The day was hot, and likely to get hotter still. Avi was used to the cool breezes from the sea. There was no such breeze here, not today. The day was early, yet, not even halfway to mid day.

The base, as ever, was filled with sounds. His flight suit kept him cool, if not completely comfortable. He was worried.

The night had been filled with false alarms.

The E-3 that NATO had loaned them had been tracking the ingress paths of Su-30s, their flight paths like knife points towards the Ethiopian air bases. Every so often the alarms would go off and the pilots would run to their aircraft. But then, just meters, sometimes, over the border, the Sudanese pilots would break off, turn tail and fly away.

It was obvious what they were doing; they were testing the Ethiopian defences. Testing them, finding weak points, and waiting for the moment to exploit them.

It was a little war, a little war that was part of a bigger war, to the North.

Avi wondered about home. Reports had been fragmentary, and probably censored. Syria, the old enemy, aligned with Iraq had been building up its military, ready to war with Israel and Turkey over the water which Turkey and Israel denied their neighbour.

And because Iraq and Syria could not take on Israel and Turkey alone, it was necessary to create another problem. That problem was Sudan, half starved, ravaged by civil war and famine, it was Iraq's ally nonetheless. And as such did Iraq's bidding.

On April 15th, the Sudanese military fired eight rounds of VX tipped Scuds into position along the contested Ethiopian border. Perhaps intentionally, the Israeli military advisors were among the casualties. In response, Israel sent three squadrons of the Hel Avir to Ethiopia, even in the face of UN concerns.

For Israel, it was simple, someone had attacked an ally and injured and killed Israelis.

Kether Squadron was his Squadron's codename. It had another name, once, the Spitfire Squadron, its colours and Livery revived for the first Squadron of the beautiful new American plane the F-22. His Squadron's name was still a secret. They used the codenames for a reason. The other Squadrons there were Malkuth and Binah. They flew F-16s and C-130s, respectively.

"Hi," the woman said. Avi turned and shook his head, and grinned.

"Come on, captain courageous, look lively!" she grinned. The woman was a Palestinian. It was strange, he thought, but 20 years ago, such a person would have been a second class citizen, not flying a Barak into combat.

"Cheer up," she said.

"Thinking."

"Moping, must be the English blood."

"Maybe. Everything okay?"

"Yes," she frowned, "everything is fine, my squadron is ready for war."

"I only hope…" he began. "no, I cannot hope, it will happen."

"Today?"

"Maybe. Yes, that would be about right."

"You worried?"

"Yes, Lieutenant, I am worried. We are badly outnumbered and outgunned, even by the bloody Sudanese air force. I have 28 combat planes, an AWACS and a reasonable ROE; they have more than 200 combat aircraft, and have never heard of a ROE in their lives. I have ten Karnaffs, and that is all I can rely on to keep the supplies coming in."

They both looked up into the skies, involuntarily.

He was being stupid, he told himself. He was a Captain of the Hel Avir. His Great- grandfather had been a RAF pilot during the Second World War. He had the sky in his blood. He had the greatest war machine ever built under his command.

Line from Yeats wandered through his mind…

"…nor law nor duty made me fight nor public men, nor cheering crowds, drove to this tumult in the clouds…"

And then, as he shook his head, and went back to his duties, he heard it.

ZANEK!!!!!!!!!!

It was time to go to war.

I have been playing TAW consistently since its release in September. In that time, I have completed about five campaigns, and three of those campaigns have not been completed to my satisfaction. I lost in other words. This was an occasion for much complaints, sulking, and generally acting like an idiot. How the living $^&&$ could Sudan defeat NATO??? But defeat it they did. My incompetence to blame.

Now, it must be known that the period I have possessed TAW has coincided with the period that I actually had not got a computer! I had a motherboard, a P350 chip, some RAM, but nothing else. I was playing TAW on my best friend's computer, and my sister's computer (my old P200), and I was not playing it often. Often enough to complete three campaigns though (one win, two losses).

When my computer was finally ready, it was one of the first things onto it, alongside Falcon 4, and my beloved EF2000 and F-15. And on Christmas Day, to offset the heartbreak of a long distance romance, and to avoid Christmas TV, I sat down to play TAW. TAW was always pretty fast, with some frame rate hits in places like airports, and in big dogfights. Oddly, it was not the amount of enemy aircraft that slowed things down, but drawing the red triangles really did mess up your frame rate. Now it was eerily fast. So, I loaded up Operation Highland and played away.

And then I noticed something.

Where the hell were all those Rafales coming from?

I am now towards the completion of Highland. And a small thing that was bothering me is now becoming a very big deal indeed.

In Highland, every 20 minutes or so, the Sudanese Airforce generate a large sortie of around 16 Su-27 Flankers. Off go our heroes and shoot them down. Then 20 minutes later there are another bunch of them. And another. And another.

