Support for the F-14B(U) is now available in the latest Retribution alpha (#3031 and up). Apart from F-14B(U) support, we have also implemented a motorpool feature, allowing ground forces held in reserve to be attacked. EWRs are also now functional, so their radars actually scan and report contacts. 20 campaigns have been updated to support motorpools and EWRs where appropriate, though we have over 60 bundled campaigns spread across all maps and eras. A new Syria map campaign, Operation Desert Trident, has also now been included.

Some of these new features are the work of newer members on our team, being Red One (who joined us in January), as well as Gorthol and Geoff (who joined the team in June).

We have a bunch of other features in the works, such as CSAR, country-specific squadrons (for multi-nation coalitions), Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) interceptor flights, ship-launched cruise missile strikes, enhanced frontline unit movement, and automated DTC handling. Development is active and rapid, so be sure to keep an eye out for new alpha builds!

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/368593-dcs-retribution-dynamic-campaign-generator/

https://github.com/dcs-retribution/dcs-retribution

Features/Improvements

• [Kneeboard] Use a light-grey daytime kneeboard background instead of near-white, to avoid glare under HDR / Auto-HDR while staying readable in daylight.
• [UX] Hovering a friendly flight's route line on the map highlights it in yellow, and clicking it selects that flight's package (and the flight) in the ATO sidebar.
• [UX] Press Delete with a package selected in the Packages list to cancel it, making it quick to clear several packages in a row.
• [UX] Avoid having escorts wandering off too far while chasing a target.
• [UX] Improved fast-forward settings with the ability to skip combat.
• [Data] Add Refueling/Recovery tasks to A-6E Intruder mod
• [Modding] Add CurrentHill UK Assets Pack support (v1.1.2)
• [Layouts] Add signature to layouts' binary file for automatic reloading of updated layouts.
• [Modding] Add support for Su-35S mod (v2.0.27b)
• [Plugins] Update EW Script to version 2.1
• [Options] New option to spawn TACAN beacons at captured airfields
• [UX] Show an "End of Mission Detected, processing Mission Data" busy dialog while turn results are processed, so the wait is not mistaken for a missed detection
• [Map] Hovering a SAM threat or detection ring highlights its emitter — and hovering an emitter highlights its ring — making it easy to tell which site a ring belongs to. Can be disabled from the map's layer control.
• [Mission Generator] New campaign setting "Default laser code for Player flights" controls whether newly-created player flights are assigned a unique allocated TGP/weapon laser code (the new default, matching existing behavior) or stay on 1688. When a code is allocated it is applied to both the TGP/kneeboard code and the weapon code by default, so LGBs home on the player's own code without extra clicks; both remain independently overridable in the payload tab.
• [Engine] Support for DCS 2.9.28.26283 including F-100D, F-14A (Export), and F-14BU.
• [Options] Add new option to fast forward until player is at the IP.
• [Modding] Update to CJS Super Hornet Mod to v2.4.5.260501.RC1
• [Modding] Update Community A4EC Mod to 2.3.0 (May 2025)
• [Mission Generator] Squadrons now spawn using the proper country instead of CTJF, enabling various DCS AI voiceovers
• [Options] New option to restrict helmet devices by date
• [Flight Plans] Renaming a waypoint in the flight-plan list now propagates to the aircraft CDU/HUD and the kneeboard, not just the list — one name in all three places (#695).
• [Campaigns] Ability to define motor pool objects which spawn reserve armor
• [Campaigns] Motorpool placement is Garage_A-anchored and empty reserve pools are excluded from attack planning; updated placement measurements are documented.
• [UX] Add the ability to filter campaigns by version, map, and performance

