pgatcomb
Posts: 39
Joined: 8/10/2015
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The Setup:
I’ve been reading too much about the Iran-Iraq war that took place back in the 1980s along with the horrible tanker war that went along with it. I decided to bring it to modern days but still stick to the rough layout and forces available at the time.
The battle takes place on April 1st, 2014 in the Persian Gulf. The player takes control of the US Task Force ALPHA as it does its best to protect any civilian shipping in the area and watch out for any other American interests. Allied with the Americans are a small French and UK surface action group made up of independent Destroyers and Frigates. Neutral are the Arab states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as over 100 individual civilian ships plus civil airliners traveling in the region. Also in the region is a small Russian task force made up of mine sweepers, intelligence gathering ships and a pair of Frigates. A random number of submarines are also present and spread throughout the gulf.
To make things extra interesting I decided to make the civilians not auto-trackable since at the time of the fictitious scenario there have been rumblings of Iran indiscriminately attacking vessels that get too close to their home territory.
The Task:
The task is simple. Protect civilian assets from any anti-shipping attacks from fast craft or aircraft. Working at your side you have an aircraft plus a full air wing and 2 destroyers, 1 frigate, and 1 cruiser in a small task force off the coast of Qatar. The scenario starts at 0500 local time.
What happened:
I figured this would be a simple task of send up everything with a radar and determine who is who as fast as possible. I set my E-2s off plus set up a CAP with F-18s in case of any trouble. Quick-loadouts were disabled and the tempo was set to sustained because a war wasn’t on, yet. At about 0515 I had a good number of aircraft and thankfully the civilians forgot to shut down their navigation radars which made the process of working out the 100+ contacts a little easier. The NATO ships also did a pretty solid job helping out with that, but a P-3 or two would have made it much simpler.
At about 0522 my F-18s on CAP suggested that there were some aircraft moving around the coast of Iran along with heading in the general direction of the gulf. I set them to roughly intercept range without crossing any international airspace. The NATO task force identified several of the Russian vessels by this point and surprisingly a Victor submarine as well that had been shadowing them for quite some time based on its position. Two of my SH-60s had also started to work over triangulating a goblin as well.
At 0526 the message window filled up with notes that several civilian ships had been struck by missiles. I had to work quick to figure out where the missiles came from and what ships were hit. Not to my surprise it was right outside of the Strait of Hormuz. I called up some F-18s loaded with Mavericks and HARMs for a quick strike package to limit the damage.
Less than 2 minutes later I received the first warning that a vampire was in bound. It was coming from that air group that had just crossed into the gulf from Iran. The vampires turned out to not be for me, but instead they ended up being AIM-7s targeting an unfortunate civilian airliner. Seconds later one of my F-18s was attacked by a separate set of missiles. And all of Iran instantly turned red and the air battle had begun.
At 0529 it was a fury of AIM-120s, AIM-7s, SM-2s and everything you can imagine plastering the sky. At some point during this one of the Russian vessels accidentally engaged one of the NATO escort vessels and caused their entire side to turn red as well!
I smashed the spacebar down and took a look at the fury of yellow, green, blue and red with all sorts of circles and contacts spread across the screen. I figured the biggest danger was going to be anti-ship missiles from Iranian and Russian Ships and Aircraft. I was not far off as suddenly the JAMMING mark appeared on nearly half of my EMCON controlled units as P-800s and Shipwreck missiles started streaming in from the coast and from the spread out and confused Russian vessels.
At 0531 another surprise occurred as the entire American surface action group decided to fire every tomahawk they had in their inventory at various hostile structures that were in range. The SAG was blocked out visually by the sheer number of TLAMs coming out of the various escorts. I knew this fight was going to run me out of ammo, and quick. The good news is that the auto-targeting TLAMs went after useful targets like airfields and radars and not the piers.
At 0540 the air battle was finally starting to settle down a little bit as aircraft after aircraft was chewed up and destroyed by the disciplined F-18 crews and the carefully placed shots of the American destroyer escorts. Fearing submarine attacks, I scrambled half of my available SH-60s and started doing ASW around the ship as well as sending pairs out to the expected positions of the enemy submarines.
