anyone find SEAD is a bit useless?

[C4EZAR]

To be honest.. i dont really know how SEAD works, till i search it up on youtube
i dont know the detail, but long story short the youtube guided me to just place SEAD (F-16) to a suspected spot where there is a SAM/AA vehicle.
from 4 suspected places, only one SEAD missile was deployed, but failed to detect another SAM from a different spot, thus my F-16 got killed from that different spot.
ngl i got furious i burned that spot to the ground with MW1 and CLU bombs, idc if it hits or miss

[Raven]

SEAD isn't working if the opponent turns off the radar of its unit. What most likely happened is that your F-16 was spotted and the IR AA shot it down.

The best way to use SEAD is with the strike package. You send your SEAD in front of your bombers and you make it turn back to your territory. Never let it go over front lines for too long.

[FasterSquid]

SEAD works against radar AA, the missile itself is designed to basically "see" a radar signal and follow it back to the source.

When using SEAD, you should have it make a pass behind your front line, and see if it fires its SEAD munitions against anything, most SEAD have 4500k-5k range, so keep it as far from the front as possible. It wont spot the site, but it will fire on its own if brought close enough. SEAD is ONLY going to fire on radar AA, so all IR teams on the ground (IGLA or Stingers) will still fire on the aircraft. Its main purpose is to clear up long range AA so your other CAS aircraft can get in closer without getting smacked from far out.

TLDR, SEAD targets radar AA, it does nothing for IR or optical guided AA sites

[$hitDemon]

Good ECM for missile sponges ahead of bombing runs or shooting helos if decent guns, But yeah at killing AA useless.

[lone wolf]

as someone else said it only fires on radar AA like the I-hawk, pivads, Tunguska, and OSA-akms. if you look at the info cards themselves each weapon has properties that will tell you if an AA system is radar guided. if you look at the Pivads (USA- 3rd armored) right above the picture of the cannon ( m168 Vulcan) there is a radar dish icon which mean that sead works on that weapon WHEN IT IS TURNED ON.

people will turn on and off their AA if they see a plane coming so sometimes even if your sead can use its missile against a target it wont. so as someone else said you use it in a strike package to make the enemy choose whether to engage their radar and risk losing it or not. sorry about over explaining this but i made it super clear so that if anyone who isnt familiar with this game could easily understand.

[Sokol]

Most AA in-game doesn't even use radar, especially NATO, only a few weapons like pivads, gepard, and the french spaag, but thats it, all their missile launchers and everything else is non-radar so SEAD can't do anything against them.

As for PACT, a lot more of the AA is radar, so its more useful against PACT, but in general the SEADs high accuracy seems to be a complete lie as it almost never hits anything unless you do a few runs at a a time on the same AA weapon

[VladK02]

Its a micro-heavy tool, in the right hands, will work wonders and will almost never die.

It can be used to clear the way for bombers, or clear SPAAG away for helos, or generally keep population of Kubs down.

But to use it right, you need to micro it, not yolo it blindly. Running into infantry AA means you screwed up with recon and flight path planning.

SEAD needs to be used at the very edges of enemy zones, microed heavily - you need to hold C and map out the flight path of the plane, keeping it 3-4km away from suspected SPAAG / Kub / Buk locations, and then set it to fly just as you mapped it out - so you fire off the sead missile (range ~5km), but stay out of range of infrared AA (range ~3km).

SEAD then clears radar SPAAGs / Kubs etc away from a sector, and lets you get in with ATGM chopper or bombers relatively un-molested.

Rule of thumb is, plane stays back at least 1-2km behind your recon squads and fires from wthin your own lines. 5km is quite far, and missile can be fired off almost sideways by the plane, so you can fly parallel to enemy zone, not at it.

The only problem is a tunguska with guns off. That can, and will, take potshots at the plane, but 1 missile wont kill the plane, and if they have 1-2 tunguskas, thats very juicy target for your arty - they will have supply trucks there too.