I decided to try and earn powerplay merits with Aisling Duval by combat rather than the usual cargo method for merit earning. To do this I used and looked for any enemy expansion systems to fight at and found Zachary Hudson's expansion in Ltt 9472.
You're supposed to go to a "Security Operation" and choose to fight with the System Resistance instead of Zachary Hudson.
I did this for a while until I ran out of ammo and killed about 16 enemy ships but with only a 1.6million credit combat bond payout and 160 merits. This seems drastically lower than payouts from bounty hunting in haz res sites, given the recent changes to combat bond payouts. One of my kills in the combat zone was a federal corvette which should have given a significant combat bond payout but it evidently didn't.
Additionally, you only get 10 merits per kill in a Security operation?! That means I need to destroy 75 ships to get 750 merits for rating 3? Apparently you get 30 merits per kill when you target system authority in an enemy system but I'd rather not deal with bounties on my head in those systems.
What's your experience with recent combat bond changes? Is there something I'm missing for earning merits through combat? Have combat bonds in these "Security Operation" signals not been updated along with combat zones?