The air war started to trickle down as the naval war started to pick back up with the various countries naval assets starting to deploy weapons at each other in a fury. At this point several other civilian ships were hit and a container vessel was sunk.
The sun started to rise at a few minutes after 0600 and already I was down a pair of F-18s and I was totally out of TLAMs. Looking at my deck I realized I had a few F-18s with harpoons plus a handful of EF-18s for OECM duties. Since I couldn’t red phone Russia to apologize and negotiate a truce, I knew I had to disable their more dangerous destroyers and then start hunting down their submarines as well as Iran’s strangely absent navy.
At 0626 the last of my strike group took off and started to started to attack the various elements spread out around the map that we could concentrate on safely. The Iranians were still sending a trickle of F-4s, F-7s and F-5s down to harass my F-18s as well as attack Civil ships. Two of my SH-60s tracked down a Russian submarine and started to pursue it.
At 0640 the two SH-60s looking for the submarine had finally run out of torpedoes without a solid hit. Luckily, I had a Seawolf in the neighborhood who was able to continue tracking it until the next wave came in. My carrier deck was now starting to fill with F-18s that had taken battle damage and would be out of the fight for 30+ hours. At least they returned. The British SAG decided to head straight for one of the airfields in range of their cannons and the French group headed for an unusually high number of unknown contacts appearing in the Strait of Hormuz.
0700 rolled around and things were starting to stabilize nicely. A good number of the ships that were endangering the American SAG were out of action and although we still couldn’t locate the other Russian submarine (or any Iranian ones for that matter!) we had a pretty good idea of what was going down. Iranian aircraft continue to trickle in although at a reduced rate thanks to a crippling TLAM strike that I didn’t even order…
0730 and my NATO allies report that they hit mines in the Strait of Hormuz and suddenly I start to panic realizing I have no anti-mining ability of my own. I hope that the two British and one French minesweeper can help out with this, otherwise things are going to start getting really messy. I am starting to run low on flyable F-18s as the ones I had are out of ammo or fuel. The pair of E-2s are still happily buzzing around and filling me in on the huge amount of contacts I’m still trying to sort through. There is an unusually large group of yellow squares near the Strait however.
0800 I have two flights of two F-18s left but my SH-60s are still working hard to find those last submarines. The British task force bumped into an Iranian patrol boat and sunk it without much effort on their part. Many air contacts at this point are civilian and easy to identify thanks to their flight level and weather avoidance radar. Every once in a while, a US escort fires a few missiles into a hostile aircraft since there aren’t many aircraft left to engage in AAW.
At 0830 I decided to put together a strike package to at least recon that huge group of contacts in the Strait that I still can’t figure out. There are still many civil ships floating around so I’m going to be a little cautious here. I just received a report that huge flight of AH-1s decided to attack the piers in Iraq for some reason. Hopefully the Iraqi air defense can work that out.
0903 turns out I was right. The huge group by the Strait was 75% of the Iranian navy attempting to block the straight with mines and good old fashioned anti-ship missiles. I have my strike group take a pass over the top to get a good look for classification and then swing around to do the deed with Maverick and Hellfire missiles. They take a pretty good toll and only get a handful of AAA shot up at them. At this point the British SAG has gotten into gun range and is demolishing Iranian targets on the coast. My Seawolf found the missing Russian submarine again and after taking two shots decided to go deep and wait for help from helicopters. They’ll be there soon enough.
0905 one of the British escorts is chasing an Iranian submarine down and I figure he’ll probably get him long before I get my helicopters over there. My SH-60s are still 10 minutes out to help out my super expensive Seawolf submarine. I haven’t seen any Iranian aircraft for a pretty long time at this point and figure between attrition and damaged runways they’ve got to be hiding.
