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It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the Command dev team has one last gift in the stocking for its global professional userbase. After a bit of a delay, but still meeting the intended cadence of two update releases per year, the v2.4.3 update for Command-PE is now finally available for download, for new and existing CPE users.
After the massive v2.4.2 release last August with its smorgasbord of brand new features, v2.4.3 adopts a more conservative approach with an emphasis on reliability, performance and user quality-of-life (QoL) features. Some of the major new features include:
* Explicit GNSS jamming and jammer units: This is effectively the follow-on to the abstract GNSS jamming made possible through the “Side Enablers” feature and introduced in v2.4.2. In addition to defining “access/no access” to specific GNSS networks (GPS, GLONASS, Beidou etc.) at the side- and area-level, you can now use distinct platforms that have the ability to jam these critical systems. Just like with radar & communication jammers, these platforms tend to be expensive and scarce, so you must position them carefully to maximize their coverage and prioritize the assets you wish to protect (or the area to negate). Also similar to other jammer types, their signal can be detected, localized and used to attack these platforms.
More over, the way that GNSS disruption affects terminal weapon accuracy has been tweaked. Instead of measuring the “time without a PNT fix” and using that to calculate the INS drift, the simulation now actually keeps track of the last 50 PNT-fix attempts (both successful and unsuccessful) and uses a simulated Kalman filter to derive the final internal drift. This provides a more true-to-life effect on disruption, as (for example) a single PNT fix is not sufficient to fully “reset” the navigation precision to nominal status.
* Salvo simultaneous weapon arrival: “I wish my cruise missiles arrived at the target area in a nice, strung-out line so that the defences could swat them down one by one” – said no strike planner, ever. The navigation logic on weapons that support TOT has been tweaked so that, within a salvo, all weapons will closely bunch up in order to arrive at the target simultaneously, overwhelming the defences. (Inter-salvo coordination remains the responsibility of the player, either manually or through the MDSP).
* Incremental / timestamped saves: You’ve long asked for an easy way to undo/rollback edits or changes on a scenario, and this it. This new feature saves timestamped copies of the played scenario, instead of overwriting the existing scen/save file. This takes up more disk space, but makes it easy to go back to a past version.
* Improved time synchronization and time acceleration control: The logic of sim-loop execution has been tweaked in order to more precisely match elapsed sim-time and wall-time when running in realtime (1x). This fixes a reported problem where e.g. a 1-minute of sim time could take 1m6sec of wall-time while running in real-time mode. This can be important for real-time exercises & federated simulations (e.g. when using DIS).
In addition, the optional HighSimSpeedTimeSync setting in Command.ini allows throttling of flame and double-flame sim speeds to stay in sync with clock time while running in the GUI, making them equivalent to 30x and 150x respectively.
* Vast A2AR improvements: A enormous amount of work has been dedicated to improving the mechanics and experience of air refueling operations:
– General reliability whit high sim speed: Increased reliability by throttling down sim speed (from double flame to single flame) when performing or about to perform AAR.
– Prioritization and Reservation: Reworked prioritization logic to better handle concurrency between clients in scenarios with few tankers, taking better consideration of other enqueued clients when calculating availability of fuel and refueling equipment on the tanker. Also fixed various issues such as AAR being cancelled right after being scheduled, wrong tanker selection criteria being utilized in various situations.
– Execution: Tankers and clients now follow refuel orders even when unassigned or without a course, forced and manual refuel orders are respected and refuelling from a tanker that is being refuelled is now prevented.
Other fixes resolve issues with AAR triggering on the incorrect lightplan waypoint, cargo missions not refueling on RTB and various other issues that caused AAR doctrine to not be followed as expected.
