Thirteen sorties: the campaign doubles, and the banner hangs from the island 46c67d7

Six new sorties join the seven you know — the campaign board now runs thirteen deep, each one unlocked by finishing the one before:

1. M8 — THE SPY BALLOON. A reconnaissance balloon drifts the coastline at Angels 34, cameras clicking. Climb the ladder, get under it, and shred the envelope with the gun — a gentle first solo against a target that can’t shoot back. The frigate is under orders to hold her SM-1s: this one is yours.
2. M9 — NAVY ONE. The war is over, and the President is flying out to the boat to say so — an S-3 Viking out of Moffett, callsign NAVY ONE. Tehran’s loyalists have Fulcrums and Flankers up for one last headline. Sweep the CAP, shepherd him through the groove, watch him trap aboard — and the banner unfurls on the island’s bridge face, over the 65, facing the flight deck exactly like the Lincoln in ’03. We repainted the cloth at full resolution so every pilot on deck can read MISSION ACCOMPLISHED from the foul line.
3. M10 — THE LAST INTERCEPT. Night. A nuclear-tipped cruise missile is running for the city at 400 metres a second with a three-ship Flanker escort. Your wingman — callsign EGARYTARIAS — takes a bandit off your tail so you can run the bogey down. You will know how you did by whether the bay is still there: the fail card reads ONE MILLION SOULS.
4. M11 — CRUISE SHIP SIEGE. Gunboats hold a liner in the strait. Cover the SEAL helo in — MANPADS on the decks, go-fasts circling — while she hovers twenty seconds over the fantail and drops the team. If a boat closes to 380 metres, it’s over.
5. M12 — SUB HUNTERS. A P-3, an S-3 and a dipping Seahawk work a submarine contact while MiGs and Sukhois scramble to break up the hunt. Keep every hunter alive and the torpedoes fly their ballet — the first two run wide, the third runs true. Lose one and the sub slips away for good.
6. M13 — AVENGE VIPER TWO. A quiet sweep, until the bounce. Your wingman never had a chance — but you do. Four bandits between you and even.
7. Finish one, the next opens. The board now gates the campaign: a fresh flight log shows only the first sortie, and each victory chalks the lock off the next briefing. Free flight stays wide open, as always.

Aces fight back: nobody flies straight any more 46c67d7

The bad guys went to Topgun. Bandits used to drone along their routes until a Sidewinder found them; now every hostile pilot flies a proper maneuver library, and the skies are a great deal less sporting:

1. Threat-aware, not scripted. A missile in the air or a gun solution building and the bandit picks an answer — a hard break into the attacker, a scissors jink, a split-S for the deck, a barrel roll to spoil your tracking solution, or a loop to force the overshoot. One evasion flows into the next; they chain them like they mean it.
2. Skill you can feel. The library reads each pilot’s skill and agility — a green nugget jinks late and sloppy, a Flanker ace will roll through your burst and come out gunning. Mission aces are rated honestly: m10’s escorts are the best stick-and-rudder men Iran has left.
3. Fair fights stay fair. Scripted sorties mark their critical aircraft noAA — the fleet’s SM-1s no longer steal the balloon, the President’s escort, or the nuke out from under your guns. If a mission says the kill is yours, it’s yours.

Sub hunters: the frigate loads Harpoons, the P-3 and Seahawk go dipping c93570d

The battle group has teeth and ears now. A hostile submarine prowls the deep water west of the group — she surfaces, she creeps, and when she’s hurt she goes deep and shows again somewhere else. Everyone with a dog in that fight now fights it:

1. USS Klakring FFG-42 answers air raids. Any hostile aircraft that closes the group inside twenty-two kilometres eats an SM-1 off her forward launcher — we watched a MiG-29 take one over the bow and auger in. That is what a guided-missile frigate is for.
2. And she carries Harpoons. When the submarine surfaces in reach, Klakring puts a two-round Harpoon salvo in the air — then holds fire: you don’t shoot into a dipping zone with friendlies in the SAC. “WEAPONS HOLD — FRIENDLIES IN THE SAC.”
3. The P-3 is a proper sub hunter. She diverts off her patrol to the contact, wheels overhead at five hundred feet and seeds sonobuoys — orange cans riding the swell. Two wet buoys near the contact and the picture firms up: LOCALIZED. Then the torpedoes start: “TORPEDO IN THE WATER — RUNNING HOT.”
4. NAVY 701 dips too. The cruiser’s Seahawk flies out to the contact, winches down to sixty feet for a six-second dipping-sonar hold — buoy away — climbs, dips again, and once the contact is localized she puts her own torpedo in. Then home to the pattern.
5. She doesn’t die easy. Hurt her enough — Harpoons, torpedoes — and she goes deep and silent, contact lost, to surface again miles away when the coast is clear. The hunt never really ends; it just moves.

All of it runs on its own in free flight — find it on the map, or ride along with J: the P-3 sings the prop whirr, the Seahawk too, and the Harpoons fly quiet.