Operations

This chapter covers force employment through the DRONECOM tactical display: directing platforms by mission and doctrine, the carrier deck cycle, weapons employment, and endurance management. Where the Sensors chapter explains how the tactical picture is built, this chapter explains how to act on it.

The Command Hierarchy

Deployed platforms are autonomous. The operator does not steer them; the operator assigns objectives and standing rules, and the platforms execute. Command is exercised at three levels:

1. Mission — a persistent assignment given to a platform or group: patrol an area, screen the carrier, fly a waypoint route, hold a station. The mission defines what the unit is trying to accomplish and persists until completed, aborted, or replaced.
2. Doctrine — standing rules that govern how the unit behaves while executing its mission: when it may fire, when it must flee, whether its active sensors radiate. Doctrine applies continuously, whatever the mission.
3. Direct orders — directives that point an individual platform at another unit or contact: follow a unit, engage a contact. Direct orders suspend autonomous mission behavior; when the order queue is exhausted, the platform reverts to its idle scan.

The intended workflow is command by exception. Doctrine handles routine reactions — a patrolling platform engages or evades per its standing rules without operator intervention. Direct orders are reserved for the moments that matter: a deliberate strike, a precise repositioning, an engagement the doctrine would otherwise withhold.

Groups

Missions are assigned at the group level. A group has a leader, which executes the mission, and followers, which maintain station on the leader in a designated formation — line abreast, wedge, trail, or echelon, at close, normal, or wide spacing. A platform launched alone is simply a group of one.

Formation spacing is a sensor-signature decision as much as a maneuvering one. A tight formation can register on hostile radar as a single merged contact with an uncertain count — but a weapon fired at a merged track homes on the track’s estimated centroid, and against a tightly packed group that aim point is close to every member. Wider spacing pulls each member away from the centroid, so the same detonation can fall outside every member’s lethal radius — at the cost of presenting the adversary an unambiguous count.

A newly launched group passes through a forming up state — members rendezvous and take station before the assigned mission begins. Throughout its sortie, the group’s current mission state — Forming up, Patrolling, Intercepting, Evading, and so on — is reported on the tactical display.

Missions

Six mission types can be assigned as a group’s standing mission. Each defines a steady-state behavior and the conditions under which the unit departs from it. A seventh mission — the waypoint Route — is assigned directly from the map and differs from the standing missions in ways described after them.

Patrol

The unit orbits a designated center at a designated radius and operating altitude, scanning with whatever sensors doctrine permits. Hostile contacts detected within the unit’s engagement range trigger a reaction governed by doctrine — engage, evade, or ignore. A patrol under Defensive stance is leashed to its patrol origin: it breaks off a pursuit when the target moves beyond engagement range from the patrol center, then resumes the orbit. Patrol is the workhorse mission for sustained sensor coverage of an area.

Screen

The unit defends a designated friendly platform — typically the carrier. The leader orbits the protected unit at the assigned radius; the radius is also the threat trigger: an inbound contact whose CPA (closest point of approach) against the protected unit falls inside the screen radius is treated as a threat. The screen engages one threat at a time, taking the contact with the smallest time-to-CPA first. If the protected unit is lost, the screen holds station at the protected unit’s last known position. A screen is the standing answer to the carrier’s vulnerability — it trades a platform’s sortie endurance for reaction time against leakers.

Picket

The unit holds station at a fixed point as an early-warning sensor post, orbiting tightly with active sensors forced to radiate — a picket that does not emit is not doing its job. The picket’s purpose is detection range, not engagement: under Defensive stance it holds station and reports; only under Aggressive stance will it leave station to intercept what it finds. A picket earns its keep when stationed along the expected threat axis, far enough out that its detections buy reaction time — with the standing cost that a radiating picket is itself a beacon. See Active vs Passive.

