Facing the Bear

[AndrewJ]

FACING THE BEAR

Here's an AAR about Yokes' "Facing the Bear" scenario, which covers a Soviet invasion of Norway in 1989. I chose to play it from the Russian side.

OBJECTIVES

At the start of the scenario I've been given three main objectives:

1) Seize the Norwegian airfield at Bodo with an airmobile assault, and hold it while an airlift brings in reinforcements and supplies.

2) Escort an amphibious landing force to Harstadt, and ensure that the troops get ashore safely.

3) Shepherd the advancing Red Army, as it invades Norway from the NE, providing close air support and combat air patrols for the advancing troops.

4) Once these objectives are safely in hand, tackle the NATO naval forces in the region.

All of this in 24 hours!


FORCES

To do all this I've been given a pile of land-based aircraft: I've got plenty of Mig-31s, Su-27s, and Mig-29s, and even a good number of Mig-23s, along with large numbers of Su-24s, Badgers, Backfires, and Fitters, as well as Frogfoots (Frogfeet??) and Hinds to support the army. I've also got a good number of support aircraft: AEW planes for surveillance, Mays to provide ASW cover, recce Bears and recce Mig-25s, and (which will turn out to be crucially important) a force of airborne jammers in Su-24 and Badger platforms. The airdrop to capture Bodo is already in flight, and there's also a group of minelaying Badgers closing on the Norwegian coast, hoping to guard the amphib's flank and trap much of the Norwegian navy in one of the deeper inlets.

My navy is composed of the Admiral Kusnetzov carrier group up north, using its Su-33s to cover the approach of the amphibious forces, an ASW group that is patrolling ahead of the carrier, and an offensive group (a Slava / Sovremenny combo) travelling ahead of the amphibs themselves. There's an older Victor snooping around the area too. Down south near Iceland I've got a tattletale shadowing the Forrestal carrier group which is headed north between Iceland and the Faroes, as well as an Oscar and a Victor III which are flanking the carrier about 15 to 20 nm to the SE and NW

Facing me, the Norwegians have their airforce (predominantly F-16s and F-5s) distributed on 6 airfields, along with a modest air defence net of a few SAM sites and plenty of radar. Their rugged coastline is dotted with fortifications, and I'm sure there must be plenty of missile boats and submarines lurking in the fjords. There's also a group of NATO destroyers and frigates operating somewhere off the middle of Norway. The Americans are present with the Forrestal CVBG, of course, as well as F-15s and P-3s operating out of Iceland, and the UK will probably be flying Tornados out of its Scottish bases. Importantly, intelligence tells us that NATO is likely to be flying major reinforcements into Orland, the southern-most Norwegian airfield, in a few hours.


THE PLAN

So what's my plan??

If I have to take and hold Bodo by air, then a major NATO force arriving in Orland will be a real problem, and they’ll also interfere with any actions taken against the American carrier group, so my first priority is to use the major portion of my SU-24 force to make a long-range strike against Orland, escorted by long-range Mig-31s. They'll only be able to carry one big bomb apiece at that range, but if they can wreck the airfield before NATO can reinforce it the payoff will be great.

This means a reduction in the initial effort against targets in northern Norway, so I will call off the attacks that HQ had requested on the coastal forts, and concentrate my remaining attack aircraft on the northern airfields. To support this I'm going to try and take down the Norwegian radar net using Badgers with long-range AS-6 ARMs, while my fighters take the Norwegians head-on in the skies.

Hopefully things will be under control by the time I can re-cycle my attack planes, in order to attack the coastal forts that are blocking the path of my amphibious group. HQ actually wants me to bombard the forts with my heavy surface group. They do have good rapid fire guns, but I'm reluctant to take my thin steel hulls into a duel with heavy artillery embedded in granite mountainsides! I give them orders to slow down and act as escorts for the amphibs instead.

Even though my ships have a powerful anti-shipping missile loadout, all my ships are going to stay up north for the moment, well away from the American carrier group. I have no desire to tangle with an angry carrier airwing until I've whittled it down a bit.


THE BATTLE: Phase 1 - Operations against Norway and initial submarine activity

Hostilities commence!

My tattletale shadowing the Forrestal vanishes in a flash of bombs, but not before he gets a sniff of what seems to be a set of ASW helicopters launching north of the Forrestal group. It looks like there's probably a picket group of some sort travelling ahead of the carrier, but what's in it remains a mystery. Still, it's an obstacle to bear in mind for later naval aviation attacks.

