New Scenario for Testing - Peeling the Onion, 1957

[Randomizer]

SAC vs. the Soviet Union - 1957

You are Commander, 308th Bombardment Wing, Strategic Air Command equipped with B-47E medium bombers and normally based at Hunter Air Force Base (AFB), outside Savannah, GA. You are also the current OP REFLEX Commander on temporary duty at Sidi Slimane AFB in French Morocco and in the event of war will be responsible to conduct nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union out of the SAC forward bases: Sidi Slimane with elements of your combat wing, Ben Guerir AFB (19th Bombardment Wing with B-47's) and Nouasseur AFB (72nd Bombardment Wing with B-36's). You have the REFLEX elements of these combat wings in addition to your own forces and the stateside Wing Commanders will allocate their bombers to your command from bases in the USA as they become ready.

Hostilities with the Soviet Union have not commenced but if they do, your mission will be to attack Soviet industrial targets starting in southern Russia on the Black Sea coast. You have over flight rights from Italy, Greece and Turkey but Western European airspace belongs to the SAC REFLEX forces in the UK and Spain, the RAF, NATO and Tactical Air Command. Other SAC Wings will operate from south Asia east from the Caucasus mountains. You have no fighter escorts (in SAC, the bomber will always get through) and the NATO allies have no significant assets or support to give you outside of the bases at Lajes AFB in the Azores, Gioia del Colle AFB in Italy and RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus for refueling. Assigned to your command are the 3rd Reconnaissance Squadron (12 x RB-47) of the 26th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing and a detachment of EC-121 Warning Stars from the 961st Airborne Electronic Warning and Control Squadron for airborne command and control. There are quantities of nuclear weapons stockpiled at your Moroccan bases and more will be flown in as necessary by MATS.

Big Player Caveat:

The AU count for this scenario is in excess of 2400 so those who might experience CMANO performance issues are warned away. That said, my 3-year old laptop ran it in testing at acceptable (for me) time acceleration. Over one-third of the AU count is from 48-Soviet cities that contain between 1 and 12 facilities and markers. Another third is in the 40-Soviet airfields averaging 14-16 facilities each. All of these are fully targetable for your nuclear weapons. The odd title and some background on forward basing by SAC - OPERATION REFLEX ACTION - are explained in the Players Notes and the scenario is written in CMANO v1.11, build 837.

Thanks for any tests, I am particularly interested in calibrating the victory conditions and the PVO's air defence scheme.

-C

Scenario Version 1.1 posted. Changelog below.

[TurboRUSH]

I love your early cold war scenarios. I'll give this one a try on my Intel atom notebook this week. It runs some large scenarios ok so I'll test for both scenario design, bugs and performance. Keep these scenarios coming!

[stolypin]

Looks right up my alley. Next on the list.

[stolypin]

Care to provide any hints on the best way to get late-1950s bombers without escort past swarms of enemy fighters?

[Randomizer]

Thanks for the test. I have no reliable answer for this problem, (and doubt that SAC did either) which is why I wrote the scenario. That said, night should be your friend since few of the Soviet fighters are all-weather and are required to close within close visual range to use their guns. Another option might be to use your RB-47's to spook the interceptions and then go in after they run short on fuel and need to return to base. Taking out the Soviet radars will help to blind the defenses, the numerous Mk-5 bombs are great for that. Try a low and fast approach, pop-up and drop the bomb on the radar station and then execute a high-speed escape. Refuel over Turkey and repeat as necessary. You have four days but even with six-hour ready times, getting repeat attacks are probably limited to one per day (or night) if you go home. Set WRA for all the bombs to single drops (I actually think that this is default) so one B-47 can attack up to four radar sites if it can survive.

Am open to suggestions for reducing the threat but the scenario was never intended to be the cakewalk that SAC leadership seemed to think it would be. Bad weather might help, this first version lacks the planned deterioration of weather conditions since I was not sure how difficult the Community would find the tactical problem as set.

