JTAC UAVs

Finally the useful darter you never knew you needed in your life, automate your war crimes from 2km in the sky.

JTAC UAVs is a simple mod that automates laser locks in your target AO! Nobody wants to sit around staring at tanks for 5 minutes while waiting for CAS to remember what their bindings are again? Frustrated with your friends shaky hands and poor positioning losing your lock? Wondering why BI made it impossible for AI to use their laser designators? We’ve offloaded the boring part to the battlefield of the future’s best friend!

JTAC UAVs automatically acquire, track and most importantly provide a laser lock on enemy armor in the area around it. It integrates directly into the UAV action menu and allows you to toggle into JTAC mode. While in JTAC mode it will spot all the armor around it and provide a reliable laser lock on the target. Finally you can play CAS on your solo experience without being forced to fiddle with the jets targeting pod.

– Automated Threat Assessment: The AI (carefully crafted if else statements) carefully prioritizes its targets, heavily favoring MBTs and heavy armor over a guy in a rusted hatchback.
– Data-Link Integration: Broadcasts the laser directly to the vanilla data link, ensuring maximum visibility for any fast-mover or artillery asset waiting for the green light.
– Smart Line-of-Sight Grace Period: If the target temporarily ducks behind a tree, the drone will hold its lock for a few seconds. If it stays hidden, the drone gets bored and finds a new victim.
– Cinematic Cooldowns: After a target is successfully turned into a rapidly expanding cloud of debris, the camera holds on the burning wreckage for a cinematic few seconds before scanning for new prey.
– Crew-Aware Targeting: If the crew abandons the vehicle (RHS fans, you know exactly what I mean), the Darter immediately realizes the metal box is no longer a threat, drops the laser, and finds a new target with humans inside.
– Server-Keyed / CBA Settings Integration: Adjust max tracking range and line-of-sight checks via standard CBA settings.

Simply take control of the UAV (turret or gunner), flip it to JTAC mode in the action menu and let loose

The simpler of the two options, simply fly your darter into an area, enable JTAC mode and it will spot armor for you that is within its maximum range.

One extra step here, fixed wings are designed to work with the loiter move order given in the UAV terminal. Set the distance and height and the UAV will spot targets in the area around the movement marker provided the UAV is close to the movement marker. Of note they will use any move marker given to them as a centre point for their search radius.

Height: 500m (optional, you can go higher)
Loiter distance: 1000m

Height: 2000m
Loiter distance: 2200m
The UCAV struggles with tighter loiter distances and tends to angle too much for the targetting pod, while it doesn’t matter for this mod to get a laser onto the target, it "feels good" when setup like this.

Q: Isn’t this a little overpowered?
A: Yes

Q: Is this ACE compatible?
A: Light testing shows it works, laser codes are not configurable but 1111 should work?

Q: I want this mod to do X?
A: Let me know, happy to take on feature requests and build on this if there is interest!

Q: Why isn’t the laser on the darter on?
A: This is intended behaviour. The darter camera is unreliable, so we don’t use the darter’s laser

Q: Why isn’t it locking X?
A: Right now the darter only supports wheeled and tracked vehicles, but do let us know. With enough traction we would love to expand the little devils abilities