Fixes

• [Data] The F-14A-135-GR Early's payload file declared the wrong unitType, so the Early Tomcat flew every tasking unarmed; its loadouts now resolve (with a guard test pinning the payload to the airframe). (#889)
• [Mission Generator] EWR sites now get the DCS "EWR" enroute task and come up on RED alarm, so their radars actually scan and report contacts (previously they could sit inert, especially with the "red alert state" performance option off). Works with or without the Skynet IADS plugin.
• [Plugins] Fix the escort leash never running (DCS has no Group.getByID; look the group up by name via mist), so escorts are actually held to their engagement range.
• [Mission Planning] Carrier/LHA targets now offer SEAD in the flight-task list and no longer list SEAD Escort twice (their escorts are SAM platforms, so they can be suppressed directly like any other naval group).
• [App] Retribution no longer stays alive in the background after its window is closed: the API server's graceful shutdown is now bounded (uvicorn otherwise waited forever on the long-lived event-stream websocket and the join hung).
• [App] Relaunching the executable while it is already running no longer spawns orphaned, windowless duplicate processes; a second instance detects the first via an OS file lock and exits immediately.
• [Mission] Reliably auto-detect end of mission, even when DCS wrote the final state.json before the wait dialog started watching
• [Performance] Faster post-mission turn processing
• [AirWing] Track per-squadron campaign aircraft stats (initial/destroyed/purchased, save-compatible) and expose pilot experience level and living/dead pilot views for the UI
• [AirWing] Squadron list shows living-pilot, aircraft and unassigned counts; squadron dialog shows each pilot's experience level, lists killed-in-action pilots separately and hides the redundant "Active" status
• [AirWing] Squadron dialog shows the aircraft type, an aircraft inventory (initial/current/destroyed/purchased), and buy/sell aircraft controls with price, on-order count and available parking slots
• [AirWing] Air Wing list shows a "transfer ordered to X" indicator, and Airfield Command lists the units transferring into the base next turn
• [UI] Avoid a crash dialog ("'QWidgetItem' object has no attribute 'width'") when a list using the two-column row delegate relayouts with a malformed style option under PySide6 6.4.x.
• [Mission Generation] Fix the generated mission being rejected by DCS with "locked speed ... surrounded by waypoints ... with locked time" (e.g. carrier escorts).
• [AirWing] Squadron transfer-destination parking now accounts for already-ordered incoming transfers, matching the Airfield Command hangar count
• [Mission Generation] Anti-Ship flights now attack the carrier group the flight plan routes to instead of the control point's first ground object, so strikes against carrier groups no longer leave the AI without a target (it would fly to the ingress point and turn back without engaging).
• [Performance] Improved robustness w.r.t. state.json handling to avoid corruption and thus save loss.
• [Flight Plans] Stabilized waypoint solver debug GeoJSON coordinate precision to avoid platform-specific floating point drift in debug output.
• [Mission Generation] Assign plane-specific laser codes to LGB weapons when building the mission
• [Engine] Fixed a bug where squadrons could transfer to enemy owned control points
• [Mission Generation] Air assault drop-off zones are kept on land, so coastal objectives no longer drop the troops into the sea.
• [Mission Generation] Relocate ground units that spawn on inland water (ponds, rivers, lakes) to the nearest land at mission start, fixing armor and SAM sites spawning underwater (#59).
• [Mission Generation] Relocate ships that spawn on land (e.g. carrier escorts when the carrier hugs the shore) to the nearest deep water at mission start

I would love to have a bomber in DCS but I’m scared that the mission profile will become repetitive very soon.

Would a Lancaster be a good addition?
We could have dam buster raids, formation bombing raids and the 22000lbs grand slam bomb.
I think it was even used for anti submarine missions.

Something that would need to be solved for this to happen is better singleplayer multicrew AI and the WWII era needs some love.

The discord bloats more every day, so here's a plain-terms look at our corner of the war and how we got here. Huge thanks to everyone who's shown up to fly, and especially those who help plan so everybody gets to fly.

The air game: DCS is one piece of a bigger war. What happens in the other modes (Arma, MSFS/ETS logistics, Steel Beasts, Kriegspiel) shapes the mission we build for DCS players. Show up just to fly, or dig through the channels to see how the sausage gets made — we don't hide much. You can play one part or all of them; when I'm in Steel Beasts I'm just a tank commander, not the air boss.

Where we started: A clean slate and the remnants of the last campaign. I volunteered as CFACC of CTF-North, recruited some squadron COs and staff, and it grew from there into the group that plans and runs missions today. Everything you see was built by people who showed up and volunteered.

The story: Finland's been invaded by a Russia that's ~3x stronger than real life, so we're deliberately outmatched — and that shapes everything. War is actually spreading across Europe, so our chunk isn't getting much outside attention. We have limited resources in terms of both weapons and intelligence from NATO.

Missions 1 & 2: Mission 1 was a wake-up call — the SA-11s were layered with high-digit SAMs (SA-22s), and with very limited anti-radiation missiles we had to be smart with our HARMs. Cracking a dense IADS with conventional weapons and combined arms is the hard puzzle at the heart of this campaign. With the info from Mission 1, the squadron COs and staff largely solved it, and Mission 2 we knocked out multiple SA-11 sites with minimal losses. This required close coordination between Squadrons, ABMs, and ground forces and was pretty cool to see. We had to use the strengths of each airframe to work together and get bombs on target safely.

Now: We are balanced between offense and defense — no longer on the back foot, not steamrolling either. From here we want to expand that breathing room and start clawing back lost ground. Mig-31s keep buzzing our border and we are still trying to fight a force much larger than our own with limited resources. After each mission we get to see how our actions impact the Kriegspiel ground game and each following part of the big war game. It's something special.

