Polar Shield - Free Viper campaign for the Kola map

[d0ppler]

Russia has started a full blown war against Finland, Norway and Sweden. You are a part of a coalition force called Polar Shield, consisting of these countries. As a Viper pilot, you have been sent to Evenes Air Base to be a part of the RNoAF 334 squadron.

Defend Northern Europe against Russian aggression. Get to flight line and see what missions we have for you today.

Polar Shield is a 24 mission campaign spanned over a year (march 2016 - feb 2017) in a fictional war between Russia and Northern Europe.
This campaign consist of 5 main types of mission (CAP, CAS, Missile Defence, Pinpoint Strike and Sea Patrol). When you start a mission, you will get the option to pick from 3 different mission types, where CAP is always one of them, and the last two is a random mix of the last four.

Each mission type consists of a variety of different sub missions (which will be generated randomly), so you will never get the same mission, since enemy and allied spawns are random.

Overview:

Each time you start a mission there will be randomly spawn X number of Bogey Groups coming from north west all down to south east of the map with X number of planes in each group (random of 2-4). Their spawning time is also a random time between mission start and 1 hour out. Expect Su-27/33, MiG-29, MiG-31 and occasionally Su-23 and Su-34. If you pick a mission type which is NOT CAP, both the north and east CAP will be taken care of by AI, also random what planes, but it's a mix of Finish F/A-18, Norwegian F-16 and Swedish JF-17 (sorry, the only stock DCS Swedish jet is Viggen, and it will be a little too old for the rest of the field. JF-17 is somewhat the closest I could find in DCS which can resemble the JAS 39 Gripen).

Anyhow, if you're doing, for instance a CAS mission, and either the AI south or north CAP goes down, you will be asked to abort your current mission and be reassigned to do CAP. AWACS Overlord will tell you on UHF CH2 if that happens. (In testing I feel this scenario can happen 1/10 of the times). If you're doing a missile defence mission, and the above scenario occurs, you will not be reassigned to CAP unless you and your wingman has taken down all incoming cruise missiles.

When you pick a mission, you will get a briefing text with everything you need to know. You can view this briefing from the F10 menu anytime.

Note : you can safely compress time whenever you want. Whenever something important comes up, the mission itself sets time compression back to normal.

Note 2 : any mission will fail regardless of what you have achieved if the AWACS goes south

Note 3 : steerpoint 1 will always be bullseye and steerpoint 2 will always be homeplate (Evenes)

 

The 5 mission types

1. Combat Air Patrol

This is your go-to A2A mission. You will be randomly sent to either EAST or NORTH. You will always fly as wingman #3. You must take your own decisions, you will not get any direct orders from wing lead. It's DCS AI, so don't expect them to be super smart. The bandit spawn odds will be multiplied by 1.8 if you pick the CAP mission, just to stir things up a bit. There will also be in total 7 friendly planes (including yourself) doing CAP, rather than the normal 4 (2 planes on each front). There's a magnitude of randomness that can happen here, so stay sharp. CAP is also the only mission type you really need to use the tanker. The other mission types will normally not require air-air refueling as long as you fly economically

The CAP mission will always be available to choose, so A2A-only pilots at least has one A2A mission to pick.

 

2. Close Air Support

There are 12 different locations on the map where you can be sent, as well as what kind of enemy units that can spawn is also random. There can be AAA and SAMs amongst those units. The JTAC/AFAC will prioritise those, if any. Hopefully  
Use the in game JTAC-feature to get MGRS unit coordinates and such. The JTAC will always be on VHF CH3

 

3. Pinpoint Strike

25 different buildings you can be tasked to destroy. All are within Russia border, and all are most likely guarded by SA-300 (which also spawns at random places every time). Due to a bug in the Kola map at the moment, it's not possible to detect whether a building on the map is destroyed or not, so I've putted a COW on the roof of the building you're expected to destroy. You will be escorted by 4 F-16s with Harms and AMRAMS, which will try to act as more attractive targets than yourself when you fence in. AWACS can ask you to go for another more important building mid flight, so you need to pay attention to UHF CH2.

 

4. Sea Patrol

Either you will be tasked to check out suspicious Russian wessels near one of the oil rigs/gas fields of Norway, or you will be tasked to take out a Corvette (which will fire at you if you come close enough). You will, regardless of which sub mission, be given a picture of the ship type you're about to destroy. There can be a lot of civilian wessels (random spawns) out there, and shooting at one of them will automatically fail the mission.

 

5. Missile Defence

5 random different cities on the west coast of Norway can be attacked. You will fly lead with one wingman. You can change the ROE of your wingman with F10 menu, but it will not act as a "real" DCS wingman.
Anyway, you need to take out in total of 6 cruise missiles (Kh-65) before they hit land. They fly kinda slow (around 4-500 knots?), but extremely low. You will get the radial to intercept the missiles in the mission briefing. Don't panic/rush, you have plenty of time to take them out.

 

 

General tips

Unless you're flying CAP, there's absolutely no need to use the burner at all. Kola is a big map, and there are some pretty far stretches you need to fly. Use time compression and autopilot rather than the blower. Just my 2 cents. CRUS page is your friend!

One last thing, just in case it isn't obvious, don't forget to put some weapons on your plane with the Rearming/refueling screen before you take off  

Download:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3347247/

 

A big thank you to  @Don Rudi. I really appreciate your valuable insights during beta testing.

 

Appendix

Skins

334sqd tail 666
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309062/

334sqd tail 659
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309962/

334sqd tail 667
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309140/

334sqd tail 665
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309137/

334sqd tail 664
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309035/

331sqd tail 677
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309185/

331sqd tail 686
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309067/

 

Misc

I've written a lua script which simulates bandit spawns in this campaign. Here are the results:

CAP mission:

 

Non-CAP mission:

Edited Friday at 11:57 PM by d0ppler
Clarification and appendix

[Furiz]

Nice, lets try it out, thanks!

[Don Rudi]

I had great fun testing the campaign, can highly recommend it

[RubberDogSh1tOutOfHKG]

Looking forward to this!
Thank you

 

[d0ppler]

12 OCT 2025 - Fixes and improvements:
  -pinpoint strike escort - AB restrict off if reassigned to CAP - fixed
  -comm tower to use to boresight mavericks - done
  -add missile defense wingman in datalink to player - done
  -awacs bug. player don't get message that awacs gone south and mission is failed - fixed
  -in case of reassignment to CAP, player gets coordinates for the racetrack of the dead CAP flight - fixed

 

Added a comm tower aprox 5 nautical miles away, directly in front from your plane which is perfect to boresight your mavs:

[FupDuck]

This looks great, I can't wait to try it out this weekend. I hear there's a Kola update coming soon too which should make this even more enjoyable!