There was a way to start this mission at the lowest difficulty and complete the first 2 parts of the mission, exit and take the highest possible to just face boss and send some rockets to paper-targets, but FC decided that it was not the right way to do things .. Now with whatever difficulty you start the mission it remains, so pick it wisely …

This is the Elite 10 difficulty with a lot of areas that i could get myself obliterated but managed to stay alive.

From what i noticed only the hit points change on the enemies and i managed to glance a bit more often than usual.