Slitherine

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On the 5th of April 1986 terrorists detonated a bomb in a Berlin nightclub. The bomb killed 2 American soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured 229 others, 79 of whom were American.

In response, citing evidence that the government of Libya was responsible for the bombing, US president Ronald Reagan ordered airstrikes against Libya on the night of April 14/15, codenamed OPERATION EL DORADO CANYON.

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ORIGINAL: Tom Konczal

I looked all over yesterday for the livestream but couldn't find it. :(
Is it going to be uploaded to YouTube?
Thanks

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ORIGINAL: JDLgnd
Will it be part of the Community Scenario Pack (Official) once the pack gets reuploaded on steam with the new scenarios?

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude
So just getting into it. Question, are the tanker ready times historical or just for the scenario. If the latter, I would suggest making the KC-135s ready initially, as the KC-135s and KC-10 really get mixed up on launch.

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

Very detailed!

The F-111/EF-111 transit and tanking is a scenario all to itself! To be honest I have started it 5 times and have never been able to coordinate the refueling and timing. I-ve tried small groups, large groups wings by type, the different air speeds make it very hard and if I get the aircraft to the Straits of Gibraltar with plenty of fuel I'm hopelessly behind schedule. So this is a refueling issue I've never tried before (so other than this op who has , maybe the IAF??? ). It's a testament to the USAF (and having been a USN "Squid" assigned to Marines, I love to bust on the USAF), Skills that they pulled it off with appropriate TOT!!!!

Now I do tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, but then I hit the Straits about 3 hours in its clear my TOT is busted! I'm a BAD CMO player!

Oh one other thing, and I'm going off my memory here, but didn't they cut the corner a bit over Portugal?

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

So giving it another try, as I recall the aircraft few about 25,000 ft (if memory serves me right it had something to do with staying below the average height of commercial traffic). Taking the KC-135s up to 36,000 gives them more airspeed. So lets see if I can time it better!

EDIT: So one thing that is messing me up is when the KC-10s start to fuel they drop to Loiter (230 mph), which makes sense. So to keep things from getting strung out need to manually go to each tanker/tanker group and increase the airspeed to 520 mph. Not sure if that slows down refueling (or stops it???). We'll see, but if you let the aircraft drop down to loiter, timing is blown!

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What I've seen works best is to:
1) The first refueling is the hardest IMO. Refuel the KC-10s and the F-111s from the KC-135s over the Bay of Biscay. The F-111s didn't actually refuel this way but with the tankers slowing to loiter mechanic it works best IMO. It allows the whole strike force to slow down to the tankers loiter speed while the KC-135s can refuel the KC-10s. Otherwise the F-111s will shoot out ahead. 1 KC-135 should be able to top off the tanks of 3-4 KC-10s that early. Should have a few left over to refuel the F-111s at the same time as well.

2) I maintain about 350-400 kts for all my groups. I gets tricky when giving course corrections to multiple types because the F-111s will always want to speed up to 480 kts so you have to watch them. If you select them in the right order they will maintain speed. Can also assign them to a patrol mission and leap frog the reference points.

3) Make sure to refuel all F-111 groups at the same time, from one group of tankers. I do use the mother tanker to some extent by having the same group refuel from the same tanker each time.

4) When the F-111's are refueling, slow my other tanker group(s) to loiter speed manually. Have to pay attention because once the F-111s finish they will speed back up to their manually assigned 400 kts. If they all refuel around the same time they should break away close enough to where there isn't too much separation. When the F-111'sd are finished, I manually set the speed of the tanker groups back to 400 kts.

5) Refuel the F-111 mother tankers after the strike force breaks off to attack. I normally hold their orbit around Sicily. Refueling them enroute just causes headaches.

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

one other thing I was going to do, maybe a cheat but I was going land and refuel the KC-135s at Rota.

