About the Game
TAKE COMMAND OF THE NATION'S AIR DEFENSE
The sky is your battlefield. A hostile contact appears on radar. Is it a civilian airliner off course, or the prelude to a full-scale attack? Your job is to find out.
Air Defender is a high-stakes, real-time strategy simulation that puts you in the command chair of a national Air Defence network. From a top-down strategic view, you are the unseen hand responsible for detecting, identifying, and intercepting airborne threats. This is not a dogfighting game; you are not a pilot. You are the commander with access to the capabilities of multiple roles in the bunker, and the fate of the nation rests on your split-second decisions.
Analyse radar returns, scramble your Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) fighters, and manage your assets to protect your airspace. Every choice matters, and the consequences of failure are devastating.
Key Features
High-Fidelity Command & Control: Take on the role of an Air Defense Commander. Manage a detailed radar network, interpret IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) data, and issue commands to your forces.
Scramble QRA Interceptors: Launch your fighter aircraft to investigate, shadow, or engage hostile contacts. Manage their fuel, weapons, and mission objectives in real-time.
Deep Information Warfare: Utilise authentic-inspired systems to build a complete picture of the battlespace. Monitor flight plans, analyse electronic warfare (EW) intelligence, and stay one step ahead of the enemy.
Intelligent Enemy AI: Face a dynamic adversary that will probe your defenses, launch coordinated attacks, and adapt to your strategy, creating a challenging and replayable experience.
Play Endless or complete Training Missions to become Combat Ready. In Endless, you will be challenged to spot the bad guys, ensure they don't sneak through, if you do, it could lead to all out war.
Welcome to the command center. The watch is yours.
Screenshots
5 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.7.0.0 - 23 May 2026
A major reliability and polish update covering interceptor behaviour, voice and radio procedure, save and load, map settings, scoring, civilian and emergency handling, and difficulty options.
New: Difficulty-Scaled Fuel Consumption
[p align="start"]Interceptor fuel burn now adapts to your selected difficulty setting.Hard: Realistic period-accurate baseline (unchanged).
Normal: Half rate — interceptor sortie endurance doubles.
Easy: One-tenth rate — extended endurance for relaxed sessions.
Warnings Unchanged: Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY warnings still trigger at the same fuel percentages — they just take proportionally longer to reach.
Save & Load Reliability
Saves Survive Process Kill: Saves are now written safely — closing the game (or losing power) part-way through a save no longer leaves a corrupted file behind. The previous slot's contents remain intact until the new save is fully written.
Rapid SAVE Click Safety: Clicking SAVE rapidly no longer risks two saves overwriting each other.
Corrupted Save Entries Visible in Load Menu: Saves with malformed files no longer silently disappear from the Load Game list — they are shown with an error indicator so you can spot them and choose to delete.
Save Game Click Reliability: Loading a save no longer silent-fails when the on-disk filename differs from the in-game display name.
Mid-Mission State Preservation: Save/load now correctly preserves a wide range of mid-flight state: AWACS approach gates, tanker fuel-flow rates, Nimrod departure-leg sequencing, enemy aircraft RTB position, enemy bomber turn state and evasion timers, in-flight missile guidance parameters, nuclear weapon damage profiles, and many smaller details that previously reset to defaults on load.
Chinook Supply Missions Survive Save/Load: In-flight Chinook HC2 supply aircraft no longer disappear seconds after loading a save — cargo, ordnance, and origin-base accounting are all preserved.
Crash Sequence No Longer Loops On Load: Loading a save taken at the exact moment an interceptor was crashing from fuel exhaustion no longer re-fires the MAYDAY voice and squawk 7700 repeatedly after restoring.
Save List Loads Faster: Browsing the Load Game menu with many save slots is now noticeably faster — the menu reads just enough of each file to show its summary instead of parsing the whole save.
QRA Interceptor
Drop Tanks for Tornado F3 & Phantom FGR.2: External fuel tanks are now correctly accounted for in the fuel display and burn rate calculations for these aircraft. Sortie endurance now matches the period-accurate published figures.
Military Fuel Realism Pass: Military aircraft fuel burn rates and tank capacities have been reviewed and corrected against published 1998-era figures across the fleet.
Aircraft Fuel Burn Time-Scaling: Aircraft fuel burn now scales correctly with the in-game time-acceleration setting — running at 5x no longer leaves aircraft burning fuel as if at 1x.
Fuel Display Consistency: The Active Operations panel and the radar track block now show the same fuel percentage for the same aircraft (previously could disagree by 25%+ for Tornado F3).
Wingman No Longer Flies On At Zero Fuel: A surviving wingman of a QRA pair whose lead aircraft has crashed will now correctly declare emergency and divert/eject instead of continuing to fly indefinitely on empty tanks.
Wingman Spawns With Correct Fuel: A wingman scrambled in a CAP pair no longer joins at a stale fuel percentage from a previous sortie.
Solo Sortie Voice Calls: Solo single-ship sorties (no wingman) now hear the full controller AAR (refuelling) voice exchange that paired sorties always did.
Defender Retask Cascade: Manually retasking an interceptor against an inbound shooter now reliably brings the paired mate along too, instead of occasionally leaving them on the wrong target.
Force-Intercept on Low Fuel: Manually retasking an interceptor back onto a hostile after a tanker request has appeared no longer makes the sortie flicker between target and tanker, loop SHOW OF PRESENCE voice, and stack repeated voice rows in ASMA. The auto-divert now correctly recognises your commit-despite-low-fuel choice and stays out of the way until the target changes, the aircraft RTBs, or fuel reaches BINGO emergency.
Track Visibility During Intercept: Some interceptor tracks could drift out of view on the radar display during the intercept procedure — all friendly interceptor tracks now remain visible at all times.
Voice & Intercept Procedure
JUDY Loop Fix: Identifying a civilian after Controller-Confirm tasking no longer causes the JUDY / Controller-confirm voice exchange to loop indefinitely.
Pilot JUDY Timing: The pilot JUDY call no longer fires at scramble time — it correctly fires only when the interceptor reaches radar contact range with the target, which also resolves the duplicated controller "Copy Judy" voice and a premature RTB on civilian intercepts.
ASMA Brevity Expansion: ASMA console messages no longer show duplicated brevity phrasing — JUDY and similar military brevity codes display the expanded explanation exactly once.
Single Voice Source: The pilot JUDY voice and the matching ASMA log entry are now produced from a single source, so they no longer occasionally fire twice when different parts of the game briefly disagreed about who should speak.
Splash Voice Improvements: Splash calls at kill sites no longer report the same target as splashed twice, and the "shooter unknown" case now correctly identifies the shooter where possible.
Splash Per-Channel Exclusivity: Kill-confirmation voice ("splash") now only plays for the sortie currently selected on the radio panel. Other sorties' kills no longer bleed into your audio when you are focused on a different sortie.
Sortie Radio Continuity: Sortie radio comms no longer drop in and out during phase transitions like a tanker rendezvous. The pilot's "vector to tanker" request, the controller's bearing/range response, and the pilot's "proceed to tanker" call now play as a single continuous exchange without silence gaps.
Channel Switch Voice Resumption: Switching the radio panel from a QRA or AWACS sortie to a CAP pair and back no longer leaves you in silence — the original sortie's voice exchanges resume cleanly on switch-back, without bleeding across channels.
Pilot Mayday on Every Emergency: Interceptor pilot mayday announcements now fire correctly for every emergency, not just fuel exhaustion. The pilot's "{callsign} mayday mayday mayday" call is heard first, followed by the controller's response — matching standard radio procedure for scenario-driven emergencies, save/load-restored emergencies, and squawk overrides.
Controller Replies Stripped of Pilot Prefix: Controller-side emergency-airfield replies no longer accidentally prefix themselves with the pilot's callsign.
BRA Channel Cleanup: BRA (Bearing-Range-Aspect) callouts no longer continue to play on a sortie channel after that sortie has been cleared or retasked.
Post-Retask Voice on Repeat Missions: Post-compliance pilot voice ("aircraft now complying", "roger RTB") now plays correctly after retasking the same QRA sortie to a second target of the same type.
Intercept Progression After JUDY: Intercepts now reliably progress through the full procedure (escort, show of presence, show of force, turn-away warning) after the pilot's JUDY call. Previously the procedure could stall silently with the interceptor sitting alongside the target indefinitely — the full sequence now fires through to completion.
Suspect-Mark Pursuit Fix: Marking a contact as Suspect via the ident bar no longer leaves the QRA interceptor unable to close — speeding up, then slowing down, never catching the target — with the escalation procedure stuck. The interceptor now settles into formation and the full escalation runs end to end.
Decision Dialog Safety Timeout: Decision dialogs that were waiting on something that never arrived can no longer hold the intercept indefinitely — a safety timeout now releases the dialog so the procedure proceeds.
Civilian Emergencies
Emergency Squawks Persist: Emergency squawks (7700 / 7600 / 7500) on civilian aircraft now correctly persist instead of being overwritten by routine controller squawk reassignment.