And indeed, another. Sometimes, these sorties are a little behind a Su-25 strike force. Like their fancier brothers, the Stormoviks seem to be endless in supply.

Did you know there are less than 400 Su-25s in the world? And that figure includes a lot of airforces (Russia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Iran, Iraq and Poland). I have personally killed at least a hundred of these things in Operation Highland alone. Very odd.

Sometimes, on CAP, your mission takes you over an enemy airbase. Ah-hah, look at them all - 20 enemy aircraft just sitting there, waiting to be strafed. And as you pull away, feeling smug, the airbase, whose entire fighter compliment has just been destroyed, is launching MiG-21s after you. MiG-21s, which, incidentally, can take on F-15Es and win. Indeed can take on whole flights of F-22s and win. But that is beside the point.

In Operation Highland, I have killed, or ordered the deaths of, so far FOUR A-50 crews. Does this seriously affect enemy CAPs? Not that I have noticed, and I would not be surprised to see another A-50 up later when I continue playing.

Are these bugs? No; rather they are design features, and strange ones at that.

Now, TAW has a perfectly functioning real-time consistent world; in that regard it is somewhat more convincing than any other dynamic campaign that I have seen, other than what I have seen of Falcon 4. You end one mission with an enemy strike group 20 minutes away from your base, with a flight of F-16s scrambling to intercept them. You start a new mission five minutes later, and the F-16s have engaged, but the enemy strike group is now 15 minutes away. This is really impressive and rather mind-boggling when you think about it. And this is happening all over the theatre. Wow.

The issue with the endless supply of enemy fighters is about game balance. It is, I think, a deliberate way of keeping the action going.

TAW is an outgrowth of EF2000; its basic template hearkens back to those days, a combination of mid-res flight modelling and dynamic detailing of a modern war. Eurofighter 2000 was a scary game, still is. You have, in that game, under your control, NATO's greatest weapon, but it is still merely a fighter plane with all the weaknesses that entails. Enemy forces, with such aircraft as the Su-35 could match you to an extent with technology and beat you with numbers. That game taught you to treat the Su-27 series of aircraft with the utmost respect. The game was not without its flaws, such things cannot be, but it was a classic. Then came F-22.

Putting the F-22 in a simulation game is always going to be problematic. Consider for a moment, a thoroughbred air superiority fighter designed and built to swat out enemies at the stand-off range. Something that can more effectively control airspace than the mighty F-15 or F-14. Now, consider, this craft is stealthy, and can remain aloft for longer than its older siblings.

Consider a plane that can enter enemy airspace unseen and remain there for many hours, armed with the AMRAAM, that most deadly of missiles. An aircraft that can dominate enemy airspace for hours, a true frontline fighter.

Imagine you are an enemy pilot. Imagine that somewhere in YOUR home airspace is an aircraft that can see you long, long before you can see him. This aircraft can kill you long before you even know you are under attack, as finally, your RWR screams that something is inbound. And then he can accelerate away at such speed that your friends cannot catch him. Until he is out of sight, then he turns, and again, starts to hunt. Think about it.

Forget about what you may think, or may have heard or inferred. This is what the F-22 is designed to do. Perhaps an aircraft like the Su-37 could challenge it, but it could not achieve superiority against it. Such an aircraft would be amazing to fly; it handles like a dream; the best elements of the F-15 and F-16, in one terrifying package. Perfect for a game you would say? Well maybe.

Well, modelling the F-22 is problematic. Factor one. People have flown it, and liked it, but they ain't telling much. DID got pilot assistance of various kinds, from NATO airforces, but I don't think there were too many F-22 pilots amongst them. They would not be the most useful resource, anyway. In fact one game, which, deep down, I shamefully suspect to be the most accurate F-22 model is (I'm sorry lord, I'm sorry!) Novalogic's F-22 Raptor. Arcade game, you cry! Hmm, yes. LMTAS helped, and one or two of the F-22 test pilots tested the game. By that token, the F-22 in TAW is probably TOO hardcore….

Flight modelling, is, however, only half the story in designing the flight experience in a sim game. (To digress, external physics and graphics texturing for speed impressions are also a very big factor). Super-accurate flight modelling would be hard, if not impossible to achieve. After all the aircraft's Common Integrated Processor is said (according to Janes and the World Air Power Journal) to be in the lower end Cray class; surely that could provide a smooth ride.

Which brings us back to game balance. Games need to be fun and challenging, otherwise we grow bored, and that, for a game developer, is bad business sense. Flying an F-22 against any potential enemy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation would only be fun for a little while, but would soon become tedious; nothing that anyone has in their inventory is a credible threat against it.

