Our second mission in the Cuba Libre campaign has us flying out to the western region of the known enemy locations. Keep in mind the dark shading on the map represents the “fog of war” areas where enemy locations and strengths are unknown. The mission is a straight forward interdiction mission against enemy armor.
Again, we’ll go for a heavy load of Hellfires. As ricnunes indicated, the campaign is set up to give the immediate advantage to the RED side, but BLUE has the advantage of resupply whereas all the pieces RED has to play are already on the map (hidden or otherwise). So interdiction and rapid decimation of RED forces is the best strategy. I’m also hoping to push out a buffer zone around our base at Guantanamo Bay because I’m not sure how effective enemy artillery might be at hitting our own equipment.
One of our resupply drops is over the base…
We take off and head northwest toward the target area…
Approaching from the south we creep up on the enemy armor and do a few quick sweeps with the FCR to pin down their location. I seem to remember that using the FCR too much can attract enemy counter-air, so I try to keep the FCR use to a minimum.
Hellfire away!
I hit a few vehicles but a couple are being obscured by the terrain slanting down toward the river behind them…
Though there is still a couple vehicles left we are credited with a mission success already, but we aren’t done blowing stuff up yet…
We break off to the west to come around from a different direction which should give us a good look at the vehicles we don’t have line of sight on…
With the all of the enemy armor destroyed I decide we should take advantage of being out on the western flank with a load of Hellfires. I set a new steerpoint by moving waypoint “F” to some high ground west of another known enemy location.
As we climb to the high point the weather started turning a bit ugly as visibility dropped and it started raining. (You can’t beat EECH for environmental moodiness!)
At the crest of the hill I select the “HIGH” threat priority and flip the FCR on for a few sweeps revealing some SA-13 vehicles below…
In EECH you spend a lot of time flipping back and forth between the map, which can give you some clues to what is going on around you. On one such flip, I see the symbol for enemy air behind us. With an enemy map refresh rate of 120 seconds, there is no telling how long or where the contact is at the moment. To make sure, I turn the FCR on air-to-air mode for a full sweep but no contacts appear…
After destroying the SA-13 vehicles there are no more targets, so they were just picket vehicles for air defense unassociated with other armor. I still have a few Hellfire missiles and my wingman has a full load, so we elect to push further east and tackle the three known enemy locations north of Guantanamo…
With a little terrain between us and the targets, I switch to the higher profile LOAL Hellfire mode which arcs the missile up into a higher flight path…
To this point, I’ve been swamped with re-learning the EECH commands and
HOTAS, so I haven’t paid much attention to my wingmen AI. With us in a pretty good position, I elect to use up some of my wingman’s Hellfires and direct him on to targets. The AI works pretty good if you keep a tight leash on them and direct their fire specifically…
Once we knock out all of the enemy locations, I decide to call it a day and we head south for home base. On the way though, I can’t help but see that now the enemy airbase north of Guantanamo is undefended, so I elect to go take a peek. I set the FCR priority to LOW and we proceed toward the base…
The airbase is definitely abandoned. I hadn’t thought about it until I started writing up the AAR, but I had neglected to remember ricnunes had somehow put all of the RED units on the map, which meant somehow he was able to disable the vehicle generator buildings that usually re-supply forces. (Those familiar with EECH will be familiar with the vehicle, helo, and aircraft generator buildings and their importance to the EECH campaign.)
I find and target the generator buildings and hand off those targets to my wingman since he has Hellfires and all I have left is cannon. Watching his missile trails streaking across the field in front of me is pretty cool…
I use my gun against some of the support vehicles..
I can’t remember if that is a vehicle generator or helo generator…
We do some damage but we don’t linger in the area for too long. I order my wingman to rejoin and we head south toward home…
Suddenly my ASE (Aircraft Survivability Equipment) shows what every EECH pilot dreads – fighters! Oh crap…
I kill the FCR and instead of turning to engage with our Stingers I elect to dump the nose, get in the weeds, and buster to the south, hoping to get under the umbrella of anti-air by BLUE forces at our base. I pop a continuous stream of flares and chaff…
As we cross the base fence I see a campaign update message that indicates the MiG-29s wandered a bit too close to our base…
One of our own vehicle generator buildings – pumping out replacement vehicles. This is the advantage that BLUE has in this campaign as ricnunes has indicated…
Back at base safe and sound. No matter what sim you fly, if you fly helicopters, you are familiar with that dull ache between your shoulder blades after a long mission. The attention and constant vigilance required to fly helos is why I enjoy them so much in PC flight sims. Embrace the burn!!
As I shut down I can see BLUE units are pushing north beyond the gates of our base to establish positions in enemy territory…
I don’t know if it will be available next, but I suspect my next mission I might chose would be a recon of the airbase so that the campaign will generate an insertion mission as well. I’m not up on any recent campaign logic changes that have been made (if any), but I wonder if I should have left the base untouched and not destroyed the generator buildings in case we can use them in the event we take over the base (?).
Another really fun mission with the new and improved EECH. I’m already looking forward to flying the next mission and driving that wedge deeper into RED territory…
BeachAV8R