Correct Procedure for Each Emergency: Civilian emergency intercepts now play the correct voice procedure for the declared emergency type instead of occasionally playing the wrong one.
Emergency Aircraft Identity Preserved: Civilian aircraft with declared emergencies (7500 / 7600) are no longer automatically reclassified to Hostile during intercept.
Procedure Safety Timeouts: Civilian emergency intercept procedures now have safety timeouts so the procedure cannot stall silently waiting for a condition that never arrives.
Active Ops Emergency Row Clears: The Active Operations emergency row no longer stays yellow / red after the emergency has resolved.
Map & Map Overlays
AARA and Danger Overlays Persist: Player choices for AARA and Danger area overlays now persist across in-app menu cycles, matching the airfield, city, strategic, and navaid overlays.
Saved Map View Restored: Returning to the map after a menu cycle no longer clobbers the saved zoom and pan position.
Coastline Visibility on Intel Graphics: The UK map coastline is now reliably visible on systems with Intel integrated GPUs that previously showed a blank background.
Map Display Toggles Saved: Player choices for which map feature categories are visible now persist across sessions.
Russian Deception & Enemy AI
Campaign Continuity Across Saves: Campaign waves now continue to arrive correctly after a save/load mid-campaign, and campaign victory is correctly detected when you have completed the objective.
Civilian Callsign Sync: Civilian aircraft callsigns now stay in sync across all panels — previously some civilian aircraft could show one callsign on the track block and a different one in Flight Info after loading a save.
Civilian Route Restoration: Stationary civilian aircraft, and civilian aircraft with broken or empty routes, now correctly restore on save/load instead of teleporting or hanging in place.
Hostile Cruise Missile Kill Not Penalised: Shooting down an inbound hostile cruise missile no longer triggers the civilian-kill penalty.
Hostile Aircraft Type Hidden Until ID: The Flight Info panel TYPE field no longer leaks the real aircraft type for unidentified hostiles. The TYPE field is blank until the contact is positively identified.
Disguised Aircraft Save/Load Stability: Disguised aircraft tracks no longer flicker in and out of view after save/load.
Visual ID Updates Every Panel: When interceptors visually identify a disguised contact, the revealed type now appears on the track label, the Flight Info panel, and the Aircraft Info tab consistently — no more contradictory readings between panels.
Aircraft Type Display Consistency: The aircraft type now displays the same value across the Flight Info panel, the radar track block, and the ASMA console.
Post-Compliance Turn-Away: Compliant disguised aircraft now turn away on a bearing that actually exits UK airspace from inland positions instead of pointing back over the country.
Show of Force Maneuver Reliability: The show-of-force cross-ahead maneuver now executes consistently on repeat missions, with both voice and maneuver firing together rather than the maneuver dropping silently.
Scoring & Stats
Enemy + Civilian Destroyed Counts Persist: The aggregate destroyed counts shown after a session now survive save/load correctly.
Mid-Campaign State Survives Save/Load: Your campaign progress no longer carries over to unrelated saves, and loading a mid-campaign save no longer resets your progress to the start of the campaign.
Map Content & UI
Keyboard Shortcuts Respect Typing: Hotkeys no longer fire while you are typing in a text field (e.g. the save-game dialog), eliminating the rare bug where the map could pan autonomously after using Ctrl+A in a dialog.
Aircraft Data Tab Updates Live: The Aircraft Data tab on the flight-plan track popup now updates within half a second of a positive identification instead of lagging by several seconds.
Track List Panel Stability: Track List panel no longer briefly flashes errors or fails to draw in unusual configurations.
Tanker Callsign Consistency: Tanker callsigns now display the same value across the Track List, the on-map track block, and the Active Operations panel.
Flight Info Panel Polish: Various Flight Info panel display improvements (TYPE hiding for unknown hostiles, callsign formatting, and status accuracy at mid-mission states).
Stability
[p align="start"]Many smaller fixes have been folded in along the way — invisible during normal play but cumulatively reducing the chance of rare crashes, voice cutouts, save/load glitches, and frame-rate hitches under unusual conditions.Radar & Track Reliability
- Radar Toggle No Longer Destroys Aircraft: Switching a radar off no longer permanently removes the enemy aircraft it had been tracking. Aircraft state and radar state are now properly independent — turning the radar back on, or another sensor picking the aircraft up, correctly redisplays them on the map.
- EW-Identified Raids Persist: Enemy raids spotted by EW intelligence (e.g. bombers inbound from far north of UK radar cover) no longer disappear after about 20 seconds. The radar map now keeps EW-flagged Hostile raids visible for as long as EW continues to report them.
- Hostile Classification Survives Radar Cycle: Toggling a radar off and back on no longer loses a Russian spoofer's known-hostile classification. A spoofer that has been correctly identified will not silently revert to "Unknown civilian" after a radar power cycle.
Russian Deception
- Spoofers Trigger Full Intercept Procedure: When a Russian aircraft using a civilian airline callsign (e.g. Iran Air) is intercepted, the QRA fighters now correctly run the full Russian intercept procedure (visual identification → challenge → engagement or escort) automatically once they reach the merge. The procedure no longer goes silent if the spoofer's civilian disguise hasn't yet been visually identified.
Engagement Procedure
- Critical Tension Auto-Engage On Hostile Confirmation: In Critical tension, QRA interceptors that visually confirm a contact as hostile now correctly switch to Engage instead of continuing the standard intercept procedure. The "ENGAGING" radio call plays at the moment the interceptor confirms the hostile, not after a manual override.
Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.7.0.0 - 23 May 2026
A major reliability and polish update covering interceptor behaviour, voice and radio procedure, save and load, map settings, scoring, civilian and emergency handling, and difficulty options.
New: Difficulty-Scaled Fuel Consumption
[p align="start"]Interceptor fuel burn now adapts to your selected difficulty setting.Hard: Realistic period-accurate baseline (unchanged).
Normal: Half rate — interceptor sortie endurance doubles.
Easy: One-tenth rate — extended endurance for relaxed sessions.
Warnings Unchanged: Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY warnings still trigger at the same fuel percentages — they just take proportionally longer to reach.
Save & Load Reliability
Saves Survive Process Kill: Saves are now written safely — closing the game (or losing power) part-way through a save no longer leaves a corrupted file behind. The previous slot's contents remain intact until the new save is fully written.
Rapid SAVE Click Safety: Clicking SAVE rapidly no longer risks two saves overwriting each other.
Corrupted Save Entries Visible in Load Menu: Saves with malformed files no longer silently disappear from the Load Game list — they are shown with an error indicator so you can spot them and choose to delete.
Save Game Click Reliability: Loading a save no longer silent-fails when the on-disk filename differs from the in-game display name.
Mid-Mission State Preservation: Save/load now correctly preserves a wide range of mid-flight state: AWACS approach gates, tanker fuel-flow rates, Nimrod departure-leg sequencing, enemy aircraft RTB position, enemy bomber turn state and evasion timers, in-flight missile guidance parameters, nuclear weapon damage profiles, and many smaller details that previously reset to defaults on load.
Chinook Supply Missions Survive Save/Load: In-flight Chinook HC2 supply aircraft no longer disappear seconds after loading a save — cargo, ordnance, and origin-base accounting are all preserved.
Crash Sequence No Longer Loops On Load: Loading a save taken at the exact moment an interceptor was crashing from fuel exhaustion no longer re-fires the MAYDAY voice and squawk 7700 repeatedly after restoring.
Save List Loads Faster: Browsing the Load Game menu with many save slots is now noticeably faster — the menu reads just enough of each file to show its summary instead of parsing the whole save.
QRA Interceptor
Drop Tanks for Tornado F3 & Phantom FGR.2: External fuel tanks are now correctly accounted for in the fuel display and burn rate calculations for these aircraft. Sortie endurance now matches the period-accurate published figures.
Military Fuel Realism Pass: Military aircraft fuel burn rates and tank capacities have been reviewed and corrected against published 1998-era figures across the fleet.
Aircraft Fuel Burn Time-Scaling: Aircraft fuel burn now scales correctly with the in-game time-acceleration setting — running at 5x no longer leaves aircraft burning fuel as if at 1x.
Fuel Display Consistency: The Active Operations panel and the radar track block now show the same fuel percentage for the same aircraft (previously could disagree by 25%+ for Tornado F3).
Wingman No Longer Flies On At Zero Fuel: A surviving wingman of a QRA pair whose lead aircraft has crashed will now correctly declare emergency and divert/eject instead of continuing to fly indefinitely on empty tanks.
Wingman Spawns With Correct Fuel: A wingman scrambled in a CAP pair no longer joins at a stale fuel percentage from a previous sortie.
Solo Sortie Voice Calls: Solo single-ship sorties (no wingman) now hear the full controller AAR (refuelling) voice exchange that paired sorties always did.
Defender Retask Cascade: Manually retasking an interceptor against an inbound shooter now reliably brings the paired mate along too, instead of occasionally leaving them on the wrong target.
