How to fight R33 (F15 - Salted wounds campaign 05)

Hi. I've been looking but I still don't know how to act.

I'm having troubles in the 5th mission of Salted wounds (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/1840934/). I'm required to escort two C17s, and we are intercepted by two Mig31s at ~35000 feets. My wingman and I climb to face them while they are at 80-100 miles.

The problem is that they don't mind us and fire long range R33s directly to the C17s way before we have the MIGs at range. And eventually one of those missiles hit one of them.

My question is how to deal with that. I've tried a couple of times with the same result. One solution obviously would be to abandond the escort earlier, but I'm required to stay in formation until ordered to engage (and also, I know where the bandits are because I have replayed the mission lots of times, but I'm not supposed to know in advance, so that would be "cheating").

Thanks for any advice :smartass:

Tacview-20171119-211557-DCS-F-15SWStage6.zip.rar