My two subs flanking the carrier group are too far away for an effective torpedo attack. They could probably launch the big wake homers bearing only, and hope the carrier group runs away from one set and into the other, but that would be a low-odds shot. The Oscar could certainly unleash his barrage of missiles, which are well within range, but would the missile stream actually reach the target? Probably not, with a Tico in the escort. So the Victor elects to try and get within the CZ and cut off the carrier group from ahead, while the Oscar will follow behind, waiting for later in the day when it can combine its missiles with those from the naval aviation bombers.

Up north, things are a little more exciting as the Norwegians take to the air to oppose us. My three inner surface groups have several visits from hostile F-16s, which start gleefully engaging my ASW helicopters. I order the helicopters to pull back closer and closer to the ships, but the F-16s press on, and I essentially have to curtail helicopter ASW activities entirely if I want to preserve any of them. This puts me at great risk from the Norwegian subs, which must be around here somewhere, but there's no alternative, and my pilots run for their lives back to the shelter of their ships. Some of them don't make it, but the F-16s have to come into a heavy SAM environment to make their kills, and those that do don't go home again.

The F-16s are nimble and deadly killers against my helicopters, but the Norwegian planes don't have any long range AAMs, and my pilots do. The order goes out: no dogfights! My pilots grumble at the lack of silk-scarfed glory, but for the most part they obey, launching radar guided missiles from medium range, and disengaging before they get into Sidewinder range. It often takes four or five missiles to kill one Norwegian plane, but I have plenty of missiles, and the Norwegians start dying steadily. My Mig-31s are particularly good at this, staying way up at extreme altitudes, expending their missiles in complete safety, and hurtling back home at Mach 2 for another load.
Over the next few hours my fighters drive back and overwhelm the Norwegian air force in the north, giving me air superiority with no losses amongst my fighters.

Down south the submarine action becomes more intense, when the Oscar trailing the American carrier detects a high speed SSN coming up from the south at over 20 knots. It sounds like the carrier group has a submarine escort sprinting to catch up, so the Oscar slows down and turns aside to let the enemy sub get closer. We then have the strange spectacle of the hulking ungainly Oscar trying to tiptoe around the sleek deadly SSN (a Trafalgar, says sonar!) and get into its baffles. The maneuver doesn't quite work, and the Oscar is a couple of miles too far away for a clean torpedo shot when it's done, but that's only a short range shot for an SS-N-15, and moments later a rocket-borne homing torpedo splashes down just behind the Trafalgar. There's a short chase and a satisfying boom, and the Oscar captain smugly goes back to shadowing the carrier group.

Things don't go so well for the Victor an hour or two later, as he's trying to cut off the carrier group from the north west. He should be safely inside the CZ, and still outside the direct path detection range of the carrier group, but that doesn't help him one bit against the prowling ASW aircraft in the area - helicopters and S-3s and P-3s. There's a splash, a whir of propellers, and an air-dropped torpedo heads in. The captain hastily fires two wake homers bearing only towards the estimated position of the carrier group, before leaping to flank speed, but it’s no use. This time the boom is much less satisfying. When the wake-homers eventually run out of fuel the remains of the Victor have already settled on the ocean floor.

Back up north the Red Army is marching into Norway, and for the most part it's making reasonable progress against the Norwegian forces, largely due to the powerful artillery assets it has attached. The Frogfoots do some good in close air support with rockets and bombs, but the Hinds have a rough time. The Norwegian SAM gunners with their RBS-70s are absolutely deadly, hiding invisibly in the forest until their laser beam riding missiles streak out to attack. There are no radar emissions to give warning, and flares and chaff are useless against them. Casualties among the Hinds reach an appalling 70%, and I have to call them off and only use them in mop-up duties after I'm sure the SAMs have been destroyed.

My attacks against the radar net are hampered by technical difficulties with the missiles, which turn out to have flaws in their anti-radiation seekers. Cursing missile techs try their best to jury-rig a fix and hurry the missiles onto the airplanes, and the attacks proceed, rolling back the Norwegian radar net and denying NATO information about my airborne activity. (Translation: there's a bug in the software that prevents some ARMs from working properly, so I guesstimated hit chances and then rolled dice to resolve the attacks)

As the paratroopers fly closer to Bodo, the leading fighters roll back the Norwegian air force, and the Su-24s come streaking in to smash the air-defences in the vicinity, losing a couple of planes but completing their task successfully. However, they can't destroy the airfield itself, because we need it intact, so I set up a close CAP around the field to try and keep any Norwegian fighters down. It doesn't quite work, and an F-16 makes it up just as the stream of ponderous transports arrives, thundering down the runway in full burner, and hauling into the vertical to fire missiles the moment his wheels are up. One of the transports falls in flames before its paratroopers can get out, but the lone F-16’s effort is suicidal, and unsuccessful. My vengeful fighters swarm over the F-16, and the remaining transports have enough troops to capture the airfield. Bodo is ours!