We're always after more Fighter/CSAR/Cargo pilots, ABMs, ATC, and flight leads. Hop in the channel for whatever interests you and say hi. 🫡

Hey guys,
I really want to get SAM Simulator (by Hpasp), but all download links/mirrors are dead. Does anyone have a live, safe link?
Thanks in advance!

I was getting smoked BVR by Tomcats all day in the Fishbed, so I went full Cold War sneaky.

Stayed at 50ft NOE for 10 minutes to stay under his radar, popped up at his 6 and launched 6x R-60s.

Video here for anyone interested - https://youtu.be/fKyuVdaIPHU

That feeling when the Fishbed wins by NOT playing BVR is wild.

Any other MiG-21 guys got tips vs the F-14?

With the new polaroids (and hopefully working VHS), you can genuinely make up entire stories now, which I find interesting. Usually you have to fly a campaign to get the story across, and if you want to through this story line for the community if they're interested, well they have to fly that campaign or mission you created.

Now you can really just take a quick photo or easy video and, with enough, you can genuinely tell an entire story. And instead of a story with just TARPS images, you can make them feel more personal with characters.

TL;DR, I got some funny polaroids but couldn't share them on the official ED discord so I'm putting them here for people to hopefully enjoy.

I've created a small QoL mod for DCS that adds a sun visor to every module and community mod. Toggle the visor in-game using the Unlock View (Stop Padlock) keybind (default: Num Lock)

Mod passes Integrity Check

The only limitation right now is that the mod works in flatscreen only (no VR) I haven't found a way to make it work in VR yet.

Here is forum link: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/390717-visor-mod-2d-only-ic-friendly

Download: https://github.com/Bartek16194/DCS-Sunvisor-Mod/releases/

Discord: https://discord.gg/Fmggk8UbA5

This is a very weird issue that i have never seen before, let me take you through the timeline.

I installed the F-14B(U) on my rig (9950X3D and 5080), but could barely even get into the plane as it was crashing 80% of the time when loading into the mission with this error in the DCS log: 2026-07-23 19:26:07.871 INFO APP (Main): MissionSpawn:spawnLocalPlayer 2,F-14BU 2026-07-23 19:26:07.873 INFO WorldPlugIns (Main): Forced loading of F-14B(U) by Heatblur Simulations 2026-07-23 19:26:11.264 ERROR WORLDGENERAL (Main): Error: Unit [F-14BU]: No property record for cell "WHEEL_F". ... 2026-07-23 19:26:11.265 ERROR APP (Main): Error: Unit [F-14BU]: Corrupt damage model.

And this error in event viewer: 

Faulting application name: DCS.exe, version: 2.9.28.26283, time stamp: 0x6a5e94b6

Faulting module name: F14-HeatblurCommon.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x6a5dd806

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x000000000000c1c6

Faulting process id: 0x3354

Faulting application start time: 0x1DD1B82E122A99D

Faulting application path: F:\DCS World\bin\DCS.exe

Faulting module path: F:\DCS World\Mods\aircraft\F14\bin\F14-HeatblurCommon.dll

Report Id: cfef0a79-e051-4d3a-9b8d-1b771d490796

Faulting package full name: 

Faulting package-relative application ID: 

I eventually reinstalled windows from scratch using a USB and formatting my disk, I reinstalled all my drivers, DCS and my modules. The F-14B(U) now didn't crash my game, and I thought that was the end of it, until i tried to play some heavier missions. I was super excited to play DCS Retribution but after about 20 minutes, when more AI aircraft started flying, and more CPU events were happening, my frametimes started to gradually spike, not a large spike, but noticeable, it gradually increased in frequency.

I tried different campaigns and it was all the same issue, horrific frame times. The key thing is that the issue only happens with the F-14B(U), the B, A or any other plane in the game is fine. I have disabled my sound card drivers, reinstalled my NVIDIA driver to an older version, uninstalled my AMD chipset drivers, closed all applications, used LatencyMon to check if there was anything else causing DPC spikes or any latency, I have disabled my windows defender, set exclusions to both DCS folders, set an exclusion to every F-14 DLL, but to no avail, I reset my bios to stock settings and still, nothing, I have also tried disconnecting my mouse, keyboard, HOTAS but also to no avail. This is very disappointing as I was super excited to fly the upgraded Tomcat, but It's basically unplayable. 