Certainly a Rafale would be a dangerous adversary, or a Eurofighter or the Sukhoi-37. Both the Rafale and the EF2000 are almost as capable as fighters, and they are better strike aircraft; the Su-37 has many of the F-22s advantages. But no-one has many of these; France, Britain and India are hardly likely to be enemies of NATO anyway. Russia, if it were to become an enemy again, would be heavily reliant on older technology, and its Su-37 and MiG-35 (Thrust vectoring variant of the MiG-33/29M) forces would not last long in the face of logistical problems.

DID tried to surmount these obstacles by setting their game in a future where other nations have had a chance to catch up; such aircraft as the Su-37, the MiG-35, the Rafale and the EF2000 Typhoon have been mass produced and sold to potential enemies. This seems a particularly ham fisted attempt to enforce that game balance.

Combined with the seemingly endless supply of enemy front-line fighters, this renders a lot of playing the game rather…. Pointless. Why bother risking your aircraft (and sanity) taking on 100 planes a night. They are still going to keep coming.

In EF2000 I often risked my plane and the outcome of the war to strafe enemy planes on the ground. I only discovered recently how pointless this was. The runways, not the planes, were the key. Not knowing the precedent, I tried this in TAW also. Sometimes, I could kill 12 or so planes and resume my CAP unharmed.

A clever and decisive sneak attack you might think? Well, not really. You do not see any reduction in enemy air presence in that sector. In fact, as I have mentioned earlier, maul a few dozen enemy strike missions over a 24 hour period in real life, you will start seeing changes at the very least., or more likely a cease-fire.

II Future Air Wars. In theory and practise.

In 2005, shortly after the first USAF F-22 Squadrons became active, the first exports were made to America's traditional ally, Israel. The F-22s were assigned to a new squadron with an old name, the Spitfire Squadron, and were now based in the Negev desert. The squadron was renamed the First Raptor Squadron, but retains its old squadron patch.

In 2007, the Egyptian military seizes power in Egypt. The Egyptian military seized power during a long period of national uncertainty, including Egyptian fears of the increasing power of its neighbour, Libya, and the conflict between the younger, liberal secularists and the older, more hardline Islamists. The military seized power and then attempted to gather support of the Islamists. The Islamists then tried to steer the new government's policy to an anti-Israel, anti-western stance.

In response, Israel deploys more troops to the border with Israel, and them starts supporting anti-government operations in Egypt. Following Egypt's occupation of Sudan and Russia's control of Ethiopia, NATO troops are deployed to Saudi Arabia, and, reluctantly, Israeli squadrons are invited to join the coalition attempting to bring the crisis to a peaceable conclusion.

Rebel, Israeli supported troops occupy most of the region between Suez and the Israeli border, and Israel has threatened to invade if Egypt moves east.

In the Second World War, Germany went through possession of over 10,000 aeroplanes. It lost in the region of five hundred in the bloody month of August 1940. No one can sustain that sort of loss anymore, even proportionally. Nowadays, fighter aircraft cost what an aircraft carrier once cost. (In the Second World War, Canada had an aircraft carrier. Nowadays, its CF-18 fleet strains its military resources.

Ireland (pause as the author coughs guiltily) had a squadron of top of the range fighters - Hurricanes. Ireland hasn't actually progressed much further in terms of airpower…. ;-). Australia had a fairly large airforce, and New Zealand had a carrier (I think). One of the cheapest modern fighters, the F-16A will set you back seven million sterling. Britain's Department of Defence budget for 1999-2000 is 21 Billion, Sterling ($33.6 Billion US).

In 1996, the US spent $255.3 Billion, France, $38.4 Billion, UK $32 Billion, Canada $7.7 Billion. The West has three nations which can still, honestly, claim super power and international intervention ability, USA, France, Great Britain. This is determined by the fact that these nations have Carrier fleets, support structures and self-sustainable deployment capability. Keep this in mind as we continue.

"You need three things to win a war; money, money and money" - Tivulzio (1441 - 1518)

Never a truer word spoken. The backbone of the RAF fleet is the mighty Tornado Fighter Bomber, and it costs 35 Million Sterling ($56 Million US) apiece. The RAF has less then 500 active military aircraft. This includes training aircraft, support aircraft and the warplanes themselves (Tornado Gr.1, Gr.1b, Gr.4; Tornado F.3 and Harrier Gr.7) which are only a minority.

Britain lost 6 Tornado fighter-bombers in the Gulf conflict. In those last Cold War days, pre-drawdown, this was seen as terribly, terribly high. If the RAF lost 6 Tornados in Bosnia, or on Operation Northern Watch, or Southern Watch, or over Kosovo today, the consequences would be disastrous. With this in mind, consider, in Total Air War, in the course of an hour, the enemy, Sudan, lost 12 Su-27 Flanker fighter-bombers (cost, roughly $35 Million US).

And still, they kept coming.

