Pyrpolitis 2014

[fitzpatv]

I've been doing a few difficult scenarios lately and this was no exception, being billed as the second-hardest in the Standalone Pack, behind Sultan's Revenge.

It's based on a real Hellenic (Greek) Air Force exercise from 2014. The premise is that an aggressive Turkey is about to invade the island of Chios (near the Turkish mainland). Greek planes are assigned to neutralise the covering squadron of four SAM-toting frigates, covered by a strong Turk Hava Kuvvetleri CAP. You have eight hours, so there is no real chance of a second strike if the first one fails.

The Turks fly F-16 Falcons, most of which have 60nm range AMRAAM C-7s, whereas most of your fighters have the older 120B model with a 40nm range or the 45nm MICA. They are backed-up by tankers and Wedgetail AEW planes at a safe distance.

You have eight Falcons and eight late-model Mirages and must split these between escort and strike duties. There are also AEW planes and a quartet each of elderly Phantoms and Corsairs. Neither side has ground-based SAMs, though both have plenty of radars.

Your initial loadouts are sub-optimal and some reassignment is helpful, but this takes 6 of the 8 hours. This sounds like it might be a good idea, as some of the Turkish fighters might run out of endurance by then. I switched the four Blk52 Falcons on Crete to AGM-154C stand-off weapons which outrange the enemy ships' SAMs, while retaining some of the longer-ranged AMRAAMs for defence.

About an hour in, seeing some enemy fighters RTB and not knowing where the Turkish ships were, I did a preliminary mission, sending-up an AEW plane with a single older-model Falcon for escort. The idea was to send the AEW plane W as quickly as possible to keep it safe. Located the ships, but more fighters quickly arrived. While I had time to get the Falcon back to base, the Turks pursued the AEW plane most of the way to Corfu and shot it down. I learned that losing planes costs no points, so there's limited harm in taking risks here.

A bit later, I tried to take advantage of the enemy refuelling from a tanker over the Aegean, using three more Falcons. They promptly broke-off and attacked and, in the ensuing dogfight, both of their planes and all three of mine were downed in a total wipeout. Destroying enemy fighters scores no points - it might be different if you can catch a tanker or Wedgetail. It caused the Turks to mount a lot of other sorties, but this mattered not at all, as their CAP is inexhaustable.

After six hours, I launched a mass attack, using Corsairs and Phantoms in an effort to draw fighters away from the attack Falcons and Mirages. The Turks responded with what seemed like around 20 fighters. In the mass dogfight, I lost 18 aircraft, including all of the AGM-154 Falcons before they could fire, for 8 enemy Falcons. The Mirage attack planes outlasted the battle, aimed all eight of their Exocets at the frigate Salihreis and, to my surprise, sank her. This scored 750 points and made it a Minor Defeat (you get 250VP for damaging a ship).

I then read Kung Pao's excellent review of this scenario on the forum. He'd come to similar conclusions to myself about the desirability of waiting-out the Turkish CAP and attacking after 6 hours, having optimised loadouts. He'd also assembled his strike just W of the island of Andros, which rises to over 3,000' ASL and approached at 100' to minimise the risk of being detected, which sounded like a great idea. He'd also swapped the Corsairs' iron bombs for more useful Mavericks (which don't outrange the SAMs, however) and used these and the similarly-armed Phantoms as a follow-up force to finish-off cripples. Finally, he'd switched the older Falcons to using HARMs against the ships' radars and split the newer Cretan ones between SPICE 1000 Mk83s (much like AGM-154s, but doing less damage) and extra AMRAAM C-7s for CAP. I decided to stick with AGM-154s for the Cretan planes on the basis that I needed every shot at the ships and couldn't beat their CAP, but otherwise gave his strategy a go.

In summary, it worked well for him, but isn't guaranteed to do so. The Andros rendezvous was indeed a brilliant ploy and I was able to get the strike there at much the same time and undetected. Only then did I launch an AEW plane to spot the enemy ships.

However, Kung Pao had coincided his strike with the Turkish CAP leaving its post. This didn't happen for me and I had to battle past six Falcons before I could attack. Shot these down, but lost 3 Corsairs, a HARM Falcon and 2 Mirage fighters in the process.

This nevertheless left me with enough planes to stand a chance and a window in which to attack. However, it was a narrow one, with another swarm of Falcons launching straightaway (the number of Turkish fighters is ridiculous and they are technically superior to most of yours, so you can't beat them). Delays were caused by a) planes needing to adjust altitude and face the right way to attack, b)the enemy ships not having their radars on, so I couldn't initially fire HARMS (used a Corsair to provoke them) and c) planes going Engaged Defensive when a missile was fired anywhere near them. On the last of these, I'd put the fighters on Auto Evade = NO, but not the attack planes. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

For all this, I got-off my attacks on the ships....but such was the SAM umbrella that not one scored a hit. I spread my fire, but concentrating might or might not have made a difference, since it was essentially the same number of SAMs against the same number of missiles. Besides, you need to hit at least two targets to better a Minor Defeat, so what do you do?. Once the Turkish aircraft closed, I lost another 13 planes for two of theirs, but it's hard to fight when your fighters are low on ammo from earlier and you're trying to mount a strike at the same time.

So it ended in a Disaster, with a score of zero. I'd actually done better the first time.

As a footnote to the designers/developers, I found that it is impossible to switch-off being notified about enemy missile launches (New Weapon Contact) using Options, Message Log. I know enemy missiles are bad news, but you DON'T need to know EVERY TIME one is fired. It is a real nuisance when you're trying to concentrate or are expectantly awaiting one of your own missiles striking a target. Rant over.

So, in short, very tough and not for the faint-hearted.