Cruise Missile Defence
Train against a saturation raid of cruise missiles and one-way-attack drones, holding the Mission Fail Line with LVC fighters and layered air defence.
Fill the sky with a wave-after-wave saturation raid, then hold the line with a force you don't have to own.
A defending force needs to rehearse holding a Mission Fail Line against a saturating raid — cruise missiles and one-way-attack drones arriving faster, and in greater numbers, than any live red presence could ever generate. The Arena lays the raid down as constructive forces and scales the defence with constructive fighters beside the live and virtual players, so a few live assets fight as part of a much larger defensive effort against a dense, relentless threat.
Plan
The red operators and the mission director build the raid as a multi-wave problem: cruise missiles and one-way-attack drones laid down as constructive forces with routes, timing and behaviours drawn from a threat library, plus a small number of fighter escorts to complicate the intercept. The waves are timed to arrive faster than the defence can comfortably clear them, because the saturation is the point. The blue laydown answers it with a mix of live, virtual and constructive fighters alongside a layered ground-based air-defence belt, all positioned to defend the Mission Fail Line in depth, with clear objectives: detect and sort the raid early, hold the line, deconflict fighter and ground-based engagements, and keep leakers below the threshold.
Brief
The package and the White Cell brief from the same mission picture: the threat axes, the wave timing, the Mission Fail Line, the fighter and ground-based engagement zones, and who owns which volume. Readiness checks confirm the constructive raid, the live-to-constructive handoffs, the ground-based belt, recording, and every battlestation are ready before the first wave commits.
Execute
As the first wave crosses into the engagement area, the White Cell runs the raid and the defence together. Red commits the waves, driving reactive constructive forces toward the Mission Fail Line rather than flying a fixed script. The ground-based belt runs as one coherent threat-and-defence picture, sequencing surface engagements against the leakers the fighters miss. Constructive fighters scale up beside the live and virtual players, so a handful of live participants fight as part of a much larger defensive effort. Live and synthetic defenders share one continuous picture to the trainee, while control sorts the raid, assigns targets, and deconflicts the fighter and ground-based zones so the two layers reinforce instead of colliding. Air-to-air and surface kills are adjudicated as shots fly, and tempo is held, accelerated or scaled to keep the saturation hard but the training value right. The defenders experience a dense, relentless raid pressing the line from several axes at once. The actual live force was a few fighters and a thin ground-based presence.
Debrief
The debrief reconstructs the raid from recorded evidence: every cruise missile, drone, escort and defender on one timeline. The team steps through each wave, when the raid was detected, how the fighters and the ground-based belt divided the work, every shot validated against its geometry and a kill model, and exactly which threats reached the Mission Fail Line and why. The link between the live fighters and the constructive raid is part of the record, so the force can explain how the line was held, or where it leaked, against the authoritative exercise record.
- Computer-generated forces drive the multi-wave raid and the layered ground-based belt
- Constructive fighters scale the defence up beside the live players
- An LVC participant model and handoff put live and synthetic defenders in one fight
- Live and constructive augmentation lets a few assets stand in for a full defence
- Shot validation and data analysis deliver defensible kill calls across both layers
- Distributed debrief reconstructs the entire raid from recorded evidence on a single timeline
AIR COMBAT ARENA / MISSION PROFILE
The capabilities behind the fight
Bring us the fight you need to rehearse, and we will walk you through how the Arena runs it — plan to debrief, on one coherent picture.
Related pages
Cruise missile defence: training against raids with Air Combat Arena
How ArenaLogic Air Combat Arena trains the defence against waves of cruise missiles and attack drones: live aircraft and equipment extended with simulator crews and computer-generated forces, one shared mission picture and Mission Fail Line, controllers coordinating fighters with ground-based air defence under White Cell control, and a shared debrief from the exercise record.
Film transcript
Waves of threats, less time
A single threat is one problem. Waves of cruise missiles and attack drones create another: more tracks, more decisions, and less time.
Extend the live force
Air Combat Arena combines the aircraft and equipment you already have with simulator crews and computer-generated forces. A limited live force becomes part of a much larger training scenario.
One mission picture, one Mission Fail Line
Everyone works from the same mission picture. The task is clear: coordinate the defence and prevent incoming threats from reaching the exercise's Mission Fail Line.
Coordinate the defence, wave after wave
Controllers sort the raid and coordinate fighters with ground-based air defence. As one wave is engaged, the next arrives. The White Cell controls the exercise, adjusting its tempo and complexity.
More training scale, one exercise record
The training challenge grows without requiring a matching increase in live assets. Decisions, engagements and outcomes become part of the same exercise record.
Review the raid together
After the exercise, teams review the raid together. What was detected? How was the defence coordinated? Which threats got through, and why? The record turns a demanding mission into lessons for the next one.
Bring us your mission
Bring us the mission you need to rehearse with Air Combat Arena.