Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as thought)

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Command: Modern Operations series >> Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as thought)

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Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as tho... - 2/1/2019 6:02:59 AM

sven6345789

Posts: 1050
Joined: 3/8/2004
From: Sandviken, Sweden
Status: offline

I am trying this scenario with the USN.

Half of the planes you have do not have the range to attack Irak, Hornets especially. I also change their ammunition from dumb bombs to smart bombs.

takes 6 hours.

I do have a strike package now that cuts my losses, but i would like to use the Hornets as bombers too. The Corsairs get SEAD missions. That works fine.

If i have a flight of 4 Hornets with, let's say 400nm range, how many of my tankers do i need. Is one enough?

Still some more testing to do.

How did you do it? any ideas on how to use the tankers more efficiently?

< Message edited by sven6345789 -- 2/1/2019 6:47:26 AM >

_____________________________

Bougainville, November 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. It rained today.

Letter from a U.S. Marine,November 1943

Post #: 1

RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/1/2019 10:25:55 AM

BDukes

Posts: 1695
Joined: 12/27/2017
Status: offline

Never understood this either. Ask developers to add AF tankers on Navy Side maybe?

YOu can do this yourself by the way if you have full game.

(in reply to sven6345789)

Post #: 2

RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/1/2019 11:15:25 AM

Cik

Posts: 671
Joined: 10/5/2016
Status: offline

you won't have the capability to attack anything but the closest targets, but succeeding at that (hitting it very thoroughly with few losses) allows a major victory.

you're right though, in that you don't have the SEAD or tankers to really do anything. in particular ~1/3 of your aircraft are corsair IIs, with their very bad minimum altitude they get whacked by even very weak SAMs on suppression missions- the intruders you have are good but not enough in number, and the hornets have range terrible enough that without 1 intruder per ~2-3 hornets you can't get anywhere.

basically, the air force just has more, better, and enough supporting aircraft to field much more percentage of it's forces across much greater distances. also it just has a far heavier beatstick with a squadron~ of aardvarks with standoff munitions, plus millions of falcons it can throw at any problem that occurs.

basically, there is no way to really accomplish the mission with the navy, just the closer parts of it. maybe that's the intention (though the briefing doesn't mention this)

(in reply to BDukes)

Post #: 3

RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/1/2019 7:57:55 PM

Amnectrus

Posts: 80
Joined: 10/22/2015
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I've played Shamal a bunch from the USAF side but not much from the Navy side, I'll have to give it a try. Just looking at it briefly though, I think you have enough units, but you'll have to change their loadouts and play to their various strengths. Historically, the Iraqi IADS was crippled on the very first day of the war. By day 2, the SAM threat had been so greatly diminished that the Coalition air forces mostly switched to flying at medium altitudes, 10000 ft and above, which kept them out of effective flak range. Flying at that altitude put them in the envelope of the remaining SAMs, but there just weren't that many left, and jamming and HARMs could take care of what remained. The downside to flying at medium altitude of course is that dumb bombs are really inaccurate, so you really have to use guided weapons to have a good chance of success.

In the scenario, you have 16x A-6Es, which are your longest-ranged attack aircraft and can carry the heaviest loads. There are a number of hardened targets in the scenario, and GBU-10s with BLU-109 warheads should be particularly effective on those. A-6s have the range to hit any target in the scenario without refueling.

Then you have 23x F/A-18C Hornets, which in 1991, can't carry LGBs, but they can carry HARMs, Walleyes, and SLAMs. They have a short range though and will need to be refueled to hit the farther targets.

Speaking of refueling, you only have 4x KA-6D tankers, which isn't very many, but A-7s can be fitted with Buddy Stores and should be able to give the F-18s enough range to hit the farther targets, especially if they're using the standoff weapons mentioned above. In my experience you'll need something like 1 buddy-store plane per 2 strike planes to give them a decent amount of gas, but you may need to experiment.

The F-14s are fine for any air defense you might need, there's not much left of the Iraqi air force at this point in the war. Historically, F-14s didn't operate much (or maybe at all) over Iraq proper, as they didn't have the NCTR or IFF systems that some USAF units had, and I believe their DECM gear was also set up for Soviet naval units and didn't have the proper frequencies loaded for land-based SAMs. However, that's abstracted out in the game and F-14s should be more than adequate to deal with anything the Iraqi air force can put in the air.