Meanwhile, my Fitters (operating near the limits of their range) and the remaining Su-24s try to tackle the northern airfields. The usual tactic is a four plane flight of with AS-12 ARMs to tackle the SAM sites, followed by another four plane flight armed with AS-14 Kedge PGMs to engage the runway access points, with Su-24s in reserve with heavy laser guided bombs. Despite the anti-radiation missiles I still lose a few planes to SAMs and AAA, but the overall result is a success. All four of the northern airfields are put out of action, and Bodo is mine, leaving only Orland in enemy hands.

The strike that I have heading in to Orland has 8 Su-24s, but at this range they can't carry their full load, so they're each toting a single massive 3000 lb guided bomb. Eight bombs against an airfield is not a lot. I don't have any anti-radiation missiles with me, so this could become a fiasco if my ECM escort can't handle the expected air defences and I start losing bombers. I do have a heavy escort of Mig-31s, but as I approach it becomes clear that the Norwegians have jammers orbiting Orland, which means that despite their enormous missile range advantage the Mig-31s won't be able to open fire on the F-16s flying CAP. The Mig-31 pilots swing wide, trying to get off axis shots on the F-16s without the jammers in the background, while the Su-24s press on nervously. Some of the F-16s dodge my incoming missiles and get dangerously close to my bombers, and it takes some blazing afterburner runs from the reserve Migs to rescue the situation. The force presses on, and while the Mig-31s try and hunt down the jammers (which turn out to be mounted in Falcon biz-jets) my ECM escorts start reporting airborne fire-control radars south of Orland. The British are coming!

Afterburners again! The Mig-31s race south to engage the intruding Tornado as the Su-24s close on the airfield. Bombs drop, SAMs rise, and missiles fly, and by the time it is over the Tornado is dead, three Su-24s have been shot down by SAMs and there are 6 smoking craters blocking the three runway access points! Orland is knocked out, and no NATO reinforcements will be operating there in the near term. (Captured documents reviewed after the war reveal what a big success this was. Orland was due to host 12 F-16s, 12 F-15s, 24 Buccaneers, and 12 F-4s! Knocking it out prevented an enormous amount of pressure on my southern flank.)


THE BATTLE – Phase 2: Naval operations and Amphibious Landing

With the Norwegian airfields all knocked out or in my hands, the pace of the air war lightened for a few hours, and naval operations became the focus. Down south the Oscar was still patiently trailing the carrier group when it detected an active sonobuoy in its path. The captain slowed to 5 knots and turned aside to creep around the buoy, but he would have been better to turn tail and run, because aircraft were already closing on his position. Ten minutes later an air-launched torpedo dropped almost directly on top of the Oscar, and within seconds the baffled captain of the massive SSGN was dead, with his full complement of missiles unused. (Postwar analysis revealed that the carrier group was actually travelling slower than expected, and the Oscar had blundered ahead, coming out in front of the group, right in the center of its ASW search zone.)

Up north the ships escorting the amphibious group were able to redeploy their ASW helicopters now that the air threat was gone, and they repaid the favour by identifying and sinking a Norwegian SS lurking along the coast. Not long after that two more Norwegian subs revealed themselves, this time with a salvo of torpedoes directed at the warships preceding the amphibious group. The surface action group turned tail and fled from the torps, while a barrage of SS-N-14s saturated the water around the two subs with rocket-delivered homing torpedoes, and ASW helicopters raced to the scene. Diesel-electric subs may be stealthy, but once you’ve found them they have a difficult time escaping. This pair die like their brother, and my ships resume their course towards the landing zone.

Meanwhile, the captain of the Victor that was on patrol in the area (a grizzled veteran of great wisdom and learning) sat placidly sipping tea in his command chair, completely unaware of the events that were unfolding around him. The only Soviet sub to survive the battle saw and heard nothing the entire time…

By this time the minelaying Badgers have completed their work in the channel leading to the Olavsvern naval base, but the channel was too deep for them to block completely, and a narrow deep-water passage is still open in the center. Radar also revealed a set of three small vessels near the area, and a close range recce by a passing fighter showed them to be minesweepers, one of which had run aground. Some aircraft which still had ordnance left over from the airfield strikes were vectored to the location, and the little ships were quickly destroyed before they could refloat their stranded comrade. (Translation: the route-finding algorithm seems to have difficulty in the narrow channels, and the group of ships had gotten stuck before it could get to the minefield.)

