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.

- Good at Air to Air (A2A) but not as good as an F-15C or a Su-27.
- Good at Air to Ground (A2G) but not as good as an A-6E or Tornado.
- Good at SEAD but not as good as an EA-6B or Tornado ECR.

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:

- THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense): This is Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense.
- HIMAD (High to Medium Air Defense): Stuff that makes you fly low to avoid like SA-2, SA-10/20, Patriot, HAWK, etc.
- SHORAD (Short Range Air Defense): Stuff that makes you fly high to avoid like SA-8, Crotale, Rapier, etc.
- VSHORAD (Very Short-Range Air Defense): Stuff to cover specific approaches or targets like most MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense System), AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery), etc.

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:

- Two runways are hard to completely shut down.
- Only one ammo facility, that's a vulnerability.
- Only two access points, another vulnerability.
- Lots of parking and hangers for those MiG-23s.

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:

- Launch your 2x F/A-18 with the HARM CBU load. Drop the CBUs on the radars and launch the HARMS at the SA-2s.
- Launch the 2x EA-6b at the same time and follow up with OECM ON and put their HARMs into the SA-2s as well. Keep them around with their jammers on though.
- Launch your 4x F/A-18 with SLAMs to follow up the HARM attacks on the SA-2s. By now the SA-2 will be badly reduced or even eliminated. Without radars they can still launch but with much less effectiveness. You may need to do some SAM dodging later if you're unlucky.
- Your 2x F/A-18 with Maverick and 2x A-6B with Skipper should linger a few miles from the base as 1 of your F-14 TARPs. Once you find any surprises that might be waiting for you, you can sort them out.
- For the Airbase itself, it is probably best to set up missions, keep them inactive until you want to use them. Timing is less critical because you know they aircraft there are grounded, but you can practice your timing by getting the first strike (probably GBU-24s to close the runway access) over the target moments after the last of the VSHORAD is removed.

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