-C

[stolypin]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Thanks for the test. I have no reliable answer for this problem, (and doubt that SAC did either) which is why I wrote the scenario. That said, night should be your friend since few of the Soviet fighters are all-weather and are required to close within close visual range to use their guns. Another option might be to use your RB-47's to spook the interceptions and then go in after they run short on fuel and need to return to base. Taking out the Soviet radars will help to blind the defenses, the numerous Mk-5 bombs are great for that. Try a low and fast approach, pop-up and drop the bomb on the radar station and then execute a high-speed escape. Refuel over Turkey and repeat as necessary. You have four days but even with six-hour ready times, getting repeat attacks are probably limited to one per day (or night) if you go home. Set WRA for all the bombs to single drops (I actually think that this is default) so one B-47 can attack up to four radar sites if it can survive.

Am open to suggestions for reducing the threat but the scenario was never intended to be the cakewalk that SAC leadership seemed to think it would be. Bad weather might help, this first version lacks the planned deterioration of weather conditions since I was not sure how difficult the Community would find the tactical problem as set.

-C

Thanks for the tips. I'm still in Day 1 so it's way too early to suggest modifications. I'll report back as I get further along.

[Randomizer]

Any input for this?

Have added weather events, some flavour messages and set the Soviet coastal radar stations to Auto-detect on the assumption that between Turkish and US SIGINT resources there might be a pretty good handle on their locations. Hoping for some constructive feedback before uploading to the Community Scenario thread. Thanks in advance.

-C

[stolypin]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Any input for this?

Have added weather events, some flavour messages and set the Soviet coastal radar stations to Auto-detect on the assumption that between Turkish and US SIGINT resources there might be a pretty good handle on their locations. Hoping for some constructive feedback before uploading to the Community Scenario thread. Thanks in advance.

-C

Can you post the updated version? I've been playing the scenario for the past week but have yet to find a winning strategy. I've managed to nuke a few targets but my bombers always suffer horrendous losses. I like the idea of making the radar stations auto detected.

[Randomizer]

Forum keeps timing out so cannot post the change log. See Post #4 above for the short version of V1.1 uploaded above.

-C

[stolypin]

I'm into the second night of the updated version and I'm having much more success.

Adding the weather event certainly helps but, for me, it's been more about learning to use 1950s-era nuclear-armed bombers properly. It took me a few plays to realize that I couldn't use them like a modern-day squadron armed with MK82s.

Excellent work.

[Randomizer]

Thanks for the tests and the feedback. SAC's way of war takes some getting used to and it's not intended to be easy.

Hopefully the Forum won't time out so I can complete the change log.

- Weather changes introduced accompanied by messages from the Wing MET Officer.

- One regiment of Soviet fighters have been deleted from the Crimea. The base remains. This should affect the virtually impenetrable wall of fighters that sometimes formed over the peninsula.

- The first tier of Soviet radar sites are now auto-detected.

- Additional flavour events have been added.

Hints:

- Take out the ships of the Black Sea Fleet first. These provide early warning, which triggers some interception missions.

- Consider the Soviet radars, and air bases as priority targets initially. The cities are not going anywhere and can be left until the defenses have been dealt with. This was (as I understand it) the essence of the onion concept of peeling back the defensive layers one at a time. The smaller Mk-5 boosted fission weapon should be effective on both types of targets, saving the big bombs like the Mk-36 for the urban centers.

- Night and clouds are your friend.

- Consider eventually staging all the KC-97 force at RAF Akrotiri.

- Don't forget BDA as some of the big cities may require multiple attacks.

-C

[juanchopancho]

Really enjoyed this one. Pretty scary the amount of megatonnage SAC was able to dish out.

Would be interesting to see similar types of SAC scenarios in the 60/70/80 time frame. See how tactics evolved with SRAMS, ALCMs, etc.

[Randomizer]

Thank you for the feedback.

In case you missed my 1962 SAC-attack try Wargasm, 1962 from the Community Scenario pack. If interested, use the link below as the updated version did not make it into the last iteration of the community scenarios. You get 45 x B-52s, 36 x KC-135s and a squadron of Atlas-E missiles plus some other toys.

Community Scenarios Post #299

Am tinkering with a 1973 SAC scenario using a B-58 wing and another where the Player attacks the Soviets with RAF V-Bombers from Bomber Command but these scenarios are much more difficult to make historically reasonable and accurate for any number of reasons.