At 0918 my two SH-60s surprise the Russian submarine and pound it with Mk46 torpedoes. I know the UN is going to be pissed about this, but hey they shot us first. My ASuW strike group is on their way back to the carrier, I can see the deck is filled with aircraft, many of which have damaged components and after looking at the magazine I know we won’t be able to survive this too much longer. I’ve put a call into the white house (several actually) for some help from some stealth assets and maybe some maritime patrol aircraft, but they were playing with the new communications disruption feature and couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
At this point I knew the end was near so I spun my carrier group around and charged at the Strait with my remaining 3 helicopters leading the way checking for any underwater surprises. I have two flights of F-18s lazily tooling around looking for any trouble. The NATO SAGs have done quite a number on shore facilities at this point and have almost gotten into gun range with the Iranian navy which seems to be pulling back to the pier. I’m a bit nervous about SSM sites so I’ve picked a roundabout method to get to the strait.
1000 Scenario ends.
Conclusion:
It’s incredible to think that everything happened because of each country’s respective rules of engagement. When building the scenario, I set Iran to attack anything they couldn’t identify. It didn’t take long for them to destroy civil ships as well as accidentally engage our own. The surprise with Russia going hostile I still can’t completely figure out but I’m confident it was because we marked them as such because they must have had a bad shot of their own.
Tactically we did well thanks to our excellent intel and solid Air-to-air assets. I felt that the SAG was extra vulnerable without a deeper escort and it really didn’t seem like we were able to keep enemy aircraft completely away from a missile shot on the American group. ASW work was a little easier than I thought it would be, but that might just be because of shallow waters of the gulf. I would like to have lost less aircraft and Civil ships, but things happen so quickly it’s super difficult to track everything. Another eye-opening thing is how quickly you run out of weapons and just how lethal everything has become. If this were a real battle, I think negotiators would have stopped the escalation long before it got that out of hand.
The Results:
SIDE: CIVIL
===========================================================
LOSSES:
-------------------------------
1x Airbus A.340-300
6x Commercial Container Vessel - Panamax [4,500 TEU, 65,000t DWT]
EXPENDITURES:
------------------
SIDE: IRAN
===========================================================
LOSSES:
-------------------------------
5x 23mm ZU-23-2
2x A/C Hangar (2x Large Aircraft)
1x A/C Hangar (2x Medium Aircraft)
1x A/C Hardened Aircraft Shelter (1x Large Aircraft)
11x Ammo Pad
4x Ammo Revetment
1x AvGas (40k Liter Tank)
12x Bell 214A Huey Plus
1x Building (Control Tower)
4x C-130H Hercules
3x CH-47C Chinook
11x F-4D Phantom II
9x F-5E Tiger II
9x F-7NI [F-7MP]
1x Gahjae [Taedong-C Class]
1x IPS-16 Peykaap II [Bavar, C-701]
1x IPS-16 Peykaap III [Zolfaghar, C-704]
1x IPS-18 Tir
1x Kajami [Taedong-B Class]
2x MiG-29 Fulcrum A
1x P 313-1 Shahid Mehdavi [Thondor Type 021 Houdong]
2x P-3F Orion
EXPENDITURES:
------------------
330x 12.7mm/50 MG Burst [10 rnds]
3x 275 USG Drop Tank
5x 30mm Gsh-30-1 Burst [30 rnds]