Having said all this, now I'm going to have to actually give it a try.

< Message edited by Amnectrus -- 2/1/2019 11:05:53 PM >

(in reply to Cik)

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RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/1/2019 8:49:43 PM

Cik

Posts: 671
Joined: 10/5/2016
Status: offline

though the briefing says it is on day 4, the SAMs are still quite active.

navy doesn't really have enough SEAD or tankers to do the mission. you can still pull a win, but you won't be able to do all the targets.

much of the time you will need a lot of glide bombs, because the shilkas/rolands/SA-8s will get them on the fly-in, and the SA-2/6 outrange their glide distance, which means you will need to re-arm half your boys per target with HARM loadouts to whack them.

USAF is just much better setup across the board to deal with the problem in front of them. they can hit the ground running with massive strike packages, including large numbers of powerful SEAD/SOJ aircraft, plus they have ~30 big body tankers, their frontline strikers (f-16) are much more capable in key ways, and they have way, way more strike assets with more capable equipment.

navy could perhaps do it if they had decks full of nothing but intruders, F-14 and hornets, along with USAF basket-equipped tankers, but as it is the hornets will need pre and post-ingress refuels going to the closest targets (it is still an incredible distance away) if you launch all of your KA-6s you can take ~8 hornets to the closest target and back, but going to the chemical plants may actually be impossible as the hornets are so thirsty.

8 is nowhere near critical mass required to clean up the target area, and so you will probably need multiple turn ----> re-strikes before you can get the job done.
in addition, your reconnaissance capability exists if only barely. it's very difficult to keep tomcats on station as you have no tankers that can loiter for any length of time.

it's just not a pretty picture. the corsair IIs are basically liabilities and the other kit you have has huge achilles heels. the only redeeming factor of the fuel situation is that the F-14s can quite happily do a CAP rotation without refueling at all (really nice range) however being able to provide a CAP is usually the least of your problems. honestly i would trade the 'cats for some more intruders.

in fact, i'd trade my whole deck for more intruders, heh.

(in reply to Amnectrus)

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RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/1/2019 11:05:24 PM

Amnectrus

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Joined: 10/22/2015
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Challenge accepted; I just tried it and it wasn't all that hard, IMO. At the start of the scenario, I sent all 8x Intruders with GBU-12s against the H3 ammo revetments, escorted by Tomcats and all 5x of my HARM-armed Prowlers. No tankers needed. I took out the SA-6s at H3 and H2, and the SA-2 site near H2 (by "take out", I mean I killed their radars; the units themselves were still on the map, but unable to shoot me), and 6 revetments (they take 2 GBU-12s each). No losses. Meanwhile all of my other planes are being refitted: A-6s with GBU-10/BLU-109s, F-18s with HARMs, SLAMs, and Walleyes, A-7s with buddy stores.

6 hours later the second wave is ready. F-18s with HARMs to Taqaddum to do a SEAD strike and F-18s with Walleyes to H3 to hit the rest of the revetments (turns out Walleyes don't work well against hardened shelters), each strike tanked by 8x A-7s with buddy stores. Also launched 4x A-6s with GBU-10s to hit the hardened shelters at H3.

The F-14s took care of 2 MiG-25 and 2 J-7s that came up.

The Walleyes took care of the rest of the revetments at H3 and the A-6 killed all the hardened aircraft shelters except 1, so there's 1 more shelter left and the ammo bunker. I sent another 4x A-6s to take care of those. No more SEAD is needed once the SA-6 is down because you can fly high enough to stay out of the flak, and if you pick your approach carefully the ZSUs are too far away to defend the specific buildings you need to hit.

At Taqaddum, the HARMs killed the 2 SA-2s, then 2 SA-3s (again, killing only the radars), then the Roland, and I shot the rest of the HARMs at ZSU-23s (Gun Dish radars), killing one unit entirely and damaging two others. I had ample fuel at the target area.

Everyone was running on fumes by the time they got back to the carrier, and I had to launch my KA-6Ds as recovery tankers to get a couple of my F-14s back, but they all made it, and if I had paid more attention to fuel states during the mission I wouldn't have needed the recovery tanking anyway.