Ambush

The inverse of the picket. The unit holds station with emissions forced silent, overriding its own doctrine, and waits. When a hostile contact enters the designated kill radius around the station, the ambush springs: emissions are restored and the group commits to an intercept. When the engagement concludes, the group returns to its station and re-silences. An ambush requires at least one passive sensor in the group (a blind ambush can never spring) and at least one armed member (a toothless one has nothing to spring with). An ambush never auto-evades — it holds the kill zone. Ambush positions exploit the passive-detection asymmetry: a silent group hears an emitting target long before the target’s radar returns anything.

Hold

The unit holds station at a fixed point. Fixed-wing aircraft orbit the point at a designated altitude; anything that can stop or hover — ships, submarines, rotary-wing — moves to the point and stays there, returning to station if displaced. A holding unit stays put: it does not pursue contacts and does not auto-evade. Hold is the staging mission — a strike package waiting for its window, a reserve positioned behind a screen.

Idle

No assigned mission. The unit loiters and runs the ambient contact scan described under Doctrine. Idle is the state a unit returns to when orders run out or a mission completes.

Route

A Route is an operator-assigned waypoint path, created by designating a movement point on the tactical display and extended point by point. The unit flies the route one leg at a time. A route may be closed into a loop, in which case the unit flies the circuit indefinitely; otherwise the unit goes Idle when the final waypoint completes. Individual waypoints can be removed, the path can be cut short at any waypoint, and the remaining legs are drawn on the tactical display.

Assigning a waypoint replaces the unit’s current mission — a patrolling unit given a movement point abandons the patrol and flies the route. Given to a group leader, the route moves the entire group: followers hold formation throughout, and the group stays intact.

A routed unit evades per doctrine, and a unit forced off its route by a threat resumes the interrupted leg once the threat clears. It does not engage on its own, regardless of stance — operator-directed movement is treated as deliberate transit, and an engagement en route requires an explicit engage order or a standing mission.

A route is positional and progress-bound, and unlike the standing missions it is never retained as the group’s default mission: a group recovered mid-route does not resume the stale, half-flown path on relaunch.

Reactive States

The following states appear in the mission column of the tactical display but are not assigned directly — the system enters them in response to events or operator orders:

Classify and Monitor are paired range-regulation behaviors. A classifying unit deliberately closes range on an Unknown contact until its own sensors hold the target strongly enough for IFF resolution, then maintains that range — it converges on the minimum exposure that still produces identification. A monitoring unit does the opposite calculation against a known hostile: it shadows from the maximum range at which its sensors still hold the track, hugging the edge of custody. Both regulate range continuously against measured signal strength rather than flying to a fixed offset.

Mission-terminal errors are reported on the display with cause: No Compatible Carrier, Not Recoverable, No Ammo, Cannot Engage, Target Not Found, Weapons Hold. An error state means the unit cannot continue and requires operator attention.

Direct Orders

Movement is commanded through Route missions; direct orders cover the directives that point a platform at another unit or contact rather than at a position:

A direct order either replaces the platform’s current directives or is queued alongside them. A platform executing direct orders is reported as Direct control on the tactical display and reverts to Idle when the queue is exhausted.

Routing — for route legs and direct orders alike — is automatic: the system plans around terrain and coastline, and replans when the route is invalidated. Waypoints are validated at assignment: a destination a waterborne platform cannot reach is corrected to the nearest navigable water, and a destination whose terrain rises above an airborne platform’s ceiling is refused. Commanded speed and commanded altitude are adjusted independently — they shape how the platform flies its current mission or order rather than replacing it.

An operator-directed engagement carries authority that an autonomous one does not: it bypasses the doctrine gates described below. A platform ordered to attack will attack, regardless of its standing rules. Doctrine constrains the machine, not the operator.

Doctrine

Doctrine is the set of standing rules carried by every deployed unit. Stance, fire control, and emissions are authored as part of each vehicle design; engagement and safety ranges and the Auto RTB rule are derived from the design’s capabilities at launch. All of it applies group-wide and is adjustable at any time from the tactical display.

