Race against the Clock, or how I learned to stop worrying and blow up the Pakistani's bombs

[Eboreg]

This scenario is the penultimate one of the Kashmir Fire campaign and uh... I've got to be honest, it's a bit underwhelming. The Indians were pushing heavily into Pakistani territory and it had gotten to the point where the Pakistanis felt that the only thing left to do was to push the Big Red Button(tm). It was up to me to stop the nuclear-tipped missiles from getting launched and from the get-go, it was obvious that I really only had one shot at this. The scenario was only 4 hours long which would not give my strikers enough time to re-arm if they somehow f'kd up a strike and even if they did, there weren't any reloads in the magazines. To make matters worse, some numbskull in high command had decided that I only really needed 6 HARMs to take out all the SAM sites in the area. The one bright side was that the Pakistanis' air defenses were in absolutely terrible shape. In the previous scenario, Falling Skies, I had massively depleted not just their air forces and SAM sites but even their radars got taken out. While the Chinese were providing material assistance, I get the feeling that after losing an S-400 and two AWACS aircraft, they weren't willing to commit too much. Oh yeah, there's also the fact that they found out that Stormbreakers have more boom than Ukrainian drones when I sent 2 of their Mighty Dragons and 6 of their Gyrfalcons to the great airstrip in the sky to meet some Astrakhanian Felons.

I immediately kicked things off by sending my reconnaissance drones towards the suspected launch facilities and turning on the radars of the Global Hawk and the RQ-180. I also launched a 2-ship of Raptors from Sirsa in order to provide air cover and even sent up all of my available aircraft from Jamnagar since they were quite a ways away from the suspected launch areas. My drones almost immediately began picking up suspicious mobile units and after checking out my opponents' units, I came to the conclusion that these had to be the missile batteries. Not to mention that the RQ-170 started picking up a SAM site nearby and one of my satellites had detected some mobile units near it. I quickly diverted two of my Jamnagar flights towards the HQ-12 spotted in central Pakistan and when I confirmed the missile batteries near the northern airbases (as well as all of the SAM sites near them) I decided on my plan of attack.

I quickly decided that the F-35s at Ambala carrying my beloved Stormbreaker bombs would be the best option. There were two clusters of missile batteries in the north each having two launchers in front of their protective SAM site and one in the rear. Keeping in mind the 37th Maxim of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, I had one 2-ship of F-35s head towards each of the frontal launcher groups to hit the launchers with 8 Stormbreakers each while getting the other two 2-ships to circle around the SAM sites to hit the rear launchers with 16 Stormbreakers each.

The southern launcher group was considerably simpler since one of the launchers wasn't even within range of the SAM site protecting it. I got a group of Strike Eagles to plaster it with 4 LJDAMs and the launcher that was protected got targeted with 8 Stormbreakers. I would go into detail about how it happened but that would require there to be some level of resistance to my strikes. Hell, the Pakistanis didn't even launch any SAMs at my Stormbreakers or launch any intercepts. I later found out that they were only able to detect the Strike Eagles hitting their southern batteries explaining the lack of intercepts. I also found out that they planned to launch their first nukes within 2 hours and 45 minutes of me starting operations which is a real heartbreaker since I only needed an hour and 10 minutes to destroy all of their launchers. And I was taking things kind of slow in order to gather intelligence before committing to the only strike I might get.

All in all, this turned out to be a very disappointing penultimate level for the Kashmir Fire campaign set and it's also indicative of a rather noticeable problem with said set: too many of the scenarios just didn't have much in the way of gameplay. Border Skirmish can be done with a quick cruise missile attack, Thunder From The Sea can leave you wondering why you're even here, and Chaos is especially bad since one of the best ways to win is to literally do nothing. However, if there is one good part of the campaign set, it's the variety scenarios. Doomsday Clock, Flaming Dragon, Peacekeepers, and Over The Hump are all great ways to give experienced players something unique and even take them out of their comfort zone. Shorelines could also be a great challenge scenario if the scoring were less brutal although my personal favorite would have to be Escalation and that's not just because it continues the game's long and storied tradition of making the Liaoning a punching bag.