Bizarre AI behaviour

[alexis99]

I was leading 8 Typhoons on a strike mission into Libya from Sicily. We were carrying Mavericks and a mix of Amraams and Asraams, and I had a couple of Paveways for the Main Target. On the way there, we encountered quite a large force of enemy aircraft. I selected a target for my wingman. locked one up myself, and ordered the rest to engage air. We whittled them down to nothing, and then continued to the Libyan coast.
I started to clear a path with my Mavericks, gave my wingman a ground target, and ordered everyone to "engage ground". By the time I had got to the target and dropped the Paveways, there were only three of us left. Absolute disaster. What happened?
I did a refly to see where we went wrong. And I am still shocked, because I have never seen the AI aircraft do this before. When I ordered them to "engage air", they dumped the tanks and all the mavericks. So after we had sorted the air attack, they had no ground weapons, but blithely followed my "engage ground" order by attacking Sam sites with bullets.
In my experience, this is not normal behaviour. I have never noticed this before in any other aircraft. What am I missing?

[Gunrunner]

Can you imagine engaged in dogfight with a few tons of bombs ? It makes you less maneuverable, it makes it risky because you're taking the risk of the attach point/pylon/wing breaking under the stress, and if you're not breaking anything and survive the engagement, you have a high risk that the release or detonation mechanism will not work as intended.

It's normal behaviour for the period covered by the sim.

As the mission leader, it's up to you to give relevant orders, you order them to attack, only their guns qualify for ground attack, therefore they resort to suicidal strafing.

Of course that creates problems when you are flying modern swing-role aircrafts with modern ordnance.

[Sheriff]

I see you were  a flight of eight so you had two flights. You could advise your second flight only to "engage air". That way they don't all jettison stores and Flight One is still armed for primary mission. Blast through at low level and see if supporting flights ,if any, engage the bandits. In the end, it's better to engage air and abort the ground attack mission than to lose your flight  

[alexis99]

Yes, when I have had two flights, I have usually had an Air to Air flight and an Air to Ground flight. I think that's why I hadn't noticed this before. Thanks for confirming this is normal.

However, we're flying Eurofighter Typhoons, with Helmet Mounted Displays. We can look down and see through the cockpit. We can off-boresight target. We're carrying AMRAAMs. The DASS system protects against incoming missiles.

Once the enemy is within AMRAAM range, first flight should launch, do a gradual turn away and then the second flight launches. 8 AMRAAMS; 8 dead Fulcrums.  Now first flight is turning back to mop-up. Then onwards to the Ground targets.