Stance — how the unit reacts to hostile contacts:

The Defensive leash requires a patrol origin to measure from. A defensive unit engaged outside any patrol — from idle, or by standalone tasking — pursues as if Aggressive.

Fire control (ROE) — which contacts the unit may engage:

Engage Unknown trades identification discipline for reaction time. Against an adversary who hides among neutral traffic it invites engagements that cannot be taken back; against a sea-skimming missile it is the difference between a kill and a hit on the carrier.

Emissions — Radiate or Silent, per the EMCON mechanics covered in Sensors. Doctrine carries the emission state so that a launched group comes off the deck with its emission posture already decided.

Engagement range — the distance at which the unit reacts to contacts, with a wider break-off distance to prevent oscillation at the boundary. Safety range governs the same way for Evasive reactions: flee when a threat closes inside the inner distance, resume the interrupted task once it is beyond the outer.

Auto RTB — whether the unit turns for home on its own when it can no longer contribute: when fuel runs low (see Endurance and Logistics), and when an engaged group has expended all weapons (see Weapons Employment). With Auto RTB withheld, the unit holds and waits for recall.

Doctrine Gates

When a unit reaches an engagement autonomously — through its ambient scan, a patrol reaction, or a screen trigger — doctrine is enforced in strict priority order before any weapon moves:

1. Weapons Hold — the engagement is refused outright.
2. Passive stance — the engagement is abandoned; the unit continues its task.
3. Evasive stance — the unit flees the contact instead.
4. Defensive leash — the unit breaks off if the target is beyond engagement range from the patrol origin.

An engagement ordered by the operator skips all four gates.

The Ambient Scan

Any unit that is idle or patrolling continuously scans the team contact picture within its engagement range. ROE filters which affiliations qualify; stance decides the reaction. When several units could take the same contact, the system distributes effort: contacts already engaged by the maximum effective number of platforms for their class are passed over, and otherwise the least-engaged contact is preferred before the nearest. The result is that a saturation raid is met by a distributed response rather than every defender converging on the lead contact.

Deck Operations

The carrier is the force’s launch, recovery, and servicing facility, and deck throughput is a hard operational constraint. Every airframe in the fight passed through a deck cycle to get there, and must pass through another to refuel and rearm.

Facilities and Pipelines

Each launch and recovery facility is a pipeline of timed phases. A vehicle entering the pipeline occupies each phase in turn; the facility’s character is set by whether its phases are serial (one occupant per phase — a conveyor) or parallel (multiple occupants move through together):

The serial facilities are the bottleneck. An aviation deck moves one airframe per phase: while a drone rides the elevator, the next waits in the hangar. A reversible facility operates in one direction at a time — a deck cycling launches is not simultaneously recovering, and the operator’s launch schedule and recovery demand contend for the same conveyor. Queued launches can be reprioritized, and a pending launch can be canceled even after it has entered the pipeline; a canceled launch returns the vehicle to stowage.

The parallel facilities exist precisely because weapons cannot wait for a conveyor: a VLS salvo or torpedo shot proceeds at volley pace regardless of what the flight deck is doing.

Launch

A launch commits one or more stowed vehicles to a facility pipeline as a group — the first named vehicle becomes the leader. The launch carries the group’s complete tactical configuration so that no follow-up orders are needed:

• an immediate intent — clear the deck and loiter, engage a designated contact, or follow a designated unit;
• an initial mission, entered automatically once the group finishes forming up, with an optional rendezvous waypoint;
• the group’s doctrine and formation;
• for weapons, a trajectory profile (see Weapons Employment).

A launched group is therefore productive from the moment it clears the deck: a screen launched as a screen, a strike launched against its target.

Recovery

A recovering platform proceeds to its assigned carrier and enters the recovery flow for its facility. Aircraft fly a racetrack holding pattern near the carrier and are cleared in turn — fixed-wing airframes descend on a glide approach to the deck; rotary-wing airframes descend overhead. Surface and subsurface vehicles trail the carrier astern, then close for well-deck entry.

