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This is not a normal AAR.It will consist of movies showing how to use air units without having them get shredded (or even measureably hurt).
The plan is to have each post i make here contain a movie and a description of whats being done.






In this movie, you can see f-14Ds(the interceptor version of F-14) doing none stop bombing of enemy units holding up in a town hex.
The F-14s are set on air patrol in a pattern that lets them fly by the target hex, without entering it.
As they do so, they attack when in range.

As the movie shows, they come under no return fire.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Okay, this example will show the F-14s continuing to work, and joined by B-52s.The B-52s have missiles on board and will attack with both bombs and missles.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

This example is how to out and destroy garrisons.

In this example B-52s and F-14s are patroling over a city that has 3 garrisons.A stack of ground units will advance close enough to the city to bring the garrisons out, than the aircraft and artillary will destroy the garrisons with little to no return fire being taken.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

This example will demonstrate the same techinque.
The aircraft will be A-10IIs.
They will be patroling near a city that contains 4 garrisons.
A stack of ground units will advance and cause the garrisons to pop-up, and the A-10s will destroy them very quickly taking almost no return fire.

The A-10s will do all the work in this one, no art ,no missiles, no ground units will help them destroy the garrisons.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Okay, this will probably be the last one tonight, so why not make it a big one.

B-52s and F-14s set to patrol around some city hexes,with one of them having a barracks.
Combined the two cities attacked in this one have circa 13 garrison units, plus an unknown amount of wounded units in the barracks.

Again, the aircraft came under very little return fire.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Finding those large borders and those pesky neighbors require alot of ground units to keep under watch ?
Why not use airpower ?

Air units are MUCH easier and faster to reassign if needed elsewhere,pack a large punch for those foolish enough to cross into(or even approach ) your hexes, and look nice while doing their jobs

Like so:

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Nice work I’ve been waiting to see this.

I was in the camp of “air units don’t work” until I kept reading posts saying we weren’t using them right and went back to playing till I got the hang of it.

Basically I was asking my F-14s to fight like Stuka dive bombers then being surprised when they didn’t live up to their warranted survivability : )

Yhea... In my current game I've found air units to be much more useful, though I still do have problems with some of the ranges in the unit database... Some fighters that should be much more capable of stand-off ground support (without using manufactured missiles) have ranges that force them to take ground fire (for instance, if anyone can explain to my why the F-35A has a smaller soft/hard attack range than the F-35B or C then I'd like to hear it... It's not like they even use different munitions...).

It'd require new features being added to the game, but I'd also love it if some air units had the ability to conduct SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences) missions, preferably connected to a few SEAD technologies. These units would target only AA units, engaging them at range (perhaps a different range than the soft or hard attack). This could represent the ability to launch munitions like the AGM-88 HARM, which has a range of 90+ km. This is particularly crucial for fighters whose soft/hard attack range seems to be based on the range of ATG missiles like the AGM-65 which, due to their guidance being an IR seeker, have a range of less than 30km. That way you could knock out long-range air defense units at range without getting your air force slaughtered (which is exactly what would happen in both the game and IRL if you tried to knock out a modern nation's air defenses with IR ATG missiles...).

We should be able to suppress/destroy AA units from long range, then let the other fighters swoop in and kill some tanks from a smaller range.

It'd be super cool if we made it akin to an "escort" mission, so that you select a SEAD mission, then select a friendly fighter to SEAD for. That way if fighter squadron B is doing an air patrol near the front lines, fighter squadron A would hang out nearby, ready to pounce on any AA that shoots at fighter squadron B...

You can do SEAD (wild weasel), but you have to do it manually.

Say you want to clear a base area of Anti-air.

1)get some aircraft (A) into range loaded with anti-facility missiles
2)get some aircraft (B) into range of the area loaded with anti-unit missiles.
3) Have (A) fire some missiles at the base.
This will cause the anti-air in the area to go live and try and shoot down the incoming missiles.

4)Have aircraft (B) target and destroy the anti-air units with their missiles.

5)Repeat til area is clear of anti-air.

6)Bomb the rest of the enemy unts in the area to blood and dust with all the aircraft you want to use

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

tkobo was famous in SR2010 for his massive use or air force and missiles, conquering the world with almost no casualties .

I see you still have a love for the air force. Good work with the videos, tkobo .

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SR2020: Successfull AI naval invasion - USA vs Cuba, USAAR - No unit or man lost - GC - WC done, SpainAAR-WC hotspotting with the military AI?, MongoliAAR

The whole possibility of little to no units lost and even little to no men lost,that is feasible with airpower does hold a certian attraction for me.

At some point ill likely do an AAR with that very goal in mind,using the Unmanned strat bombers and missiles

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Nice!

I'm still fairly new and my first big game I had the misfortune of playing a country that didn't start with missile manufacturing (ROK), then got DOW'ed early, so by the time I had any real missiles coming off the line I had already taken Pyongyang and most of my air force was being repaired (the DPRK has a LOT of AA).

Still, I wish there was something to simulate anti-radiation missiles like the HARM, instead of just having to launch cruise missiles at AA sites...

A missile that only targeted anti-air units while a nice addition to the game,would make the game far too easy for air based combat.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Tkobo this is a informative and thourough tutorial on how to use air units.

in my first campaign as california mexico DOWed me and i pushed far into their territory, but it decimated my air force and destroyed much of my army because of those darn garrisons.

eventually that plus the other bugs and issues that were prevalent in the first release turned me off to the game but now that it is patched and ive seen an effective way to use air units ill have to give it another go

Thanks for the great tip. Too bad the "manual" didn't explain this

I have a question about missiles/aircraft. Some units won't accept player-manufactured bombs/missiles (eg.-MiG 25, A37, etc.) So will these units be as effective using your tactics? If so, then they would be more cost-effective since they do not require any special ordinance. I'm still figuring out the whole missile-aircraft relationship and how to load-out aircraft, etc. Any post or tutorial on this subject would be helpful.