Digital Combat Simulator¶

Ground-Controlled Interception (GCI)¶

A GCI is a player who supports friendly aircraft in a theater by being their "eyes" on the map. Players acting as fighters have limited visibility of where they are, where other planes are, and whether or not planes around them are friendly or hostile.

Some responsibilities of the GCI include:

• Guiding friendly aircraft to targets.
• Alerting friendly aircraft of incoming hostiles.
• Coordinating friendly aircraft to provide support to other friendlies or objective locations.
• Guiding friendly aircraft to nearest friendly airfield for RTB.
• Advising friendly aircraft of whether another aircraft is friend or foe.

Most servers have an AI variant of the GCI if a human is not doing so. However, in many cases, the effectiveness and fun for a team dramatically increases when a human GCI controller logs in.

Authority¶

Something to internalize:

Pilots are not obligated to follow GCI instructions, adhere to GCI advice, or monitor the frequency GCI is on.

In the end, this is a video game. Pilots are flying because they want to have fun. The GCI is doing the role to have fun. Pilots are likely to adhere to GCI suggestions, as in many cases they make their lives easier, but they are never obligated to.

Everything explained below serves to help immersion, which is important for having fun, and to explain how most all players expect a GCI to speak and act.

BRAA calls¶

The primary means by which a GCI gives directional information to an aircraft is via a BRAA call.

It stands for Bearing, Range, Altitude, Aspect.

A call is always preceded by the word "BRAA", followed by:

An example of a BRAA call made by GCI to an aircraft would be something like this:

In the example the GCI, codenamed "Magic", is informing aircraft "Salem 1-1" that an aircraft is at bearing 248° relative to their position, is 25 nautical miles away, is 8 thousand feet above the ground, and is traveling right towards them.

Some things to note:

• Speak each number of the bearing individually. SRS is noisy and imperfect, and quickly saying "two hundred forty eight" can easily be lost or misinterpreted.
• Do not say FOR or AT (e.g "... two-four-eight for 25 at 8 thousand"). These words have a strong chance of being misheard as numbers.

The 4 Aspects¶

The above example uses the "hot" aspect. There are 4 total.

Aside from hot, it is encouraged to include the cardinal direction the target aircraft is moving.

Additional information¶

BRAA calls can have 3 pieces of additional information appended to the end. Their usefulness is situational.

• Friend or Foe: Is the target aircraft friendly or hostile?
• Aircraft Type: What is the type of aircraft the target is?
• Speed: What is the relative speed of the target aircraft?
  • This is typically represented as "fast" (>600kts – 900kts) or "very fast" (>900kts).

A BRAA call with all information available would be the following:

Bullseye¶

The "bullseye" is a literal bullseye visible to the GCI and all friendly aircraft in a theater.

The purpose of the bullseye is to combat espionage. Frequencies are not encrypted; it is possible for hostile aircraft to snoop. However, when using a bullseye call, the enemy will not get any actionable information.

A bullseye call is not fundamentally different from a BRAA when speaking it verbally.

"GROUP" is included in the call so that Salem 1-1 is aware that the following bullseye call is for the purposes of leading them to a hostile. You will say "GROUP" regardless of the true number of hostiles in the "group". You will clarify how many are in the group alongside any other information available at the end.

Sunrise v. Midnight¶

Sunrise means a GCI is newly logged on and ready to play. Midnight means they are logging off and will no longer be available.

How this is done procedurally is server-specific.

Angels¶

The term "angels" is the technically correct means of referring to the altitude of a friendly aircraft.

It is highly unlikely that anything will come of not using this terminology, as the pilot being communicated with is getting correct and parsable information either way. But it helps immersion if used.

Requests to GCI¶

Very often, a GCI will be contacted by a pilot for specific things.

Unable¶

If for whatever reason a request made to the GCI cannot be actioned, the GCI will respond with "unable"

A pilot may also tell this to the GCI if a given instruction is physically impossible, undesirable, or just being refused.

Initial check in¶

When a GCI initially logs in, or a new aircraft enters airspace they know has a human GCI, they will provide a lot of information relating to them and their squadron (if applicable). This is purely informational and the GCI can acknowledge them simply.

Alpha check¶

At any time, and many times immediately following a check in, an aircraft will request confirmation of their location relative to the bullseye. This is an "alpha check". The GCI will simply provide a bullseye call to the location of the aircraft requesting the check.

Bogey Dope¶

In short, a pilot requesting a bogey dope wants to be pointed to the nearest enemy aircraft relative to their position. A simple BRAA will suffice.

CAP / Anchoring¶

A pilot will occasionally inform the GCI that their intent within the theater is to perform combat air patrol. The GCI can either provide a bogey dope to the nearest hostile if that makes sense, or they can request the aircraft "anchor".

Anchoring is the GCI requesting a pilot "hover" in a particular area and guard it.

SEAD tasking¶

Aircraft sometimes arm themselves with munitions to deal with ground targets. If a GCI sees ground targets on their radar, they can provide a BRAA for these aircraft towards them. The altitude will, obviously, be omitted.

Declare¶

A declare is a pilot asking the GCI to perform friend or foe identification on an aircraft based on information they provide to the GCI.

The GCI will respond with what is functionally a BRAA and, at the end, identify as FRIENDLY or HOSTILE.

Furball¶

Sometimes, a friendly aircraft will indicate they want a declare amongst a cluster of aircraft which are a mix of friend and foe. The GCI will then remark FURBALL in the place of FRIENDLY or HOSTILE to indicate that positive identification is impossible.

Vector¶

A pilot will sometimes request a "vector" followed by a callsign or desired location. This is the pilot simply requesting a BRAA leading them to what they are asking for. For example, someone within a squadron of 3 may request a vector to the other 2 if they get seperated, or the squadron leader wants to know how to get to their spawn to refuel.

RTB¶

A pilot indicating they are RTBing is identical to them wanting a vector to the nearest friendly airfield (unless they specify a particular destination).

Other terminology¶

The following is additional terminology that can be used to assist in maintaining brevity of communication.

The following are various examples that serve to demonstrate some of the above terminology.

Programs¶

People use various programs to do GCI. How to use any one of them is out of scope, but the following is a known list.

External resources¶