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Falcon BMS: Balkans

Drafted — not technically validated

Record revision 1 · The official BMS Balkans theatre, with 1995-era and Link 16-era campaigns.

One simulator's map: what it covers, when it is set, and which airfields in this encyclopedia it represents. Sim maps change with updates; each claim is cited with the date it was read.

Falcon BMS: Balkans

Simulator
Falcon BMS
Made by
Falcon BMS community Balkans team, as an official add-on theatre
Setting
Present day, since 1995: Its campaigns Balance of Power, Under Siege and Powderkeg are set around 1995, without Link 16, AIFF on the Block 50 F-16 or a helmet-mounted cueing system; Deny Flight Two, Serbian Annex and Joint Guard have all three, and more advanced enemy weapons [1]
Area
The Balkans, with airbases such as Batajnica, Aktion, Gjader, Klisa, Tivat and Podgorica [1]
Real-world theatre
Europe
Purchase

Store pages checked 2026-10-28. Prices and availability change.

Airfield coverage

No airfield in this encyclopedia has been checked against this map yet.

Each airfield's page cites the sources for its entry. Airfields not listed have not been checked against this map.

Other differences from reality

  • Campaign objectives: Under Siege and Serbian Annex are built like Operation Allied Force but are won on the ground: blue forces must occupy Kosovo and red forces northern Albania. [1] In the real Allied Force, Yugoslavia agreed to withdraw its forces from Kosovo after the air campaign, while a ground-force deployment was still only being discussed in case the air war failed. [3]
  • Objective placement: The release notes that objective placement is still a work in progress, so some ground units sit on top of one another and some objectives appear sunk into the ground. [1]
  • ATC frequencies: All airbase ATC frequencies are UHF only, to avoid splitting every frequency between VHF and UHF; towers keep an old VHF placeholder that pilots are told to ignore, and only the ATIS is on VHF. [4]
  • Approach and departure: Approach and departure share one frequency at every airbase, although the ATC menu has separate pages for each. [4]
  • Read-back: There is no mandatory read-back of instructions; AI controllers often give the next instruction straight away, so a read-back is likely to be stepped on. [4]
  • Navaids: BMS models only TACANs and ILS. Real civil VOR-DMEs appear as TACANs, and unlike in real life no ILS has its own DME: distance in TCN/ILS mode is to the TACAN, which can be 1 or 2 nm or more from the runway threshold. [4]

Coverage

The Balkans theatre is one of the official Falcon BMS theatres, installed separately from the base game. [2] Version 1.08.1, for BMS 4.38.1, brought new terrain, new airbases such as Batajnica, Aktion, Gjader, Klisa, Tivat and Podgorica, some updated army bases and updated campaigns. It installs into its own add-on folder and changes nothing in the main BMS installation. [1] Its six dynamic campaigns can be left to the AI, though the release notes that ground troops may not reach every objective without the player’s direction as commander. [1]

Sources

  1. [RELEASED] Balkans Theater for 4.38 version 1.08.1. Falcon BMS forum (release announcement). https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/30554 (accessed 2026-10-28).
  2. BMS 4.38 Theater List. Falcon BMS forum (official list of add-on theatres). https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/30687 (accessed 2026-10-28).
  3. NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia (accessed 2026-10-28).
  4. BMS Comms & Nav Book 4.38.1. Benchmark Sims (official documentation). https://cdn.falcon-bms.com/docs/4.38/BMS-Comms-Nav-Book.pdf (accessed 2026-10-28). Sections 1.1 (Airbase comm plan) and 1.3.5 (Departure), the read-back rules, and the navigation chapters on tacans and ILS.

Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. Vendor pages describe the current release of each map.