Graveyard of Empires Campaign

Afghanistan | November 2025 - January 2026

It was 5:30 am local time, the air is frigid and a strong wind was blowing large snowflakes around Shindand Airfield. Pilots are doing final checks before taking to the skies to head towards their respective objectives. This is the Coalitions final push to take the enemy’s base of operations, Herat Airfield. A flight of 2 Vipers takes off from the runway and form up to head head to their objectives. Once at the AO, they will start clearing the airspace and destroy strategic bridges that could aid in enemy reinforcement.

A single Hornet lines up on the runway and quickly takes to the air to head towards Herat airfield. He has the critical task of bombing the runway to prevent the enemy from scrambling fighters.

As soon as the Hornet fades into the darkness, three helicopters making up the base assault team carefully lift into a steady hover despite the gale force winds. A single Kiowa flies mere feet above the ground, nimbly holding a nap of earth flight path. An Apache loaded with Hellfire missiles follows closely behind. The last helicopter in the group is a Mi-24 Hind. It moves slowly at first due to its bulk and sizable ordinance load. Despite its weight, the Hind is capable of a quick flight once up to speed.

The last plane to leave Shindand is a lone A-10 Warthog. As it steadily lifts off the runway, its pilot banks slightly north east towards its primary objectives of destroying enemy armor which could pose a significant threat to the success of the capturing and holding of Herat. 

As the flight of helos move carefully forward, the Hind begin to suffer engine problems, likely due to multiple factors such as wind, altitude, and weight. After weighing the options, the crew made the difficult decision of on return to base and scrub their role in the operation. Meanwhile, the flight of Vipers were also experiencing their own problems. One pilot was forced to do some in flight troubleshooting due to a bad alignment. Also at this time, the Hornet pilot was manually inputting waypoint information because none was present on his AMPCD. The issue is thought to have been caused by a malfunction in the DTC upload. Numerous radio communication issues were also experienced by multiple pilots causing the squadron to use a less ideal means of communication. 

Despite multiple systems malfunctions as well as poor weather and low visibility, all pilots maintained a high level of professionalism and intense mission focus. The runway at Herat was quickly bombed by the Hornet and the pilot then diverted to assist the Vipers in maintaining control of the skies. At this time the Warthog was arriving within range of its first objective and quickly rippled off multiple Mavericks. It then moved into position to drop a GBU 54 which took out the remainder of the armor at that location as well as a small squad of enemy infantry. 

It was at this point that the base assault team arrived on the outskirts of Herat an begin a heavy attack on enemy defenses. The initial strike left enemy defensive capabilities severely inhibited and constant suppression was required for Coalition Chinooks to drop special forces teams tasked with moving in and capturing enemy HQ. Despite enemy air defenses being limited, Coalition forces suffered a few casualties including the crew of the Kiowa Warrior. 

After completing its assigned attack runs, the Warthog moved to escort the Chinooks to the LZ. Even though attempts were made to suppress enemy anti air, both Chinooks took critical damaged and were forced to crash land. Fortunately both special forces teams survived and were able to travel by foot the rest of the way to Herat. Upon arrive at Herat, capture teams found a demoralized and defeated enemy ready to surrender and no infantry casualties were sustained. All strike packages were asked to return to base and command deemed this area of Afghanistan secured. 

• Reported on January 9th 2026 - 0530 Local Time