I shot down (in Operation Outcast) at least 20 Rafales in the same period. And (in Outcast), a similar number of Su-27s, and twice that number of MiG-27 and Su-25s. Losing 32 planes in such a period, in a modern conflict, especially 32 front-line fighters, top of the range warplanes, would have distressed IA-PVO generals in the event of World War 3, in the bad old days. And the enemy lost that number to me… one lousy flight of F-22s. I would not at all be surprised if the final tally of lost enemy aircraft in that one hour in Outcast was well over a hundred.

In the real world, losing any significant amount of aircraft does not merely imply that you are now X-amount of aircraft down, with only Y-amount left.

It goes deeper than that. There is a ruthless mathematics at work here. Every plane needs maintenance, and their pilots need rest. If an enemy is taking a toll on your CAP force, then the amount of aircraft available for your CAP is reduced, but not the requirement for the CAP, meaning that the downtime required for aircraft maintenance is reduced. This means that the available aircraft is reduced even further, or the time between maintenance is reduced, meaning that your own air cover is lessened.

If the worst happens, and an enemy plane takes out a squadron on the ground, then things get FAR worse.

Warplanes are severely limited in range. So, if, for example, your Squadron of Su-27s is strafed on the tarmac at Bodo, incurring 60 percent losses, not only have you lost most of your aircraft, but also the base is disrupted. Until you have dragged the burning wrecks from their revetments (7 or eight burning aircraft, with highly flammable aviation fuel everywhere? - give it a minimum of six hours.), that base is probably, for all practical purposes, inoperable. And that is before the headaches of resupplying the base.

This means that your CAP force at the nearest friendly airbase will have to increase its range until the base is fully capable again. Until that happens, your airforce, in that sector is a: losing downtime, b: operating at greater range, and thus has less fuel for manoeuvre and dogfight; c: using more resources (i.e., the war is becoming more expensive). A proportion of your aircraft will need more maintenance, and, because of the wider CAP requirement for the operable squadrons, they will have to trade off either weapons load or time aloft.

So, now, over a large front, you are now that bit more stretched. Okay, it is a limited, critical time, you can deploy reserves, or repair what can be repaired and get up to strength, but in that time you have an enemy who can strike more freely at your HVAs, or engage your weakened CAP and get closer to air superiority. It means that enemy ships can operate closer to your littoral regions, and have less fear of anti-ship strike aircraft. When you go out to engage these fleets, you cannot be sparing fighters for escorts.

Thus, without even bombing the runway it is possible to really hobble your opponent, and make his life difficult by simply strafing a dozen aircraft on the ground.

Remember, that was Adolf Galland's main tactic in the Battle of Britain, to beat the RAF on the ground, and it was only because of an accident (bombing London) that this was interrupted. The RAF was within days of total defeat as a result. Once the enemy stopped engaging the RAF Southern Airfields, the "few" were able to wreak havoc.

War is economic in nature. It is, to quote Tom Clancy, "armed robbery writ large." Wars are expensive, perilously so. World War II bankrupted Britain and ended its empire. (actually, the US made money from it, through the War Bonds - clever people!)

If 32 expensive front-line fighters are lost in one day, never mind an hour, then that nation is in financial trouble, akin to the government exchequer losing over a Billion from its economy - a Billion that could fund tax cuts, hospitals, schools, and other things. The TAW scenario holds that someone finds a great deal of oil and the Red Sea littoral nations (who in real life hate one another with a vengeance, and are gearing up militarily) become rich and militarily powerful.

Actually Oil is not the big deal nowadays as it was - you need more than oil to make your nation rich. Nigeria, Sudan, and Russia have huge reserves of the stuff, and none of them are particularly rich. You need economics to turn that oil into money. I prefer to consider the nations of TAW to be Lion Economies (after Francois Heisbourg's wonderful book little booklet, the "Future of Warfare", which had some wonderful scenarios to demonstrate his theories.)

The TAW scenarios would cause so much mayhem to the economic infrastructure of these little Lion economies, the results would be felt world wide. Imagine, if you will, the consequences of Singapore going to war with Malaysia. Also, remember, that just because Britain held out so long against the Luftwaffe, does not mean that Ethiopia would be able to hold out against a dedicated NATO bombing campaign, no matter how advanced their airforce is. How long before a meeting of the country's Central Bank and the Prime Minister, with the central bank warning that unless the war ends, the nations GDP will fall, and foreign investment will dry up?

Yes, TAW models this to an extent, with required percentages of Industrial or political or whatever targets. But why must there be a fixed percentage?

Today, there are many sundry reasons that end wars. Wars are never purely military occurrences anyway. They are factors of politics and economics. In TAW's future, Television and the Internet will be prevalent even in the wilderness of Eritrea. Wars are never pleasant and the media will see these things as the media sees fit, and that will determine what the politicians are hearing from the people.

Also, neutral nations, as well as entering the war on one side or the other may well put pressure on the warring factions to desist. After all, they do not want their economies and their markets put in jeopardy by a spat between their neighbours.

