Vehicles

Some transport aircraft can carry a whole ground vehicle — a HMMWV, a fuel truck, an AAA piece — instead of breaking it down into crates. You still fly it to where it is wanted and set it down, but there is no assembly step at the far end: the vehicle drives off ready to fight.

Whole-vehicle carry is a capability of the airframe. Only aircraft the mission enables for it (the canTransportWholeVehicle capability) show the vehicle menus below. Everything else — including the UH-1H — moves vehicles the crate way instead: pack them into crates, sling or menu-load the crates, and unpack at the destination. See Crates.

Vehicles you can carry have to already be on the ground near you — placed by the mission maker, or unpacked from crates you delivered. There is no F10 action that conjures a vehicle out of the air at a logistics zone; Request Equipment always hands you crates, never a finished vehicle.

Load a vehicle (menu)

Utility: Picks up a nearby ground vehicle whole, so you can fly it out without packing it into crates first.

How it works: Land within maximumDistancePackableUnitsSearch (default 200 m) of the vehicle. CTLD lists the vehicles you can lift — filtered to your coalition and to the types your airframe is cleared for (loadableVehiclesRED / loadableVehiclesBLUE). Pick one and it is loaded virtually: the vehicle disappears from the map, its weight is added to your aircraft, and it rides with you until you unload it. You must be on the ground to load — try it in the hover and you get "Land to load vehicles". How many vehicles you can carry at once is capped per airframe by maxWholeVehiclesOnboard (default 1); at the limit you get "Cannot load more vehicles (%1/%2)."

Activation: F10 → CTLD → Vehicle Commands → Load / Extract Vehicles → [vehicle name] (requires landing; the submenu is greyed out in the air and shows "No vehicles nearby" when none are in range).

Load a vehicle (dynamic cargo)

Utility: Lets a C-130 or Il-76 swallow a vehicle through the cargo ramp the way DCS handles its own dynamic cargo — no menu click needed.

How it works: Drive the vehicle into the aircraft's cargo bay. CTLD watches the bay's bounding box; when the vehicle is inside it is loaded automatically and DCS manages the weight natively (the per-airframe count and weight limits above do not apply to this path). Unload happens the same way in reverse — the vehicle reappears on the ground when it leaves the bay.

Activation: Automatic when the vehicle enters the cargo bay. Only C-130 / Il-76-class airframes (dynamic-cargo capable) use this path; other capable transports load via the menu above.

Unload a vehicle

Utility: Sets a carried vehicle back down where you are.

How it works: For a menu-loaded vehicle, CTLD re-spawns it on the ground near the aircraft under its original name. For a dynamic-cargo vehicle, it drives back out of the bay. Either way the vehicle returns ready to be re-loaded later.

Activation: F10 → CTLD → Vehicle Commands → Unload Vehicles → [vehicle name] (requires landing; airborne with a vehicle aboard shows "Land to unload vehicles", and the submenu is hidden entirely when nothing is loaded). To drop a vehicle by air instead, see Parachute — Parachute Vehicle appears in the same menu when you are airborne with a vehicle loaded.

Pack a vehicle into crates

Utility: Turns a ground vehicle back into crates so any transport — including aircraft that cannot carry whole vehicles — can move it. This is the reverse of unpacking.

How it works: Land near a packable vehicle (within maximumDistancePackableUnitsSearch, 200 m). The vehicle is removed and its cratesRequired crates appear around you: in the front sector (±45°) for a helicopter, in the rear sector for a C-130 / Il-76. From there, move the crates by sling-load or menu and unpack them at the destination. Packing is available only when the mission enables it (enablePackingVehicles).

Activation: F10 → CTLD → Crate Commands → Pack Equipt → [vehicle name] (appears on the ground when a packable vehicle is nearby). See also Pack.

For mission makers

Which aircraft can carry whole vehicles, which vehicle types each may lift, how many at once, and their weights are all set in the aircraft capability configuration. See the crates catalogue.