Editing Mercenaries and planes (section)

====Recap====
We were allowed to choose how many of the chemical pods we carried, most of us took four, since they weren't super heavy. I flew my new F-18, and put a centerline fuel pod, two aim-7s and two aim-9s, as well as the pods, and four of the Russian special bombs. Scotch loaded his Viggen in much the same way (and apparently pays less for maintenance now) although he didn't need the extra tank of fuel and put two AA-10 (IR) instead of AIM-7s, where I used the last of my crappy ones. Judge put a centerline on, as well as four canisters and four AA-8s. Sandy loaded six canisters, and several of the special chem neutral bombs, as well as two AA-8 jury rigged. Hugs loaded two of the Special bombs, four AA-10s (IR) and four AA-11s. Our ingress point would be close to the Azerbaijan border, but our egress was over turkey, which had us nervous. We knew that we could go through Armenia safely, and we also had several landing airports available in Armenia thanks to bribes. The turkey bit worried us, since it would be a quick sprint through Nato airspace. As predicted, the peak hours when the shutdown would occur was in the late afternoon, so we wouldn't have darkness on our side. We took off and headed towards the first waypoint.

Over the country we had to hit around 18 farms. We had plotted out routes. Sandy had the longest one, the furthest to the North, since he could do his run very quick, slowing for the sprays, and still have fuel. Hugs and Scotch had medium routes, and the short routes were done by me and Judge, since our planes had range issues. The plan was to try to come back together before the egress point, and make the run on the bridge. We had decided against the airfield, just one too many things to do, and it seemed the riskiest of the two. We monitored radar returns as we made our approach, low over the ground. The radar went down early, and we punched it, looking to get in and underway quickly. We crossed the border with little to no incident, but Hugs called to tell us he was getting some intermittent hits from an airborne target, maybe two. Judge didn't have anything, nor did I, but Sandy was getting hits, from the northeast. We aimed at the first farm field, with Judge doing the honors, as the rest of us peeled off, to let him fly both his run and his route. We watched with some curiosity as he popped up, and the back of his plane disappeared in white smoke/vapour. It didn't take long, but he did have to slow to make the run, after which he descended and proceeded on course, the vapour drifting down across the fields. I was next to leave the formation on my flight path, turning westwards, with the landscape of Georgia passing underneath me.

We got about halfway, with intermittent hits from airborne sources, we were too low/behind mountains for the land based radars in most cases. We had mapped out a lot of them in our previous raid over Georgia, and we were noticing that some were not active, while some were. Seemed our strike had caused a bit of a shortage, or something. I had been doing my runs, popping up actually was useful, since I quickly got a radar hit strength so it was refreshing to know I still hadn't been confirmed as a target. Steve told us that popping up for 8~12 seconds is fairly safe, provided we disappear quickly. For the most part, our route was pretty quiet, but just north of us, Hugs and Scotch were not so lucky. They had just told us they were heading towards two radar emitters, airborne. They were not sure how much longer they'd be staying undetected or ignored, since they'd lose the low level ground clutter soon. Then Sandy called us, saying the northern border with Russia was crazy. Things had just gone hot, on the electronic spectrum, with multiple high power airborne radars blasting out from behind the Russian line. There were two radar sources moving at high speed from the south east towards the border, and Sandy's threat detector was chirping constantly as all this energy was washing over his plane in spurts and bursts.

Sandy told us, somewhat relieved, that the sources behind him were heading on a track that would pass well behind him, towards Russia. Our guess as a team was that the Russians were holding some form of exercise to piss off/distract the Georgians, while we did our thing. Which was nice of them, although we would have preferred to have been told about it before hand. Then the jamming started and we lost contact with Sandman. Scotch called, and told Hugs he was dumping his bombs and would be climbing to engage the targets ahead. Hugs wasn't entirely happy, but didn't have much of a choice, if worst came to worse he would also climb and engage. Scotch called that he was dumping his weapons, but he didn't want to waste them, so he dropped his entire cache as he passed over a high voltage power line, collapsing a tower, and then a second one, as the steel buckled under the detonations from the quasi-ied weaponry.

Hugs figured he had enough chemical remaining to do the required farms enroute, so Scotch also emptied his tanks, and dropped them into a small stream, as best he could. Scotch then lit his burner, and raced ahead, still low over the ground, heading towards the contacts. For our part, we were going slower, to save fuel, but hit a snag when one of my chem bottles failed. We would still be able to make our run, but I couldn't miss any of the passes, which meant, I was slowing down even more. Although we didn't know it, Sandy had given up on trying to do the mission properly, since if he popped up he'd be spotted, so he began spraying at low level, and at speed. This mean that more often then not, he sprayed only a small part of a field, in heavy concentrations. Sandy also dumped his IEDs to allow him to go faster, but did it over a small pond on his route. Scotch meanwhile was racing faster now, when he suddenly shouted that he'd been detected, and locked. Both radiating targets were now turning towards him, about 45 miles out.

