• Two relatively primitive short range A2A missiles.
  
• Can be a credible threat flying Soviet style GCI intercepts from the mountains, but I wouldn't trust the AI to effectively do that.
  

• Soviet equivalent of A-10
  
• A variety of precision and non-precision A2G weapons
  
• The ability to fire anti-radiation missiles.
  

• My flight as a whole did a great job keeping formation both on each other and with Ascot.
  
• The new air battle managers were very quick to respond to my calls.
  
• The Panthers intimidated the enemy sufficiently that we didn't really have to do anything but admire the view.
  
• The last-minute decision to add wing tanks was an excellent one, single centerline would not have left sufficient margin if a scrap did occur.
  

• At one point during the flight datalink coverage was lacking, and I called for a declare ("ABM, is this guy hostile?") using Bullseye coordinates. The ABM misunderstood and looked for my callout in BRAA relative to me. While it was quickly cleared up, it did take some time to sort.
  
• When entering the clouds during landing, we were flying in too close a formation. At one point, Venom 1-2 conducted a maneuver that forced me into evasive to avoid a collision. Later review determined that we passed within 150 ft of each other. https://i.imgur.com/kExBe6m.mp4
  
• Venom 1-3 was running the majority of the flight with airbrakes out. This caused undue fuel expenditure and difficulty with formation keeping.
  
• Landing was somewhat of a clusterfuck, as there was a bit of a communication breakdown there. While I will admit there were some missed directions from the ATC within my flight, I did need to conduct some approach resolution on my own to conduct a safe landing as a result of misdirections from the ATC (the most "expedited" descent you're getting out of me in IMC is 10-15 degrees nose down in my expensive jet).
  

• During portions of the flight, we noticed our datalink dropping off for extended periods. This made it a little challenging to know where Ascot was during portions of the flight where they were below cloud cover (we chose to stay above clouds for fuel economy). Petitioning command to shore up coverage in the AOO, as if the PLA discovers this gap in radar/DL coverage, they might exploit it to slip aircraft in undetected.
  
• I would have preferred the ILS side of the runway in those conditions. While I recognize that we opted not to use it due the wind forcing wild corrections to stay on target, it would have been useful to have as a reference point before the runway was in sight.
  
• The weather. Seriously, that super secret commando team better be setting up some of those weather controlling lasers I keep reading about on the internet.
  

BurntCornMuffin fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 1, 2023

1. I played receptionist, being the guy with the bigass radio.
   
2. On getting a call, I hand off the coordinates to Davin for number crunching; As Davin had been practicing not only quickly resolving firing solutions in the leadup to this mission, but also perfected shouting "Death by Trigonometry!" as a war cry while we were all trying to sleep in the barracks, I felt he was best suited for the role.
   
3. Breaky was our triggerman - Once Davin had a firing solution, he told Breaky where to aim, and me how long the rounds would take to get there so I could pass it off to friendlies. Once it was done, Breaky was the one shooting.
   
4. Once we got a barrage off, we would pack up everything and scoot before a counterattack could be laid against us. We were especially concerned about the possibility of counterbattery radars. Breaky served as our driver during scoots and did a very good job of keeping us mobile.
   

• No losses
  
• Extremely accurate fires were delivered, both thanks to RECCE's talking us onto target but also thanks to the team working together to navigate and math accurately, which produced pretty drat accurate firing solutions for lacking any kind of computer to do the job, and lacking any sort of gps: we did all this poo poo by hand and kicked rear end at it. (We managed a dead-on hit on our first try during one of the firing missions, which is legitimately impressive).
  
• We were very mobile and committing to moving after every fire mission. This worked well for keeping us out of trouble, as while no counterbattery fire ever happened, I did learn later on that our prior firing positions were being raided long after we vacated them.
  

• We did get shot at by a helicopter. While the damage to the truck was superficial, it did render us a bit paranoid for the next few firing positions, as I had mistaken it for small arms fire and thought a squad was actively chasing us.
  
• We were not always available when a fire mission was requested as a side effect of our commitment to move after each salvo. This also meant we could not prosecute a reattack as we didn't wait for our shots to even land before packing it up. This helped keep us alive, however, so it was a bit of a tradeoff.
  
• We could have positioned closer. As positioned, our shots were taking an average of 35 seconds to reach targets, which was not quite timely enough in situations when the target was already in contact with machine gunners. Alternatively, some fire deconfliction decisions could have been made at the command level, as I am of the understanding that a lot of the time we attacked the same targets that machine gunners did, and their rounds tended to hit first.
  

• A standardized comms plan for artillery requests and also for artillery teams is a must. While ours wasn't standardized, I did walk everyone through their job and got some test fires out in the warmups, and everyone knew what their responsibilities were. This helped produce accurate fire, as well as quick getaways after we fired.
  
• Mortars are a better weapon to employ prior to a ground assault, rather than as a reaction to one.
  
• Map markers are useful for communicating desired targets, but you need to pick one with an actual center so we can place a shot accurately. Luckily, outside of one incident, RECCE was generally careful to use map markers that fit the description.
  

• Picked up targets quickly and engaged successfully.
  
• Nobody died, everyone landed successfully.
  
• Once a fallback course of action was decided after the loss of Venom, we executed it well.
  

• The conversation while deciding whether or not to proceed with the mission could have been resolved more quickly with greater brevity.
  
• "Technical Issues" (framerate issues) knocked out a third of my flight.
  

BurntCornMuffin fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jan 20, 2024

BurntCornMuffin fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jan 10, 2024