Force-Intercept on Low Fuel: Manually retasking an interceptor back onto a hostile after a tanker request has appeared no longer makes the sortie flicker between target and tanker, loop SHOW OF PRESENCE voice, and stack repeated voice rows in ASMA. The auto-divert now correctly recognises your commit-despite-low-fuel choice and stays out of the way until the target changes, the aircraft RTBs, or fuel reaches BINGO emergency.
Track Visibility During Intercept: Some interceptor tracks could drift out of view on the radar display during the intercept procedure — all friendly interceptor tracks now remain visible at all times.
Voice & Intercept Procedure
JUDY Loop Fix: Identifying a civilian after Controller-Confirm tasking no longer causes the JUDY / Controller-confirm voice exchange to loop indefinitely.
Pilot JUDY Timing: The pilot JUDY call no longer fires at scramble time — it correctly fires only when the interceptor reaches radar contact range with the target, which also resolves the duplicated controller "Copy Judy" voice and a premature RTB on civilian intercepts.
ASMA Brevity Expansion: ASMA console messages no longer show duplicated brevity phrasing — JUDY and similar military brevity codes display the expanded explanation exactly once.
Single Voice Source: The pilot JUDY voice and the matching ASMA log entry are now produced from a single source, so they no longer occasionally fire twice when different parts of the game briefly disagreed about who should speak.
Splash Voice Improvements: Splash calls at kill sites no longer report the same target as splashed twice, and the "shooter unknown" case now correctly identifies the shooter where possible.
Splash Per-Channel Exclusivity: Kill-confirmation voice ("splash") now only plays for the sortie currently selected on the radio panel. Other sorties' kills no longer bleed into your audio when you are focused on a different sortie.
Sortie Radio Continuity: Sortie radio comms no longer drop in and out during phase transitions like a tanker rendezvous. The pilot's "vector to tanker" request, the controller's bearing/range response, and the pilot's "proceed to tanker" call now play as a single continuous exchange without silence gaps.
Channel Switch Voice Resumption: Switching the radio panel from a QRA or AWACS sortie to a CAP pair and back no longer leaves you in silence — the original sortie's voice exchanges resume cleanly on switch-back, without bleeding across channels.
Pilot Mayday on Every Emergency: Interceptor pilot mayday announcements now fire correctly for every emergency, not just fuel exhaustion. The pilot's "{callsign} mayday mayday mayday" call is heard first, followed by the controller's response — matching standard radio procedure for scenario-driven emergencies, save/load-restored emergencies, and squawk overrides.
Controller Replies Stripped of Pilot Prefix: Controller-side emergency-airfield replies no longer accidentally prefix themselves with the pilot's callsign.
BRA Channel Cleanup: BRA (Bearing-Range-Aspect) callouts no longer continue to play on a sortie channel after that sortie has been cleared or retasked.
Post-Retask Voice on Repeat Missions: Post-compliance pilot voice ("aircraft now complying", "roger RTB") now plays correctly after retasking the same QRA sortie to a second target of the same type.
Intercept Progression After JUDY: Intercepts now reliably progress through the full procedure (escort, show of presence, show of force, turn-away warning) after the pilot's JUDY call. Previously the procedure could stall silently with the interceptor sitting alongside the target indefinitely — the full sequence now fires through to completion.
Suspect-Mark Pursuit Fix: Marking a contact as Suspect via the ident bar no longer leaves the QRA interceptor unable to close — speeding up, then slowing down, never catching the target — with the escalation procedure stuck. The interceptor now settles into formation and the full escalation runs end to end.
Decision Dialog Safety Timeout: Decision dialogs that were waiting on something that never arrived can no longer hold the intercept indefinitely — a safety timeout now releases the dialog so the procedure proceeds.
Civilian Emergencies
Emergency Squawks Persist: Emergency squawks (7700 / 7600 / 7500) on civilian aircraft now correctly persist instead of being overwritten by routine controller squawk reassignment.
Correct Procedure for Each Emergency: Civilian emergency intercepts now play the correct voice procedure for the declared emergency type instead of occasionally playing the wrong one.
Emergency Aircraft Identity Preserved: Civilian aircraft with declared emergencies (7500 / 7600) are no longer automatically reclassified to Hostile during intercept.
Procedure Safety Timeouts: Civilian emergency intercept procedures now have safety timeouts so the procedure cannot stall silently waiting for a condition that never arrives.
Active Ops Emergency Row Clears: The Active Operations emergency row no longer stays yellow / red after the emergency has resolved.
Map & Map Overlays
AARA and Danger Overlays Persist: Player choices for AARA and Danger area overlays now persist across in-app menu cycles, matching the airfield, city, strategic, and navaid overlays.
Saved Map View Restored: Returning to the map after a menu cycle no longer clobbers the saved zoom and pan position.
Coastline Visibility on Intel Graphics: The UK map coastline is now reliably visible on systems with Intel integrated GPUs that previously showed a blank background.
Map Display Toggles Saved: Player choices for which map feature categories are visible now persist across sessions.
Russian Deception & Enemy AI
Campaign Continuity Across Saves: Campaign waves now continue to arrive correctly after a save/load mid-campaign, and campaign victory is correctly detected when you have completed the objective.
Civilian Callsign Sync: Civilian aircraft callsigns now stay in sync across all panels — previously some civilian aircraft could show one callsign on the track block and a different one in Flight Info after loading a save.
Civilian Route Restoration: Stationary civilian aircraft, and civilian aircraft with broken or empty routes, now correctly restore on save/load instead of teleporting or hanging in place.
Hostile Cruise Missile Kill Not Penalised: Shooting down an inbound hostile cruise missile no longer triggers the civilian-kill penalty.
Hostile Aircraft Type Hidden Until ID: The Flight Info panel TYPE field no longer leaks the real aircraft type for unidentified hostiles. The TYPE field is blank until the contact is positively identified.
Disguised Aircraft Save/Load Stability: Disguised aircraft tracks no longer flicker in and out of view after save/load.
Visual ID Updates Every Panel: When interceptors visually identify a disguised contact, the revealed type now appears on the track label, the Flight Info panel, and the Aircraft Info tab consistently — no more contradictory readings between panels.
Aircraft Type Display Consistency: The aircraft type now displays the same value across the Flight Info panel, the radar track block, and the ASMA console.
Post-Compliance Turn-Away: Compliant disguised aircraft now turn away on a bearing that actually exits UK airspace from inland positions instead of pointing back over the country.
Show of Force Maneuver Reliability: The show-of-force cross-ahead maneuver now executes consistently on repeat missions, with both voice and maneuver firing together rather than the maneuver dropping silently.
Scoring & Stats
Enemy + Civilian Destroyed Counts Persist: The aggregate destroyed counts shown after a session now survive save/load correctly.
Mid-Campaign State Survives Save/Load: Your campaign progress no longer carries over to unrelated saves, and loading a mid-campaign save no longer resets your progress to the start of the campaign.
Map Content & UI
Keyboard Shortcuts Respect Typing: Hotkeys no longer fire while you are typing in a text field (e.g. the save-game dialog), eliminating the rare bug where the map could pan autonomously after using Ctrl+A in a dialog.
Aircraft Data Tab Updates Live: The Aircraft Data tab on the flight-plan track popup now updates within half a second of a positive identification instead of lagging by several seconds.
Track List Panel Stability: Track List panel no longer briefly flashes errors or fails to draw in unusual configurations.
Tanker Callsign Consistency: Tanker callsigns now display the same value across the Track List, the on-map track block, and the Active Operations panel.
Flight Info Panel Polish: Various Flight Info panel display improvements (TYPE hiding for unknown hostiles, callsign formatting, and status accuracy at mid-mission states).
Stability
[p align="start"]Many smaller fixes have been folded in along the way — invisible during normal play but cumulatively reducing the chance of rare crashes, voice cutouts, save/load glitches, and frame-rate hitches under unusual conditions.Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.7.0.0 - 23 May 2026
A major reliability and polish update covering interceptor behaviour, voice and radio procedure, save and load, map settings, scoring, civilian and emergency handling, and difficulty options.
New: Difficulty-Scaled Fuel Consumption
[p align="start"]Interceptor fuel burn now adapts to your selected difficulty setting.Hard: Realistic period-accurate baseline (unchanged).
Normal: Half rate — interceptor sortie endurance doubles.
Easy: One-tenth rate — extended endurance for relaxed sessions.
Warnings Unchanged: Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY warnings still trigger at the same fuel percentages — they just take proportionally longer to reach.
Save & Load Reliability
Saves Survive Process Kill: Saves are now written safely — closing the game (or losing power) part-way through a save no longer leaves a corrupted file behind. The previous slot's contents remain intact until the new save is fully written.
Rapid SAVE Click Safety: Clicking SAVE rapidly no longer risks two saves overwriting each other.
Corrupted Save Entries Visible in Load Menu: Saves with malformed files no longer silently disappear from the Load Game list — they are shown with an error indicator so you can spot them and choose to delete.
Save Game Click Reliability: Loading a save no longer silent-fails when the on-disk filename differs from the in-game display name.
