Fliegerfaust Gruppe

"Haha Viktor, look at these silly infantr-" - SU-25 pilot, last words

In Team Yankee

Das Stats

The Fliegerfaust is a platoon of infantry equipped with Redeye MANPADS who provide dedicated anti-air cover with the durability of infantry. One Fliegerfaust Gruppe may be purchased as an an add-on to a Gepard or Roland batterie.

For players looking at why in the world you would buy this on top of some very decent anti-air units, you're not wrong. The raw firepower of the Roland and the Gepard will usually be enough to take out a flight of aircraft or two, and the firepower that this infantry provides is piss poor.

What it does however, is provide a unit with much greater staying power. While your Rolands and Gepards will be overwhelmed rather easily by dedicated air cavalry lists, entrenched infantry have always been a pain to kill: the Fliegerfaust Gruppe is no exception. It comes with assault 4+ and 3+ rally, meaning that a pinned gruppe is very likely to regroup and return fire against any enemy helicopters or flyers. Should the enemy fix bayonets, you are still bringing infantry squads that will beat PACT infantry in close combat unless heavily outnumbered. You won't vapourize their aircraft from the skies, but you will almost definitely outlast them. Be sure to keep these guys safe from enemy artillery.

A Fliegerfaust Gruppe comes with 2, 4 or 6 Redeye teams which cost one point per team.

A niche unit that excels against helicopter lists, but scores 1/5 for redundancy and the niche being very small indeed.

IRL

As discussed on the page for its Israeli equivalent, the Redeye is the ancestor of the FIM-92 Stinger, and generally regarded as a tube of hot garbage. The attempt to shrink the AIM-9's guidance was about ten years ahead of the tech, and it never really worked as advertised. The problem was the seeker. It was only sensitive enough to track a target if it had line of sight on the engine exhaust, meaning it was all but useless against helicopters facing the user.