EF2000 had a macro war; TAW does also, but EF2000, everything happened off-stage, and you could assume things were happening. Eight hours pass and Sweden in on your side. That is a little easier to swallow than the TAW variant. The game pauses for a second, a message appears, Egypt has joined the enemy side. WTF? (curses, snarls, bah humbug, drools). And thus it is, in the space of a game hour, your enemy has doubled in size, and now has F-22s.

Even more trying.

Even more tempting to give up.

Let's look at potential futures, and consider their implications for Total Air War.

As far as I can see it, the so-called "Military-Industrial" complex will face a crisis in the next few years. Why?

Well, Augustine's Law will come home to roost. Western Powers will no longer be in a position to continually buy newer and better weaponry for their soldiers, so the focus will have to change. The very last bunch of fighter aircraft for a long while are in production at the moment. The Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22, the F-117, the B-2, the Eurofighter, the Rafale.

Once these are in service, money will be spent maintaining them, and producing replacements, but nothing new. It is likely that military spending will increase soon, but for a limited time. Force requirements will be reviewed, then implemented. Britain may very well construct a new fleet carrier, and the US will return its carrier groups to the much hoped for 20 carrier level. Military recruitment will increase for a while.

And then nothing. Military budgets will by necessity have to become maintenance budgets rather than purchasing budgets. If America has 20 carrier groups, it will be hard pressed to maintain them all and research new technologies. Research budgets will suffer. Military operators will no longer be able to sell a proposal to their Governments asking for a new tank or ship or plane to replace an "ageing" older model which is not much more than five years old.

NATO will have to make do with what this boom will give them. We will see a lot more cross-usage of weaponry. There will be navalised versions of the Eurofighter, F-22, F-117 and Rafale fighters, rather than anything else.

The world is not going to get less dangerous; in fact it will grow more so. A Balkanised Russia, an expansionist China, and the economic powerhouses of South East Asia will represent likely theatres of conflict. The entire continent of Africa could very well be the theatre for a new colonialism, where NATO and others will be forced to intervene to protect scarce resources from hostile governments, or the ravages of civil war.

Consider: an Africa divided between a Pro-western North and South, and a neutral West, and a hostile East, perhaps dominated by a newly powerful former Zaire. As western economies begin to run out of fuel or minerals or whatever, military intervention will become necessary. It doesn't take much to imagine whole continent fighting over an as yet undiscovered oil reserve in somewhere like Chad. Consider also that AIDS will have probably decimated the population of every central African country in the next fifteen years, leaving whole areas underinhabited.

Wars in the future will not be "total wars" between super powers, they will be what the west would consider to be regional crises, but on the ground they will be "total wars." By total war, I mean a war fought with every resource of each combatant. High casualty, high weapon usage conflicts.

Most worrying, these conflicts will be played out using cheap modern weapons. If western arms manufacturers cannot get a buyer at the current prices, the market will dictate that they cut their prices, increase supply, in order to turn a profit. So maybe an air-to-air missile than costs $100,000 today may cost as little as $2,000 in ten years time. And this 2 grand weapon will be no less deadly for its reduced price tag.

In this case, conflicts of the future could be high-technology tribal conflicts.

What's more, Western arms manufacturers will be able to, by threatening job losses, sell what they like to who they like. Recently there was an example of this in Britain, where Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary and Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary had to back down on the Labour government's pre-election promise to stop the sale of Hawk fighter-bombers to Indonesia, for the very reason outlined above.

The Indonesian government had a contract with the company, with the approval of the British government. The fact that it was with a different government was immaterial, to break the contract would ensure job losses, due to the closing of production lines and possible rationalisation due to cost incurred by breaking the contract.

So, modern front-line fighters will not get any cheaper, but the current crop will be going for a discount, so the idea of a civil war in North Africa fought between two sides both armed with F-16s is not fanciful.

On a brighter note, if such it could be called, we will see whatever military spending is available will be spent on upgrades not brand new equipment; today's classic warplanes will not go gentle into that good night . In the United States there are literally thousands of warplanes sitting in the desert doing absolutely nothing. They are covered up against the elements and occasionally scrapped, but they are there.

It would not be difficult for Western Air Forces to make up shortfalls by reactivating and upgrading older fighters. New radars, new avionics, perhaps Fly by Wire or Fly-by-light technology installed in everything from old A-6s, F-4s and F-15s. Israel currently specialises in this, but it will be THE military growth industry in the future.

Why?

Which is cheaper, do you think? Designing, testing, producing an aeroplane, which may or may not do what you intended, or retrofitting a plane you know will fly and do as you intend, only make it better?

A super-cruise, thrust vectoring capable Tomcat? Well, maybe. Certainly an F-14 Tomcat with a powerful mini-awacs, JTIDS compatible radar system and a strike capability. Or maybe an F-16 with deep strike capability. Or a truly multi-role Tornado fighter-bomber that does all the work of all its sub-variants.