So yes I've seen and done some variant on all of this at one point or another. Guess I should have kept going when Hit the Strait at 3 hours! Right now I have the KC-135s in a nice clusters in 2 and 1 aircraft groups. I'm finding keeping them to that size allows you to more easily assign tanking. The F-111/EF-111s are drinking right now just west of Portugal and then I'm going to tank off the 135s. The way I did that was building three (3) "Form-up" SUPPORT missions over southern England, One for the KC-10s, One for the F-111Fs and one for the EF-111As. Then I built a Support Mission for my mission track for all the groups to head down (that way I can assign Groups altitudes and speeds and when the KC-135s passes each I reassign the Formed Up group to the Track Support Mission. So it's echeloned 135s, 10s F-111s and EF-111s and just let the F-111s & EF-111s come up to refuel. Once the Strikers are done drinking I'm going to refuel the KC-10s and send the 135s to ROTA. Wonder why they didn't do that in the original mission? seems like refueling some 135s would be something the Spanish would have looked the other way on.

One way to keep everyone on track is to move the "Track Support Mission's" first reference point ahead of them and then deleting the RPs as they're not needed anymore. That way they aircraft always tracking toward the RP and you don't have to worry about so many tracks!

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

Setting up for the last refueling before beginning the strike, lead aircraft are the KC-10s followed by the F-111F's and then the Ravens. Three KC-10s have dropped out as they stayed at 230 mph after the refueling despite MULTIPLE attempts to bring them up to mission speed. There is sooooo much micromanaging that I'm playing it in real time. The three don't matter as all five missions have enough refuelers to tank up before the attack. all the KC-10s will go into a holding box west of Sicily. And since it has taken me longer to get the game aircraft here than the real mission I'm calling it a night. Set up the Carrier missions next time. we're 30 minutes from the Carriers aircraft being ready so the timing isn't all that bad after all and I hit the Strait of Gibraltar about Launch +3:10. Did have to send 2 KC-135s to Rota as they got hung up in the Exclusion zone and kept banding their heads into it. Didn't think they had enough fuel left to make England, and I doubt the Spanish would notice two 135s as being out of the ordinary.

So feel pretty good about things right now!

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude
Strikes inbound. Think the TOT is way off, but I was going to loose it with the F-111s and fuel. So yes got there too early!

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude

And I lost it.

The F-111s turned back just before feet dry for a couple of reasons, one of which was fuel and the other I will keep to myself to avoid a spoiler. I guess they were Bingo for flying all the way back to England even though IMHO they had plenty to get back to the tanker holding box. So they turned back to tank up from the KC-10s with about 50% fuel.

So excellent research, and well done but too much micromanagement for my taste, and apparently skills . I felt like I was flying each and every plane, which is fine for a smaller scenario but too much for me in this one. Like I said I had to play it on real time just to keep everything in line.

My one suggestion is you might add areas where the F-111s should refuel with locked RPs, I'm pretty sure the air crews would have had that calculated for them. We used to use a flight program for planning that took the forecast winds en route and calculated fuel and refueling points as well as divert fields.

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ORIGINAL: BeirutDude
2. I did move the aircraft too fast. Maybe I missed it in the side briefing, but you might suggest an average aircraft speed of 350-400 if I did. I was averaging more around 440-480 mph, so yeah got there ahead of schedule.

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{5} OVERFLIGHT OF FRANCE AND SPAIN WAS REQUESTED BUT DENIED. AIR FORCE STRIKE FORCE WILL PROCEED AT LOW LEVEL AROUND THE IBERIAN PENINSULA. PLANNED ALTITUDE AND SPEED IS 360 AGL AT 400 KTS.

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{5} OVERFLIGHT OF FRANCE AND SPAIN WAS REQUESTED BUT DENIED. AIR FORCE STRIKE FORCE WILL PROCEED AT LOW LEVEL AROUND THE IBERIAN PENINSULA. PLANNED ALTITUDE AND SPEED IS 360 AGL AT 400 KTS.