First a couple of disclaimers and or notifications on subject: I do not have any knowledge what the HX scenarios used in evaluation might be. Thus this scenario is just my personal view what HX scenario OCA/Deep Penetration scenario might be. This scenario is called Walz in Carelia

Second I have used commercial simulation program Command Modern Warfare to run these scenarios, so there is problems with accuracy of the software. I suspect it gets things about 50-65% right. So you would get around 2-3 out of six level of performance in school. So OK, but not good.

Third: I do not have NATO weaponeering manual, so there might be cases of wrong kind of ordnance used to targets, so without further ado to business at hand:

F/A-18E/F/G in Kannas isthmus

Boeing sells F/A-18 E/F/G trinity by easy transition into new iteration of the same fighter and related savings there off a,d by the exceptional capabilities of the Growler platform. The block III brings new doohickeys into the fighter as well so E Rhino is a far cry from C Hornet.

Compared to Lightning II S-400 system and Russian AWACS saw Super Hornets right about immediately they took of from their respective AF bases. This is clearly a minus on F/A-18 block III part, but as they are loaded to the teeth with AA missiles, tanks and such, it is maybe not as big of a minus as it might be perceived to be. This is due that every pylon attached to wing will create a nice straight angle that will reflect the electro magnetic radiation right back whence it came. This makes the detecting much easier, and is a problem for all aeroplanes without internal weapons bays. Other limiting factors are really only the curvature of earths surface

Super Hornet really has strenghts in this scenario with 11 hardpoints and massive 8500kg ordnance carrying capability. The future missile is JATM, (I have to note here that we have no knowledge of what the furute AA missile will be if American fighters are chosen: British F-35 can utilize Meteor, but I’m confident that future missile JATM will be integrated to US air assets. This would be from 2026 onwards. so thus there should be a lot of AMRAAM Ds around still.

The point here is getting maximum number of bridges down without losing much fighters in process.

F-18 Es with 6 JATM make mince meat of the VVS pretty quickly, as the range is such that Suhois are just unable to counter the FAF Super Hornets. If my recollections are correct, in the three scenarios I ran and a couple of paractise runs VVS was able to ground maybe 7 Supre Hornets put together. This leads to my finding that at least in Command Modern Operations F/A-18 E/F/G is really woulnereable against new Russian AA/AD systems, here S-400 and S-350. They also proved to be extremely hard to kill even in heavy electronic war environment provided by MALD decoy missiles and Growlers in this area. FAF didn’t get a many hits on mentioned systems even with newest Anti radiation (AARGM-ER) missiles. The older systems like BUK, PANTSIR and TOR were much easier to kill.

Main point of this sceario was the bridge destruction: That was accomplished quite nicely. As compared to the F-35 A particularly two Super hornets can lug along 20 1000lb bombs and can practically hit all the required targets on one bombing run. This would take 4 F-35s. On the other hand, the vulnerability against S-400 system dictates the need for EW and decoy carrying fighters. So as it turns out in these scenarios, you in the end require around the same number of missions, but they go against different needs. With F-35 you need more OCA fighters, with F/A-18 E you need more EW support (Although I suspect Growler is may by not as potent in the simulation as it is in RL)

The bombing runs went quite smoothly and the run on Poventsa in East was really a cakewalk every time. (Althoug in the second run Rhino pair around Poventsa decided to whack the S-350 system and got killed for their trouble) On the other run they were heading to Kannas, and the same system shot them down a bit further away. The bridges were relaibly destroyed with quite a few missions (in all cases two pairs of two did the actual deed.)

One cannot really sugarcoat this thing: FAF lost many F/A-18s every time: ten on average, plus loyal wing man. They did however also destroy a lot of VVS power about 30 on average. but still the attrition rate would be horrendous (AS noted before, I’m in no way professional in this, so all the pros may be laughing behind their masks on the mistakes I made in placing and loading, but hey. It would be sad, I’f I could beat them in their profession by just being little old me.)

All missiles fired against FAF total on average 155, so the kill probability is 11/155 still around 1/16 so around 7%. I have a gut feeling that is a bit on a high side of things. ill look it up and combine all of this soon. 30/105 Kp for JATM and AMRAAM D are not really flattering either. this gives average kill ratio of 29%.

I was really surprised how susceptible the F/A-18 Es are for the S-400 and S-350 missile systems: in three runs I don’t think Suhois or MiGs managed to get a single kill, but named premier surface to air systems dropped Hornets from sky like nobody’s business. I included a Loyal wingman type UCAV, but it really didn’t make difference in outcome one way or the another.

Video will follow in a few days.