No screens at this time. I couldn't connect to SimHQ this morning to upload pics before leaving for work, which is where I write this stuff.

The campaign has just about reached day 3, and Blue continues the advance. I expect that the Chinese, who have been using strong rhetoric condemning NATO's involvement in what they call a local dispute, will likley intervene shortly.

On the plus side, the navy has shown up, with the USS Carl Vinson's battle group in the Sea of Japan. A Nimitz-class supercarrier, it houses several F/A-18 squadrons, some Prowlers and Hawkeyes. A welcome boost, and helps to balance our deployment, since we had virtually nothing on the east coast aside from some F-5s at Kangnung. I wish we could transfer squadrons to different bases in this campaign. Edit: See Schnidrman's following post for the solution to this.

I have a nice shot of the aircraft force levels showing Red completely smashed. The 'fight them in the air' strategy has certainly paid dividends. A Chinese entry will give them a much-needed shot in the arm.

Here's another example of something I did with manual tasking. After taking Kaesong, I turned on all of the PAKS south of Pyongyang to begin targeting things in that area. To prep the area for all the strikers that would eventually start arriving, I fragged out an extensive DEAD effort. Using F-16s I set up individual two-ship DEAD strikes at every known SAM battery south of Pyongyang. The leader of each two-ship was loaded with four slammers and two HARMs. Each Wingman got two slammers, two heaters and six Mav-Ds. All aircraft got two bags of gas.

At this stage, late day two in RF, Blue has nine Viper squadrons. Five Block 52s, three 40s and one 32. So plenty of them to play around with. 32s cannot carry HARMs so those were used as the CAP'ers. They are excellent in air-to-air, even if restricted to slammer-Bs and no 9X's. The 52s and 40s were the strikers.

All missions times were set to 'roll up' the SAMs. That is, the closest SAM sites were targeted first. Then the rest were staggered so that the following F-16s would arrive just as the first SAMS were being hit. We're talking just minutes here, but failing to do this means that any ships you are sending against the 'deeper' sites would have to fly through the engagement zones of the closer SAM batteries, so some co-ordination is required to prevent unnecessary losses. If you set all of these missions with identical ToTs the deep guys will overfly the close sites before they've been taken out.

Each flight path was tweaked. One thing you need to be careful of with SEAD and DEAD strikes (and naval strikes too) is that oftentimes the program will set the IP for these missions too close to the target. 10 miles is common. The AI will wait until they have reached the IP before attacking. Too-close IPs therefore negate the standoff capability of the HARM. And this is also true in naval strikes using weapons like Harpoon. It's true essentially with any mission that is using any type of weapon with standoff capability. So it's always worth it to check the IPs on these missions and adjust as necessary. I will usually drag the IP to about 30 miles. The leader gets his HARMs off taking out the radar, and the wingman swoops in to fire his rifles at the launchers. Very effective.

In addition, CAPs were set up along the ingress/egress routes. They would clear the tails of any strikers that came off target with a threat trailing. Following a few minutes behind this DEAD effort were several facility strikes using guided munitions. Factories, supply points, nuclear plants etc. I fragged myself a DEAD mission and took out two Fan Songs on the southeast side of P'Yang. Some Fulcrums came up to play but we dealt with them. Fulcrum-A's aren't much threat at BVR ranges.

In all, ten SAM sites were shut down. This clears that space for ATO-fragged follow-on missions to this area. I spent about twenty minutes setting it all up. Well worth the effort as any Blue aircraft flying south of P'Yang will now be far safer.

Missions like this are so much fun to be a part of. Switch to proximity channel in the target area and listen to all of the aircraft you fragged as they go through the paces. Magnum calls in succession, followed shortly by the rifles. The CAP engaging threats and keeping you informed of where the bad guys are. Turn for home just as Paveway calls are made as the facility strikers start dropping. Everyone fences out in short order through the CAP. Only drawback is some possible congestion in the ATC flow back at base.