Mid-Mission State Preservation: Save/load now correctly preserves a wide range of mid-flight state: AWACS approach gates, tanker fuel-flow rates, Nimrod departure-leg sequencing, enemy aircraft RTB position, enemy bomber turn state and evasion timers, in-flight missile guidance parameters, nuclear weapon damage profiles, and many smaller details that previously reset to defaults on load.
Chinook Supply Missions Survive Save/Load: In-flight Chinook HC2 supply aircraft no longer disappear seconds after loading a save — cargo, ordnance, and origin-base accounting are all preserved.
Crash Sequence No Longer Loops On Load: Loading a save taken at the exact moment an interceptor was crashing from fuel exhaustion no longer re-fires the MAYDAY voice and squawk 7700 repeatedly after restoring.
Save List Loads Faster: Browsing the Load Game menu with many save slots is now noticeably faster — the menu reads just enough of each file to show its summary instead of parsing the whole save.
QRA Interceptor
Drop Tanks for Tornado F3 & Phantom FGR.2: External fuel tanks are now correctly accounted for in the fuel display and burn rate calculations for these aircraft. Sortie endurance now matches the period-accurate published figures.
Military Fuel Realism Pass: Military aircraft fuel burn rates and tank capacities have been reviewed and corrected against published 1998-era figures across the fleet.
Aircraft Fuel Burn Time-Scaling: Aircraft fuel burn now scales correctly with the in-game time-acceleration setting — running at 5x no longer leaves aircraft burning fuel as if at 1x.
Fuel Display Consistency: The Active Operations panel and the radar track block now show the same fuel percentage for the same aircraft (previously could disagree by 25%+ for Tornado F3).
Wingman No Longer Flies On At Zero Fuel: A surviving wingman of a QRA pair whose lead aircraft has crashed will now correctly declare emergency and divert/eject instead of continuing to fly indefinitely on empty tanks.
Wingman Spawns With Correct Fuel: A wingman scrambled in a CAP pair no longer joins at a stale fuel percentage from a previous sortie.
Solo Sortie Voice Calls: Solo single-ship sorties (no wingman) now hear the full controller AAR (refuelling) voice exchange that paired sorties always did.
Defender Retask Cascade: Manually retasking an interceptor against an inbound shooter now reliably brings the paired mate along too, instead of occasionally leaving them on the wrong target.
Force-Intercept on Low Fuel: Manually retasking an interceptor back onto a hostile after a tanker request has appeared no longer makes the sortie flicker between target and tanker, loop SHOW OF PRESENCE voice, and stack repeated voice rows in ASMA. The auto-divert now correctly recognises your commit-despite-low-fuel choice and stays out of the way until the target changes, the aircraft RTBs, or fuel reaches BINGO emergency.
Track Visibility During Intercept: Some interceptor tracks could drift out of view on the radar display during the intercept procedure — all friendly interceptor tracks now remain visible at all times.
Voice & Intercept Procedure
JUDY Loop Fix: Identifying a civilian after Controller-Confirm tasking no longer causes the JUDY / Controller-confirm voice exchange to loop indefinitely.
Pilot JUDY Timing: The pilot JUDY call no longer fires at scramble time — it correctly fires only when the interceptor reaches radar contact range with the target, which also resolves the duplicated controller "Copy Judy" voice and a premature RTB on civilian intercepts.
ASMA Brevity Expansion: ASMA console messages no longer show duplicated brevity phrasing — JUDY and similar military brevity codes display the expanded explanation exactly once.
Single Voice Source: The pilot JUDY voice and the matching ASMA log entry are now produced from a single source, so they no longer occasionally fire twice when different parts of the game briefly disagreed about who should speak.
Splash Voice Improvements: Splash calls at kill sites no longer report the same target as splashed twice, and the "shooter unknown" case now correctly identifies the shooter where possible.
Splash Per-Channel Exclusivity: Kill-confirmation voice ("splash") now only plays for the sortie currently selected on the radio panel. Other sorties' kills no longer bleed into your audio when you are focused on a different sortie.
Sortie Radio Continuity: Sortie radio comms no longer drop in and out during phase transitions like a tanker rendezvous. The pilot's "vector to tanker" request, the controller's bearing/range response, and the pilot's "proceed to tanker" call now play as a single continuous exchange without silence gaps.
Channel Switch Voice Resumption: Switching the radio panel from a QRA or AWACS sortie to a CAP pair and back no longer leaves you in silence — the original sortie's voice exchanges resume cleanly on switch-back, without bleeding across channels.
Pilot Mayday on Every Emergency: Interceptor pilot mayday announcements now fire correctly for every emergency, not just fuel exhaustion. The pilot's "{callsign} mayday mayday mayday" call is heard first, followed by the controller's response — matching standard radio procedure for scenario-driven emergencies, save/load-restored emergencies, and squawk overrides.
Controller Replies Stripped of Pilot Prefix: Controller-side emergency-airfield replies no longer accidentally prefix themselves with the pilot's callsign.
BRA Channel Cleanup: BRA (Bearing-Range-Aspect) callouts no longer continue to play on a sortie channel after that sortie has been cleared or retasked.
Post-Retask Voice on Repeat Missions: Post-compliance pilot voice ("aircraft now complying", "roger RTB") now plays correctly after retasking the same QRA sortie to a second target of the same type.
Intercept Progression After JUDY: Intercepts now reliably progress through the full procedure (escort, show of presence, show of force, turn-away warning) after the pilot's JUDY call. Previously the procedure could stall silently with the interceptor sitting alongside the target indefinitely — the full sequence now fires through to completion.
Suspect-Mark Pursuit Fix: Marking a contact as Suspect via the ident bar no longer leaves the QRA interceptor unable to close — speeding up, then slowing down, never catching the target — with the escalation procedure stuck. The interceptor now settles into formation and the full escalation runs end to end.
Decision Dialog Safety Timeout: Decision dialogs that were waiting on something that never arrived can no longer hold the intercept indefinitely — a safety timeout now releases the dialog so the procedure proceeds.
Civilian Emergencies
Emergency Squawks Persist: Emergency squawks (7700 / 7600 / 7500) on civilian aircraft now correctly persist instead of being overwritten by routine controller squawk reassignment.
Correct Procedure for Each Emergency: Civilian emergency intercepts now play the correct voice procedure for the declared emergency type instead of occasionally playing the wrong one.
Emergency Aircraft Identity Preserved: Civilian aircraft with declared emergencies (7500 / 7600) are no longer automatically reclassified to Hostile during intercept.
Procedure Safety Timeouts: Civilian emergency intercept procedures now have safety timeouts so the procedure cannot stall silently waiting for a condition that never arrives.
Active Ops Emergency Row Clears: The Active Operations emergency row no longer stays yellow / red after the emergency has resolved.
Map & Map Overlays
AARA and Danger Overlays Persist: Player choices for AARA and Danger area overlays now persist across in-app menu cycles, matching the airfield, city, strategic, and navaid overlays.
Saved Map View Restored: Returning to the map after a menu cycle no longer clobbers the saved zoom and pan position.
Coastline Visibility on Intel Graphics: The UK map coastline is now reliably visible on systems with Intel integrated GPUs that previously showed a blank background.
Map Display Toggles Saved: Player choices for which map feature categories are visible now persist across sessions.
Russian Deception & Enemy AI
Campaign Continuity Across Saves: Campaign waves now continue to arrive correctly after a save/load mid-campaign, and campaign victory is correctly detected when you have completed the objective.
Civilian Callsign Sync: Civilian aircraft callsigns now stay in sync across all panels — previously some civilian aircraft could show one callsign on the track block and a different one in Flight Info after loading a save.
Civilian Route Restoration: Stationary civilian aircraft, and civilian aircraft with broken or empty routes, now correctly restore on save/load instead of teleporting or hanging in place.
Hostile Cruise Missile Kill Not Penalised: Shooting down an inbound hostile cruise missile no longer triggers the civilian-kill penalty.
Hostile Aircraft Type Hidden Until ID: The Flight Info panel TYPE field no longer leaks the real aircraft type for unidentified hostiles. The TYPE field is blank until the contact is positively identified.
Disguised Aircraft Save/Load Stability: Disguised aircraft tracks no longer flicker in and out of view after save/load.
Visual ID Updates Every Panel: When interceptors visually identify a disguised contact, the revealed type now appears on the track label, the Flight Info panel, and the Aircraft Info tab consistently — no more contradictory readings between panels.
Aircraft Type Display Consistency: The aircraft type now displays the same value across the Flight Info panel, the radar track block, and the ASMA console.
Post-Compliance Turn-Away: Compliant disguised aircraft now turn away on a bearing that actually exits UK airspace from inland positions instead of pointing back over the country.
Show of Force Maneuver Reliability: The show-of-force cross-ahead maneuver now executes consistently on repeat missions, with both voice and maneuver firing together rather than the maneuver dropping silently.
Scoring & Stats
Enemy + Civilian Destroyed Counts Persist: The aggregate destroyed counts shown after a session now survive save/load correctly.
Mid-Campaign State Survives Save/Load: Your campaign progress no longer carries over to unrelated saves, and loading a mid-campaign save no longer resets your progress to the start of the campaign.