Shortly after that, a Spetznaz patrol watching over the Olavsvern Naval Base radioed in a warning that a flotilla of 16 missile boats centered around a pair of frigates were forming up and heading out to sea. Fitters get vectored in to tackle them with AS-14s, but the range on these is quite short, and the Sea Sparrow missiles on the frigates can engage long before I can. Patrolling ECM Badgers are called in to escort the attackers, and they manage to knock back the radars enough for my pilots to engage, but they still have to get uncomfortably close, and in some cases the frigates manage to burn through the jamming and launch SAMs, leading to some desperate wavetop level evasive maneuvers on the part of my Fitters.

The outermost missile boats get sunk (they’re so small that almost any hit is a kill), but roughly half of the flotilla is still afloat, sheltered deep in the fjord, and heading for the minefield gap. I’m out of aircraft for the moment, but my Sovremennys are in range with their Sunburn missiles, so with one of the ECM Badgers standing off as a long range observer I begin by firing an exploratory missile towards the flotilla. It comes streaking in at low altitude, climbs to clear the intervening terrain, and successfully acquires and destroys one of the ships in the fjord. Success! The Sovremennys begin a remorseless sequence of missile engagements, and the fjords echo to the supersonic shockwaves of the passing missiles as the largely defenceless flotilla is pounded into oblivion one ship at a time.

With the Norwegian naval forces destroyed, and their air-force trapped on the ground, the amphibious landing group proceeds unopposed. By the time they reach the entrance to the Harstadt fjord the coastal fortifications there are smoking ruins, pounded into rubble by enormous laser guided 3000 lb penetrator bombs dropped by the Su-24s. (In an era of PGMs, the fixed fortification is of little value once its air defence is gone.) Escorting ships and ASW aircraft scour the water for more submarines and find nothing, and visual and radar reconnaissance show the waters are empty of Norwegian ships. Then, just as landing operations commence, camouflage nets drop and four missile boats fend off from the rocky cliff-side in a tiny inlet, and come surging out to engage!

VAMPIRES! (Who knew Penguins could fly?) Sixteen of the small anti-shipping missiles come roaring in, while the missile boats start blasting away with their rapid-fire 76mm guns. Radars light up throughout my landing force as they reply in kind – a Russian landing force is well equipped with guns and rockets! A storm of shell splashes envelops the brave little ships, and SAMs and SS-N-14s streak towards them in anti-surface mode. Within moments they are gone, but plumes of smoke mark where their missiles have struck. Two escorting Krivaks are damaged, one of my LSTs has taken a hit, another is afire and down by the stern, and my big Ivan Rogov landing ship has severe flooding and is listing to one side. One of the Krivaks explodes and sinks within minutes, followed by the burning LST an hour or so later, but the others manage to control their flooding and extinguish their fires, and the landing proceeds. Before the end of the day the surviving troops are all safely ashore, and Harstadt is under our control.

With their charges safely delivered, my naval forces regroup and head south at speed, traveling along a sonobuoy corridor laid by my Mays, hoping to contribute to the naval fight that’s been happening down south. However, naval aviation has things well in hand, and my ships play no further role in this part of the war.


THE BATTLE – Phase 3: Southern air operations

While the northern operations were underway, things were still active down south…

With the capture and occupation of Bodo I now have a southern airfield from which I can operate. I don’t have munitions there yet, but NATO has kindly left me plenty of fuel, hangars, and shelters, which I can use as a staging base. From this point onwards I start landing large numbers of my fighters at Bodo to refuel (particularly my Mig-31s). If I need munitions I still have to send the aircraft back to their original bases, but this is a massive range extension, and it will allow me to tackle the American carrier group directly.

