Comment - In my years of "playing" with the strikefighters series , no single mission has given so much adrenaline, tension, and satisfaction as what i'm about to descibe. This mission was created by the game, not through the mission editor.

Mission briefing - A russian surface group has been detected to our north east with the Kiev supplying air support. Our brief is to take out the Kiev by overwelming force. Committed to this mission is our full squadron of 12 A7's with top cover of 8 phantoms and another 4 A7's from our sister squadron to use air defense supression. So thats a full 24 plane strike package.


Teamed up ready to launch


Forming up


A world of pain heading for IVAN


The target, the Kiev in the background. We have been spotted on the radar, as she scrambles her fighters to meet us.


The Phantoms surge ahead to engage. They are on a suicide mission as to get within range of the fighters, they will be within the frigate and destroyer picket missile range.


The enemy fighters. Not a match for the Phantoms


As the phantoms start their kills, the first ship launches start and in the radio we hear the last seconds of a good man's life

Our 12 A7s configure to hit the Kiev in a narrow launch box at staggered altitude. Recorded next is the view from the cockpit, over just a few seconds as we approach the Kiev, and the first hits take place. Note the AA, missiles and exploding aircraft as we ingress to target. My Walleyes just miss but I would expect the blast to have caused structural damage. By the time I hit, the flight deck and bridge is already ablaze.
Finally as we climb away , there are only 5 of us left. However we sank the Kiev, and 2 frigates are burning from missile strikes.








In the last 2 shots, you can see my wingman get hit by either AAA or a missile. We probably pulled off target too straight and high. I was too busy mesmerised by all the metal and fire flying through the sky.

Appendum: Whilst there are a few bugs in the release, none of them are game breakers to me and TK always has pride in his product and support.

The positives - This feels like Naval combat, Whether it is I wouldn't have a clue as though my grandfather was a Navy man, and I grew up visiting Portsmouth regularly , I have no experience what so ever. It just feels right. It merged perfectly with all the other Strikefighters 2 products ( I have them all).The plane set and some new weapons and a new theatre is definitely worth the starting price. I can see a mod or DLC that features conflict off the coast of Norway. It could include the RN.
The bugs so far that I have noticed ( others have already reported on TK's site) - The 1st mission of A7 campaign and the takeoff crash - the workaround is just for that mission, start in the air. I'm sure it will be fixed soon. When flying, and call up the map, whilst the flightpath, targets and aircraft are there, the rest of the map is black. Not a game breaker.

Excellent AAR and screenshots! Looks like a very hostile environment.

Might be worth buying once the bugs are ironed out.

Thanks for the AAR and H/U!

I gotta ask, how is the carrier landing? More realistic than SF2V?

Thanks for the AAR, digger. Can't wait to get my feet wet in the campaign.

Great AAR! Thanks!

Lovely job - despite a few bugs its a great game this one!

I thought I would replay this mission to see what "randomness" takes place between each iteration.

Well I can tell you - Wow.

Firstly the mission package was the same except our fighter escorts were 4 Tomcats. More of that later.

So 12 A7E's for the Ship strike, but only 4 A7E's for SEAD.


flight deck getting ready


This guy was out there trying to find our fleet at the same time our recon. had found the Kiev



At the same time , radio comms from the mainalnd indicated that seaborne russian fighters were patrolling over the south of Iceland.
This turned out to be a blessing as our SEAD package in the previous mission played had been "bounced" at their lauch point and
though the phantoms had fought them off, the strike had been ineffectual.

We felt very confident, with this news, and Tomcats as Air Cover.



Adversaries over Iceland





Our Tomcat top cover, they received the AWACs call that the Kiev was launching fighters so they hit the gas a pushed forward.

As the Tomcats engaged the russian fighters, the SEAD strike commenced launching unapposed.


first salvo of radar suppression missiles from SEAD team

As the missiles launch we turn into the final run in

The second salvo of missiles, we are on our own now.



These shots show some of the damage from the missile launches. This first shot shows a frigate in the background burning
( also the smoke trail in the sky of a downed russian fighter from a hit by a Tomcat). The second shot shows a Sam launcher disabled.