Scotch pulled up hard, changing his aspect (apparently) and quickly got a lock on one of the fighters, hot against the sky. He slapped off his two Alamos and banked up and away from the incoming shots, pumping out chaff. His opponent spotted the incoming alamos, and also turned away, pushing out flares, turning perpendicular to the missile. Hugs finally got a spotting roll and figured that from the EM sig they were Mig-21s. Scotch was turning back to engage, as the missiles fired at him missed when the lead aircraft lost lock. But the second aircraft had stayed high, and was now coming around on Scotch's tail. Scotch however was in a good position, and began pursuing the lead MiG. The other MiG had stopped radiating, and Scotch didn't have a spot on him, so he lost track of where it was. Hugs continued below, focusing more on the upcoming farm then the fight above, but taking his Flanker up in speed. Scotch turned hard in a break turn as his quarry tried a hard maneuver to cut inside of Scotch. Scotch had a firing solution, and pulled the trigger, sending two more heatseekers out. And then he lost about ¼ of his left wing, blown off as the pursuing MiG landed a hit of their own, first blood in the conflict.

Scotch was in a world of hurt, all of his MFDs (one) dropped offline, as did his radar (it went from standby to fault) and all of his electronics, as the system failed catastrophically. Luckily the Viggen ran on 'steam gauges' as Scotch said, and he began looking hard for the fighter that had shot him. The MiG-21 ahead of him took one of Scotch's missiles in the rear quarter, causing it to smoke quite badly, and begin to head down. Scotch didn't spot the MiG and so threw his Viggen as best he could into an immelman. Tracer rounds flew past Scotch's cockpit, and he got a quick peak at his opponent, flying in close behind, apparently out of missiles, or usable ones. Scotch decided to risk it, and pulled a hard turn, hoping to capitalize on the closeness of the engagement. Unfortunately, he lost too much speed, and began a shallow stall, with the MiG closing fast. Hugs had seen all this, and had just finished spraying the farm, and was nearly underneath the fight now, watching Scotch turn, his pursuer, and the other MiG heading outbound trailing smoke. Hugs decided that a shot at the departing aircraft was more important, and loosed off two big Alamos at the practically sitting duck. One failed in flight, curving off in a lazy arc to the right. The first missile homes well, and blew what remained of the fishbed out of the sky. Hugs had passed underneath the fight, and was now heading away, still on flight plan, as Scotch saw the remaining MiG coming at him.

Scotch was on full burner trying to recover from the stall, and straightened out, but the MiG also made a high turn to come back down on Scotch's tail. Scotch maintained visual as he dove for the floor, jinking as he did so, still flying 'blind'. The MiG fired some very short bursts, but missed, as they began to enter a scissors maneuver, Scotch trying to get rid of the pursuing MiG but he kept 'reading' the moves Scotch was doing. And then Hugs pulled a Pugachev. He flipped up, and backwards, while still flying forwards, and punched off his remaining AA-10s in a snapshot situation. The MiG pilot landed a gun salvo finally on Scotch, but next turn was hit by a near explosion, and Hugs (having returned to level flight, barely 200 ft above the ground) saw the fishbed pilot punch out of his flaming aircraft. Scotch for his part was now leaking fuel from his right wing and had control difficulty. He turned south, staying very low, and was on a direct route to an emergency airfield outside of Georgia. Hugs' maneuver had jammed wrecked the canister system, so he dumped them as well, and began to head towards our planned exit point. Judge and me were coming up on the rally point as well, and we finally got a hold of Sandy as he emerged from the wall of electronic jamming. Unfortunately, he was being chased by at least one aircraft, which was pursuing with active radar. Sandy had no real defense other than speed and low altitude, his air to air weaponry was very short ranged and essentially 'snap shot' only. Both judge and myself, having finished our runs, turned north to help, dumping our A/G weaponry as we did.