Before I find the carrier, however, my ELINT aircraft pick up traces of the NATO surface group, which seems to be retreating south towards the last known location of the carrier. A sensible move, in the face of Russian might! I’d like to take them out before they join up, but I don’t want to use my Badgers and Backfires for a relatively inoffensive target. Therefore, 6 of the Fitters are ordered to load up with AS-9 ARMS (which seem to be unaffected by the technical problems), and 9 with PGMs for use against the ships. My stocks are running low, so they’ll be forced to use the old AS-7s with a very short 3 mile range, which are all I have left. Jamming support and fighter escort will be essential to get them in that close. The strike will fly down to Bodo, spend a couple of hours refueling, and then take off for the remaining part of the strike. (Command doesn’t seem to have a function for this sort of refueling stopover, and it would normally cause the aircraft to go through the full 6 hour readying process each time they land. But if you can refuel a strike in midair, why not on the ground? If you can refuel on the ground for a ferry mission in 30 minutes, why can’t you do the same as part of a pre-planned strike? So what I do is let the entire strike land, wait two hours to represent the refueling, and then use the scenario editor to force the planes to ready status before launching on the second leg of the strike. This seems like a reasonable way to simulate a planned stopover.)

In the meantime, my fighters start facing off against the Americans and British. Tornados, F-15s, and F-18s all have good medium range radar guided AAMs, so they won’t be the helpless targets that the Norwegian F-16s were! Worst of all are the dreaded F-14s, with their powerful radars and long-range Phoenix missiles that even outperform my mighty Mig-31s.

This is when my jammers prove their worth. The Fencers and Badgers start flying in close formation with my fighter patrols, and suddenly my range advantage is back! My pilots can engage before the enemy can lock them up, and things start looking rosy again. So long as they have the discipline to stick with their jammers and not press on into close range against an alerted foe, they should be able to take on the enemy and win. And it works! My fighters pounce on F-14s, trying to outnumber them whenever possible and flood them with missiles before they can strike back. The kill claims mount over the course of the day, until the Elint planes report that they’re not detecting any more F-14s, and the numbers of other fighter aircraft have also dropped dramatically.

Suddenly it’s noble to be a Badger pilot! ECM weenies are now the best of men! The electronics techs can barely stagger, as the jubilant fighter pilots pound them on the back, and buy them drink after drink to celebrate their success. Never have so many bought so much vodka for so few…

Part-way through the day the Americans launch a major strike against my amphibious landing force approaching Harstadt, but without their long range fighter escort the Su-33s from the Kuznetsov slaughter them, and even one of the Forgers manages to get an A-6 kill.

With the F-14s gone, the eager Mig-31s realize they have a chance to take on the AEW and Jammer aircraft that are shielding the carrier group, and they use their Mach 2.3 dash to go hurtling in before the remaining escorts can react.

Which means they leave their electronic protectors far behind…

The AEW planes are swatted out of the sky, but two of the newly vulnerable Mig-31s die to Sparrow shots before they learn their lesson. Chastened, they retreat to the cover of their electronic cloud again, where they chose their targets more carefully.

By the time the Fitter strike is ready the skies have been cleared of almost all remaining NATO aircraft, and the wavetop skimming raid (with heavy jamming support, of course) manages to sink or cripple the NATO force of frigates and destroyers.

Now the heavy naval aviation closes in, with Bears to locate the carrier group, and Badgers and Backfires to attack from each flank, through a dense screen of jamming support. The picket force out front of the carrier group turns out to be the Lake Champlain, a modern VLS Tico, which could have been a very dangerous raid-wrecking surprise in some situations. Now, however, it is completely exposed and alone without any air support, and the bombers simply fly around it on their way to the carrier. The Tico can only listen to the garbled radio calls as the overwhelming multi-axis missile attack crushes the carrier group.

Then, as evening falls, dozens of bright lights streak out of the darkening east, and the crew of the Lake Champlain know this is The End.


Thoughts about the Scenario

As always, I enjoy Yokes’ big complex scenarios. The variety of units and the scope of operations are very entertaining. In this case, I think the balance might be off somewhat, since Russia has such a powerful advantage in airpower, which essentially allows them to roll over the Norwegians with little resistance. There’s no way I could have done as well from the NATO side. A reduction in jammers and Mig-31s might be the way to go, along with changing SAM site ROEs to allow engagement of non-hostile targets.

Thanks Yokes!

[Yokes]

Andrew,

Thanks for the wonderful AAR! It was like reading Clancy...

I like how you used the scenario editor to work around some of the limitations of CMANO.

This one is supposed to be a Soviet victory. Norway was at best a speed bump until the CVBGs could arrive. By taking out Orland you really helped yourself out. The air battle is "supposed" to be won early by the Soviets, with the late southern reinforcements and carrier air arriving to contest it again.

Thanks again for sharing!

Yokes