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To All Pilots:

I have been thinking of creating a campaign background for MAS using
Area 88 and the events in Afghanistan as the basis for the campaign. I would like to mention what influenced me to purchase MAS was that I was just doing a random Searchon Lulu and saw the game listed an read the preview for the bookand found it interesting. I purchased Mercenary Air Squadron.

But now on the campaign basis, I have decided that the campaign will aroundthe early months of the year 2000. The last son born to king of Afghanistan has been working on creating a small mercenary force operating in northwest area ofAfghanistan being financed by small amount from his family's fortune and the backing of some rich mideast royalty and influential corporate people who liket to see the royalty restored in the country of Afghanistan.

I would to get some input on this alternate reality for Afghanistan instead
of creating a fictional mideast country from the gound up.


David P

Here's a bit of current event real world info for you to mull over in your alternate-history Afghan air campaign:

THE WAY THINGS REALLY WORK: AWACS Attacks Afghan Aerial Anarchy

June 22, 2009: Turkey has given NATO permission to station four AWACS aircraft at an airbase in western Turkey. This will make it possible to keep an AWACs in the air over Afghanistan 24/7 (or as close to that as they can). Afghanistan has never had a nationwide air-traffic control system. That was largely because there was never enough aircraft flying around to justify it. As the economy keeps growing, and more U.S. and NATO transports and warplanes are out and about, air traffic control has become a growing problem. All those radar blocking hills and high mountains don't help either. So NATO decided to bring in some of their AWACS (which don't get much work since the end of the Cold War) and play aerial traffic cop over Afghanistan. The AWACs can also keep track of any unscheduled air service being used for the drug gangs or the Taliban, or whoever. NATO will send 300 aircrew and ground support to Turkey as well. The AWACS radar can track over a hundred aircraft, within a 400 kilometers radius.


from strategypage.com

-Mark

Oooo, that's huge. Given that AWACS have detected drug smugglers running the Gulf of Mexico in speed boats, this should make life more difficult for the Taliban (and others) making money off the heroin trade.

Thank you that was very interesting.


David P.

pouncer wrote:Thank you that was very interesting.


David P.

You're welcome! And I second what Charlie said, those AWACs are trully impressive "eye in the sky" platforms. I got to meet the crew of one while up in Alaska in the mid 1990s during a visit to my brother while he was still in Air Force.

Another tidbit on Afghan air stuff via strategypage:

WARPLANES: Foreign Fighter Pilots Over America

June 27, 2009: For the first time in fifty years, an Afghan Air Force officer graduated from the U.S. Air Force basic flight program. This was part of the Aviation Leadership Program or (ALP), which includes classroom work, including English language training, and flight school (which includes 167 flight and simulator hours). The ALP has been used for years to provide training for air force officers from countries that cannot normally afford this extensive schooling for their pilots. A total of 61 Afghan pilots are going through the ALP, and many will be flying the twenty C-27 twin engine transports Afghanistan will begin receiving later this year.
Up until now, the Afghan Air Force has been using pilots trained during the decades that Afghanistan was an ally of the Soviet Union. But these pilots are getting on in years. ALP students, in effect, receive a scholarship worth nearly half a million dollars for the ALP training (which includes housing, food, medical care, etc.). Since the 1950s, several thousand foreign pilots have attended the ALP.