Your enemy is based at Red Base, and your mission is to close the base. You know the Red side has the following available:

- Bn of SA-10b, S-300PM. This is not the deadliest SAM system you will encounter but it's close! If it sees you, things will get ugly fast.
- 2x Tipsy 75 3D Long Range air search radars. Quite good and hard to hide from.
- A squadron of 12 Eurofighter Typhoons! It's laundry day at Red Base so it will take them an hour to get ready. You will want to have the base closed by then or your day will go from bad to worse!
- You also know that you don't know everything about the enemy.

The terrain is fairly interesting, you're in southern Algeria in the area of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park and these are the Hoggar Mountains. It looks like a spectacular place to visit, but in the interest of game play I've plotted a couple geological markers with some easy to reference names.

- Big Ridge: Runs east to west, about 45nm long, about 25-35nm south of the base at an Alt of 3-4000ft, or 15-2500ft above the objective.
- Small Ridge: Runs parallel to Big Ridge, about the same dimensions and forms a neat little valley between them.
- Highway: A nice and quite obvious low-level approach, if I was an air-defender (Just to clarify, I'm not. I'm a Mud Gunner and work for a living, not like those floppy Bird Gunners who hang around waiting for the bad guys all day.), that valley lights up like the Las Vegas Strip with a big Neon sign Aircraft this Way with arrows.
- Side road: Another nice low-level approach, less obvious so possibly not as well defended or maybe it is...
- Big Flat Flank: As the name says. You could use some standoff weapons from below the ridge to the south, but range is getting to be an issue.
- Sandy Flank: The ridge offers some nice cover but is good 50nm from the target, so this is nice but will take a bit of coordination because once you cross the ridge, he sees you.
- The Back Door: Billiard Table anyone? Flat is not good if you're trying to hide from an SA-10.

Your Forces are modern Chinese aircraft and weapons. There is a good mix of capabilities but as any, they have limitations:

- A-50 Mainring: Based on the Soviet/Russian Mainstay. This is the Russian/Chinese version of the American E-3 AWACS, and quite comparable. In all situations put him on a "Support" mission in a safe area. In this case you should turn the radars "ON", as it is quite a permissive area, for now. He will let you know when that SA-10 is getting angry.
- CSA-003 Diamond Twin Star: This is a small commercial aircraft which has been turned into an electronic sponge. Put it on a support mission, leave the radars "OFF", its strength is the 500nm ESM range. With an asset like this, try and put it in an area opposite your AWACS so that your suspected target, the AWACS and the ESM aircraft form a triangle. This is called Triangulation and hopefully the sensors on the two aircraft will pinpoint the enemy emitter quicker this way.
- Y-9G Cub: This is a powerful Electronic Warfare aircraft based on the Russian An-12 Cub. For those of you familiar with the venerable C-130 Hercules, the An-12 is slightly larger and more robust, picture that stuffed with electronics and antennae! This aircraft should be able to jam most radars but as discussed in the last tutorial, nothing is a sure thing. Because the Y-9G is not agile, it needs to be kept safe, it is an area jammer. Keep it high and as close to the battle as possible with OECM "ON". Once you pinpoint the SA-10 you should get a good idea of the range of its missiles, try to keep this guy just outside of that. Another point is that his ELINT suite is 20 years newer than the Twin Star, so you can use that to your advantage in triangulating as well.
- JZ-8F Finback: You have two of these older aircraft which have the advantage of being able to fly quite high, not high enough to escape the SA-10 however, so save these until after that is disabled.
- H-6K Badger [God of War]: These are heavy units that you would not normally see on a mission like this, but it's a tutorial so we should introduce heavy bombers. The YJ-63 Cruise missiles it carries are reasonably capable, slow like most cruise missiles (520knts) it is terrain following which is good and has a decent warhead and a good PK (probably Hit). Use them properly, however, or they will be wasted. These bombers are the variables in the three scenario runs we'll discuss later.
- J-11BS Flanker: These twin seat Flanker copies are ideal for the complicated task of SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense). For this role they are equipped with the AS-17 Krypton, not as accurate as the American AGM-88 HARM but it has a heavier warhead.
- J-16 Flying Shark: Another spin-off of the Su-27 Flanker, this one has some rather interesting standoff weapons such as the LS-6 GPS guided glide bomb.
- Q-5D Fantan: Very loosely based on the MiG-19, the D variant is a much more modern aircraft than that heritage would suggest. Their job today is to close the runways with the Durandal copies, the Type 200-4 bombs. There are some laser guided bombs as well but I wouldn't use them until that SA-10 is dealt with.

Scenario Run-through #1

This won't take long. Simply launch your 4 Badgers, fling your cruise missiles at the base and see what happens. You could try plotting courses for your missiles to see if that helps.

You will probably note that of the 16 missiles, one or two will hit the base. You will probably also note that many of the SA-10 missiles go blind and lose track. This is because the YJ-63 has the ability to terrain follow, an excellent advantage which many older cruise missiles don't have.

All in all, the attack is likely to be a failure. Cruise missiles on their own will have a very difficult time inflicting significant damage on a target unless you have enough to saturate all defenses and hit hard. In this case you would need at least 4 times as many missiles as you have.

Now reload the scenario and let's do this properly!

Scenario Run-through #2

In this run we will use all the aircraft, and just for sport, we won't use missions for the attack. Feel free to set up missions for your AWACS, ESM and EW aircraft, then launch the rest in groups. You've got plenty of fuel so no harm in having aircraft loiter a bit. I won't talk you through every move, there are just too many options but will suggest the following:

- Lead with your J-16s in two groups, accompanied by the J-11s, also in two groups. Stay low.
- Put your Badgers off to one or both flanks, consider them your snipers.
- Have your recon aircraft handy and your Q-5's safe.
- Lob a couple glide bombs over the ridge, you'll have to climb to do this so be ready to evade.
- When the SA-10 lights up its radar to engage the glide bombs, launch the Kryptons and I mean about 1/2 to 3/4 of your AS-17s from at least two directions. Make sure the Cub is jamming and close.
- Once the Kryptons are about 1/2 way to the target, throw in a couple Cruise missiles for good measure.
- If you have a chance shut down the Tipsy-75's with your remaining Kryptons but keep at least two just in case the SA-10 fires up again.
- Once the SA-10 has been hit there is a good chance the radar is down, test with another glide bomb. Keep hitting the SA-10, if it is not disabled you will take too many casualties on the attack and your mission will fail.
- Now it is time for recon, remember what I said about air defenses layers. Just because the SA-10 is down doesn't make the base defenseless. When you find things plink them with glide bombs or even cruise missiles.
- Once you're confident that the defenses are suppressed, go in with the Q-5s and close the runways. Laser guided bombs will be good to kill aircraft on the ground: 500lb bomb for a $150-million-dollar aircraft is good trade-off.
- Job done!

Now reload the game and let's do this with a bit of a challenge!

Scenario Run-through #3

Now it is very unlikely that you will have strategic bombers along for a tactical strike like this, so do the same again but leave the bombers parked.