Allied P51 feature

Name: P51
Side: Allies
ERA: Red Alert 2 (concept)
Base Asset: Project X Team

The Allied P51 is a light multi role aircraft, that is only available via a reinforcement support power.
This support power becomes available immediately after placing an Airforce Command, and cost $2000 to use.

The P51s will fly in from the edge of the map, to any location that you place the support power decal, but be aware that the path of the P51s, on their way to the location, does not take them across enemy anti-air.

The P51 is armed with machine guns that can hit both ground based and aerial targets.
They are most effective against infantry, and not much else. As such the aircraft acts as a reconnaissance and anti-scout unit, rather than an attack aircraft.

While, as stated, it can attack aircraft, the low health of the P51 means that it is only really useful against aircraft that cannot fight back (such as helicopters). Also for units such as Kirovs, which cannot hit aerial units, you should keep in mind that the P51 does not do a tremendous amount of damage when attacking aerial units.

HVAR Upgrade

The High Velocity Aircraft Rocket upgrade is available right away (indeed you can group select your P51s and upgrade them all together which might mean that your upgrades are ready before your P51s reach their location!), and is purchased at each individual P51.
The HVAR rockets are air-to-ground unguided rockets, which are fired in a burst of 4.

This adds reasonable anti-vehicle and anti-structural abilities to any P51s that have been upgraded.
Again due to the low health of the P51s, it is not recommended that you engage vehicles that have good anti-air abilities. Any unit that cannot fight back (ie harvesters) can be quickly destroyed by 3 upgraded P51s.

Rushes

The fact that the P51 squad reinforcement is available as soon as an airfield has been placed, means that together with the ability to upgrade them into an anti-vehicle role, the P51 can be very useful for rushes.
Indeed the only negative ends up being that it is so obvious a rush tactic, it ends up losing any surprise factor.

1. Rush build to an Airforce Command.
2. Send the P51 drop in the direction of your enemies harvesting set-up.
3. As soon as the P51s are selectable, select all of them and then purchase the HVAR for the entire group.
4. Optionally (be warned that doing this will drain your cash to near zero) build 4 Longbows. If not, sell the Airforce Command as well.
5. Once the P51s reach the harvesting area they should have their rockets already, begin pounding the enemy harvesters, hopefully destroying a few before adequate counters can be built and deployed (if you have built Longbows, then they can join in and help).

Usage

The key with this unit is to use the speed advantage that you have to avoid as many AA hits as possible.
Until your enemy reaches tier 3, the only counter that can match the speed is either their P51s, or YAKS if it is the Soviets you facing.

Be warned that groups of AA infantry will quickly destroy your P51s, only engage them if they are isolated, and in very small numbers.