SGS NATO’s Nightmare – Tips for Air Movements

Air Movements

I know the Pact best, so this is mainly the way to go with them, but it should in general work for NATO too.

Concentrate as many modern fighters with a HQ, a recon and an ECM unit in a high stack region. Look for another region in enemy territory, that has no land unit in it, and draw a path to that region flying over or by as many enemy air units as possible. That way you will sweep air corridors open. Continue targeting further regions to hit more enemy fighters, in some cases it may be worthwhile to track back and go over an enemy stack again that survived your original attack. Do the same with other stacks, always as large as possible and with support units.

Once you have opened sufficient air corridors and there are no enemy air units along your front line either you can go for bombing missions. Have your high tech strike aircraft go deep, for the Pact that means hit the Pomcus sites, for Nato that would be rail units and the like. Give these strike groups recon, ECM, Wild Weasel and other supporting units to make the best of your strike capacity.

Strike enemy fleets with your specialised naval air units.

Next send a good mix of different types of aircraft into enemy regions you wish to attack with land forces. I always send a recon unit as it is a cheap bonus for your land forces, attack helicopters, and some helis have command capacities too, and one or two average bombers (Mig-23B/Mig-27/Su-17) and older planes. If the enemy ground forces are evenly distributed and no region is more important than another spread your bombers out between them. Else concentrate some on more important roles.

In general, any time I fly into enemy territory I do so with large stacks, even if I plan to break them into smaller packages later. It raises your chances to avoid aborting. That is take into consideration enemy air units, but also anti aircraft. Don’t fly over modern SAM positions if you can avoid it. If you want to continue moving your stack don’t pull it into a region that has an enemy ground units or else you will engage air-ground combat and end your movement.

For defensive air the best way is again to concentrate your fighters. Make it so stacks in different regions support one another. A strong fighter stack in front and older types behind. If you are not sure you can prevent the enemy from mauling your first line fighters it might be a good idea to move your specialised aircraft that will not contribute to air combat back some ways (no Su-24s near the front unless you desperately need more air), particularly attack helicopters. As the Pact you also have some specialised Mil Mi-8 with minelaying capacity which is represented by giving a nice defensive fire bonus to friendly ground units in the region.

In general always look at the special abilities one of your units might have. A recon unit for instance will boost the fire ratings of all your units in the region, air, naval and land, and you tend to have a lot of those.

If you can afford replacements rebuild your best fighters. That is if you have a good unit that has taken serious damage don’t fly it during the defensive air phase, you cannot rebuild units that have just flown in the defensive phase.