I don't think it's in the tips
so I'll add it.
Q. How do I change AI controlled aircrafts' and vehicles' weapon load outs in missions?
A. Make the mission using the Pro Mission Creator, or the Quick Mission Creator. Outside of the game browse to the Fighters Anthology directory and open up the mission's .M file with a text editor. To edit quick mission load outs, your last made quick mission is named quick.m. Near the top of the file you will mission object entries. They will appear as entries like this:
obj
type SU34.PT
pos 1319758 5000 1604430
angle -72 0 0
nationality2 0
flags $17
speed 500
name Player
controller $80
skill 1
react $c000 $0 $0
searchDist 0
wing 0 0
wng 1 1 2048 512
.
To change the aircraft's load out, add a line under the last line in the form of this:
hardpoint 5 4 AA9.JT
Hardpoint tells FA to change a hardpoint load. 5 is the number of hardpoint to be modified. Hardpoints begin number with 0. For many aircraft, hardpoints 0-2 are used for sensors and ecm, and the gun is hardpoint number 3. My JKPFA libraries follow this convention for all radar equipped aircraft, meaning hardpoint 3 is the first visible weapon, and for aircraft without radars, the first visible weapon hardpoint is hardpoint 1. The number 4 above is how many of the weapon will be loaded. And finally, AA9.JT is the filename for the weapon to be loaded, in this case 4 R-33 Amos missiles. Aircraft hardpoint weight limits or capacities, or takeoff weight limits are not taken into account, so this is a way to overload aircraft for when you just have to carry 20 AMRAAMs.
As you can see in the object entry, this is a way to also change some other normally off limits parameters, such as giving names to vehicles or ships, like the way aircraft can be named. Additionally, the skill line has a number from 0-3, corresponding to the object's skill. 0 is novice, and 3 is ace/expert. A value of 4 can be inserted here to make a "super ace," and the extra dot will actually show up on the Shift-4 target window in game. Any skill level higher than this doesn't seem to have an effect.