Full blower between the towers: the Habu owns the night reel — and the strike package hits the board

2026-08-03FEATURE MISSIONS

Full blower between the towers: the Habu owns the night reel — and the strike package hits the board e0cb6a7

NASA 832, the SR-71 Blackbird, in full afterburner over downtown San Francisco at night — a black delta with twin fireballs threading the rooftop gap between the towers

The attract reel’s new closer is the fastest thing in the bay. Night, clear sky, both J58s lit: NASA 832 comes out of the west as a spark over the strait, roars past a boat at wave-top, threads the Golden Gate under the deck, bends right over the bay and winds out toward a thousand knots down the downtown corridor — rooftop height, between the towers — then pulls for the stars. Six cameras catch it, air and ground both, and the cut is showreel clip 21 on the upload sheet.

Three new campaign sorties, with portraits. M17 HABU DESCENDING — a crippled SR-71 is limping in off the black programs with failing engines; rendezvous, fight the vultures off, and walk him down to the field. M18 DEADLY CARGO — a rustbucket freighter full of weapons-grade uranium, a sub surfaced to take it off her, six Mk 83 dumb bombs to stop the handoff. M19 WALL OF LEAD — the same cargo under a gunline: fast boats throwing a wall of AAA, MANPADs on every deck, fighters for top cover. Order VIPER TWO onto the cover and he’ll pull the gunline’s fire too — you make the run. All three wear their thumbnails on the board like every other sortie.
T-8 IRON BOMBS joins the syllabus. Flight school’s new strike sortie: two target hulks anchored on the bombing range, six Mk 83s, and the CCIP pipper doing the impact math live on the glass. Dive twenty to thirty degrees, track the pipper onto the hull, pickle, pull out by 800 feet. Note for graduating classes: the syllabus now includes T-8 — earn it and the campaign board unlocks as before.
A sortie only counts when you bring her home. New standing order, campaign and school both: finishing the objective is not finishing the mission. You complete the sortie when you’re down and stopped back at the point of origin — the deck or the field you launched from. Any other strip, and the boat, will still gas and re-arm you on the way — but she doesn’t count till she’s home.
Weapons select goes 1988. The per-weapon voice callouts are gone. Every toggle answers with one short console beep, like the Amiga original — and the stores panel now makes the readback unmissable: the live weapon’s stations burn solid white over an inverse-video label, and the HUD names it outright. Strike sorties rack the bombs on 5.
The net crackles. Every flashed notification keys the radio now — a squelch tick and two static pops stand in for the chatter, so a call sounds like it came over the net even when you only read it.

Spark off the strait, fire between the towers, gone. That’s the way to close a reel. — HB