– Flight Plan Editor: Various fixes, and QOL tweaks to the Flight Plan Editor in the management of Refueling Waypoints and their doctrine setting
* Improved manual salvo control: An “Execute” button has been added to the Manual Weapon Allocation (aka “Shift+F1”) window. Now when the player creates weapon salvos through this window, by default they are scheduled to be executed “far into the future”. If the player then clicks on “Execute” or closes the window, the created salvos are re-scheduled to be fired as soon as feasible. The change causes salvos that are created when using this form to be scheduled impossibly far in the future. When the user clicks ‘Execute’ or closes the form then the salvos are all updated to fire as soon as possible.
Therefore, the units assigned to these salvoes will NOT start executing them (or even maneuvering towards the targets if necessary) until the execution is signaled. This gives the user the ability to delete the salvo, plot a course of the salvo, etc. without having to try and do it before the assigned units start firing.
Other bits & pieces:
* Land-strike weapons that nominally have only fixed targets as valid (e.g. JDAMs) can also be used against mobile vehicles if they are stationary
* The various map-settings menu options have been duplicated on a dedicated “Map Settings” window (accessible through top menu –> Map Settings –> Map Settings Window). This makes it much faster & simpler to change multiple settings in quick succession.
* When evaluating chaff effectiveness (probability to successfully seduce) against a given radar seeker, the target’s apparent radar size (RCS) is taken into consideration. So, for example in a very large (RCS-wise) target the chaff becomes less effective at spoofing the missile, whereas with a very small or stealthy target the chaff will almost always be effective.
* Units that are within the relevant engagement range of another unit (e.g. aircraft inside nominal range of SAM site) and are being illuminated (for weapon fire control / guidance) by that unit will consider themselves under attack (and take relevant action, e.g. evade if allowed) even if no distinct weapon is detected incoming.
* Flight plans are now drawn as orthodromic lines (ie. correctly curving over the globe; most clearly evident on long-range routes)
* Added the ability to change the color of borders, coastlines and the sea ice.
* Various tweaks and improvements to DIS support.
* Units tasked with SEAD patrol will engage not only detected radars but also jammers (both radar- and GNSS-jam emitters).
* On mission types that utilize the “1/3rd rule” and “number of class” settings (e.g. patrols), these settings now include new unit grouping options. Players can choose to group aircraft by Loadout (same class + same loadout), group all units by Unit Class, or use No Grouping, which allows grouping strictly by flight size without filters.
* You can customize the expiration time of any contact type. This can be useful if e.g. you wish to keep submarine contacts around for longer after their last detection.
* Players in an RTMP session can be restricted in certain powers (for example blocked from having Absolute Control mode, or loading autosaves, or changing the time acceleration).
* You can now load a scen/save file simply by drag-&-dropping it into the main map window. (This works only if Command.exe is running under a non-admin context).
* Nuclear submarines with natural circulation on their reactors get significant noise-reduction benefits at shaft speeds up to 15 knots.
* On anti-weapon engagements, if the target’s speed is much higher than the weapon’s max design target speed, PH drops to 1% (pure luck).
* The “Jettison” button now gives you more options of weapon type for you to drop.
* New Lua API abilities: Display satellite-specific data (e.g. launch date), send a unit to refuel, retrieve the current sound level of a naval unit, handle flight plan properties, and display detailed sensor properties.
* Lua calls (not interactive) are now cached when first compiled (string parsing and compilation of a script is one of the worst offender for Lua performance); this should significantly improve performances for recurring calls (such as events) especially long chunks.
* Ability to convert an airbase installation to a single-unit airfield (Right-click –> Scenario Editor –> Convert to single-unit airfield). This can be useful during scenario creation to keep the unit count manageable in large scenarios.
* Improved the way images are fetched on-demand from the server and populate the unit image thumbnail (on the unit status panel) (It is no longer necessary to select another unit and then back the original one in order to see the downloaded image)
And as always, the new update benefits from the updated official scenarios and the most recent releases of the DB3000 and CWDB database.
NOTE: The previously slated for v2.4.3 “Aircraft as Cargo” feature was not ready for inclusion and thus has been delayed. The dev team remains committed to including it on the next CPE update release, in early 2026. Stay tuned