AndrewJ
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Joined: 1/5/2014
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Operations are now complete.
Long range Mig-31s, in conjunction with jammer aircraft, skirted around NATO defences to engage and destroy the AWACs and its escorts. (It's amazing how well bringing the entire squadron works.) In the same area some late arriving Fencers with ARMs did some minor damage to another HAWK battery in the area (finding another one in the process), but were largely rebuffed.
After that a general pause in air operations gave me the free time to appreciate what a bad situation I'd put my minelayers in, by hurrying them forward unsupported, when torpedoes started rushing through the water towards them. Once again the only thing that saved me was the fact that the torps mostly didn't lock on, and circled harmlessly. One that did lock on managed to miss. The loss of a bunch of minelayers could have been extremely bad for the mission - escorts mandatory! ASW aircraft converged, and the sub was soon dealt with.
A few more F-4s made another sortie, and the SA-5 had a shot at them before realizing they were coming straight towards it. The missile missed, and the SA-5 shut down its radar while the planes were still 80 nm out. My watching AEW plane saw the F-4s turn aside immediately after that, strongly suggesting they were Weasels, and had been making an attack run. Since the F-4s had no AEW radar support of their own, some of my Mig-23s were safely vectored in behind them, and that was that.
The next step, in the early evening, was another heavy SEAD raid on the 3 HAWKs up around Vaerlose. Fitters and Fencers dealt with them, with a few losses, and continued onwards to destroy all the remaining air surveillance radars, to complete the blinding of the NATO air defences. A desultory attempt was also made to bomb Vaerlose, but the oncoming dark made it ineffective.
At that point a lone airborne surface-search radar contact of a very unique nature was picked up coming in from far to the north. Fortunately, my high altitude Mig-31s flying CAP were there to deal with it before it got close enough to see my ships, and I thought that I might escape notice from NATO throughout the night. Not so! Shortly thereafter masses of aircraft started launching and heading in from all the NATO airfields, many of them hugging the waves, and those that didn't bother flying low turned out to be Eagles. I had some decent CAP on station, but not as much as I would have liked (and they had to split N and W) so the scramble order went out to all airfields, as I tried to stem the flow of attackers with Mig-21s and Mig-23s until the bulk of the better fighters could arrive. The Eagles made a mess of a number of them, but in doing so they had to spend missiles on low value targets, and Mig-31s burnering in from the far end of the Baltic, along with Su-27s from closer at hand, were able to eventually shoot them down, while other planes closed in to deal with the Tornadoes, F-16s, and, to my delight, Drakens.
Drakens! I hadn't expected to see those.  Bravely skimming the wavetops, pressing on into the gathering gloom with their loadouts of iron bombs and cannon, the determined Draken pilots actually got closer to my ships than anyone else. It didn't help them in the end (I suppose the CAP parked directly on top of Vaerlose was a handicap), and it was a shame to shoot down such beautiful aircraft.
The attackers arrived in two heavy waves and a third lighter wave, but I had enough on station by that point that I could overwhelm the attackers despite the dangerous Eagles, and from that point onwards it was a matter of escorting my ships to their destination.
Assorted observations:
It's possible for a very low-flying attack plane to get right up to NATO's coastal SAM sites without being engaged. You could then cannon-fire them into oblivion, if desired, which seems a bit of a cheap kill. Maybe a little bit of light AAA would be realistic to accompany these particular installations? Just enough to keep us honest! 
The NATO SAMs seem to be all set to fire at maximum range, which means that when they engage fighters the fighters can often just turn aside and fly out of range before the SAM can get there. This is particularly true of the long-range Patriots with their longer flight time. I'd recommend using their WRA to turn down the engagement range against fighters, so the SAM engagements happen within the no-escape zone. This sacrifices some range, but also means that shots will always have a chance to hit, instead of being easily outrun.
The Pilica sub hunters (as mentioned in an earlier post) have an extremely small amount of fuel in the database, and will run out in just over half a day or so. Some other unit would be needed to provide escort.
I'd suggest the high-altitude visitor be set to have active emissions only on station. I have to admit I didn't even notice the Rygge airbase, but the moment that airplane took off with its radar turned on my ESM assets picked it up and I had plenty of warning to deal with it. I might not have noticed it until much too late if it had remained silent until it arrived on station.
I don't know if you'd want to consider making Vaerlose a multi-unit airbase? It's the closest airbase to the objective, and the most likely to be attacked by the player. I was actually in a position to make a useful attack on it a few times, and multi-unit airfields are more realistic in those circumstances. I think an attack would be less likely on the other fields (although I was over them too).
I think a close defence reserve, possibly in Eggebec or perhaps Lec, could be very useful for the NATO forces. When I had knocked down most of the fighters and went in to attack the SAM sites there my ground attack aircraft were able to safely approach under the radar unopposed, while my fighters hung back out of SAM range. A mere handful of aircraft popping up on a short-range interception mission could have lead a merry massacre on my attackers, or forced me to bring the fighters into SAM range to defend them. The same might also be true up in Vaerlose.
I liked the AWACS patrolling with a strong escort and jammer, safely behind the heavy SAM belt. Very realistic, and a real all-seeing pain in the posterior, until I could devote enough resources to defeat the Baltic CAP, make a hole in the SAMs, and send an entire squadron to deal with the escorts. Once that was done, however, the next two flew to their doom. Is there any way to prevent the next ones launching while there are enemy fighters in the area?
I think I see how I escaped the torps. The sub fires, and then speeds up, reducing its sonar effectiveness and making the uncertainty area grow greatly, instead of staying small. The torps go to the uncertainty zone centroid, and then start hunting, but the centroid is now too far from the surface ship target, and no lock-ons happen. I don't know if there's anything that can be tweaked about that.
Thanks again for another great scenario!
< Message edited by AndrewJ -- 2/26/2016 2:28:45 AM >
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