Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier punishes you for flying in the clear. Five radar sites sit on mountain tops in the Waiapolo Mountains, and enemy satellites fire missiles at aircraft they can see. The way through is to use the clouds as cover, climb only long enough to hit a radar site, then disappear back into cloud before the missiles can catch you. Once those five sites are down, you must survive a short ambush before the hostile F/A-18Fs can be targeted. Destroy the marked fighters to finish.
The hard part is choosing where you’ll duck back into cover after every attack. A fast aircraft helps, but a safe route between the cloud banks helps far more than diving blindly into a mountain.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier: five radar sites and the satellite missiles
The first phase has five radar sites marked TGT. You’ll find them on mountains around the operation area, with clouds covering many of the lower approaches. Destroying all five disables the satellite missile attack and advances the mission.
Think of the clouds as cover rather than scenery. When you rise above them or fly across an exposed gap, enemy satellites can spot you and launch long-range missiles. Returning to cloud cover breaks their targeting. Simply flying low in clear air isn’t the same as staying hidden.
- Approach through the valleys and cloud banks. Keep the aircraft under control and watch your altitude relative to the mountains.
- Choose a radar site and line up early. Use the longest practical lock-on range your weapon offers, then spend as little time exposed as you can.
- Fire, then dive towards cloud. Once the radar site is destroyed, don’t hang around above the ridge just because you can see another ground target.
- Repeat for all five radar sites. Save any particularly exposed site for an approach where you have a clear path back into cover.
- Watch for the mission update. The satellite missile threat ends after the final radar site is destroyed, so you can prepare for the air battle without the same cloud restrictions.
Longer-range air-to-ground missiles are useful here. A quick attack from the edge of the clouds is safer than flying right over a ridge and trying to turn around with a satellite missile already incoming.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier: avoiding satellite missiles
If you’re being repeatedly hit, check the position of the nearest cloud bank before making another attack. The satellite missiles don’t behave like ordinary fighters’ missiles that you can comfortably shake off with endless turns. Cloud cover is the intended defence.
Don’t fly straight through the side of a mountain in a panic, though. Use your radar and the terrain to plan a descent into cloud that still leaves enough room to pull up. There’s no benefit to evading one missile only to crash during the escape.
Some radar sites force you to poke above the cloud cover. Don’t stay up there to destroy every nearby warehouse or AA gun on a normal clear. Save optional targets for an S-rank or SPIDER attempt.
What happens next in Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier?
The second half starts with twelve F/A-18Fs pretending to be friendly Osean aircraft. They can attack you, but your targeting system has not yet identified them as enemies. Survive for about one minute and fifty seconds while Bandog sorts out their identities.
Once the IFF update comes through, the F/A-18Fs are marked TGT and you can fight back. Destroy all the marked aircraft to complete this stage. Watch for Helios missiles coming from the Arsenal Bird during this phase too; the sky can become hazardous very quickly if you stay in one place.
The final clear for Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier is destroying the required hostile fighters. You don’t need to return to the radar sites, and the last story sequence triggers automatically as the air battle concludes.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier: finding SPIDER
SPIDER is the optional named F/A-18F in Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier. He only appears on a replay after you’ve finished the mission once, on Normal difficulty or higher. The spawn condition is to destroy at least half of the enemies that are not marked TGT before you finish the five radar sites.
That means clearing extra AA guns, helicopters and other optional targets during the radar phase. SPIDER then appears around the middle-west of the map. His F/A-18F has stealth capability, so get closer if you can’t see the contact on radar. Destroying optional enemies means more exposure to the satellite missiles, which makes this a tougher run than a normal clear.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier: how to get S rank
The S-rank combined score requirement is 43,040 points. Completing the mission in 11 minutes or less gives the maximum time bonus of 31,240, leaving a target of 11,800 destruction points. Taking longer cuts into your time bonus, so you’d need extra kills to make up the difference.
The twelve F/A-18Fs in the final phase are worth 6,000 points in total if you personally destroy them all. That leaves around 5,800 points to earn before the air battle for a six-to-eleven-minute S-rank pace. Friendly aircraft or Helios strikes can destroy some fighters too, so collect a little extra ground score for a safety margin.
Why Ace Combat 7 Mission 09 Faceless Soldier won’t end
If the first phase isn’t progressing, check that all five radar sites are destroyed. Optional AA guns and warehouses don’t replace the radar targets. If the second stage feels as though the mission has stopped responding, there’s a short survival segment before the enemy fighters receive proper TGT markers.
Once those markers appear, shoot down the required F/A-18Fs while avoiding the Helios strikes. That’s the final combat objective. Staying under the clouds only matters during the satellite-radar stage at the start.
Find official game information at Bandai Namco’s Ace Combat 7 site.
