I'm playing a campaign in the Balkans and still learning a ton about the different missions.

My question relates to a mission I just flew. It was an escort for a SEAD package. I hit my steer-points near the target area, plus or minus a few minutes, didn't see too many bogeys, and headed for home. After I landed, I got court-martialed for "dereliction of duties". Upon reading my debrief, it turns out the SEAD guys never even got to the target. I know for certain they weren't shot down. What is going on? Am I supposed to somehow "link up" with them at one of the steerpoints? If so, how do you do it?

Thanks

Most likely a "dereliction of duty" wasn't due to improper flight management, rather a friendly fire and/or destruction of military property issue. Check your debrief folder for the event list on this flight and verify what your missiles hit, or see if your aircraft collided with anything.

Mission failure is precisely that, the debrief will read mission failed or partial success, but a courts martial is highly unlikely. These usually stem from another issue, such as mentioned above.

You were on 'escort', not TARCAP of SEAD package.
It means, in reality, you need to have a full and thorough SA on the package you are to escort throughout the entire mission till you reach the STP on which you are supposed to break away from the package.

Check your pre-flight briefing carefully.
Read through your mission objective (apart from protecting the SEAD team) and reconfirm your given ordnance meets the needs.
Check all the available intel from the mission briefing for the possible threats on/around the waypoints for the entire strike package.
Find out which AFB the SEAD package is taking off from and when.
Have either visual (largely for the simple fun of it) or HSD data link identification (in case of OF) of the package when you reach the rendezvous STP and keep the rough idea on their whereabouts in relation to your position as you progress referring RWR.
Listen to the SEAD flights' radio communication carefully and if you are on surface to air threats pre-emptive escort (SEAD escort, to be precise), make sure your flight do your job before the SEAD team enters the threat range.
When you reach the target STP, don't just turn to the next STP but stay on alert, listening to the radio, checking the radar and AWACS for any hostile aircraft till the SEAD package break away from the target and start heading home.

There may be many more things you can do to enjoy and immerse into the dynamic campaign Falcon offers but for now it's about what I can think of.

I concur with Shadowman. The only courts martial I've seen in F4 are for blue on blue incidents. Since you are playing in the Balkans, be aware that friendly and neutral nations may be flying aircraft that are traditionally red, such as MiG-21s, Su-27s and the like. It's almost certain you hit a friendly or neutral.

Thanks for the answers, guys. Upon further inspection of the debrief, I did damage a friendly MiG-21 (it was a Mig, ya know?).