights no longer get the old generic jamming waypoint actions. Legacy saved ewrj settings are purged automatically when an old campaign is loaded.

Tips

• Stand off. Burn-through and survivability both reward distance; the default ranges (200 NM area, 100 NM spot) are built for a deep orbit.
• Spot the priority, area the rest. Spot jamming is your punch but it's expensive and single-target; don't leave area jamming running flat-out or you'll overheat.
• Let ELINT mature before you hand off. An early track has tens of miles of position error; wait for the refinement phase before you pass a fix to a shooter via COORD.
• It pairs with SEAD/DEAD, not replaces it. The jammer degrades the enemy picture; the shooters still have to kill the site. See Air Defense and the Air War.

See also

• Mission planning
• Air Defense and the Air War
• IADS Engines: MANTIS and Skynet
• Fog of War and Reconnaissance