Note on Persistance:

Persistance is also available in case you want to stop and resume the mission at a later time. The state is saved every minute, but only the color and number of upgrades of a zone are saved, meaning partially destroyed groups will respawn fully restored once the mission starts up again.

In order for persistance to work you will need to edit the following file in your DCS install directory: \Scripts\MissionScripting.lua

Edit the following section:
do
    sanitizeModule('os')
    sanitizeModule('io')
    sanitizeModule('lfs')
    _G['require'] = nil
    _G['loadlib'] = nil
    _G['package'] = nil
end
to look like this:
do
    sanitizeModule('os')
    --sanitizeModule('io')
    --sanitizeModule('lfs')
    _G['require'] = nil
    _G['loadlib'] = nil
    _G['package'] = nil
end

To reset the persistance and play the mission again from the start, delete the footholdSyria.lua found in the DCS install directory.

