Deter, Detect, Defend 1962

[HalfLifeExpert]

I've had my eye on this scenario for some time, and finally fired it up today. I simply loved it. Simple enough to not be overwhelming, yet challenging at the same time.

It's a more novice friendly look at nuclear war breaking out around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (this isn't the crisis specifically, but a generic war in August of 1962). It is also nice to only have to manage the Air Defense of one region, in this case the US Pacific North West as well as southern British Columbia.

I had fun initially trying to identify the Airliners so that I wouldn't shoot them down, but then it occurred to me that single aircraft would be civilian, and groups would be bombers.

Nonetheless, I was limited at the outset with my fighter bases being on peacetime alert, most with only two fighters ready for combat at the beginning, many of those that were not were unarmed. So I gave my planes load outs before I unpaused.

With that, it would be 3-4 hours before the bulk of my fighter strength would be ready, so I had to be sparing with scrambles.

As it turned out, most of the Soviet Bombers would arrive before those hours had passed.

My first kills were over central Vancouver Island, a flight of three 3M Bison bombers, and in the process used Nuclear Air-To-Air missiles for the first time in CMANO. I like them a great deal [:D]

I subsequently took out a flight of Blinders way out in the ocean, roughly on the same latitude as the Washington-Oregon Border, and managed to stop a pair of Blinders from nuking Vancouver, BC.

My next kills were over the North Pacific, largely over and south of Vancouver Island, but the Soviets also launched a number of Cruise Missiles. I managed to shoot down a few of them with Air-To-Air Missiles, with the rest being shot down with the Nike-Hercules batteries surrounding Puget Sound.

At this point my fighters were returning to base to refuel. Then I was caught unprepared when another pair of Blinders were detected over the Canadian Rockies, headed south. I had to wait 3 minutes before I could launch the nearest fighters, at Paine AFB, then launched them the second I could and ordered them at full afterburner to Vancouver.

They didn't make it in time, and the city as well as its southern suburbs were vaporized with 100kt nuclear bombs[:(] I kept those two fighters in hot pursuit of the Blinders, and ultimately shot them down, the best revenge I could get for the people of Vancouver. The fighters were well out of fuel range of Paine AFB at this point, so they were welcomed at RCAF Comox.

Shortly afterward, a single air contact was detected over the west coast of Washington State, headed directly toward Bremerton, WA. The previous cruise missiles were headed there, and with no fighters available to intercept in time, I ordered it shot down with the SAM battery outside Bremerton. It turned out to be a Civilian Boing 707 Airliner. A tragic, yet understandable, accident.

Then a trio of Blinders were detected with a bearing toward Portland, OR. They were slipping in and out of radar, and my fighters were at bingo Fuel and couldn't detect them. Then they appeared suddenly about 40 miles west of the city center. The only planes I had ready were a pair of F-89 Scorpions, and I scrambled them at the last possible minute, and they were just barely able to stop the attack, with a Genie Nuclear AAM detonating right in the middle of the formation. Close enough to easily have been visible from the city.

At that point I was getting general reports of the devastation to Europe, the USSR, and the Eastern US. Now practically my entire fighter strength was ready for combat, and was easily able to splash the last few flights of bombers well over the North Pacific. Then I simply ran out the clock.

I have put the relevant losses and expenditures below. My final score was Disaster -100 for the destruction of Vancouver. The four fighters I lost were due to tail guns of Soviet Bombers.


SIDE: NORAD

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LOSSES:

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2x F-102A Delta Dagger

2x F-106A Delta Dart

EXPENDITURES:

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61x AIM-4F Falcon [SARH]

15x AIM-4D Falcon

16x AIR-2A Genie [1.5kT Nuclear]

16x MIM-14B Nike Hercules

SIDE: Soviet Union

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LOSSES:

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15x 3M Bison B

9x Tu-22B Blinder A

9x Tu-95KD Bear B


EXPENDITURES:

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25x Generic Chaff Salvo [4x Cartridges]

9x 23mm AM-23 x 2 Burst [50 rnds]

11x Generic Flare Salvo [4x Cartridges, Single Spectral]

11x AS-3 Kangaroo [Kh-20M, ASM, 800kT Nuclear]

16x 23mm AM-23 x 2 Burst [50 rnds]

3x 23mm NR-23 x 2 Burst [40 rnds]

2x TN-9000 Tactical Nuclear Bomb

SIDE: Civilian

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LOSSES:

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City of Vancouver, British Columbia, and suburbs destroyed by Soviet Nuclear bombers

1x Marker (City)

2x Marker (Town)

1x Marker (Target)


SIDE: Commercial

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LOSSES:

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1x Boeing 707-320C (accidental Shootdown by Nike-Hercules Battery outside Bremerton, WA)

[Randomizer]

Thank you for posting your AAR, am very glad that you found it interesting. Deter, Detect, Defend was my first public CMANO scenario.

Since it was uploaded it has been tweaked significantly and an updated version was posted in the Scenarios forum some time ago but it seems never made it to subsequent iterations of the Community Scenario Pack. I have also made a variant where the RCAF CF-101B Voodoos are swapped out for a squadron of the hypothetical Avro CF-105 Arrow Mk II.

-C

[Coiler12]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Thank you for posting your AAR, am very glad that you found it interesting. Deter, Detect, Defend was my first public CMANO scenario.

Since it was uploaded it has been tweaked significantly and an updated version was posted in the Scenarios forum some time ago but it seems never made it to subsequent iterations of the Community Scenario Pack. I have also made a variant where the RCAF CF-101B Voodoos are swapped out for a squadron of the hypothetical Avro CF-105 Arrow Mk II.

-C

Nice. Did you find that the Arrows made that much of a difference in the scen?

[Randomizer]

Nice. Did you find that the Arrows made that much of a difference in the scen?

To be honest, replacing the Voodoos with the Arrows was an afterthought that came on the heels of completely redoing the scenario; greater randomizing of the attacker and civilian airliner deployments, improved Soviet targeting and mission profiles, game scoring and downgrading the effectiveness of the Nike Hercules batteries in the Puget Sound area to make the air defence problem more of a problem. The Arrow is an effective interceptor, particularly when armed with the Sparrow-D but there are only twelve of them (RCAF Voodoos were 16 to the squadron but Avros were supposed to deploy in dozens). That said, I have really not done enough testing to address your question, sorry.

I intend to upload the new versions after the next CMANO update is released. Thanks.

-C

[HalfLifeExpert]

You are very welcome Randomizer, I very much enjoyed playing your scenario. It certainly did not feel like a first public scenario, a job well done indeed!

The variations you talk about sound intriguing. I was a little frustrated at first that the only use for those Canadian Voodoos I had was identifying contacts to ensure they were not airliners. But I managed nonetheless, it would have been nicer to have a couple more planes at the ready so that I could have had a better chance at saving Vancouver from that second wave, but then again that may be more to the peacetime alert or my own mistakes.

I also think you should take a look at Cold War nuclear combat from other perspectives, perhaps command of a single B-52 Wing in a similar scenario as this one, or maybe command of Soviet Bombers attacking this same area, or the attacks on Alaska mention in the briefing of this one. A compare and contrast might be worth it where your defenses are on full combat readiness at the outset.

Finally, I think it would be interesting to have a sequel to this, but set in the 1980s, showing how much things had changed in Nuclear combat by then.

[Randomizer]

I had uploaded (and subsequently forgot thanks to the curse of a lifetime of drink and debauchery some would say) the scenario updated for Build 813 with many changes that are big improvements over the version from the latest Community Scenario version 34. In case you're interested find it below.

Deter, Detect, defend updated for CMANO 1.11

-C