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AndrewJ -> RE: New Scenario for testing - IOF #4 The Red Gate (6/11/2018 11:47:10 PM)
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One day in, and here's where I'm at so far...
THE PLAN
After the heavyweights have passed through in the last couple of days, my remaining forces, mostly British and French with American amphibs, have been tasked with the capture of Socotra, and the the various islands and narrows in and around the Bab al Mandeb.
My first thought is to consolidate my naval forces heading for Socotra. I’m most concerned about small task groups stumbling into an enemy submarine, and I want to bring them together into convoys which are easier to defend. The UK carrier group is ordered to slow down to a fuel efficient creep so the other two groups in the area can catch up and join it, and the Pelilieu group SE of Socotra is to do the same thing to wait for its trailing LST. The little Floreal will head south to try and offer a little protection for the oiler coming up the African coast. The Jeanne d’Arc group heads over to help escort the minesweepers, who seem very exposed with their single escort. The support ships in Oman put their two escorts out front, and start steaming west along the coast. I’d like to put up some MPA ASW patrols in the area, but since there are probably still aircraft lurking in Socotra I’m holding off for now. The French in Djibouti will stay in port for now. The lone Brit up in the Red Sea is just asking for death. Hopefully nobody notices it.
Looking over my airborne assets, I can see I’ve got a lot of Harriers carrying stores that need buddy-lasing, so I decide to request the assistance of the Tornados, who are equipped for that task, and have the long legs to do it for an extended period of time. These and other aircraft from up north in the Gulf are ordered to relocate down to Thumrait for Socotra operations. I don’t have a lot of dedicated high-speed fighters, except for the French over in Djibouti. For Socotra operations I’ve got Harriers with AMRAAMs on the Brit carrier group, and Harriers with Sidewinders elsewhere. Other than that it’s a few AMRAAMs carried as secondary weapons on American strike aircraft. If we’re just facing a Mig-21 or two with older missiles we should be okay, but beyond that? Hmmm…
DAY 1
As operations get underway I decide that foolish moves are the best way to throw the enemy off-guard, and I try and sneak some of the little French Gazelles in at low altitude to take a look at the Ethiopian airbase in Dire Dawa, and to peek over the mountain into Aden. What could go wrong? Well, enemy fighters, that’s what. My scouts are shot down before they can exfiltrate. Dumb move…
The only benefit is that it provokes skirmishing between the French Mirages in Djibouti, and the Yemeni airforce, and the French quickly make a good score of F-5s and Mig-21s. Things start getting tougher when Mig-23’s start appearing out of Sana’a, but they’re usually coming 1 at a time, so they can be taken down at numerical advantage. Then the Mig-29s start to appear, and the French have to cool it for a bit. After taking some time to consolidate they start to launch strong 6-plane fighter sweeps, which gradually eat away the enemy air forces in Sana’a, before burnering back home to take advantage of their quick turnaround. It takes a while, but their final sweep of the evening even manages to get rid of the impudent jammer (and his silent ELINT friend) which have been loitering impudently in the region.
In one of the pauses in the air-to-air fight, my E-8 cruises through far in the background, plotting defences in the Bab. There’s plenty of those, as excpected, but it also spots a large column of contacts headed south to the Bab al Mandeb area. My recce Mirage makes a high-speed dash down the line, and brings back footage of an entire armoured regiment + on the move. I’ve got no way to hit it with any effective strength at the moment. If it stays in the region and contests the Bab then any landing on the far shore is going to be a miserable failure. The E-8 also spots a bunch of high speed naval contacts up north which may be a problem if they come south to interfere with the French Amphibs.
Cargo planes need to get into Djibouti, and the French decide that the Ethiopian fighters in Dire Dawa are a menace along that route. Therefore a strike of some Mirage fighters, one Mirage with AS-30Ls, and the attack helicopters head south to hit the base. A couple of enemy fighters are shot down, a couple more are destroyed on the ground, and the strike returns safely, leaving the airfield empty (for the moment). As they arrive home they are just in time to receive the diplomatic briefing saying “Please don’t antagonise the Ethipians”. Ooops….
Over in Thumrait the drones and recce planes start lifting off, to ID the various armed fishing boats (spies every one, I’m sure), and take a look at Socotra. The E-8 does a very good job of pinpointing enemy positions as it flies around at a distance, but an incautious naval helicopter, which tries to come in hidden by the radar shadow of the southern escarpment and ID an isolated radar blip on the south shore, gets spanked by a Mig-29 which was based on the island. Active Mig-29s on Socotra? Hmmm… That crystalizes my decision, and I request the air superiority Mirages to fly down to Thumrait as well.
The first strike against Socotra happens in the afternoon, after the Harriers have flown down from Kuwait and readied again. Everybody goes. A speculative HARM shot towards the surveillance radar prompts the SA-15 to light up, and a shower of anti-radiation missiles descend on it, but it shoots them all down. Fortunately it then runs out of missiles, and is finished off by an LGB. My LGB and laser Maverick forces then start working on enemy air defence vehicles. Once those are gone the first of my iron bombers swoop in, only to find that there are plenty of MANPADS active in the area, and I can’t see where they’re coming from. My pod equipped strikers drop down ‘till they’re a kilometer above missile ceiling, and that’s when they spot the full scope of the enemy deployment on the island. That’s a lot of guys! My remaining LGBs destroy some of the MANPADS, and my other bombers work over outlying troops where the little SAMs can’t reach.
