Stealth Strike

Overview

In this mission, you are given 4 initial GPS waypoints that need to be observed to find 3 Weapon Supply Caches. The Cache locations are randomly generated somewhere in the vicinity of these waypoints every mission. These Caches look like large army tents (using Storage Tent A model) and from certain angles can look similar to aircraft hangars. However, the Cache will always generate an IFF Foe signature when you slew over it with your EOTS.

As the mission title suggests, the most likely route to success is staying as stealthy as possible. This does not mean remaining undetected the entire mission (this may be impossible), but it does mean taking all measures possible to not appear on radar until your first strike to take out at least one objective and any available threats.

Stealth Strategy

The goal is to remain undetected by enemy radar whilst getting into firing range. To prevent radar detection, you should:

• Keep the belly of the plane away from the direction of the radar source
• Avoid using afterburner
• Keep your own radar switched OFF
• Do NOT load any external hardpoints (E5-E10)
• Set all internal hardpoints to "manual uncage" mode. This means holding the joystick trigger opens the bay door, and the weapon-switcher button fires. Do NOT open the bay door until the very last second before you plan to fire.

The first bullet item above is most critical and requires that you stay very low to the ground and avoid hard banking. You should especially not roll away from a radar source (e.g. if a fighter is on the left side of your RWR, do not roll your plane to the right). Slow speeds and heavy use of the rudder allows for maneuvering while keeping the plane's underside parallel to the ground as much as possible.

Maintaining this approach, you can get very close to the SAM sites in the mission and remain undetected by the initial patrolling aircraft.

One effective strategy is to sneak around the mountains to the northside of the airbase located at the same GPS location every mission. If you remain undetected up until getting close to the airbase, you can very quickly take out its one air defense missile turret and then mop up the scrambling fighters on the runway. At least one of the objectives is very often (always?) located at the airbase.

This will leave considerably less enemies in the air to engage with for when you seek out any remaining objectives.

Happy hunting!