Deck capacity is enforced. When the pipeline is full, additional recoveries hold — the display reports holding — deck full. A platform that chose its own recovery carrier (an automatic low-fuel return) will divert from a full deck to another compatible carrier with room. A recovery directed by the operator to a specific carrier is pinned to it and holds until that deck clears: the system assumes the operator named that carrier for a reason.

Servicing

A recovered vehicle is struck below and serviced in sequence — refueling from the carrier’s bunkers, then rearming from the carrier’s magazine inventory — before reporting Ready for relaunch. Both transfers take time proportional to the quantity moved, and refueling draws down the carrier’s own fuel stocks. A vehicle can be launched mid-servicing; it departs with whatever fuel and ordnance it has taken on, and the deficit is the operator’s to manage.

stateDiagram-v2
    direction LR
    Ready --> Pipeline : Launch committed
    Pipeline --> Deployed : Clears the deck
    Pipeline --> Ready : Launch canceled
    Deployed --> Recovering : Recovery (RTB)
    Recovering --> Servicing : Struck below
    Servicing --> Ready : Refueled and rearmed
    Servicing --> Pipeline : Launch mid-servicing

    classDef own fill:#062712,stroke:#22c55e,color:#22c55e
classDef enemy fill:#2f0d0d,stroke:#ef4444,color:#ef4444
classDef success fill:#062712,stroke:#22c55e,color:#22c55e
classDef warning fill:#2e2301,stroke:#eab308,color:#eab308
classDef error fill:#2f0d0d,stroke:#ef4444,color:#ef4444

    class Ready success
    class Pipeline warning
    class Recovering warning
    class Servicing warning
    class Deployed own

The cycle, not the inventory, is the true measure of combat power. Twelve airframes with a single serial deck deliver sorties at the deck’s pace; the operator who launches everything at once has also scheduled everything to come home at once.

Weapons Employment

Delivery Models

Two kinds of platform deliver warheads:

• Expendable weapons — missiles and torpedoes. The vehicle is the warhead; the flight is one-way. Launched from VLS cells, torpedo tubes, or the air-launch racks of a carrying platform.
• Launch platforms — armed drones carrying stowed weapons. The platform closes to employment range, releases weapons through its own launch pipeline, observes the result, and can re-attack or return to rearm.

For warhead and chassis specifications, see the Platform Reference.

The Engagement Sequence

An engagement against a contact proceeds through a fixed sequence, reported on the tactical display as the engagement phase:

flowchart LR
    P["Pursuing\n(closing / standoff)"]:::own --> L["Launching\n(weapon in pipeline)"]:::own --> C["Committed\n(weapon airborne)"]:::own --> D["Detonation\nat CPA"]:::enemy --> B["BDA"]:::warning

    classDef own fill:#062712,stroke:#22c55e,color:#22c55e
classDef enemy fill:#2f0d0d,stroke:#ef4444,color:#ef4444
classDef success fill:#062712,stroke:#22c55e,color:#22c55e
classDef warning fill:#2e2301,stroke:#eab308,color:#eab308
classDef error fill:#2f0d0d,stroke:#ef4444,color:#ef4444

Pursuing. The platform closes on the contact’s track. A launch platform does not fly to the target — it flies to a standoff range and holds there while its weapons do the closing. The standoff distance is regulated continuously against track quality: a strong, reliably-held track lets the platform stand off farther; a weak track pulls it in to preserve custody. The ceiling is the weapon’s own reach.

Launching. When the target is within weapon range, ammunition is available, and the target is not already at its engagement capacity, a weapon is committed to the launch pipeline.

Committed. The weapon is airborne against the contact. The launching platform maintains its standoff and holds custody of the track while the weapon flies out.

Detonation. The weapon detonates at its CPA against the target — the closest point its trajectory achieves. Lethality falls off with miss distance: full warhead effect at zero miss, decreasing to nothing at the edge of the warhead’s lethal radius. A pass outside the lethal radius is a clean miss. Only the engaged contact is affected — there is no area effect against bystanders.

