Survivability (ASE)

What each aircraft has

	US equipment	British equipment
Radar and laser warning receiver (RLWR)	Yes	Yes
Chaff	Yes	Yes
IR jammer	Yes
Flares		Yes
Missile warning system (MWS)		Yes

Choose the equipment in the editor or the mission planner; see Variants and customisation. Everything here needs DC power.

Turning it on

After start-up, on the ASE page:

1. R6 RLWR on. You hear a tone as it comes on.
2. T1 CHAFF (or CMS) to ARM.
3. R1 IRJAM (US) or MWS (British) on.
4. Pick an autopage level, so the ASE page comes up by itself when it matters.

Warnings

Radar warning

The RLWR hears radars. Within about 8 km, each radar is placed on the ASE page (and on the TSD, if shown there) at its bearing, and called out by voice: what it is, its clock direction, and what it is doing.

State	Meaning	Heard
Searching	Its radar is sweeping the sky.	Once, when it first appears
Acquisition	It has picked you out.	When it moves up to acquisition
Tracking	It is tracking you and can fire.	When it moves up to tracking
Launch	A radar-guided missile is on its way.	“Missile launch”, with the direction

What the RLWR calls a threat depends on the vehicle’s config. Vehicles from the mods the Apache has compatibility for are named by type, such as SA-6 or ZSU-23. Anything else with a radar shows as a generic search radar.

Laser warning

The RLWR also warns when a laser designator or rangefinder is aimed at your aircraft, with the voice message and the direction.

Missile warning

British equipment only, with MWS on: the MWS sees any missile or rocket coming at you from within 3 km, whatever guides it, and calls “missile” with its direction. This is the only warning of an IR missile.

Aircraft with US equipment get no warning of an IR missile. The IR jammer has to deal with it without being told.

Countermeasures

Countermeasure	Defeats	Fire it with
Chaff	Radar-guided missiles	Arma’s Countermeasures binding. Needs chaff at ARM.
Flares (British)	IR-guided missiles	Deploy FlareX. Needs the MWS on.
IR jammer (US)	IR-guided missiles	Nothing: once it reads OPER, it works continuously.

Full, the ASE page counts 30 chaff and, with British equipment, 60 flares. Rearming refills them. See Rearm and refuel.

Chaff does nothing against an IR missile and flares nothing against a radar missile. Use the RLWR’s call to tell them apart: a launch call is a radar missile, so dispense chaff. A missile call from the MWS with no launch call before it is probably IR.

Volume

The RLWR’s voice messages have their own volume, RLWR volume Knob, in Addon settings.