Drones probably will not become anything more than a clever gimmick. Drones may be seen as the way forward, but it is unlikely that they will ever fully replace human pilots.

One thing that TAW does not model, that the future will become increasingly reliant on: stand-off weaponry.

Yes, every so often, you are asked to go take out a SCUD launching battery. I have yet to see these things firing - I assume they do not. But stand-off weaponry are such a part of modern warfare that they cannot be ignored. If, in a TAW scenario, air strikes are considered problematic against an important military target, the USN or the Royal Navy should enter the littoral waters and unleash a slew of Tomahawks against that target, then withdraw.

Or, alternately, RAF Tornados should fly towards the border and launch a BAe / Matra Storm Shadow at the enemy position, or a B-2 launch a JSOW at that troublesome airbase. To digress, SCUD hunting is, historically, a singularly unsuccessful occupation. All the "SCUD launchers" destroyed during the Gulf Conflict were not in fact Maz launcher vehicles, but oil tankers….

However, if this is to be modelled, there has to be strong rules governing their usage. After Operation Desert Fox, the US Tomahawk stocks are almost depleted. There are not, obviously, many of these things in the world.

A useful correlation with TAW was the highly charged Operation Desert Fox. Desert Fox had a TAW-type goal system, and a TAW-type prosecution. A series of targets were marked out, and a percentage damaged goal was applied, and in went the bomber. Most of the work was done by Tomahawk missiles. RAF Tornados did a lot also. Eventually, the "percentage damaged" goals were achieved and off they all went home.

Did they win the war? Of course not. Did they achieve much? Well… sort of. To be fair, much head scratching went on over this. Sky News in the UK thought this was the greatest thing ever, and were dreadfully disappointed.

The moral of the story. When the Hurly-Burly's done, when the battle's lost and won…. You need ground troops to gain and hold ground, and ground troops are terribly exposed and vulnerable.

And here, TAW falls flat on its face. Without a ground war, all we are playing are surreal Desert Fox replays.

III Gameplay: Thoughts and Conclusion.

The Forcecom general sighed, and looked at his computer screen. Superimposed on a theatre map, straight from a NRO satellite, the war played out. He wondered why he had to be here, precisely. He could just as easily be at home in Washington, with this thing. The software was straight-forward, it could run on any old laptop, all you needed was a military access code, and you, too, could watch a war.

The Data on the screen was filtered in from the patrols of NATO E-3 Sentry aircraft, USN E-2Chawkeye aircraft, USAF E-8 JSTARs, USN F-14E "Datacats," coalition JTIDS and from the ground links with each allied airbase. From here, he could see the war, in almost every trivial aspect, and he could see, too, the war was not going well.

The weather that afternoon in Addis Ababa was hot, humid and endless. He was sweating. His dark skin shone in the harsh overhead lamp.

The Sudanese were overwhelming allied CAPs frequently, simply by weight of numbers. Their upgraded MiG-21s were as dangerous as an old F-16. They couldn't take the Viper's punishment, but they were cheaper and more plentiful. They were losing F-22s.

The fact burned in his head. They had lost 9 so far. Nine of America's brightest and greatest fighter.

This did not bode well. LMTAS were struggling, due to endless and foreseen problems with the JSF programme. Only the USAF order had been, so far, even begun to be honoured. And now that wonderful, super technology was showing a perfectly predictable problem: it's hi-tech complicated logistics endlessly.

Their bright star, the F-22, had been their touchstone, something to point to when the JSF caused more and more trouble. "We made that," they would say, "you can't fault that." Congress was seriously considering wiping the JSF programme. The NATO nations involved with the programme were faltering. The Royal Navy was looking rather lustfully at a choice of a navalised EF2000, or a license built F/A-18E Super Hornet. And now the F-22 was showing that it, like every other fighter plane in the world, had feet of clay.

The general was uncomfortable running an airwar. He was, after all, a US Army general. It was his post, so he had the job of running the show. If only we had troops, he told himself. He imagined watching a surge of Armoured Cavalry up along that Valley there, supported by Commanche and Apache gunships, and the army's latest acquisition, the upgraded A-10.

But no US Army troops had been actively involved, fighting anywhere since Kazakhstan; after that, the US administration re-learned the lessons of the Somalia peacekeeping experience in the early 90s. And nothing would change that. CNN surveys showed the American public were sick to the teeth of US involvement in the petty quarrels of the Middle East. One after another, the US had been involved in conflicts between Eritrea and Ethiopia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and the long series of wars against Yemen. And that was not forgetting the crap further up the Gulf.

The general turned his music up - Wagner's Parsifal. Opera had become very popular in the second decade of the 21st century. Modern culture was too confused and had little more to offer. The music, he found, helped him think.