Judge began to pick up speed, closing with Sandy, and climbing. Sandy told us he'd been shot at several times already (Four missiles, two SAMs) and had taken some damage, but no system problems yet. I also began to climb, but didn't speed up, falling behind Judge. Judge was climbing, trying to be at the same elevation or higher. Sandy also called that we we're going up against an F-16, his right seater having identified the radar signature. My back seater also confirmed, as we closed. I figured that it was worth the risk, and flipped on the radar. Unfortunately, I soon found out we had two closing aircraft, not one. I quickly relayed this to Judge, who was still too far to get a lock on his IRST. The Falcons began to attempt jamming, with ECM systems, but my backseater was on it, and we got a lock, sending two Sparrows on their way! Chaff flew everywhere, as both Falcons maneuvered, which allowed Judge to begin setting up on one of them. And true to form, both of the Sparrows missed wide, blowing up and killing thousands of pieces of airborne tinfoil.

Hugs, the only member still equipped with bombs, was making a beeline for the bridge, we were late at this point, and he had no clue where the train was, and no time to call for info. Sandman let off the engines somewhat, since the Falcons were now engaged with Judge and myself. Judge had twice the loadout I did, so my plan was to make my shots count as best I could. Judge didn't feel the same way, he was closing way too fast, and couldn't follow the Falcon, but did manage to get an off boresight shot off, but it missed, losing lock after two or so seconds of flight. I did manage to get behind my falcon though, and began tailing, waiting for a good growl from my sidewinder. The Falcon could turn harder, but not by much, and being in the rear aspect was an asset for the tailing. The other falcon however got behind me, I only spotted because of my backseater, who called it out. Flares spewing we began evasive maneuvers, dropping the Falcon chase. Which is when Judge came in from above, inverted, in the middle of a high yo yo, AA-8s spewing off his wings like angry wasps. He struck one of my pursuers, who disintegrated shortly thereafter. No chute. I pulled up hard, throttled back and pulled the speed brake, hoping the other aircraft would shoot past me. On the positive side, he did. The downside was I stalled out. Judge was out of missiles, and trying to line up a shot, and I was falling out of the sky.

I attempted recovery, but failed, so I punched out more flares and kept trying. Judge tried a hard gunshot, but missed despite using a sustained burst. I eventually recovered, rolling out with burners lit, making a turn back towards the fight. I finally got a good shot, mostly thanks to Judge pulling the enemy Falcon through my gunsights, and I launched with tone. My air to air package pushed off, quickly chasing down the falcon, although one of them also veered off between the Falcon and some flares. The other detonated near the falcon, but finally my luck turned, and I rolled a golden BB, taking out the pilot with the explosion, the Falcon spiraling down into the ground in an uncontrolled banking turn, but we did see an ejection. Just wounded, not killed. Then judge and I realized that we had won! No damage, no hits, no incidentals. Two clean, confirmed kills, we were on fire! And then Hugs wrecked our mood. Let me try to explain, Hugs can't do air to ground, his pilot is air to air specialized, his air to ground is crap. And he was on a bomb run against a bridge. Easy for anyone in the group. Except Hugs.

Anyway, Hug lined up with the Bridge, he didn't see the train coming at it. He approached, and dropped his weapons, turning up and inverting to see his effectiveness. He got to see his strike nail the bridge, taking out a support column and part of the deck. The deck of the bridge slumped to one side, before the weight caused it to slowly collapse partially dragging more of it with it. Unfortunately, he took out the road bridge, not the train bridge. We began our run for the border, everyone shedding anything extra. We were trying to figure out how many farms we'd done, and what was going to happen about the bridge. We were low, waiting for the Radar to drop offline. And then, we started to get hit by airborne search radar, early warning class, from the East. After a minute, it appeared it was getting stronger, and the ground radar wasn't shutting off either.

Finally we decided that the intel must have been bogus, and the Radar wasn't going off anytime soon. We also figured it would be safer to just push out then find out who or what was with the AWAAcs platform. We had no clue where Scotch was (radio electronics still dead), so we figured we'd leave at speed. We all pushed up in speed, and aimed southeast. It was working fine, Sandy rocketed across the border, with judge close behind. Unfortunately, then the fire control radar lit off, and my board went red with radar warnings, as did Hugs'. My backseater called out SAM and I moved off, Hugs wasn't so lucky. He turned into the SAM, spotting it when he did so, but too late to avoid. His Flanker suffered catastrophic damage, both of his engines damaged, one on fire, most of his tails gone, one elevator gone, draining fuel, hydraulic fluid and oil pouring out. He made it to the Armenian border when his damaged engine also caught on fire, and detonating heavily. Hugs rolled on the punch out table, since he'd ridden the Flanker longer than he should have, and it was basically breaking up around him at this point.

Hugs made it though, straining his arm and his ankle on the landing, but other than that, alive. Sandy, myself and judge all made it back to our departure point. When we landed we skipped some time to find out that Hugs had been picked up, and Scotch had made it back to an emergency alternate, flying debris more than a plane. (One damage point remaining) We're not sure what to expect next.