4x 30mm Type 30-1 x 2 Burst [30 rnds]
7x 30mm/65 China Type 65 Twin Burst [AK-230 Copy, 50 rnds]]
2x 370 USG Drop Tank
162x 40mm/70 Single Bofors Burst [4 rnds]
2x 480 liter Drop Tank
8x 500kg GPB
12x 53-65KE WH
1x 600 USG Drop Tank
1x 720 liter Drop Tank
130x 76mm/62 Compact HE Burst [4 rnds]
11x AA-11 Archer [R-73]
30x AIM-7E2 Sparrow III
14x AIM-9N Sidewinder
96x BGM-71B TOW
4x C-704
26x C-801K [YJ-81]
8x C-802 [CSS-N-8 Saccade]
8x Generic Chaff Salvo [5x Cartridges]
2x Generic Flare Salvo [3x Cartridges, Single Spectral]
16x Ghader [C-802 Mod]
168x HYDRA 70mm Rocket
2x M117 750lb GPB
2x RIM-66A SM-1MR Blk IV
SIDE: IRAQ
===========================================================
LOSSES:
-------------------------------
1x Radar (TRS 2100 Tiger S)
1x Radar (TRS 3410)
EXPENDITURES:
------------------
SIDE: USA
===========================================================
LOSSES:
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3x F/A-18A+ Hornet
1x F/A-18C Hornet
2x SH-60F Oceanhawk
EXPENDITURES:
------------------
4x 120 USG Drop Tank
60x 127mm/62 Mk179 HE-ET [Mk41 HiFrag Body, Mk432 Fuse]
22x 20mm/85 M61A1 Vulcan Burst [100 rnds]
36x 330 USG Drop Tank
8x AGM-114M Hellfire II
8x AGM-65F Maverick IR
24x AGM-84G Harpoon ICR
4x AGM-88E AARGM
63x AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM P3I.3
7x AIM-9X Sidewinder
1x AN/SSQ-53F DIFAR
1x AN/SSQ-62E DICASS
9x Generic Chaff Salvo [5x Cartridges]
12x Generic Flare Salvo [3x Cartridges, Dual Spectral]
9x GEN-X [RT-1489/ALE] Active Expendable Decoy
8x Mk46 NEARTIP Mod 5A(SW)
2x Mk48 Mod 7 ADCAP CBASS
2x Mk54 LHT Mod 0
92x RGM-109C Tomahawk Blk III TLAM-C
92x RGM-109E Tomahawk Blk IV TACTOM
8x RGM-84G Harpoon ICR
1x RIM-116B RAM Blk I
27x RIM-162A ESSM
16x RIM-162D ESSM
17x RIM-66M-2 SM-2MR Blk IIIA
SIDE: NATO
===========================================================
LOSSES:
-------------------------------
1x D 610 Tourville [Type F67]
1x F 730 Floreal
EXPENDITURES:
------------------
3x 100mm/55 Model 1968 PFHE Burst [4 rnds]
316x 114mm/55 Mk8 HE(MP) HE
632x 114mm/55 Mk8 HE(MP)ER HE
50x 30mm/75 DS30B Mk1 HE Burst [20 rnds]
16x Aster 15 PAAMS [GWS.45 Sea Viper]
2x Aster 30 PAAMS [GWS.45 Sea Viper]
2x DAGAIE Mk2 LEM Chaff
2x Mistral 1
12x MM.40 Exocet Blk II
16x MM.40 Exocet Blk III
5x R.440N Crotale V3N
12x R.440N Crotale-NG VT1
8x Sea Dart Mod 2
2x Spearfish Mod 0
2x Syllex Chaff
SIDE: RUSSIA
===========================================================
LOSSES:
-------------------------------
1x BDK Alligator [Pr.1171 Tapir]
1x BPK Kashin Mod [Pr.61M]
1x EM Sovremenny I [Pr.956 Sarych]
1x MPK Grisha V [Pr.1124ME Albatros]
3x MT Natya I [Pr.266M]
1x PL-877M Kilo
1x PLA-671RTMK Victor III [Shchuka]
1x PLARK-949A Oscar II [Antey]
1x SSV Vishnya [Pr.864 Meridian]
2x VTR Academician Pashin [Pr.23130]
1x VTR Berezina [Pr.1833]
EXPENDITURES:
------------------
61x 25mm/80 Twin Burst [20 rnds]
108x AK-130 130mm/54 Twin Frag Burst [2 rnds]
46x AK-230 30mm/65 Twin Burst [50 rnds]
37x AK-306 30mm/54 Gatling Burst [50 rnds]
4x AK-630 30mm/65 Gatling Burst [400 rnds]
11x AK-630M 30mm/65 Gatling Burst [400 rnds]
9x Generic Acoustic Decoy
52x PK-10 Chaff [SR-50]
6x PK-16 Chaff [TSP-60U]
6x PK-2 Chaff [TSP-47]
6x SA-N-1b Goa [M-1M/P Volna-M/P, 4K91 / V-601]
8x SA-N-4b Gecko [9M33M3]
42x SA-N-7 Gadfly [9M38]
12x SA-N-8 Gremlin [9M36]
14x SS-N-19 Shipwreck [P-700 Granit]
8x SS-N-22 Sunburn [P-80 Zubr]
4x SS-N-2c Improved Styx [P-15M]
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