How to identify air targets?

[PeteUplink]

I'm working my way through the tutorials and I'm on the 3rd or 4th air tutorial with enemies that shoot back. There's a couple of unknown bogey's that I think are civillian aircraft, and I tried to ID them by telling a group of F16's to fly towards them, but my planes kinda flew right by and missed them and they're still unknown...

What did I do wrong?

[Half life Expert]

You can manually order your aircraft to 'engage' without actually shooting. This will cause them to move close and identify. Here is how you can do it (though I wish there was a more straight forward way):

1. Pause the game

2. Issue an auto-attack order on the bogeys in question from the aircraft you want to use.

3. select the bogeys and label them as 'unfriendly' by right clicking on them or pressing Ctrl+H

4. Un-pause the game.

Try that

[PeteUplink]

I don't want to shoot them, just identify them so I can find which ones are hostile. It's be nice if the game had an "intercept target" command so you can select a plane, click on it and your fighters will fly towards it to ID it.

[Half life Expert]

The method I provided won't cause your aircraft to shoot at them, just get close, identify, and shadow them. Once you label the bogeys as hostile, then the shooting starts.