The Game

Air Defender is a real-time Cold War air defence simulator set in 1998. You don't fly the jets. You sit at the console in an RAF Control and Reporting Centre, build the Recognised Air Picture, decide what's a threat and send Tornado F3s to deal with it. It's currently in Early Access on Steam and updated regularly.

Get Air Defender on Steam · Read the latest patch notes

Ways to play

  • Combat Ready: the full, endless watch. Start in Peacetime with unknowns, civil emergencies, spoofers and Zombies, then face rising tension up to a full assault on the UK. How well you identify and engage shapes the size and weapon loads of the raids that follow.
  • Instant Action: start at Critical tension with bomber raids inbound and weapons hot. You get time to get AWACS and fighters airborne before the first probing raid arrives.
  • Basic Training: learn the console, the panels and the core procedures.
  • Trade Training: advanced scenario missions covering intercepts, tanking and deception, with a mentor who nudges you when you're stuck.
  • Difficulty: Easy, Normal and Hard. These scale identification assistance and interceptor fuel burn (Hard is period-accurate).

Radar and identification

  • Eight ground radar heads: Faroes, Saxa Vord, Buchan, Benbecula, Brizlee Wood, Staxton Wold, Neatishead and Portreath, each with independent sweeps.
  • E-3D Sentry AWACS to fill gaps in radar cover, and the Nimrod R1 for long-range SIGINT/EW detection.
  • Correlate tracks with IFF, Mode 3 (realistic 1998 code allocations) and Mode S, filed flight plans and deviation detection.
  • Passive EW detection, radar jamming, and intel reports from sources across the UK.
  • Enemy deception: spoofers under airline callsigns, disguised airframes and Zombie contacts from countries of interest.
  • Some Zombies are spies that leave their filed flight plan and head for your radar stations.
  • An Aircraft Register of 640 UK civil aircraft with authentic 1998 registrations, operators and Mode S codes.

Interceptors and weapons

  • QRA from Leuchars, Leeming, Coningsby and Lossiemouth, on 57 real 1998 squadron callsigns.
  • IDENTIFY, SHADOW or DESTROY tasking, Combat Air Patrols and whole-flight commands.
  • Full intercept procedure: TALLY, JUDY, visual identification, show of presence, show of force and turn-away warning. Raids don't always comply.
  • Tornado F3 weapons: 4× Skyflash (Fox 1) and 2× AIM-9L Sidewinder (Fox 2), with realistic engagement ranges.
  • Enemy fighter escorts fight to 1998 Russian doctrine and are supported by an Il-78 tanker.

Assets and logistics

  • Finite fuel and missiles at every airfield.
  • Air-to-air refuelling tankers and AWACS can be tasked anywhere on the map.
  • Redeploy aircraft between bases, or DIVERT airborne assets to another airfield and relaunch them from there.
  • C-130 Hercules and Chinook supply flights move fuel and weapons around the country.
  • Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY fuel states.

Civil traffic

  • More than 600 civil aircraft with real 1998 registrations, airline callsigns and flight plans, including international arrivals through realistic FIR entry corridors.
  • Aeroflot, Iran Air, Air China, China Eastern and China Southern fly into Heathrow alongside Nordic and other foreign arrivals, all with real 1998 identities.
  • VFR traffic, offshore helicopters, police, air ambulance and coastguard flights.
  • Squawk 7500/7600/7700 emergencies, airspace closure under threat, and a public that reacts to your decisions.

Voice and radio

  • Every pilot and controller call is fully voiced, with three pilot voices and full BRA calls.
  • Pilots describe what they see on visual identification. Russian crews answer back.
  • Radio channels per sortie, so you can follow one intercept at a time.
  • Some voice lines use AI-assisted voice technology, adapted to realistic pilot and controller styles.

The console

  • An ICCS-inspired radar console with MIL-STD-2525B symbology, range rings, airways, danger areas and AARAs.
  • Moveable, resizable panels whose layout is saved per profile. Scales from 1080p to 4K.
  • Track List, Flight Plans, Assets, Airfield, Active Operations and COMMS panels.
  • The ASMA console gives you intel, supply requests, a coaching feed and hidden commands (there are easter eggs to find).
  • Pause, step and time acceleration. A shift handover brief, and a full debrief at the end of every watch.

Roadmap

Coming in Version 0.9

  • Ops Desk: put your panels on a second monitor
  • Redesigned panels and menus, with a new Airfields panel for stocks, resupply and redeployment
  • Live weather calibrated to 1998 records, with airfield colour states and runways chosen from the wind
  • A Watch Briefing from your shift supervisor at the start of every watch, spoken and on screen
  • Bingo plus: recovery fuel margins called by the weapons controller
  • Background radio from the rest of the ops room

In development

  • Tankers, AWACS and Nimrods on the radio with their own period callsigns and voices
  • Busier, more realistic civil traffic

Later

  • More training missions
  • Falklands and Arabian Gulf maps
  • Multiplayer co-op

Platforms

Windows 10/11 (64-bit) via Steam. It also runs on Linux via Proton. Minimum spec: 4-core CPU, 8 GB RAM, DirectX 11 GPU with 1 GB VRAM and 1 GB of storage.

Early Access

Air Defender is built by one developer, a former RAF Aerospace Systems Operator, under Rotor3 Ltd. The game is playable and challenging, and it's being expanded and refined throughout Early Access, largely from player reports on Steam and Discord. Saved games may occasionally break between updates. The price is likely to rise at full release as content is added.