Map Content & UI
Keyboard Shortcuts Respect Typing: Hotkeys no longer fire while you are typing in a text field (e.g. the save-game dialog), eliminating the rare bug where the map could pan autonomously after using Ctrl+A in a dialog.
Aircraft Data Tab Updates Live: The Aircraft Data tab on the flight-plan track popup now updates within half a second of a positive identification instead of lagging by several seconds.
Track List Panel Stability: Track List panel no longer briefly flashes errors or fails to draw in unusual configurations.
Tanker Callsign Consistency: Tanker callsigns now display the same value across the Track List, the on-map track block, and the Active Operations panel.
Flight Info Panel Polish: Various Flight Info panel display improvements (TYPE hiding for unknown hostiles, callsign formatting, and status accuracy at mid-mission states).
Stability
[p align="start"]Many smaller fixes have been folded in along the way — invisible during normal play but cumulatively reducing the chance of rare crashes, voice cutouts, save/load glitches, and frame-rate hitches under unusual conditions.Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.7.0.0 - 23 May 2026
A major reliability and polish update covering interceptor behaviour, voice and radio procedure, save and load, map settings, scoring, civilian and emergency handling, and difficulty options.
New: Difficulty-Scaled Fuel Consumption
[p align="start"]Interceptor fuel burn now adapts to your selected difficulty setting.Hard: Realistic period-accurate baseline (unchanged).
Normal: Half rate — interceptor sortie endurance doubles.
Easy: One-tenth rate — extended endurance for relaxed sessions.
Warnings Unchanged: Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY warnings still trigger at the same fuel percentages — they just take proportionally longer to reach.
Save & Load Reliability
Saves Survive Process Kill: Saves are now written safely — closing the game (or losing power) part-way through a save no longer leaves a corrupted file behind. The previous slot's contents remain intact until the new save is fully written.
Rapid SAVE Click Safety: Clicking SAVE rapidly no longer risks two saves overwriting each other.
Corrupted Save Entries Visible in Load Menu: Saves with malformed files no longer silently disappear from the Load Game list — they are shown with an error indicator so you can spot them and choose to delete.
Save Game Click Reliability: Loading a save no longer silent-fails when the on-disk filename differs from the in-game display name.
Mid-Mission State Preservation: Save/load now correctly preserves a wide range of mid-flight state: AWACS approach gates, tanker fuel-flow rates, Nimrod departure-leg sequencing, enemy aircraft RTB position, enemy bomber turn state and evasion timers, in-flight missile guidance parameters, nuclear weapon damage profiles, and many smaller details that previously reset to defaults on load.
Chinook Supply Missions Survive Save/Load: In-flight Chinook HC2 supply aircraft no longer disappear seconds after loading a save — cargo, ordnance, and origin-base accounting are all preserved.
Crash Sequence No Longer Loops On Load: Loading a save taken at the exact moment an interceptor was crashing from fuel exhaustion no longer re-fires the MAYDAY voice and squawk 7700 repeatedly after restoring.
Save List Loads Faster: Browsing the Load Game menu with many save slots is now noticeably faster — the menu reads just enough of each file to show its summary instead of parsing the whole save.
QRA Interceptor
Drop Tanks for Tornado F3 & Phantom FGR.2: External fuel tanks are now correctly accounted for in the fuel display and burn rate calculations for these aircraft. Sortie endurance now matches the period-accurate published figures.
Military Fuel Realism Pass: Military aircraft fuel burn rates and tank capacities have been reviewed and corrected against published 1998-era figures across the fleet.
Aircraft Fuel Burn Time-Scaling: Aircraft fuel burn now scales correctly with the in-game time-acceleration setting — running at 5x no longer leaves aircraft burning fuel as if at 1x.
Fuel Display Consistency: The Active Operations panel and the radar track block now show the same fuel percentage for the same aircraft (previously could disagree by 25%+ for Tornado F3).
Wingman No Longer Flies On At Zero Fuel: A surviving wingman of a QRA pair whose lead aircraft has crashed will now correctly declare emergency and divert/eject instead of continuing to fly indefinitely on empty tanks.
Wingman Spawns With Correct Fuel: A wingman scrambled in a CAP pair no longer joins at a stale fuel percentage from a previous sortie.
Solo Sortie Voice Calls: Solo single-ship sorties (no wingman) now hear the full controller AAR (refuelling) voice exchange that paired sorties always did.
Defender Retask Cascade: Manually retasking an interceptor against an inbound shooter now reliably brings the paired mate along too, instead of occasionally leaving them on the wrong target.
Force-Intercept on Low Fuel: Manually retasking an interceptor back onto a hostile after a tanker request has appeared no longer makes the sortie flicker between target and tanker, loop SHOW OF PRESENCE voice, and stack repeated voice rows in ASMA. The auto-divert now correctly recognises your commit-despite-low-fuel choice and stays out of the way until the target changes, the aircraft RTBs, or fuel reaches BINGO emergency.
Track Visibility During Intercept: Some interceptor tracks could drift out of view on the radar display during the intercept procedure — all friendly interceptor tracks now remain visible at all times.
Voice & Intercept Procedure
JUDY Loop Fix: Identifying a civilian after Controller-Confirm tasking no longer causes the JUDY / Controller-confirm voice exchange to loop indefinitely.
Pilot JUDY Timing: The pilot JUDY call no longer fires at scramble time — it correctly fires only when the interceptor reaches radar contact range with the target, which also resolves the duplicated controller "Copy Judy" voice and a premature RTB on civilian intercepts.
ASMA Brevity Expansion: ASMA console messages no longer show duplicated brevity phrasing — JUDY and similar military brevity codes display the expanded explanation exactly once.
Single Voice Source: The pilot JUDY voice and the matching ASMA log entry are now produced from a single source, so they no longer occasionally fire twice when different parts of the game briefly disagreed about who should speak.
Splash Voice Improvements: Splash calls at kill sites no longer report the same target as splashed twice, and the "shooter unknown" case now correctly identifies the shooter where possible.
Splash Per-Channel Exclusivity: Kill-confirmation voice ("splash") now only plays for the sortie currently selected on the radio panel. Other sorties' kills no longer bleed into your audio when you are focused on a different sortie.
Sortie Radio Continuity: Sortie radio comms no longer drop in and out during phase transitions like a tanker rendezvous. The pilot's "vector to tanker" request, the controller's bearing/range response, and the pilot's "proceed to tanker" call now play as a single continuous exchange without silence gaps.
Channel Switch Voice Resumption: Switching the radio panel from a QRA or AWACS sortie to a CAP pair and back no longer leaves you in silence — the original sortie's voice exchanges resume cleanly on switch-back, without bleeding across channels.
Pilot Mayday on Every Emergency: Interceptor pilot mayday announcements now fire correctly for every emergency, not just fuel exhaustion. The pilot's "{callsign} mayday mayday mayday" call is heard first, followed by the controller's response — matching standard radio procedure for scenario-driven emergencies, save/load-restored emergencies, and squawk overrides.
Controller Replies Stripped of Pilot Prefix: Controller-side emergency-airfield replies no longer accidentally prefix themselves with the pilot's callsign.
BRA Channel Cleanup: BRA (Bearing-Range-Aspect) callouts no longer continue to play on a sortie channel after that sortie has been cleared or retasked.
Post-Retask Voice on Repeat Missions: Post-compliance pilot voice ("aircraft now complying", "roger RTB") now plays correctly after retasking the same QRA sortie to a second target of the same type.
Intercept Progression After JUDY: Intercepts now reliably progress through the full procedure (escort, show of presence, show of force, turn-away warning) after the pilot's JUDY call. Previously the procedure could stall silently with the interceptor sitting alongside the target indefinitely — the full sequence now fires through to completion.
Suspect-Mark Pursuit Fix: Marking a contact as Suspect via the ident bar no longer leaves the QRA interceptor unable to close — speeding up, then slowing down, never catching the target — with the escalation procedure stuck. The interceptor now settles into formation and the full escalation runs end to end.
Decision Dialog Safety Timeout: Decision dialogs that were waiting on something that never arrived can no longer hold the intercept indefinitely — a safety timeout now releases the dialog so the procedure proceeds.
Civilian Emergencies
Emergency Squawks Persist: Emergency squawks (7700 / 7600 / 7500) on civilian aircraft now correctly persist instead of being overwritten by routine controller squawk reassignment.
Correct Procedure for Each Emergency: Civilian emergency intercepts now play the correct voice procedure for the declared emergency type instead of occasionally playing the wrong one.
Emergency Aircraft Identity Preserved: Civilian aircraft with declared emergencies (7500 / 7600) are no longer automatically reclassified to Hostile during intercept.
Procedure Safety Timeouts: Civilian emergency intercept procedures now have safety timeouts so the procedure cannot stall silently waiting for a condition that never arrives.
Active Ops Emergency Row Clears: The Active Operations emergency row no longer stays yellow / red after the emergency has resolved.
Map & Map Overlays
AARA and Danger Overlays Persist: Player choices for AARA and Danger area overlays now persist across in-app menu cycles, matching the airfield, city, strategic, and navaid overlays.