Trajectory Profiles

An expendable weapon shapes its flight path according to a profile chosen at launch (or carried as the design default):

The profile decision is the sensor tradeoff in miniature: terrain-following trades range for surprise, lofting trades surprise for range. See Low-Altitude Clutter and The Horizon for the detection mechanics being exploited.

Sensor Custody and the Kill Chain

Weapons are aimed at tracks, not at truth. An engagement names its target by track code, and the weapon homes on the track’s estimated position for as long as the track lives. If sensor custody is lost mid-flight, the weapon dead-reckons on the last known position — against a maneuvering target, a stale track decays into a miss. If the track has expired entirely by the time the weapon arrives, the engagement resolves as a miss regardless of where the target actually is.

The operational consequence: fires are only as good as the sensor picture sustaining them. A launch platform that goes silent after firing, or a supporting picket that loses the target behind terrain, has disarmed its own weapon in flight. Keeping a sensor on the target through weapon flyout is part of the engagement, not an accessory to it.

Battle Damage Assessment

A detonation does not announce its result. The targeted track is marked awaiting BDA, and the assessment is made by independent sensor coverage — sensors other than the weapon’s own seeker, which is destroyed in the detonation. If independent coverage confirms the target gone, the track is assessed Probably Destroyed and the engagement completes. Without independent coverage the assessment is Uncertain: the engaging platform searches an expanding orbit around the last known position to re-acquire or confirm. A target re-detected after engagement is re-engaged.

BDA outcomes are displayed as overlay decorations on the contact symbol — see Symbology for the markings.

With Auto RTB in effect, a platform that has expended all weapons breaks off and returns to base to rearm (weapons out — RTB); a group breaks off only when every surviving armed member is spent and no volley remains in flight. With Auto RTB withheld, the spent unit holds on station and waits for the operator’s recall.

Endurance and Logistics

Fuel

Fuel burn is proportional to thrust demand. A platform cruising at partial throttle burns substantially less than one running at maximum speed; the transit profile is a tradeoff between time-on-station and time-to-station. Every deployed platform’s fuel state is visible on the tactical display.

Bingo Fuel and Automatic Return

Once a platform’s fuel drops below a low-fuel threshold, the system begins comparing its remaining range against the distance to the nearest compatible recovery facility, with margin to spare. When remaining range no longer covers the return leg with that margin, the platform is at bingo fuel: the state latches and is cleared only by refueling. With Auto RTB in effect — the default for any platform that is not itself a warhead — a bingo platform abandons its mission and turns for home (bingo fuel — RTB). An engagement is likewise abandoned when fuel can no longer support it (intercept aborted — fuel).

Assigning a new mission to a platform that has turned for home cancels the recovery and withdraws its automatic-return authority for the remainder of the sortie — the system does not fight the operator for the platform. From that point the fuel state is the operator’s responsibility alone.

A platform that exhausts its fuel does not vanish from the air immediately: propulsion fails and onboard systems run on battery reserve. An airborne platform without thrust is lost on surface impact; any platform is lost when the reserve depletes. The reserve interval is brief and is not an endurance margin to be planned against.

Carrier Stocks and Procurement

Servicing draws on the carrier’s finite stocks: refueling depletes bunker fuel, rearming depletes magazine inventory. Stocks are replenished through resupply deliveries ordered against the force’s operating funds, which accrue over the course of the engagement; replacement airframes are produced the same way, with production time scaling with the cost of the design. A fight can therefore be lost logistically long before it is lost tactically — a carrier with an empty bunker is a carrier whose air wing is on a countdown.

The signature decisions of this system are logistical: when to cycle the deck, how much fuel to spend on transit speed, whether the next sortie launches now with partial fuel or later with full tanks. Firepower decides engagements; the deck cycle decides campaigns.