This is a DCS World mission for Afghanistan theater designed as a practical application of the tactical study of runway attacks that I published previously.
This mission is designed to be played by one or two people, using two similar aircraft fitted with the best anti-runway ordnance available on the aircraft type. I tried to list all the official high fidelity modules here. If I have forgotten your favorite jet, please tell me, and I'll correct it.
List of available aircraft.
PS: for obvious reasons, striking in the TOT window is not achievable for the A-10C.
For each air frame, you can select either a "normal" mode or an "immortal" mode, depending on your level of confidence and your tolerance to frustration...
Overall, I tried to make a mission that is not too difficult in terms of enemy actions. But it does not mean that it's an easy one. First of all, there's absolutely no flight plan loaded in the jets: you must make your own planning - I recommend using CombatFlite obviously - and carefully study the target area.
Regarding the timings, you have 20 minutes on the ground to start-up your jets and be ready for take-off, if you don't want to be in a rush to meet your TOT window on target. If you need, you can strike out of that TOT window, but consider this time constraint as a nice exercise to improve your skills as a virtual pilot.
Picture of the target area with your two Desired Mean Points of Impact (DMPIs).
Also, this mission is the perfect opportunity to test your low level visual navigation skills (using "dead reckoning"): even if the Afghan theater is lacking remarkable man-made visual features, its geography is so particular that it's totally possible to do a nice old-school navigation.
For those who don't know where to start, I'll take the time to go through a full planning process, from high level threat analysis and tactical choices, to more detailed attack profile and parameters on target. But it's very time consuming, so you'll have to be patient!
In the mean time, I'll be happy to receive any feedback, idea for improvement, and as usual, don't hesitate to share your results (Tacview tracks, planning materials, etc...) in order to discuss your choices or answer your practical questions!
Version notes:
v1.0: initial release
v1.1: trigger modified and skill of MANPAD & AAA decreased
Note: Bakwa is the name of one of the districts in the Farah Province. The city of Farah itself has a very long history. In particular, there's a 2500 years old citadel in the heart of the city, that was supposedly built by Alexander the Great. For those more particularly interested in history, Rory Stewart's book "The Places in Between" is a very nice introduction to the historical background of the country, in addition to an entertaining account of his (supposed) encounter with the Afghan people back in 2002.
Comments (12)
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JTR · December 10, 2025
Hi! I have a question. There are no routes in the .cf file, right? Do we have to create the waypoints for the flight plan ourselves in Combatflite? Because when I import the file into Combatflite or DTC, it says there's no flight plan. In DTC, I get the following message. "The Combatflite file has no routes" Thanks!!
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Graveyard of Empires · December 10, 2025
That's correct, you have to create you own attack plan and make the flight plan accordingly. Following posts describe one possible attack plan to inspire you if needed.
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Richard · July 3, 2025
Gave it another (2x) try today. Couldn't find the target airfield. Made a route in the ME with a waypoint on the runway --> no joy. Second attempt was via inserting the target L/L which is provided in the briefing --> no joy. Each time I climbed up to see where the field was (shot down ofc) and it seems to me that I'm a couple of miles south of the target.
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Graveyard of Empires · July 3, 2025
Low level attacks are really difficult because the infrastructures pops up at the last second. My primary advice is to rely on vertical development features around the airfield. For example, the mountains west of the runway can be seen tens of Nm away. When you approach the runway, you can also easily see the hill south of the airfield. If you overfly that hill on the correct heading, it's impossible to miss the runway. The main difficulty is to translate vertical map or picture information into 3D representation of what you expect to see on the final run. What can help is to use Google Earth from example : place yourself at the initial point, at planned attack altitude, and look towards the target to see what the terrain will look like once you actually reach that point in game. It helps a lot. Also, a thorough planning and studying of the final run is important. Eventually, don't forget to use an immortal aircraft if terminal air defense make it too hard... I'll try to make a video of the full mission one of these days.
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Richard · April 5, 2025
Done!
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Richard · April 5, 2025
I did the workaround as described, that’s why I can’t figure out what went wrong or what settings in Combatflite I have to tick to see units etcetera. I’ll open up the cf file for this mission, but would love to know what went wrong in the first place. Smal update: Just tried to open up the cf file, and that didn't work as well.
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Graveyard of Empires · April 5, 2025
Loading the cf file should work even without doing any changes to the theater.xml or the PG.xml so I'll check on my side if it's not corrupted. If you want more help, pkase share screenshot in discord, it will be easier than here.
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Richard · April 5, 2025
Tried to open it up in Combatflite. No luck so far. Did the change to “PersianGulf” in theatre and mission file. Double checked it, but whenever I open the mission I only see the Bullseye change its location but no units and or flight plans (already in the miz file) are visible. I’m not that familiar with Combatflite, so maybe it’s just a setting or so. Any help much appreciated.
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Graveyard of Empires · April 5, 2025
There's a small work-around in CombatFlite to open miz files. I made a post to explain it all here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/119144318 However, I don't recommend reading the miz file for planning, it would be a spoiler since it would give you all the details of what's going to happen. You should just use the included .cf file instead, it has all the info needed for planning in CombatFlite. If you still want to read or modify the miz file, and you don't manage to use CombatFlite as descrived above, you can still use other tools like DCS Web Viewer or DCS Web Editor.
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Richard · April 5, 2025
Nice to incorporate the tactical departure and overhead landing as described by you in other articles.
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Graveyard of Empires · April 5, 2025
I didn't want to mix up everything at the same time. The tactical environment doesn't really impose it in this mission, but you can definitely do it if you want!
