Challenge makes things interesting. Interesting situations are fun. 
Deliveries of the Kh-58 to Gudauta got fouled due to an Amazon Prime shipping mistake. The good news is that we now have all seasons of Game of Thrones on BluRay in the officers quarters.
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I do agree that challenging situations are fun. the Kh-58 is intrinisically challenging though as you only get two of them 
I know there was more than enough hard work put into the mission already but with a system of zones and triggers you could turn the emissions on and off so it would not simply be a case of letting the missile fly from 100km out
It wasnāt an objection. Just a question if it was purposefully omitted from the mission.
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So just to preface, I didnāt see any of this as overly critical. Iāll try and describe why I made it how it was, and how what actually happened didnāt exactly follow. If I seem like Iām picking on people, thatās not my intention.
The mission was basically trying to be as close to the F-15E strikes described in Smallwoodās Strike Eagle with the flyable assets currently available in DCS. If this had been 9 months from now, it would have been Viggens and Hornets, but it isnāt, so one has to improvise 
The missionās SEAD flight was configured with the idea that it would lead off the mirages, flying a low level ingress past the two SA-6ās near Apsheronsk, and then fanning out and destroying any SAM sites present in the vicinity immediately around Krasnodar. Once the Mirages were clear, the whole group would RV over the lake to the south via flight, and then exfil via the waypoints, which were basically the way they came in.
With this in mind I set up the SAM coverage around Krasnodar to be challenging for the frogs, but not overwhelming. The total coverage consisted of two SA-3 sites and an SA-6, both systems have shorter or equal range to the Kh-25. To spice things up, I made it so the SA-6 and one SA-3 would not engage until targets were well within itās WEZ. This makes it so you have to react fast to an unexpected threat, but the SEAD missile should be faster than the actual SAM, and all of the vehicles were visible before activation, so they could be engaged before they went active (hence the single ML each jet had). While there was SA-10 and SA-11 sites in theater, the SA-10 was to be dealt with by AI aircraft (which it was), and the SA-11 was only there to both serve as a deterrent from leaving the target area, and as a trap for players who were not paying sufficient attention to the flight plan.
I toyed with giving the Su-25s Kh-58s, but the biggest issue was that if I gave them two -58s, two -25s, bags, jammers, and heaters, they were going to be over MTOW, and I wanted to be absolutely sure they could make it up to Krasnodar, play for a while, and make it back to at least Sochi. Secondly I felt that I had already loaded the deck in their favor, as their mission could be successfully accomplished by knocking out three radar dishes, that amount of stand off capability would just be boring.
Now what actually happened (and Iām going to throw myself and @AeroMechanical under the bus), is that I must have failed to emphasize that the flight plan, if followed, would keep us out of all threat rings until we were at the target area, and should be followed strictly by the strikers until ~WP5. Aero, the stout trigger happy lad he is, dispatched his flight to go search out the SA-6s near Apsheronsk and then promptly CTDād because his computer is a coward and a fifth columnist. Checking the Tacview, it looked like his two then got separated after failing to find the SA-6 (which itself failed to spawn because of a DCS bug, woot). One wandered into aforementioned SA-11 of navigational punishment. The other got shots off on one of the SA-3s but in doing so wandered into the WEZ of both the other SA-3 and the SA-6 while flying at medium altitude without maneuvering, and became quite dead.
So tl;dr
I gave the Frogfoots a load out I felt would be challenging but not overwhelming for them given the threats arrayed before them provided they followed the flight path in the editor. I then failed to emphasize that flight path, and shenanigans happened.
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Thank you for the explanation
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Oh, I also have a question:
What was the AI Mirage2000 flight supposed to do? We never knew because it was stuck on the taxiway of Gudauta (which caused a small problem for @Navynuke99 and me, we had to taxi around it).
Guilty as charged.
Picking up the story: I saw the briefing and the two SA-6 rings our waypoints supposedly were to guide us in-between and promptly decided that with 3 AR missiles x 4 planes weād have plenty of ordinance to spare to just KILL EVERYTHING.
Mission time arrived, take-off happened, and about T+3 seconds Cheapoās pilotās neck, succumbing to the insipient, but insidious, damage of Gās endured over time, buckled as the C2 through C7 vertebrae simultaneously turned to dust. With the highly-detailed textures of his seat, control stick, and cockpit floor taking up the entirety of his field of view, he promptly met terra-firma at 350 km/h.
Meanwhile @Krautwald, @SevenColoredMage and I tried to stay organized as we approached the marshaling point. At push time we were organized well enough despite both of them having issues with the Su-25Tās navigation mode, so I oriented the flight towards the push point, fenced in, and got ready to dodge some SAMs. About 20 seconds after turning on my Phantasmagoria pod, I noticed several search radars, and an indicator showing an unidentified radar (diamond with no ID text in the HUD). Thinking that curious, I tried to lock it up, and DCS promptly froze and crashed. Hopping back in I elected to honor the āno respawn post-pushā rule and sat on the tarmac with my F10 map open. At this point Cheapo had respawned per the takeoff grace period rule and was about 10 minutes behind Krautwald and Mage.
At this point I had Krautwald and Mage start sweeping towards Apsheronsk to seek and destroy the first SA-6, to no avail (turns out it didnāt even spawn), so I had them turn towards the target area, and the rest is history. If at any point it seemed like any of the SEAD flight post my CTD were ālost sheepā then thatās my fault, as I was vectoring them towards areas I suspected would contain threats, telling them to ignore search radars and prioritize and engage any āSA-Xā labeled contacts with extreme prejudice.
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The Su-25T doesnāt really make it easy to stick to a flight plan during ground strike mode as you canāt use the Phantasmagoria pod and navigation waypoints at the same time.
At least we did the āSā of our SEAD Mission. It seems we stroke fear into the hearts of those SA-6 sites.
Even though Iām not happy with my personal performance, I had a lot of fun. Thanks for the building and organization of this event!
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The HSI NPP on the instrument panel gives current bearing (yellow needle) and range to the last selected waypoint even in A2G mode.
The yellow needle in this pic is also directly underneath the double wide course needle. The upper left number is the range, in km, to the waypoint and the number at the upper right is the true heading to that waypoint.
[edit: the heading readout doesnāt line up with the needle in this image. Iāll have to look at this at home unless someone reading this has more info]
This instrument stays current on the last selected waypoint through most modes, if not all (havenāt tested them all!) and you can use this to maintain flight plan or even just know where you are.
Mission success!
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It was a lot of fun - and Aero did a great job of briefing and controlling Chevy. It was my first real flight in the frogfoot, and it was great to have a flight lead talking me through the systems as we went.
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