Dagger Directive Airstrikes

Version 1.0 added two player-called airstrikes. The July 2026 developer blog named them before launch, and the 1.0 notes treat them as part of the finished toolbox, not a trailer tease. This page is the field card. It is not a certification to drop steel on a hut you have not walked.

If you are still learning pouches, leave this page and finish Getting Started. An airstrike will not fix a sprint.

A-10 Warthog — one pass, 30 mm

Official language: a single pass with the 30 mm autocannon. The beaten zone is small. The rounds are high penetration and high damage. Think of it as a very expensive, very honest door charge that arrives from the sky.

Use it when you have a tight cluster you have already marked — a courtyard stack, a technical park, a bunker door you do not want to peek. Do not use it as reconnaissance. The pass is the whole show. If you missed the lase, you bought a loud nothing.

Fragments and overpenetration are still physics. Ballistics applies to cannon shells the same way it applies to an M32. Friendlies, hostages, and your own prone body in the beaten zone are your problem.

AH-64 Apache — two minutes of attention

Official language: the Apache hovers over a location for two minutes and fires the 30 mm at targets it sees. That last clause matters. If the bird cannot see the man in the shed, you hired a noisy spotlight.

Two minutes is a long time in a one-shot game. The hover tells every patrol with ears where the interesting noise is. Use it on a loud Shadow Strike clear when you want a compound suppressed while you take the side door. Do not use it on a grass insert in the Pacific. You will educate the entire valley.

Because it tracks what it sees, night and weather and walls change the value. A day courtyard is a gift. A basement is a waste. If you called it to “cover extract” and the LZ is in a fold, you bought a helicopter that stares at the wrong slope.

When not to call anything

• Silent briefs. Stealth and an airstrike cannot share a sentence.
• Rescue objectives. Official Shadow Strike language starts with a rescue. 30 mm does not do hostages.
• First life on a new map. Recon drone first. Drones are cheaper intel.
• A hut you are still inside. Leave, then call.
• Co-op before a sync test. New explosions plus new AI are how sessions desync. Co-op first.

Loadout company

Airstrikes do not replace a primary. They replace a moment. Pack a rifle you can finish with. The loadout planner grenadier card is for tubes you carry. The Apache is a phone call. If your pouches are already full of NVGs, claymores, and a recon brick, you may not have the discipline to also manage a two-minute hover. That is fine. Skip the call.

On maps with long glass — Bering especially — an A-10 on the wrong fold is a silhouette advertisement. On Europe streets, bounce and civilians-as-problem-spaces (even when the game is not a police sim) mean you aim the pass at a courtyard you own, not the boulevard you hope to own.

Co-op and the call

Say the call out loud. Host and clients must agree the bird is incoming. If one player is still in the beaten zone because their delay hid the voice line, that is a wipe you scheduled. After 1.0, treat every new explosive system as a networking exam until your squad has seen one clean A-10 and one clean Apache together.

What we will not invent

We will not print a bind that the 1.0 notes did not specify. Check Controls in your build; if the call lives on a pouch or a radial, reset to default once like every other EA scar. We will not invent a third aircraft. We will not claim Free Play lets you spam Apaches yet — Free Play is still a post-launch promise on the store page.

When a patch retunes hover time or penetration, Patch history gets the date. Until then, you have two loud tools and a save key. Use the tools after the save.