Third wave was F-18s with SLAMs against Taqaddum, tanked by 8x A-7s again. Fuel still no problem. I escorted them with a couple Prowlers with HARMs which I used to fully kill the last ZSU covering the target buildings. I was expecting to have to do a follow-up strike since there are 23 targets at Taqaddum and I only had 16 SLAMs but it turns out the first 1 or 2 missiles had a big enough blast to kill all the targets so the rest just stirred up the rubble.

Takeaway lessons I got from all this: 8x A-7s with buddy stores can tank 8x F/A-18s all the way to Taqaddum no problem. The SAMs are pretty weak, and you only have to hit a few of them to clear the way for your attacks. The ZSU-23s can be a pain, but you can hit them with leftover HARMs.

At the end of these attacks I had 4500 points, Major Victory, and over 10 hours left, enough time for at least one more strike, maybe two. I have a full squadron of A-6s with GBU-10s ready to go, and 1.5 hours before I have two squadrons of F-18s, one with Walleyes and one with HARMs, and my A-7s will all be turned around by then and ready for another tanker mission. The only remaining targets are the runways at H2, so my plan would be to run in a SEAD strike with the HARMs and then BLU-109 the runways into submission, but I've established to my own satisfaction that range and SEAD capability is not a problem in this scenario.

Granted the USAF does have better units but it's totally do-able with the Navy.

Here's the losses/expenditures I ended up with:

SIDE: Iraq
===========================================================

LOSSES:
-------------------------------
2x Vehicle (Straight Flush [1S91])
16x Ammo Revetment
3x Vehicle (Fan Song F [RSNA-75M])
9x SA-2f Guideline Mod 1 Single Rail
3x Vehicle (Spoon Rest C [P-12])
2x MiG-25P Foxbat A
2x F-7B Fishbed [MiG-21 Copy]
4x A/C Hardened Aircraft Shelter (1x Medium Aircraft)
2x A/C Hardened Aircraft Shelter (1x Large Aircraft)
3x SA-7a Grail [9K32 Strela-2] MANPADS
2x Vehicle (Flat Face B [P-19])
2x Vehicle (Low Blow [SNR-125])
4x SA-3b Goa Twin Rail
2x Roland 2
5x 23mm ZSU-23-4 Shilka
1x Ammo Bunker (Surface)
23x Building (Medium)

EXPENDITURES:
------------------
3x SA-2f Guideline Mod 1 [S-75M2 Volkhov, 5YA23 / V-759]
3x SA-6a Gainful [3M9]
3x AA-6 Acrid A [R-40R, SARH]
4x Generic Chaff Salvo [5x Cartridges]
17x 23mm ZSU-23-4 Shilka Burst [50 rnds]
2x SA-3b Goa [5V27, V-601P]

SIDE: USAF
===========================================================

LOSSES:
-------------------------------

EXPENDITURES:
------------------

SIDE: USN
===========================================================

LOSSES:
-------------------------------

EXPENDITURES:
------------------
23x AGM-88B HARM
16x GBU-12D/B Paveway II LGB [Mk82]
12x AIM-7M Sparrow III
1x Generic Chaff Salvo [5x Cartridges]
16x AGM-62B Walleye II ER/DL
14x GBU-10J/B Paveway II LGB [BLU-109/B]
16x AGM-84E SLAM

Edit: I just went ahead and launched the last strike. It turns out that the runways at H2 are not targets as far as the points system goes, but they're marked as targets on the map. Targets that give you points are the hardened aircraft shelters. I hit them with A-6s, with a SEAD strike of F-18s tanked by A-7s and got a Triumph, 5300 points total, zero losses.

< Message edited by Amnectrus -- 2/1/2019 11:39:00 PM >

(in reply to Cik)

Post #: 6

RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/2/2019 12:52:01 AM

Cik

Posts: 671
Joined: 10/5/2016
Status: offline

extremely impressive. well done.

A-7 buddy store is an important innovation. i will have to give it a go in the future.

(in reply to Amnectrus)

Post #: 7

RE: Stand alone Gulf war 1991 ( Shamal?) not as easy as... - 2/3/2019 8:13:38 AM

sven6345789

Posts: 1050
Joined: 3/8/2004
From: Sandviken, Sweden
Status: offline

Thanks for all the replies.

Going to try the buddy system.
And thanks for your test amnectrus.

_____________________________

Bougainville, November 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. It rained today.

Letter from a U.S. Marine,November 1943

(in reply to Cik)

Post #: 8

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