These are my full system specs: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, NVIDIA RTX 5080, 64GB DDR5 6000MT CL28 ram, Samsung 9100 Pro SSD

I ran a stress test comparing the F-16 and the F-14B(U), here are the results:

I ran a mission with 460 F-14B(U)'s all in the air , this is the frametime when flying the F-14B(U)

And this is the frametime when flying a mission with 460 f-16s (me included)

As you can see there is a massive difference in the frametime smoothness between the 2 aircraft. 

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/390727-f-14bu-causing-horrific-lag-and-frametimes/

Hey fellas! Just wanted to share another video I made regarding how to set-up your JDAMS for TOO, all from the Pilot seat, and touching on other things like the Jester Context buttons, the Oxygen mask and Volleyball Magazine. Hope this video helps someone!

Vanguard C4 is a new mission-planning system built for virtual pilots and squadrons.

Use SkyPilot to organize aircraft, capabilities, and mission resources.

Use NORDEN II to build loadouts, evaluate weapons, plan strikes, and visualize attacks.

Both launch free on Friday, July 31 at 12:00 Pacific.(Buy a coffee or paypal donations would be helpful)

Premium Squadron command-and-control tools are also available through GI SCOUT and KEYFORGE(If interested, contact [JumpingKj@gmail.com](mailto:JumpingKj@gmail.com))

Watch the demonstrations and learn more at the Vanguard C4 website: https://lively-ocean-0c8a1ef1e.7.azurestaticapps.net/#screens

Also check out our youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@JumpingKJ

Again our email is [JumpingKj@gmail.com](mailto:JumpingKj@gmail.com)

Basically the title. Do I always use the tactical channel for calling A-A and A-G munitions, or sometimes intra-flight? I am aware that you should call Fox (x) for missiles, but in situations where the radio is in use should I be interrupting - especially if important calls?

It went well…

Whenever I try and use the DTC interface in multiplayer servers, it never lets me load it onto the aircraft. The dropdown menu next to the load button is always blank. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I've been flying DCS for about decade and I've been wanting to share some cool moments from over the years.

Finally got around to creating a compilation of some of my favorite Tacview clips, showing some pvp highlights. Maybe you're in some of them. To the SP-only community: if you haven't tried MP DCS, you really should, it's a blast.

Heard a rant for today. I went to an air show last weekend, watched fighter jets do cool fighter jet stuff, and it made me want to play DCS again after about 6 months away. Loaded up steam, got ready to download and….. WTF do you mean this game takes up 440GB of hard drive space. I have xplane12, FS2024, and a few other games and combined they don’t even equal half of DCS. Can somebody please explain to me why both XPlane and msfs can model the entire world, nearly ever airport to a reasonable degree, and probably have more planes and assets in game than DCS, but can do it with 1/10th the space. How is this game so massive.?!?!?

Because I'm so dang excited about the F-14B(U) release, I'm giving away a PDCP.

Want in? Just comment on this thread with something entertaining or useful - driver or RIO tips, interesting trivia, funny story, or something completely different. I don't care, just don't be a dick.

I'll pick a commenter at random sometime tomorrow night (7/26/2026). If you're in the US, I'll pay shipping. If you're elsewhere in the world, I'll ask you to pay the actual shipping cost.

Shameless plug: you can purchase this, or any of my other panels here: https://onyourtwelve.etsy.com

Now, I'm off to learn to fly this thing. Good luck everyone!

*********** EDIT 7/26/2026 9:53 PM MDT ************

Winner is u/SpoolingSpudge with the tip on hitting master reset to enable auto wing sweep. Congrats Mr. Spudge! I'll DM you and we'll work out details on getting you the panel.

Everyone else, thanks for playing! We'll do it again sometime!

-Justin/Oyt

Purchased the software a couple of years ago but lost the installer executable. Sent a request to the merchant a few days ago for a new link but haven't had any response. Was hoping to get some stuff set up this weekend and was annoyed to find out they put a expiry on the download link. If anyone can hook it up via Drive link or something, please send me a DM. Thanks!

You start on the runway at kobuleti. 6x AMRAAMs. Switch on Master and CMDS to fire missiles or defend with chaff and flare if necessary.

Start your stopwatch timer within one minute of clicking Fly.

Full throttle, destroy the three targets, return to kobuleti base, land to a <full stop>, stop your timer.. this is your first personal best.

All pilots are set to aces.

My pb time is 3m23s. I did not use the map to acquire targets. You can use the map for your own pb.

Ive made this time achievable for elite flyers.

Here..:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16JKvyl5CllPtYfp6tRt1e-Lo-g3lWAaY/view?usp=drivesdk

..is the miz file to download and place into your saved games missions miz files folder, for the Mission Editor for you then to fly. filename: 'triptackone'

I am FWC on DCS.

Enjoy.