Red has been constructing a nuclear reactor and it must be destroyed! 8 F-16s and 8 F-15s will fly a low level route below 6,000ft ASL across the Gulf to strike at the reactor facility. The four main facility structures must be destroyed before Red can begin production of nuclear weapons! Unfortunately, this mission must be conducted in secrecy; if any aircraft flies above 6,000ft ASL before the reactor is destroyed, Red forces will be alerted and neutral forces will deem you hostile and engage.
Notes
This is a cooperative/PvE mission intended for up to 16 players. There are 32 slots however, if you decide you want to totally dominate the map! It’s ridiculously simple and not a real challenge unless you violate the altitude limit or shoot at neutral aircraft. There are 8xF-16C, 8xF-15C, 8xF/A-18C, and 8xF-14B slots available. However, weapons are severely restricted to early 80s era equipment, leaving mostly dumb bombs with very few smart munitions available – and no targeting pods! This mission is primarily an exercise in fuel management for the F-16 and will take up to two hours to complete, depending on player count and strategy. If you’d prefer the F-15C, F/A-18C, or F-14B, feel free to give those a try!
Thought I’d update this one since there’s been a few changes to the game since I made it.
Scenario changes:
Added an AI flight option – you can request an AI flight to help you with the objective; four F-15Cs and F-16Cs will attempt to carry out the mission once any player takes off. If any player takes off before this option is utilized, it won’t be available afterward.
Warehouse restricted weapons changed due to unreliability of it and how updates break it; a script based solution has been implemented instead. Don’t try to take off with prohibited weapons!
F-16C loadout changed to have three drop tanks instead of two, so now you have more room to get to the target and back.
As the dreaded Shiraz-Kerman-Lar uncontrolled explodey AI bug has been fixed as of the most recent update, I updated this one to reflect a few changes over the past few months.
Changes:
F-16C skins changed to the new IAF defaults available, so user skins are no longer required for those (still recommended for the F-14B IRIAF Asia Minor skin).
AI fighter groups reset for engage in zone to avoid a few persnickety issues of them going way over yonder to attack helicopters.
Modified script based weapon restrictions to be more streamlined and better multiplayer compatibility.
An interesting little trivia from the real raid…evidently King Hussein of Jordan was spending some relaxation time on the Royal Yacht when the IAF strikers came screaming by at low altitude. He tried to call Saddam Hussein in Iraq to warn him, but couldn’t get through…oh well.
Ran this mission with @Franze the other night.
While a long mission it certainly keeps you busy once you go feet dry on your way to the target. Didn’t have much time to spend with the screenshot camera on this run, I had to spend a lot of time with the cockpit view with some added zoom to keep and eye on Franze as flight lead in order to stick together. The Israeli camo livery on the F-16s blends very well with the terrain.
Before crossing the water we had much higher contrast but even that was not fantastic. This screenshot shows the sort of best-case scenario I got for the entire mission this is mainly due to the underside of his jet being a bit of a shadow!
The livery selected for the mission - the terrain colors end up getting as good as close enough to matching them as you get to the target area. When flying with a wingmate this becomes a very interesting experience that we don’t often think about when flying in DCS in that you have to really try to pick out the aircraft from the terrain, under such well-blending conditions. Due to the length of the flight it’s not just a momentary pick-up in a dogfight, this is a constant workload during the flight in and out of the target area.
Really liked this was as a partner’s mission, even small groups of 3-4 would do well here if you can’t muster an entire strike package + escort’s worth of players.
Small update to this one: F-14s given default navigation points, set to unloaded LAU-138 rails (30/30 chaff/flare default), stored heading checked; weapon restriction script bug fix.