My arrival over the fleet

I'm dead, whilst the missile launches seemed to much less that the previous mission ( only about 30%)
due to the great success of the SEAD team, I got unlucky. I'm now a spectator to what happened next


hits, near misses and fires on a destroyer and frigate

Here you can see in the bottom right corner, a ship has exploded and sank with just the oil slick left.
Note also the smoke trail and splash of an A7 hitting the water


The Kiev takes a massive hit

As the kiev starts to slow, smoke and settle, a frigate on its starboard side takes a direct hit and explodes.
The frigate sailing ahead of the Kiev doesnt have long to live


The whole Fleet has been decimated. So why the different result.

1/ The Kiev was only able to deploy a few fighters as the rest were off on other missions.
2/ The Tomcats were able to keep the fighters off our SEAD strike
3/ All 4 A7s were able to fire all their missiles in 2 salvos of 8. That had to hurt. ( Note I saw no evidence of these missiles "sinking" any ship , just fires on radar systems and missile systems)
4/ Much less Sam launches due to this success so our losses ( 4 of) were over the fleet often after bomb launch
5/ As each ship was hit there is a dramatic reduction in AAA and SAMs so 3 of the 4 losses ( including myself) were as we just hit the fleet

So the "scoreboard" was 4 A7's from the strike group lost, 1 SEAD A7 from a SAM from the fleet

The russians lost most if not all of the fleet , I could see 1 destroyer limping away but looked terminal, all of the launched fighters to the Tomcats ( I think only 4 launched but not sure)

Total Victory and played out very differently to the first time











The 4 SEAD package left first, so as to strike before we arrived over target

Man that looks like a nice addition to the flight sim catalog in the house. Time to build the Tomcat pit that I have always wanted to build????

Having played this out twice, I was interested to see what happens if I play the mission as air defence suppression.

Again, the resources devoted to the mission varied. This time the computer went for Air Superiority Overkill, 4 F14s plus 8 Phantoms to escort the strike package.


The strike package was made up of a full squadron of Crusaders but they were using "dumb" bombs rather than guided munitions so this could get nasty.
Our SEAD mission was to fly ahead of the main strike package and take out the air defenses. I just had my wingman with me.
I could have edited the mission to bring more but this would identify the variables in the importnace of ship missile defense so decided to go as is.


The strike package formed up

my wingman and I

the F14s

The phantoms


Now the key to the air defence of the Kiev is the air defence destroyer, sitting behind the Kiev.
The last time I had flown the mission ,its systems had been overwelmed by the Shrikes but as there were just 2 of us,
the result may well be different




As we got within range the Kiev started to launch SAMs, a gunfight between us


We fired off all the shrikes, dumped chaff and got the hell out of there.


It seemed that we scored multiple hits on the Kiev, but the AA destroyer was in full working oder.
Note in the first screenshot, you can even see the reflection of a SAM trail in the water





so the crusaders turned into attack unaware that they were heading for trouble



The following are a set of screenshots as they arrive over the fleet. A combination of a fully functional AA destroyer,
and the difficulty of putting unguided munitions onto targets such as a ship from altitiude under fire leads to a turkey shoot








What I found interesting is this. Most of the shrikes homed in on the Kiev. I could understand if they were exocets or harpoons as its size
would confuse the targeting much like the Atlantic Conveyor did in the South Atlantic. Does the Kiev have a broader or longer range air defense radar profile,
thats something I dont know or was it my targeting skills or lack of it.

Even with the strike package arriving together over the fleet, with multiple misses by the dunb bombs,
the fire intensity of SAMs and AAA never diminishes as ships remained capable of fighting.

I then started thinking of the bravery of the Argentinian skyhawk pilots and understand why they flew so low, it was a catch 22 as the bombs had no time to arm ,
but if they had come in higher, they were exposed to much more intense fire and the accuracy of the weapons diminish.
My understanding is most were lost pulling off target or engaged by the harriers as they rushed for home.

So have flown the mission 3 times and 3 different results.