Dodging lock-on missiles: flares, altitude and tone

Two things are trying to lock you, know which

Lock-on damage in a helicopter comes from one of two sources. The Talon is a SAM site that only gets built on a base, and needs a player sitting in the seat working the lock manually. The Verba does the same job from the ground on foot: a portable launcher a single player can carry and fire without any base or emplacement at all. Neither cares whether you can see them; both only care whether you are above the altitude where locking on is possible.

Layering base air defence: A castle without borders →

Thirty AGL is the line, and you cannot live there

Above 30 AGL (height above the ground directly beneath you, not sea level) a Talon or a Verba can get a lock. At or below it, they cannot, full stop. That does not mean flying the whole match at 30 AGL: trees, ridgelines and buildings make holding exactly that number impractical for more than a few seconds at a time, so most flying happens somewhere around 40 to 60 AGL instead, dipping toward 30 only when a threat is actually working on you.

Helicopter flight basics →

Two tones, two different messages, one decision

The intermittent beep beep beep means someone has started tracking you; it is a warning, not yet a hit. If you dip below 30 AGL and that tone drops out, you are already safe and no flare is needed. If instead it turns into a steady, continuous tone that carries on even after you have dipped under 30, that is confirmation a missile is actually in the air and flying at you. At that point give it roughly half a second to a second, then pop the flare. Treat the flare as an on-demand shield rather than something to spend the moment you hear the first beep: a missile already inbound is what it is built to stop, and firing early just leaves you without one for the next threat.

Know what you are carrying before you need it

Flares sit under the ammo menu's countermeasures tab, which is the only tab available on a helicopter with no guns of its own, such as the transport-configured Little Bird in this build. Stock and cost vary by airframe and by patch: at time of writing the Little Bird carries up to 9 flares and the Lakota up to 20, with a real in-game cost per flare rather than the free-looking placeholder some menus show. Check your own build's numbers before you fly a route that assumes a specific count; a helicopter that has already burned its flares on the way in has none left for the flight home.