-C

[GeneralVikus]

Hey @Randomizer,

I've long been a fan of the early Cold War era, and lately I've been reading and re-reading Emergency War Plan by Sean Maloney. I'd highly recommend it if you're still interested in this time period: it provides a lot of fine technical details which I've yet to find in books about later times, and attempts to recreate SAC war plans from 1945 - 1960. Here's a passage on the state of PVO defenses and SAC counter-measures circa 1957:

The PVO in 1957 was a potpourri of aircraft types. There were three models of mig-17s: the P model with Scan Odd air intercept radar; the pf, which had afterburners; and the pfu, a limited-run collection of forty aircraft modified to carry very early rs-1-u (aa-1 Alkali to nato) beam-riding air-to-air missiles. The second was the mig-19 series with the sv high-altitude interception model and the P version with granat radar. The Yak-25m dual-seat, dual-engine radar-carrying interceptor was also in service in limited numbers. Despite the fact that there were nearly two thousand interceptor aircraft in the PVO inventory and they exhibited tremendous technological innovation, there were significant vulnerabilities. The primary one was that PVO pilots were slaves to their jammable GCI system. The other problems were aircraft-specific. The Yak-25m had trouble reaching the b47 service ceiling; it was optimized for
low-level intercept but had no “look-down–shoot-down” capability because its radar pointed forward in the direction of flight. As for the mig-19p, it could match the b-47, but there were not enough trained crews available and the type suffered from repeated radar malfunctions and poor reliability. The mig-17s other than the P had no radar, “which made using them against the Stratojets pointless.” The P model “had radar but lacked the speed and altitude performance required to oppose the Stratojet.”

"Sac, on the other hand, invested heavily in electronic countermeasures. The Blue Cradle b-47s of the 376th and 301st Bombardment Wings stood alert alongside their nuclear-armed brethren overseas, prepared to deploy a pair of ECM planes for each fifteen-plane b-47 cell penetrating PVO radar cover. Constant exercises against surrogate Soviet radars and NORAD honed the capability: “The way we did it, we had the fourteen blue cradle planes spread apart in tier at high altitude, there was a lot of jamming, power all over the place. Behind them came forty bombers each with a couple of jammers. One by one the b-47 bombers would go silent, drop out of the formation and go to low level, 1,000 feet, skirt across the country, pop up, “bomb” the city, go back to low level and return to base.” “The b-47e bomber itself carried chaff, jammers, and an electronic warfare detection system of its own.” If the sac EWP had been executed at night or under poor weather conditions, the bulk of PVO would have been unable to intercept the b-47 force. During the daytime, a mass scramble would probably have generated some attrition, but the GCI links would have been jammed and it would have been visual flight rules all the way for the interceptors. There was little or no low-level intercept capability. Indeed, after initial penetration, the sac plan involved orbiting the Blue Cradle b-47s over Belarus, Moscow, and Ukraine while different waves came in. Anti-aircraft artillery, of which the Soviets had plenty, did not have the ability to kill a b-47 conducting a LABS run even if it were detected."

The rest of the book is much the same. I've been thinking about how to put all of this information, including the speculative maps of target planning, to practical use in a scenario. In case you're still interested in this subject, I thought I'd share some of my thinking on the matter:

1. I don't know any way of representing communications jamming in Command, which seems to have been the PVO's Achilles heel.

2. Some aircraft can be substituted for others in order to more accurately represent their performance. For example, the IL-28R can stand in for the Yak 25M, because the former has a (considerably inferior) radar in the nose, but poorer speed at high altitude than Command’s Yak25M, which probably more nearly approximates the real thing; and otherwise they are comparable aircraft. Thus the essential properties of the aircraft - radar and poor high altitude performance - are preserved.