Saved Map View Restored: Returning to the map after a menu cycle no longer clobbers the saved zoom and pan position.
Coastline Visibility on Intel Graphics: The UK map coastline is now reliably visible on systems with Intel integrated GPUs that previously showed a blank background.
Map Display Toggles Saved: Player choices for which map feature categories are visible now persist across sessions.
Russian Deception & Enemy AI
Campaign Continuity Across Saves: Campaign waves now continue to arrive correctly after a save/load mid-campaign, and campaign victory is correctly detected when you have completed the objective.
Civilian Callsign Sync: Civilian aircraft callsigns now stay in sync across all panels — previously some civilian aircraft could show one callsign on the track block and a different one in Flight Info after loading a save.
Civilian Route Restoration: Stationary civilian aircraft, and civilian aircraft with broken or empty routes, now correctly restore on save/load instead of teleporting or hanging in place.
Hostile Cruise Missile Kill Not Penalised: Shooting down an inbound hostile cruise missile no longer triggers the civilian-kill penalty.
Hostile Aircraft Type Hidden Until ID: The Flight Info panel TYPE field no longer leaks the real aircraft type for unidentified hostiles. The TYPE field is blank until the contact is positively identified.
Disguised Aircraft Save/Load Stability: Disguised aircraft tracks no longer flicker in and out of view after save/load.
Visual ID Updates Every Panel: When interceptors visually identify a disguised contact, the revealed type now appears on the track label, the Flight Info panel, and the Aircraft Info tab consistently — no more contradictory readings between panels.
Aircraft Type Display Consistency: The aircraft type now displays the same value across the Flight Info panel, the radar track block, and the ASMA console.
Post-Compliance Turn-Away: Compliant disguised aircraft now turn away on a bearing that actually exits UK airspace from inland positions instead of pointing back over the country.
Show of Force Maneuver Reliability: The show-of-force cross-ahead maneuver now executes consistently on repeat missions, with both voice and maneuver firing together rather than the maneuver dropping silently.
Scoring & Stats
Enemy + Civilian Destroyed Counts Persist: The aggregate destroyed counts shown after a session now survive save/load correctly.
Mid-Campaign State Survives Save/Load: Your campaign progress no longer carries over to unrelated saves, and loading a mid-campaign save no longer resets your progress to the start of the campaign.
Map Content & UI
Keyboard Shortcuts Respect Typing: Hotkeys no longer fire while you are typing in a text field (e.g. the save-game dialog), eliminating the rare bug where the map could pan autonomously after using Ctrl+A in a dialog.
Aircraft Data Tab Updates Live: The Aircraft Data tab on the flight-plan track popup now updates within half a second of a positive identification instead of lagging by several seconds.
Track List Panel Stability: Track List panel no longer briefly flashes errors or fails to draw in unusual configurations.
Tanker Callsign Consistency: Tanker callsigns now display the same value across the Track List, the on-map track block, and the Active Operations panel.
Flight Info Panel Polish: Various Flight Info panel display improvements (TYPE hiding for unknown hostiles, callsign formatting, and status accuracy at mid-mission states).
Stability
[p align="start"]Many smaller fixes have been folded in along the way — invisible during normal play but cumulatively reducing the chance of rare crashes, voice cutouts, save/load glitches, and frame-rate hitches under unusual conditions.Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.5.13.15 - March 2026
Bug Fixes
- Linux/Proton Display Switching: Fixed fullscreen display-mode handling so Borderless, Fullscreen, and Windowed preferences remain consistent when switching between laptop and external displays.
- Resolution Selection Reliability: Graphics Settings now includes a direct selectable resolution list. On Linux/Proton, selecting a non-native resolution while in Borderless mode now automatically switches to Windowed so the selected resolution applies reliably.
- Resolution Picker Usability: Moved the resolution selection layout higher on the screen for better visibility.
- AWACS Redeploy Active Ops: Redeploying multiple E3 Sentry aircraft from the same base before takeoff now correctly creates a separate queued redeploy entry for each aircraft in Active Operations.
- AWACS Redeploy Selection: Queued AWACS waiting on the 30-minute redeploy countdown can no longer be selected again as if they were unused parked stock.
Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.7.0.0 - 23 May 2026
A major reliability and polish update covering interceptor behaviour, voice and radio procedure, save and load, map settings, scoring, civilian and emergency handling, and difficulty options.
New: Difficulty-Scaled Fuel Consumption
[p align="start"]Interceptor fuel burn now adapts to your selected difficulty setting.Hard: Realistic period-accurate baseline (unchanged).
Normal: Half rate — interceptor sortie endurance doubles.
Easy: One-tenth rate — extended endurance for relaxed sessions.
Warnings Unchanged: Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY warnings still trigger at the same fuel percentages — they just take proportionally longer to reach.
Save & Load Reliability
Saves Survive Process Kill: Saves are now written safely — closing the game (or losing power) part-way through a save no longer leaves a corrupted file behind. The previous slot's contents remain intact until the new save is fully written.
Rapid SAVE Click Safety: Clicking SAVE rapidly no longer risks two saves overwriting each other.
Corrupted Save Entries Visible in Load Menu: Saves with malformed files no longer silently disappear from the Load Game list — they are shown with an error indicator so you can spot them and choose to delete.
Save Game Click Reliability: Loading a save no longer silent-fails when the on-disk filename differs from the in-game display name.
Mid-Mission State Preservation: Save/load now correctly preserves a wide range of mid-flight state: AWACS approach gates, tanker fuel-flow rates, Nimrod departure-leg sequencing, enemy aircraft RTB position, enemy bomber turn state and evasion timers, in-flight missile guidance parameters, nuclear weapon damage profiles, and many smaller details that previously reset to defaults on load.
Chinook Supply Missions Survive Save/Load: In-flight Chinook HC2 supply aircraft no longer disappear seconds after loading a save — cargo, ordnance, and origin-base accounting are all preserved.
Crash Sequence No Longer Loops On Load: Loading a save taken at the exact moment an interceptor was crashing from fuel exhaustion no longer re-fires the MAYDAY voice and squawk 7700 repeatedly after restoring.
Save List Loads Faster: Browsing the Load Game menu with many save slots is now noticeably faster — the menu reads just enough of each file to show its summary instead of parsing the whole save.
QRA Interceptor
Drop Tanks for Tornado F3 & Phantom FGR.2: External fuel tanks are now correctly accounted for in the fuel display and burn rate calculations for these aircraft. Sortie endurance now matches the period-accurate published figures.
Military Fuel Realism Pass: Military aircraft fuel burn rates and tank capacities have been reviewed and corrected against published 1998-era figures across the fleet.
Aircraft Fuel Burn Time-Scaling: Aircraft fuel burn now scales correctly with the in-game time-acceleration setting — running at 5x no longer leaves aircraft burning fuel as if at 1x.
Fuel Display Consistency: The Active Operations panel and the radar track block now show the same fuel percentage for the same aircraft (previously could disagree by 25%+ for Tornado F3).
Wingman No Longer Flies On At Zero Fuel: A surviving wingman of a QRA pair whose lead aircraft has crashed will now correctly declare emergency and divert/eject instead of continuing to fly indefinitely on empty tanks.
Wingman Spawns With Correct Fuel: A wingman scrambled in a CAP pair no longer joins at a stale fuel percentage from a previous sortie.
Solo Sortie Voice Calls: Solo single-ship sorties (no wingman) now hear the full controller AAR (refuelling) voice exchange that paired sorties always did.
Defender Retask Cascade: Manually retasking an interceptor against an inbound shooter now reliably brings the paired mate along too, instead of occasionally leaving them on the wrong target.
Force-Intercept on Low Fuel: Manually retasking an interceptor back onto a hostile after a tanker request has appeared no longer makes the sortie flicker between target and tanker, loop SHOW OF PRESENCE voice, and stack repeated voice rows in ASMA. The auto-divert now correctly recognises your commit-despite-low-fuel choice and stays out of the way until the target changes, the aircraft RTBs, or fuel reaches BINGO emergency.
Track Visibility During Intercept: Some interceptor tracks could drift out of view on the radar display during the intercept procedure — all friendly interceptor tracks now remain visible at all times.
Voice & Intercept Procedure
JUDY Loop Fix: Identifying a civilian after Controller-Confirm tasking no longer causes the JUDY / Controller-confirm voice exchange to loop indefinitely.
Pilot JUDY Timing: The pilot JUDY call no longer fires at scramble time — it correctly fires only when the interceptor reaches radar contact range with the target, which also resolves the duplicated controller "Copy Judy" voice and a premature RTB on civilian intercepts.
ASMA Brevity Expansion: ASMA console messages no longer show duplicated brevity phrasing — JUDY and similar military brevity codes display the expanded explanation exactly once.
Single Voice Source: The pilot JUDY voice and the matching ASMA log entry are now produced from a single source, so they no longer occasionally fire twice when different parts of the game briefly disagreed about who should speak.