Three naval contacts are spotted during the attack, huddled up against the Socotra shore, and the Trenchant manages to sink them with one Harpoon apiece. The Trenchant gets a surprise of its own, when, despite its very good sonar, it gets ambushed during a cruise-speed transit. The Trenchant fires a torp back down the bearing, and turns and runs as fast as it can. After a couple of minutes, in which time the enemy sub has hopefully turned to run and thus made itself blind, the Trenchant turns aside. The enemy torpedoes pass by on their original course, and the Trenchant runs silent. The enemy sub, which turns out to be a Victor, gets hunted down and killed by a helicopter from the Jeanne d’Arc group.
Another sub, which turns out to be an SSGN, also turns up in the path of the supply ships coming from Oman. Fortunately, the P-3 which laid the sonobuoy which detected it manages to sink it before it can do any damage. It’s ID-ed as a Charlie, with short range missiles. An Oscar would have been in range.
NIGHT 1
The first night comes with interesting political developments. I have orders to escort my commander on a night flight into Ethiopia, in order to work out a potential cease-fire.
My boss’s flight path will take them near the edge of Yemeni radar cover, and very close to one of their damaged bases. So, I plan to send an EC-130 to knock back radar range in that area. Some Mirage fighters from Thumrait will meet up with the diplomatic plane in that region, before escorting them down into Somalia. My F-15-Es and Tornadoes, with their long legs and good night vision, will rendezvous in the same zone, along with the E-8 and E-3, which will look for suspicious air and ground activity in the area. Four tankers are tasked to support.
It’s a lot of activity, but it goes well, and the operation is an unopposed diplomatic success (and I’m expected to operate against Eritrea now). However, it does delay the second strike on Socotra until the F-15Es and Tornados get back to lead the strike on their return trip. So the second strike begins shortly before dawn, which is later than I would have liked. On the up-side, as the planes cross the island from the SW they find another cluster of troops up in the mountains, which are added to the target list. The second strike finishes off the last of the known MANPADS with LGBs, and then works on the remaining targets. The little carriers are close enough to participate now, and the Harriers do a great job against the newly spotted troops in the mountains. Most effective are the Cobras, which do great execution against the main body of infantry with their death-ray 20mm cannons. By the end of the strikes only a modest number of troops remain around the port.
My minesweepers have been slowly closing in through the night, travelling along the coast from west to east, but they are appallingly slow. I’m sweeping at their 2 knot creep speed, sonars on. I suppose mines are most likely in the landing area, but I can’t trust that, and they could be anywhere along the coast. The coast is very long at 2 knots… The Jeanne d’Arc group is immediately behind them, impatient to do some NGFS. From the other side, I’ve detached most of the gunfire capable ships from the carriers and amphibs, and they’re being sent along the coast in single file from east to west. The Perry’s in the lead with its mine-hunting sonar blasting away, so they should be okay, right? Right?
The night was calmer in the Djibouti region, with cargo planes flying in full of troops, but one of the French Mirages doing a recce sweep found that the fast moving patrol boats from the Red Sea were transiting the Bab and heading towards Socotra. A Sea Harrier (with tanker support) made the long flight in from the Ark Royal to sink two of them with Sea Eagles, a Mirage with AS-30L got another one, and the American SSN used a Harpoon on the fourth. I think that’s all of them. The recce Mirage also spotted an AN-2 up in the Red Sea. I’m not sure what it was trying to accomplish in the dark, but it’s dead now.
I’ve ferried some helicopters up to Djibouti, including some Lynxes with good night vision equipment, and they had time do do a little scouting before it became light. They found there were still some boats in docks in the Bab area, so the AS-30L Mirage blasted a pair of docks, and they can repeat this if more turn up.
PLANS FOR DAY 2
Airstrikes in Socotra are winding down, so I’m going to start shifting aircraft into Djibouti. The F-16s with HARM are already on the way, and I’ll send more as the day progresses.
The amphib landing will proceed on Socotra (barring minefield disasters) but I’m already behind schedule. I should have read my timelines more closely and planned better at the beginning. Slowing and consolidating into task groups was prudent, but took time my commander did not want to me to spend! Pelilieu is expected to stay at Socotra, but I may try hurrying Ark Royal towards the Bab. The American SSN hasn’t found anything hidden en-route yet, but a Tango or Kilo shaped surprise may still be lurking about, so a high speed transit would be risky.
In Djibouti I need to find where the regiment went (the E-8’s on its way now), and see if there’s anything up near the Russian naval base in Eritrea to worry about. Recce Mirages will get to work there. At the same time I’ll start infiltrating recce teams onto the nearer islands by helicopter, and the more distant ones by parachute.
I know there’s still a couple more Mig-29s up in Sana’a, and probably some fighters in Eritrea, so we’ll do some more Mirage sweeps before converting most of the Mirages over to bombing. I’d like to get rid of the radars in the Sana’a and Ataq area too, and I may be able to sneak some TLAMs in through the mountains to do it. (I should have done that last night, under cover of darkness.)
If it looks like air defences are mostly down then it’ll be time to start working over the enemy in the Bab, before landings on Day 3.
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