3. More generally, substitution could also be used to get around the high altitude speed problem: the fact that Command’s afterburning fighters can go too fast at high altitude when using afterburner, and therefore have a much faster closing speed with enemy bombers in a tail chase than their real counterparts, since small differences in speed produce large differences in closing speed. For example, the radar - equipped variants of the Mig-17 provide a nearer approximation of the high - altitude performance of the Mig - 19, than Command’s “Mig - 19” does, although they’re still too fast relative to bombers. In the same vein, the afterburning Mig - 17 might best be approximated by Command’s Mig - 15 bis, and the Mig 17P (radar but poor performance) might be represented again by the Beagle. Of course, on patrol missions, attack throttle can be specified, and military power for the afterburning fighters is a good approximation of their actual afterburning speed at high altitude; but this can’t be done for intercept missions. Still, this is a tradeoff: the closing speed between a Mig 19 and a B-52 at low altitude is roughly the same in Command as in DCS - it’s only at high altitude that Command is inaccurate.

4. Historically accurate closing speeds between bombers and interceptors at high altitude can also be replicated by the bombers simply limiting themselves to lower maximum altitudes: 12 - 24k ft in Command provides a good approximation of relative speeds at high altitudes in real life, because the fighters are slower at these altitudes, but the bombers are not.

5. Another inaccuracy of Command is the bomb release distances for gravity bombs - topping out at 3 nm in Command, compared to 6 - 7 nm at ~40,000 ft in real life. This is only really relevant with regards to the early SAM systems such as the SA-2, since the extra 3 miles is a significant fraction of the space between their maximum and minimum ranges. For this reason, it might be best to knock 3 miles off the maximum allowed firing ranges of SAMs to account for the discrepancy.

6. High altitude bombing accuracy, with or without radar, also seems too low in Command. Misses of 3000+ ft seem to be the rule: this is what LeMay considered woefully inadequate when he first took charge of SAC in the late 1940s. Conversely, I have a suspicion that blast effects might be too strong (a problem which would be easily solved by substitution) but I haven't done any proper testing to confirm or disprove that.

Although each of these tweaks are minor and might not be considered worthwhile on their own, if you add them all up, the early Cold War environment ends up looking quite different - in general, the problems of air defense end up looking considerably more challenging. If you would be interested in working on a new scenario, let me know, as I’ve had a desire to do so for a while.

[Randomizer]

@General Vikus,

Thank you for the observations but I currently have no plans to produce more scenarios for the CSP. I am familiar with Prof Maloney and have his book War Without Battles in my library although I was unaware of Emergency War Plan. It's now on my list and I have ordered a copy should it be published in paperback.

Given that Peeling the Onion is more than eight-years old and pretty much the only scenario of its kind in the CMO Community Scenario Pack, I think that it has aged reasonably well, although your input is appreciated. My design philosophy has always been oriented more towards reasonableness as opposed to slavish accuracy and all scenario design requires compromise, but your points are taken.

Was I tweaking the scenario, I would probably make more use of PVO pilot proficiency, as this might address at least a few of your critiques regarding interceptions. Sadly, CMO still has issues with gravity bombs, particularly nuclear weapons. LABS bombing profiles are not supported and as you point out. the bomb release point maxes out at just about three nautical miles. Executing the doctrinal 150 degree diving turn after release, which was designed for bomber survivability, will generally get the bomber killed and indeed, gravity bombing with nuclear weapons pretty much requires manual intervention by the Player if he wants the bomber to survive. To be fair to the Team however, fixing these are likely low priority since early Cold War situations and gravity bombing in general are of interest to a comparatively small subset of the community. Having the AI capable of LABS deliveries and high-speed, high-G egress manoeuvres are hopefully in the developmental pipe, we'll see.

My information available at the time was that the Blue Cradle modifications to the B-47E were still under development and unavailable at the time when Peeling the Onion takes place. Hence there are no ECM resources available to the Player, which is actually noted in the Player briefing.

Was I rewriting Peeling the Onion, the PVO would probably consist of multiple sides grouped geographically with limited interactions between them using postures and Lua events. Not having tried the scenario using the Tiny beta, presumably the new missile modelling makes the Soviet's defensive tasks much more difficult. That said, based upon community feedback, interest in these scenarios is barely one-step above nonexistent so the question becomes whether it is worth the 40-50 hours involved in redoing the situation.

Anyway, thanks again for the info and the interest.

