The first campaign for the DCS: F/A-18C is out and its a brilliant four mission mini-campaign by SEDLO available on the Eagle Dynamics user files area of their website. This fictional campaign puts you in the cockpit of a Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 in the skies over Georgia as a complex geopolitical situation takes shape. Just one mission in and I felt like I had to tell everyone about this campaign.

Making friends in the East

In this fictional campaign, Georgia hurriedly joins the NATO alliance against the backdrop of a complex geopolitical situation involving rebels, Russia, and more. With Canadian, French, American and other allied forces all taking to the skies over a tense situation that quickly turns hot.

It’s rare to fly for the RCAF and take to the skies in a jet that I’ve seen so frequently at airshows but for one of the first times here is that opportunity.

Mission one

Loading this campaign up is fairly straightforward and there are additional packages of information available from a Dropbox account featuring mission details for each and every mission. It’s not a long campaign but these missions are extremely well put together from what I’ve seen so far.

The first mission sees you in a Hornet sitting at base, jets all warmed up, and ready to scramble to deal with rebels on the ground who have stolen some military equipment. Canadian Army forces on the ground come under fire and you and your wingman quickly take to the skies to deal with the situation.

Once in the air, and using the Hornet’s navigation system, we hit the first couple of waypoints before turning in hot to the target area.

Throughout all of this are some really well done voice over lines that play with comms traffic between your flight and the troops under fire on the ground. There’s even background audio with machine gun fire. A nice touch!

Updates keep coming as the jets approach the target zone and friendlies mark their position with smoke. And that’s when this tense mission gets really interesting. I was able to put bombs on target as well as killing off a couple of lightly armored vehicles with rockets. But then things took a turn.

At first, ground fire doesn’t appear to be a threat but then the enemy opens up with a SAM launch.

Unfortunately, still being new to the world of modern jets, my dodging skills are not yet fully on point. The first missile I was able to drive into the side of a hill trying to find me but silly me had forgotten to enable the countermeasures system prior to engagement and the second missile had a clear line on the glowing exhausts of my Hornet.

I’ll be redoing the mission over again soon but I had to write up just how great this campaign has been.

Spudknocker on YouTube has a great video (with far more professional flying than me) from the fourth mission in the campaign called ‘Strike on Sukhumi’ that is well worth a watch. Tense, beautiful, and cold!

Download it here

Check out Eastern Friendship CF-18 campaign for DCS: F/A-18C on the Eagle Dynamics website. You need DCS World 2.5, the DCS: F/A-18C and enjoy flying over the frozen and snowy Georgia located on the free Caucasus map.