Coalition management, that's what they teach commander nowadays, he reminded himself, trying to re-learn the lessons. He had two nations under his military "advisorship" Ethiopia and Eritrea, nations who by turns, warred and loved each other. To say things were strained would be a crass understatement.

And he had another nationality under his command, although it was not until he arrived did he know they were there - Israel. They had a squadron of F-22s and F-16s and C-130s in the North of Ethiopia, flying under Ethiopian colours. He wasn't pleased about that, but the Ethiopians considered them their secret weapon, so he had to lump it. They were good fighters. He hoped the world would not find out. The situation in Syria was tensing, by the day.

Ever since Norway, a few years back, the pattern for NATO wars was this. European NATO would do the work, and the US would support them. Host countries were, according to the new "silent doctrine" to do the ground warfare; it was their tanks, their men, their trucks. The US would provide airpower. That was what they are best at, no? The Marines would be the only American ground forces. That was, after all, what the Marines were for. Occasionally, a small ACR group would find itself sent off in a support role.

But it was Britain who's star was re-ascending; and that was since Norway too. But it had been going that way a long time. And this time, the UK was not here. He had worked with those troops, liked those troops; he liked their tactics, their Challenger tanks, their ruthless professionalism. They were a dream to work with. They had strange habits, their morale was odd. "We Brits, an infantry sergeant had said to him, love to grab a one-nil score in the last few seconds of injury time. We always play till then."

He took a while to work out what all that meant, but he had grown used to having them under his command. Now Britain was staying out of this little "Red Sea Adventure," thank you very much. They were too busy evaluating the F-22 as a possible Future Offensive Aircraft contender. And that was that.

So, here he was, with his screen, watching a war which was being timed, and his migraine was getting worse.

When would it end, when would the Sudanese break, and when could his aircraft operate freely over their territory. He wished he had American troops. He wished he had British troops. But only America had really involved itself this time. He was on his own.

So, after all my moaning, why buy TAW?

Because its awe inspiring and brilliant, that's why.

The gaming area looks small on the map, but in fact it is huge. I have not, for example, fallen over the edge of the world at all, and I could amuse myself for hours simply flying about, exploring, and there is a hell of a lot to explore.

The gaming area is not Iran, or Korea, or Iraq, or Russia, or Libya or Cuba, surprise, surprise. In fact it's nowhere a PC sim has ever been set before, to my knowledge. It is the region of the Red Sea basin; South Eastern Egypt, Western Saudi Arabia, North Eastern Sudan, Northern Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen.

And boy it's a beautiful part of the world.

According to the background of the game, the region becomes the theatre for a series of wars at the end of the next decade, fought between nations armed with second hand Western and Eastern weaponry. Two of these nations, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have that most deadly of weapons, the F-22. Both nations also posses those other rather deadly aircraft, the EF2000 and Joint Strike Fighter.

According to the campaign environment, the nations of the world have been busy buying second hand US and European and Russian military equipment, and upgrading them. If you see a MiG-21, don't snigger. Worry. He can probably see you on his fancy new radar, and if he can see you, he can take you out with his fancy new R-77s. You may not think much of Ethiopia as a military super-power, but in F-22, you would do well to worry about them.

Thus, the enemy has a dangerous mix of planes, from the Russian "Strike Eagle" beater, the Su-30, to the F-22 itself, to the Joint Strike Fighter, as well as such terrors as the F-16 and Rafale. This is all part of the hi-tech warfare of the future, I know, but… again, where do they get all these damn planes from?

Now, in the end, after considering all these many and varied arguments, let us consider what is needed for a future war dynamic campaign.

Coalition management. There are about 10 countries involved in TAW. You can, in the mission editors I have seen designated them as Gulf Co-operation council, NATO, Soviet, etc. Well, that is great, but how a bout more nations, maybe all the NATO members. Each time a campaign starts, the computer says who are helping you, and which NATO countries have sent troops.

Say you use the Siberian War option. Russia and China have been involved in a 6-month ground war on the borders at Khabarovsk. Winter is closing in. The Russians are close to defeat. The Russian economy is completely ruined by the war. Russia threatens to go nuclear against China. Into the breach steps NATO, as a "peace-enforcing" force. And then everything goes wrong and a small NATO coalition is alone on the icy tundra.

Right, nice evocative scenario you can conjure with. The computer selects who is out there. A few defaults: Germany, UK, and US, FRANCE. The computer does a quick run around of the NATO countries and decides who comes along. Poland, the Czech Republic, Norway, Belgium, and Italy send troops and air squadrons. Greece and Turkey offer troops, then get paranoid of one another. Canada offers logistical support. The computer then decides that Sweden sends a squadron of Grippens to escort their aid convoys to the starving populace of the warzone. These planes can be, to an extent you assets, provided they are not over-used.