-C

[Nikel]

His web page just in case is useful.

https://www.seanmmaloney.com/

[GeneralVikus]

Having no familiarity with scripting, inside or outside of Command, I don't think I'll be trying that any time soon, but representing air defence sectors as different 'sides' is definitely a good idea. If anybody has any ideas about how voice comms and jamming might be abstracted in a scenario, I'd love to hear it.

As for LABS: according to Maloney, only a couple of B-47 wings were ever trained for LABS delivery, specifically for defeating the SA-1 system around Moscow. And even those units stopped when the mechanical issues became apparent; so, in short, pop - up delivery was by far the predominant method of low - altitude bombing in the early Cold War era, and if Soviet Long - Range Aviation conducted low - level attacks at all, (I don't know anything about their tactics) I presume they would have used the same method. For fighter - bombers, on the other hand, LABS was the primary modus operandi (even for the Skyraider, with its comically dismal prospects for escape.) Naturally, the role of those fighter - bombers in the EWP was supressing the enemy's outer defences, which they could doubtless do a very good job of in daylight and fair weather; but although Maloney does not clarify this point, I can only presume that including the fighter-bombers in an attack would have required abandoning all the advantages of night; lacking a navigator, it must have been difficult enough for the fighter - bombers of the era to find their targets in broad daylight, flying low and fast as they were. Either way, fighter - bombers were of no use deeper within the PVO net. In sum, then, LABS would of course be nice, but a reasonably authentic depiction of this era does not require it.

As for substitutions - naturally, some are more attractive than others. Personally, the name of the unit doesn't bother me much; after all, CMO aircraft are not detailed flight models - more than the sum of their parts - like a DCS aircraft; but a collection of simple numbers with a label attached to it. Hence I don't see anything wrong with replacing a regiment of "Mig -17s" with "Mig 15s" if the aircraft with the latter name is more true to life, as long as there's a disclaimer in the scenario description explaining the substitution and the reasons for it. On the other hand, I would be less happy replacing a "B-47" with a "Tu-16" under the same circumstances.

As for gravity bombing - I disagree with the argument that it's irrelevant, because an appropriate system would make no distinction between a dumb bomb and a guided bomb other than CEP: that is to say, the range of an unpowered ballistic weapon would be determined in a continuous fashion according to speed and altitude. Any other way of doing it seems quite inadequate to me, and doing it right seems simple enough.

[Randomizer]

LABS was also used extensively by NATO tactical ground attack aircraft and the Canadian CF F-104 force practised it extensively until the Starfighter's retirement and replacement by the CF-18A. A history of the B-47 bomber that I read says that LABS training missions effectively destroyed the B-47 fleet due to cracking of the wing main spar. There may have only been two bombardment wings using LABS for all of their targets but it's almost certain more than just 12% of the bomber force and crews actually practiced the technique. Not necessary perhaps, but a potentially valuable tool for the gravity-bomb strike planner.

I never said that gravity-bombing in CMO is irrelevant but accurate modelling of ballistic projectiles is complex. Low angle artillery (less than 45* angle of departure) and non-retarded bombs are not well represented by CEP methodology simply because the footprint changes radically depending on external factors. A roughly circular footprint at near vertical angles of fall becomes an increasingly long ellipse as the angle of fall decreases and the horizontal velocity vector increases. Whether changing the modelling accordingly is worth the effort is a question for the developers but I suspect that the effect would be at best marginal and probably undetectable for the majority of users.

... and doing it right seems simple enough.
The common refrain from one who does not actually have to do the work.

-C

[GeneralVikus]

Indeed, I don't think that changing the accuracy calculation from CEP to another model is necessary - I certainly wasn't arguing for that, since I didn't know about it to begin with. By all means, retain CEP for all weapons. On the other hand, as far as I know, the trajectory of a bomb is simple - the formula can be googled - and providing accurate release distances for gravity bombs of all types according to speed and altitude alone (excluding complicated and marginal factors like wind and atmospheric conditions) would make a big difference - as much for modern JDAMs as for dumb bombs - and would require little work.

[WBailey]

I noticed the Crisis 2 event action in Peeling the Onion is set to send the message to the Soviet Union side instead of SAC, so the player never sees it. Using the version found in this post:

Randomizer's Apocalypse Collection Updated