Your job today is to neutralize the Diori Hamani International Airport, 300 miles to the Southwest of your base. You have reliable intelligence that the base's fuel system is contaminated, and it will be unlikely that the regiment of MiG-23s stationed there will fly today.

First let's examine your assets, you have 24 aircraft, so this is starting to get complicated:

12x F/A-18C: Very nice but as with all multi-role aircraft, they are good at several jobs but not great at any of them.

Although it, as does the F-16, have a wide range of munitions its bombload and range are limited, in fact you may need to jettison ordnance to get home if you're coming in heavy:

No.

Load

Range

Wpns

Ideal For

Remarks

2

GBU-24B (2K lb)

420nm

2

Penetration heavy damage

LGB, 12Kft

2

HARM/CBU

280nm

2+2

SEAD, Follow up

Range!

4

SLAM

360nm

2

Standoff strike

SLAM is slow

2

Maverick

450nm

2

Sniping at surprises

Low damage

2

CBU

420nm

2

A/C on the ground

Not PG

You can see that range is an issue for at least 2 of the loadouts and the weapon load is generally 2 of each type per aircraft.

8x A-6E: Look at that bomb load, but this bomb truck is slow by today's standards, sub sonic maxing out at 520knts, oh and no A2A weapons! This aircraft does only one thing, bomb stuff.

No.

Load

Range

Wpns

Ideal For

Remarks

2

GBU-24B (2K lb)

650nm

4

Penetration heavy damage

LGB, 12Kft

4

Mk 82 Snakeeye

450nm

28!

Plastering stuff with bombs

Low level

2

Skipper

725nm

4

Sniping at surprises with a kick

LGB, 12Kft

The A-6E can go a lot further than the F/-18 but can't defend itself when it gets there. Carries at least twice the bombload as the Hornet and when you talk about dumb bombs, that equates to half of a B-52 load of bombs!

2x F-14B: The Tomcat is meant to be an A2A fighter but in an effort to extend its usefulness into the post-Cold War era, attempts were made to make it more versatile. Arguably the most successful divergence was in the Reconnaissance role where the addition of the TARPS (Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System) pod. Since there is no air opposition today, the rest of the F-14 Squadron is taking a break and these two will do your reconnaissance tasks.

2x EA-6B: Using a larger version of the A-6 airframe, this tool is designed for one thing, defeating enemy radars. The two ways it does this are with its ECM pods and with HARM missiles. Very handy in a fight but the long range comes at the expense of speed and defense.

Let's see what the enemy has:

Radars: There are two Big Back long-range 3D installations. It's very convenient that they are both radiating for you to find them, that won't happen often. Big Back is the NATO reporting name, there is a naming system, but I have no idea where they come up with some of them. Long range is self-explanatory, and the white ring shows you an approximation of the coverage. 3D means that the system tracks range and azimuth (bearing) as all 2D radars do but also altitude. If you want more information, go here.

Consider how you would kill a radar. A HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missile) will do the trick but this is a very good weapon, and you only have 6 of them. Take a look at the photo, or just the DB is you don't have the photo pack added. With 1 damage point and looking that flimsy, you could probably disable it with a pointy stick! Save your HARMs for something a little trickier. A cluster bomb would do quite nicely.

SAMs: Surface to Air Missiles. We've run into these before but there are dozens of different systems out there. You need to understand the ones you're facing and a bit of the doctrine behind what they are doing.

First, understand the missile, here is some background on Soviet/Russian SAM development.

You're facing an SA-2f, that's the NATO term. S-75M if you go by the Russian term. It's old technology but the comment 'responsible for the downing of more American aircraft than any missile in history' should grab your attention. You can defeat it, avoid it and probably spoof it but you can't ignore it! If you recall in Tutorial 2 we stayed under its engagement envelope, unfortunately you have some LGBs (Laser Guided Bombs) which will force you up into its engagement envelope. Remember what the number to the upper left of the unit represents, 11 in this case? The number of elements in that unit, checking the DB; it has 6x Launchers, 3x MANPADS (more on that later but scrub going in low), and 2x Radars, remember those HARMs we saved!

Second, understand what the unit is doing, in this case defending the target you are going after so no luck avoiding it. Remember that a SAM is an Air Defense (AD) system, it is there to defend things, not attack things. It achieves its objective if you simply avoid what it is defending, often however, you're attacking something else and you can simply fly around defenses if they are not oriented on your objective.

Third, understand the system. Except in certain budget strapped militaries (usually western nations who love to learn lessons over again), AD systems are just that, systems. Radars are part of it, fighter aircraft are part of it, and SAMs are part of it. But not just one SAM. Layers of SAMs. Not all fixed (like the SA-2's) but mobile. Different categories are:

It is likely that there are some SHORAD and perhaps some VSHORAD providing the layering of an AD system.

Now you can look at the target, its an airbase and you've already attacked one of those, so nothing special about that. Some points to note however:

You should make your own plan, try different things, and run the scenario several times. To challenge yourself try and keep all aircraft within the borders of Niger at all times.

If you're struggling, what follows is a plan but there are many ways of doing this:

Enjoy. There will be a few messages along the way.