Splash Voice Improvements: Splash calls at kill sites no longer report the same target as splashed twice, and the "shooter unknown" case now correctly identifies the shooter where possible.
Splash Per-Channel Exclusivity: Kill-confirmation voice ("splash") now only plays for the sortie currently selected on the radio panel. Other sorties' kills no longer bleed into your audio when you are focused on a different sortie.
Sortie Radio Continuity: Sortie radio comms no longer drop in and out during phase transitions like a tanker rendezvous. The pilot's "vector to tanker" request, the controller's bearing/range response, and the pilot's "proceed to tanker" call now play as a single continuous exchange without silence gaps.
Channel Switch Voice Resumption: Switching the radio panel from a QRA or AWACS sortie to a CAP pair and back no longer leaves you in silence — the original sortie's voice exchanges resume cleanly on switch-back, without bleeding across channels.
Pilot Mayday on Every Emergency: Interceptor pilot mayday announcements now fire correctly for every emergency, not just fuel exhaustion. The pilot's "{callsign} mayday mayday mayday" call is heard first, followed by the controller's response — matching standard radio procedure for scenario-driven emergencies, save/load-restored emergencies, and squawk overrides.
Controller Replies Stripped of Pilot Prefix: Controller-side emergency-airfield replies no longer accidentally prefix themselves with the pilot's callsign.
BRA Channel Cleanup: BRA (Bearing-Range-Aspect) callouts no longer continue to play on a sortie channel after that sortie has been cleared or retasked.
Post-Retask Voice on Repeat Missions: Post-compliance pilot voice ("aircraft now complying", "roger RTB") now plays correctly after retasking the same QRA sortie to a second target of the same type.
Intercept Progression After JUDY: Intercepts now reliably progress through the full procedure (escort, show of presence, show of force, turn-away warning) after the pilot's JUDY call. Previously the procedure could stall silently with the interceptor sitting alongside the target indefinitely — the full sequence now fires through to completion.
Suspect-Mark Pursuit Fix: Marking a contact as Suspect via the ident bar no longer leaves the QRA interceptor unable to close — speeding up, then slowing down, never catching the target — with the escalation procedure stuck. The interceptor now settles into formation and the full escalation runs end to end.
Decision Dialog Safety Timeout: Decision dialogs that were waiting on something that never arrived can no longer hold the intercept indefinitely — a safety timeout now releases the dialog so the procedure proceeds.
Civilian Emergencies
Emergency Squawks Persist: Emergency squawks (7700 / 7600 / 7500) on civilian aircraft now correctly persist instead of being overwritten by routine controller squawk reassignment.
Correct Procedure for Each Emergency: Civilian emergency intercepts now play the correct voice procedure for the declared emergency type instead of occasionally playing the wrong one.
Emergency Aircraft Identity Preserved: Civilian aircraft with declared emergencies (7500 / 7600) are no longer automatically reclassified to Hostile during intercept.
Procedure Safety Timeouts: Civilian emergency intercept procedures now have safety timeouts so the procedure cannot stall silently waiting for a condition that never arrives.
Active Ops Emergency Row Clears: The Active Operations emergency row no longer stays yellow / red after the emergency has resolved.
Map & Map Overlays
AARA and Danger Overlays Persist: Player choices for AARA and Danger area overlays now persist across in-app menu cycles, matching the airfield, city, strategic, and navaid overlays.
Saved Map View Restored: Returning to the map after a menu cycle no longer clobbers the saved zoom and pan position.
Coastline Visibility on Intel Graphics: The UK map coastline is now reliably visible on systems with Intel integrated GPUs that previously showed a blank background.
Map Display Toggles Saved: Player choices for which map feature categories are visible now persist across sessions.
Russian Deception & Enemy AI
Campaign Continuity Across Saves: Campaign waves now continue to arrive correctly after a save/load mid-campaign, and campaign victory is correctly detected when you have completed the objective.
Civilian Callsign Sync: Civilian aircraft callsigns now stay in sync across all panels — previously some civilian aircraft could show one callsign on the track block and a different one in Flight Info after loading a save.
Civilian Route Restoration: Stationary civilian aircraft, and civilian aircraft with broken or empty routes, now correctly restore on save/load instead of teleporting or hanging in place.
Hostile Cruise Missile Kill Not Penalised: Shooting down an inbound hostile cruise missile no longer triggers the civilian-kill penalty.
Hostile Aircraft Type Hidden Until ID: The Flight Info panel TYPE field no longer leaks the real aircraft type for unidentified hostiles. The TYPE field is blank until the contact is positively identified.
Disguised Aircraft Save/Load Stability: Disguised aircraft tracks no longer flicker in and out of view after save/load.
Visual ID Updates Every Panel: When interceptors visually identify a disguised contact, the revealed type now appears on the track label, the Flight Info panel, and the Aircraft Info tab consistently — no more contradictory readings between panels.
Aircraft Type Display Consistency: The aircraft type now displays the same value across the Flight Info panel, the radar track block, and the ASMA console.
Post-Compliance Turn-Away: Compliant disguised aircraft now turn away on a bearing that actually exits UK airspace from inland positions instead of pointing back over the country.
Show of Force Maneuver Reliability: The show-of-force cross-ahead maneuver now executes consistently on repeat missions, with both voice and maneuver firing together rather than the maneuver dropping silently.
Scoring & Stats
Enemy + Civilian Destroyed Counts Persist: The aggregate destroyed counts shown after a session now survive save/load correctly.
Mid-Campaign State Survives Save/Load: Your campaign progress no longer carries over to unrelated saves, and loading a mid-campaign save no longer resets your progress to the start of the campaign.
Map Content & UI
Keyboard Shortcuts Respect Typing: Hotkeys no longer fire while you are typing in a text field (e.g. the save-game dialog), eliminating the rare bug where the map could pan autonomously after using Ctrl+A in a dialog.
Aircraft Data Tab Updates Live: The Aircraft Data tab on the flight-plan track popup now updates within half a second of a positive identification instead of lagging by several seconds.
Track List Panel Stability: Track List panel no longer briefly flashes errors or fails to draw in unusual configurations.
Tanker Callsign Consistency: Tanker callsigns now display the same value across the Track List, the on-map track block, and the Active Operations panel.
Flight Info Panel Polish: Various Flight Info panel display improvements (TYPE hiding for unknown hostiles, callsign formatting, and status accuracy at mid-mission states).
Stability
[p align="start"]Many smaller fixes have been folded in along the way — invisible during normal play but cumulatively reducing the chance of rare crashes, voice cutouts, save/load glitches, and frame-rate hitches under unusual conditions.Air Defender Changelog - Version 0.7.0.0 - 23 May 2026
A major reliability and polish update covering interceptor behaviour, voice and radio procedure, save and load, map settings, scoring, civilian and emergency handling, and difficulty options.
New: Difficulty-Scaled Fuel Consumption
[p align="start"]Interceptor fuel burn now adapts to your selected difficulty setting.Hard: Realistic period-accurate baseline (unchanged).
Normal: Half rate — interceptor sortie endurance doubles.
Easy: One-tenth rate — extended endurance for relaxed sessions.
Warnings Unchanged: Joker, Bingo, PAN-PAN and MAYDAY warnings still trigger at the same fuel percentages — they just take proportionally longer to reach.
Save & Load Reliability
Saves Survive Process Kill: Saves are now written safely — closing the game (or losing power) part-way through a save no longer leaves a corrupted file behind. The previous slot's contents remain intact until the new save is fully written.
Rapid SAVE Click Safety: Clicking SAVE rapidly no longer risks two saves overwriting each other.
Corrupted Save Entries Visible in Load Menu: Saves with malformed files no longer silently disappear from the Load Game list — they are shown with an error indicator so you can spot them and choose to delete.
Save Game Click Reliability: Loading a save no longer silent-fails when the on-disk filename differs from the in-game display name.
Mid-Mission State Preservation: Save/load now correctly preserves a wide range of mid-flight state: AWACS approach gates, tanker fuel-flow rates, Nimrod departure-leg sequencing, enemy aircraft RTB position, enemy bomber turn state and evasion timers, in-flight missile guidance parameters, nuclear weapon damage profiles, and many smaller details that previously reset to defaults on load.
Chinook Supply Missions Survive Save/Load: In-flight Chinook HC2 supply aircraft no longer disappear seconds after loading a save — cargo, ordnance, and origin-base accounting are all preserved.
Crash Sequence No Longer Loops On Load: Loading a save taken at the exact moment an interceptor was crashing from fuel exhaustion no longer re-fires the MAYDAY voice and squawk 7700 repeatedly after restoring.
Save List Loads Faster: Browsing the Load Game menu with many save slots is now noticeably faster — the menu reads just enough of each file to show its summary instead of parsing the whole save.
QRA Interceptor
Drop Tanks for Tornado F3 & Phantom FGR.2: External fuel tanks are now correctly accounted for in the fuel display and burn rate calculations for these aircraft. Sortie endurance now matches the period-accurate published figures.
Military Fuel Realism Pass: Military aircraft fuel burn rates and tank capacities have been reviewed and corrected against published 1998-era figures across the fleet.