All well and good. Because the NATO mission is technically a UN mission, Finland, Japan and Korea send troops. If the war goes well, then your coalition will hold together. But China is using back-channel diplomacy against all the antagonists. Japan and Korea and indeed, Canada are vulnerable to this. China is also in a position to directly threaten Korea and Japan, and does so. And then there is Russia. I know TAW does this anyway, but it would be nice on a wider scale. Maybe a War Popularity Scale, or something.

Say, the Finns take massive casualties along their area of security. They reduce their commitment according to political pressure at home. And then the core players have their own populations to worry about. When a campaign starts, you could even end up losing the US support, and their vital F-22s, leaving France and the UK holding the line. Like I said, I want to know what is going on, to some extent, back home. The war on the home front is as important as the war in the field.

Bases. Each base should be a special sort of unit. The base should be like an aircraft or whatever. It has a (changeable) Nationality, it has a personnel level and a set amount of aircraft at this base. And most importantly, it has a rating that determines how well it may generate sorties. This figure should be dependent on a number of factors.

TAW airbases are great, but lets make them functional, and worthwhile. What do you need to generate a sortie? You need aircraft, first of all, and if a RAF Typhoon as just dropped by and cluster bombed the ramp, then you have, obviously, less planes. And when you have no planes, until reserves are called up and stationed there, you cannot generate sorties!!! Next, you need fuel. Again, you need a set limit of the fuel available here. And if a NATO JSOW takes out one of yours fuel tanks, then obviously, you should have less. You may have to leave aircraft "fallow" doing nothing.

Next you need weaponry, and again, this should be limited. The campaign AI should subtract the loadout from the base total. Something simple, perhaps - 12 BAI loadouts, 50 CAS loadouts, 100 CAP loadouts, perhaps? If certain loadouts are all used up, then the base is not going to generate CAP flights. Next you need a maintenance factor. To be simple, make this general. Basically how many maintenance crews there are, compared with how much damage, and thus how long to fix the things. An Apache stand off attack could very well damage this level.

And finally, the pilots. Say 36 pilots for every 24 aircraft? Assume that each time they eject, they get back to base within 24 hours, but if they do not eject, the pilot pool is reduced. Also, to be simple, assume half are sleeping at any one time, and if there are less pilots than active planes, then less planes than optimal are going to be taking off.

Perhaps even a maintenance factor for the aircraft. Anyone operating, for example, F-14s is going to be spending a lot of time keeping it flying.

You need, also, floating airbases. In both EF2000 and TAW, the CVs do not do anything, simply float. Well, they should launch aircraft, by the same principle. Nothing fancy, just a Fighters Anthology style launching and trapping, and a fixed number of aircraft.

Both of these things need re-supply. Keeping bases supplied can become a whole sub-strategy in itself. Basically, TAW should do all this work in the background, but allow it to be played with, if needs be. And if the enemy keeps preventing re-supply, then the base can no longer generate sorties. Indeed, it might now fall to the enemy. Or, in the case of the CVs, sink. This may sound complicated, but even someone who is crap at maths could manage a formula for it. Basically, a small, ongoing algorithm for each base, occupying a few K of memory. It is something that could radically, radically, change the way the war is fought.

You need theatre-wide stand off battle occurring. You have enemy FROG-7s and SCUDs raining down on allied airbases and troop concentrations. You have Storm Shadows and Tomahawks destroying supply dumps. You get to watch them cruise in, in SMARTVIEW.

By the same token, you need a ground war, and artillery, but that is a fight for another day.

And finally, finally, I come again to the main irritant of TAW. In EF2000 TACTCOM, in the section detailing the campaign, it gives a list of just how much each side has of what. I assume the campaign sticks to it. TAW just keeps rolling the damn things out.

Douglas Cowan's MAWGUI for F-22ADF also allows the campaign creator to set exactly how much each side has of what. Ruthless rationing of arms, ammunition, and warplanes would go a long way towards promoting the game balance, as well as airbases operating under a stressful war footing. Instead of scramble missions against 16 Su-27s and 20 Su-25s (the missions, to be fair, never ask you to kill that many, but while you are in the air, it is not unheard of to shoot down this many bad guys), which is just one of many raid that day against your base, how about a scramble mission, half armed and half fuelled, against a raid of 4 Su-30s and 2 Su-27s in escort roles? Even in an F-22, I would be terrified.

It is my express wish that EF2000 V.3 is a sequel to both TAW and EF2000 V.2. I think an alchemical marriage of the two would produce something that would agree with the arguments expressed here. Certainly, DID could well afford to drag their sims closer to the hard-core lobby, not particularly by flight modelling, although EF2000 could do with a far more fluid flight experience, but by the strategy and workings of the campaign itself. TAW is a wonder, it's amazing; but it can get very annoying. The past is but prelude.

Consider this a challenge.