AAA Groups

Medusa manages anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) in two modes.

• Radar-directed AAA has a working unit with a DCS search-radar attribute in the group. It uses normal IADS tracks, target assignment, and engagement behavior.
• Independent AAA has no working search radar. It detects hostile aircraft directly through local visual and audio modeling.

If a radar-directed AAA group loses its last search radar, Medusa returns it to COLD and changes it to independent operation.

Mission setup

AAA groups need the normal network prefix but no role token. Medusa recognizes units with the DCS AAA attribute.

red.1div.1bde.aaa.alpha

Place and orient each AAA gun in the Mission Editor. Medusa uses every AAA gun’s heading for local visual detection, so a group with eight guns checks all eight fields of view. It refreshes the group position and headings during the mission.

Group classification

Medusa counts launcher, MANPAD, AAA, and search-radar attributes across the group.

1. A launcher, TLAR, or TELAR makes the group a conventional SAM battery.
2. Otherwise, if at least one MANPAD unit is present, MANPAD units win when their count is equal to or greater than the AAA count.
3. AAA wins when it outnumbers MANPAD units and either has no search radar or has at least two AAA units per search radar.

Independent detection and response

Independent AAA searches directly for hostile airplanes and helicopters near the group. This works even when the IADS has no track for the aircraft.

Visual detection uses each gun’s heading:

• Range: 8 km
• Horizontal field: 30 degrees to either side
• Relative altitude ceiling: 3,048 m above the group

Aircraft inside AAA.AudioRangeM also receive an audio detection roll every 10 seconds. The base chance is 35% in HOT_WAR, 26.25% in WARM_WAR, and 17.5% in COLD_WAR.

After a detection, the site reacts after 15 seconds. It either:

• fires for 30 seconds toward an imprecise, projected point; or
• becomes HOT for 180 seconds and lets DCS AI acquire aircraft locally.

Area fire projects from the last detected position using the aircraft’s horizontal velocity at detection. It uses a random 5 to 20 second lead, then adds up to 500 m of position error. Medusa keeps the aim point at least 100 m above terrain and caps it to the gun’s maximum slant range.

After area fire, a site may continue with a 10-minute barrage. AAA.BarrageChance controls the chance and defaults to 25%. Fire and pause periods each vary from 10 to 15 seconds so nearby sites do not remain synchronized. Visual and audio detection continue during the barrage. A new detection immediately starts the normal area-fire or local-acquisition response, then the barrage resumes until its original end time.

When an AAA gun fires, IDLE or ALERT independent AAA within 5 nautical miles can join the barrage after a random 10 to 20 second delay. Their first burst uses the same aim point. Later bursts choose their own points. Every infected site inherits the same end time, so propagation cannot extend the barrage beyond 10 minutes.

Medusa limits barrage participation to 15 AAA groups across the map by default. AAA.MaxBarrageGroups adjusts this limit, and 0 disables barrages. When active networks use different values, the lowest value sets the map-wide limit.

If DCS does not report a shell range, Medusa uses a 12 km fallback range.

At night, Medusa uses 1 - AreaFireChance. The default therefore gives a 20% area-fire chance by day and 80% by night. Values cannot exceed 0.5, so area fire cannot become less likely at night than during the day. Detection chance and reaction time do not change at night.

HOLD prevents local detection and cancels a pending or active response. TIGHT and FREE both permit direct local detection of enemy aircraft.

Doctrine settings

Medusa_MM_Doctrine = {
    AAA = {
        AudioRangeM = 6000,
        AreaFireChance = 0.20,
        BarrageChance = 0.25,
        MaxBarrageGroups = 15,
    },
}

Field	Default	Behavior
AAA.AudioRangeM	6000	Audio range in meters. Valid range: 0 to 20,000. Set to 0 to disable audio detection without disabling visual detection.
AAA.AreaFireChance	0.20	Daytime probability of area fire after a detection. Valid range: 0 to 0.5. Night uses 1 - AreaFireChance.
AAA.BarrageChance	0.25	Probability that area fire continues as a barrage. Valid range: 0 to 1.
AAA.MaxBarrageGroups	15	Maximum barrage participants across all active Medusa networks. Valid range: 0 to 100. Set to 0 to disable barrages.

See the Doctrine Field Reference for the complete doctrine schema.