Aircraft Fuel Burn Time-Scaling: Aircraft fuel burn now scales correctly with the in-game time-acceleration setting — running at 5x no longer leaves aircraft burning fuel as if at 1x.
Fuel Display Consistency: The Active Operations panel and the radar track block now show the same fuel percentage for the same aircraft (previously could disagree by 25%+ for Tornado F3).
Wingman No Longer Flies On At Zero Fuel: A surviving wingman of a QRA pair whose lead aircraft has crashed will now correctly declare emergency and divert/eject instead of continuing to fly indefinitely on empty tanks.
Wingman Spawns With Correct Fuel: A wingman scrambled in a CAP pair no longer joins at a stale fuel percentage from a previous sortie.
Solo Sortie Voice Calls: Solo single-ship sorties (no wingman) now hear the full controller AAR (refuelling) voice exchange that paired sorties always did.
Defender Retask Cascade: Manually retasking an interceptor against an inbound shooter now reliably brings the paired mate along too, instead of occasionally leaving them on the wrong target.
Force-Intercept on Low Fuel: Manually retasking an interceptor back onto a hostile after a tanker request has appeared no longer makes the sortie flicker between target and tanker, loop SHOW OF PRESENCE voice, and stack repeated voice rows in ASMA. The auto-divert now correctly recognises your commit-despite-low-fuel choice and stays out of the way until the target changes, the aircraft RTBs, or fuel reaches BINGO emergency.
Track Visibility During Intercept: Some interceptor tracks could drift out of view on the radar display during the intercept procedure — all friendly interceptor tracks now remain visible at all times.
Voice & Intercept Procedure
JUDY Loop Fix: Identifying a civilian after Controller-Confirm tasking no longer causes the JUDY / Controller-confirm voice exchange to loop indefinitely.
Pilot JUDY Timing: The pilot JUDY call no longer fires at scramble time — it correctly fires only when the interceptor reaches radar contact range with the target, which also resolves the duplicated controller "Copy Judy" voice and a premature RTB on civilian intercepts.
ASMA Brevity Expansion: ASMA console messages no longer show duplicated brevity phrasing — JUDY and similar military brevity codes display the expanded explanation exactly once.
Single Voice Source: The pilot JUDY voice and the matching ASMA log entry are now produced from a single source, so they no longer occasionally fire twice when different parts of the game briefly disagreed about who should speak.
Splash Voice Improvements: Splash calls at kill sites no longer report the same target as splashed twice, and the "shooter unknown" case now correctly identifies the shooter where possible.
Splash Per-Channel Exclusivity: Kill-confirmation voice ("splash") now only plays for the sortie currently selected on the radio panel. Other sorties' kills no longer bleed into your audio when you are focused on a different sortie.
Sortie Radio Continuity: Sortie radio comms no longer drop in and out during phase transitions like a tanker rendezvous. The pilot's "vector to tanker" request, the controller's bearing/range response, and the pilot's "proceed to tanker" call now play as a single continuous exchange without silence gaps.
Channel Switch Voice Resumption: Switching the radio panel from a QRA or AWACS sortie to a CAP pair and back no longer leaves you in silence — the original sortie's voice exchanges resume cleanly on switch-back, without bleeding across channels.
Pilot Mayday on Every Emergency: Interceptor pilot mayday announcements now fire correctly for every emergency, not just fuel exhaustion. The pilot's "{callsign} mayday mayday mayday" call is heard first, followed by the controller's response — matching standard radio procedure for scenario-driven emergencies, save/load-restored emergencies, and squawk overrides.
Controller Replies Stripped of Pilot Prefix: Controller-side emergency-airfield replies no longer accidentally prefix themselves with the pilot's callsign.
BRA Channel Cleanup: BRA (Bearing-Range-Aspect) callouts no longer continue to play on a sortie channel after that sortie has been cleared or retasked.
Post-Retask Voice on Repeat Missions: Post-compliance pilot voice ("aircraft now complying", "roger RTB") now plays correctly after retasking the same QRA sortie to a second target of the same type.
Intercept Progression After JUDY: Intercepts now reliably progress through the full procedure (escort, show of presence, show of force, turn-away warning) after the pilot's JUDY call. Previously the procedure could stall silently with the interceptor sitting alongside the target indefinitely — the full sequence now fires through to completion.
Suspect-Mark Pursuit Fix: Marking a contact as Suspect via the ident bar no longer leaves the QRA interceptor unable to close — speeding up, then slowing down, never catching the target — with the escalation procedure stuck. The interceptor now settles into formation and the full escalation runs end to end.
Decision Dialog Safety Timeout: Decision dialogs that were waiting on something that never arrived can no longer hold the intercept indefinitely — a safety timeout now releases the dialog so the procedure proceeds.
Civilian Emergencies
Emergency Squawks Persist: Emergency squawks (7700 / 7600 / 7500) on civilian aircraft now correctly persist instead of being overwritten by routine controller squawk reassignment.
Correct Procedure for Each Emergency: Civilian emergency intercepts now play the correct voice procedure for the declared emergency type instead of occasionally playing the wrong one.
Emergency Aircraft Identity Preserved: Civilian aircraft with declared emergencies (7500 / 7600) are no longer automatically reclassified to Hostile during intercept.
Procedure Safety Timeouts: Civilian emergency intercept procedures now have safety timeouts so the procedure cannot stall silently waiting for a condition that never arrives.
Active Ops Emergency Row Clears: The Active Operations emergency row no longer stays yellow / red after the emergency has resolved.
Map & Map Overlays
AARA and Danger Overlays Persist: Player choices for AARA and Danger area overlays now persist across in-app menu cycles, matching the airfield, city, strategic, and navaid overlays.
Saved Map View Restored: Returning to the map after a menu cycle no longer clobbers the saved zoom and pan position.
Coastline Visibility on Intel Graphics: The UK map coastline is now reliably visible on systems with Intel integrated GPUs that previously showed a blank background.
Map Display Toggles Saved: Player choices for which map feature categories are visible now persist across sessions.
Russian Deception & Enemy AI
Campaign Continuity Across Saves: Campaign waves now continue to arrive correctly after a save/load mid-campaign, and campaign victory is correctly detected when you have completed the objective.
Civilian Callsign Sync: Civilian aircraft callsigns now stay in sync across all panels — previously some civilian aircraft could show one callsign on the track block and a different one in Flight Info after loading a save.
Civilian Route Restoration: Stationary civilian aircraft, and civilian aircraft with broken or empty routes, now correctly restore on save/load instead of teleporting or hanging in place.
Hostile Cruise Missile Kill Not Penalised: Shooting down an inbound hostile cruise missile no longer triggers the civilian-kill penalty.
Hostile Aircraft Type Hidden Until ID: The Flight Info panel TYPE field no longer leaks the real aircraft type for unidentified hostiles. The TYPE field is blank until the contact is positively identified.
Disguised Aircraft Save/Load Stability: Disguised aircraft tracks no longer flicker in and out of view after save/load.
Visual ID Updates Every Panel: When interceptors visually identify a disguised contact, the revealed type now appears on the track label, the Flight Info panel, and the Aircraft Info tab consistently — no more contradictory readings between panels.
Aircraft Type Display Consistency: The aircraft type now displays the same value across the Flight Info panel, the radar track block, and the ASMA console.
Post-Compliance Turn-Away: Compliant disguised aircraft now turn away on a bearing that actually exits UK airspace from inland positions instead of pointing back over the country.
Show of Force Maneuver Reliability: The show-of-force cross-ahead maneuver now executes consistently on repeat missions, with both voice and maneuver firing together rather than the maneuver dropping silently.
Scoring & Stats
Enemy + Civilian Destroyed Counts Persist: The aggregate destroyed counts shown after a session now survive save/load correctly.
Mid-Campaign State Survives Save/Load: Your campaign progress no longer carries over to unrelated saves, and loading a mid-campaign save no longer resets your progress to the start of the campaign.
Map Content & UI
Keyboard Shortcuts Respect Typing: Hotkeys no longer fire while you are typing in a text field (e.g. the save-game dialog), eliminating the rare bug where the map could pan autonomously after using Ctrl+A in a dialog.
Aircraft Data Tab Updates Live: The Aircraft Data tab on the flight-plan track popup now updates within half a second of a positive identification instead of lagging by several seconds.
Track List Panel Stability: Track List panel no longer briefly flashes errors or fails to draw in unusual configurations.
Tanker Callsign Consistency: Tanker callsigns now display the same value across the Track List, the on-map track block, and the Active Operations panel.
Flight Info Panel Polish: Various Flight Info panel display improvements (TYPE hiding for unknown hostiles, callsign formatting, and status accuracy at mid-mission states).
Stability
[p align="start"]Many smaller fixes have been folded in along the way — invisible during normal play but cumulatively reducing the chance of rare crashes, voice cutouts, save/load glitches, and frame-rate hitches under unusual conditions.Current Release
22537774
Uploaded Apr 07, 2026
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System Requirements
How to Install
Air Defender.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
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355 MB
22537774
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