Lots of fictional concepts popped up and I started one I called Odyssey Thunder - wherein a USMC MEU lands in Sirte (Libya) after the recognized government has been booted, to capture the port & airfield and conduct a search/engage for opposition military forces in the city and rogue ballistic missiles they’ve been firing. But it quickly turned into something where it would be better if there was lots of ground unit action and I wasn’t pleased with my test results. Next I started doodling on one I called Broken Shield, wherein Saddam decides to forge into Saudi Arabia on August 14th, 1990, just a few days after the US begins to deploy units to the Gulf after the invasion of Kuwait. But the truth is that the Iraqis would really of had a devil of a time with that - the US had quickly built up airpower to be a credible threat even after a week, the Iraqi forces hadn’t planned on the option of invading Saudi Arabia so their logistics would of been a mess and in the end, any forces would likely be isolated and utterly destroyed for no gain. About the only play might of been to seize Saudi northern Gulf oil fields and infrastructure and hold them for ransom.
Hmmm, I might still do that one…
In any case, researching that I started to look closer at Iraq. There have been some good Iraq scenarios but the 1991 Air Campaign, which is the glitter that catches everyone's eye, is a beast that has yet to be tamed. Its' sheer size is just so overwhelming. So I wanted something more bounded; a short action with a manageable unit set. And immediately thought of Operation Desert Fox.
As you might recall, Desert Fox occurred between the evening of December 16th to the morning of December 20th, 1998. It was in reaction to Saddam’s non-compliance with UN inspections and was also seen as a distraction from Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. Although short in duration it saw the launching of more cruise missiles than Desert Storm, was conducted largely with guided weapons and was the B-1B’s combat debut. Over 600 sorties were launched with no combat losses to US or RAF a/c and very little SAM activity from the Iraqis was noted.
Cool. A brief, succinct operation with limited goals using USN, USAF and RAF forces vs the Iraqi IADS. The main downside about the operation from a game play perspective is the quiescent Iraqis. Scenarios are usually funner when things can shoot back. But this operation also hasn’t been done yet (to my knowledge), there’s a lot of documentation out there and it seemed like a good project where I could just set up the historical forces and give them some reasonable plotting.
Research
This being a historical scenario there’s pressure to stay as true to the circumstances of the event as possible. I figured it would be pretty easy to Google up some great, crunchy info on Desert Fox; after all it was only 20 years ago! In reality, a bit tougher than I had thought. My initial Googling for Desert Fox kept coming back to many of the same resources. Like peeling an onion, I needed to dig deeper since the operational info in the easy-to-find stuff was pretty ephemeral. It took a lot of time, during which I listened to the Desert Fox Pentagon press briefings over and over (yes, they’re on Youtube!). In a nutshell for the US the Enterprise Battle Group started things off but was joined the following night by F-16s, A-10s and Tornadoes flying out of Kuwait and the Vinson flew some sorties at the end. There were B-1s based out of Thumrait, Oman making the type’s first combat appearance. And B-52s launched 90-odd CALCMs of varying warhead weights while based from Diego Garcia.
But how do you take that info and make a decent Blue-side ORBAT? Lots of work. After some filtering I got a good (but not perfect) read on what US ships were in the region along with escorts in the Enterprise CSG, as well as the squadrons and a/c aboard. But where was the Enterprise during the operation? Photos and reporting bylines stated the Arabian Gulf. So I had to assume that’s where Enterprise launched its’ strikes from and not inside the Persian Gulf. Those Tomcats and Hornets are going to need tanker support for sure from that far out. So where did those come from? What about AEW, recon, Elint and other supporting forces? What was the status of units in Saudi Arabia? They didn’t seem to be listed as aircraft involved in Desert Fox airstrikes. More work, first finding news stories or government reports as the first layer and often winding up in an obscure squadron history or aviation patch collector’s web page to fill in the rest.
Next up came US/UK force staging and prep. The first night’s attacks were conducted by the Enterprise’s air wing along with a large, preliminary naval Tomahawk strike. So I have to make sure there are aircraft ready to go with likely loadouts on Enterprise - the first night had been largely prepped for SEAD to clear lanes for follow-on attacks so loads should be appropriate to that purpose - and also provide a representational number of VLS cells with TLAMs in theater. An interesting side note here is that I decided as scenario designer that due to the proximity of Iran the Enterprise would not of had all her a/c committed to Desert Fox, nor would her Aegis cruisers have all their VLS cells filled with TLAMs. As such there is an entire squadron of Hornets held back in reserve and a fair number of SM-2s still on hand in the VLS’ of the Enterprise CSG. According to my research the USAF/RAF a/c in Kuwait along with the bombers didn’t join in until the evening of January 17-18. Okay, I’ll make sure those a/c ready-by times are delayed appropriately. Finally I need to put a method in place that allows the Vinson to come onto station after sailing down from Suez to the Arabian Gulf while not loitering in the northern Red Sea to strike from there due to delicate political issues at play that made that unfeasible.
Now a big issue I had to solve using just a tiny amount of available info and some knowledge of strike warfare. How should I set the operational tempo? The overall sortie numbers for the operation seemed to indicate that aircraft were tasked with only one to two combat sorties a day. So do I make the US/UK side have a Sustained (20hr) turn around? That seemed too extreme, as my target set is pretty large and the overall number of a/c and cruise missiles to service them is not overly huge. On the other hand Surge for over 3 days seems like too much.
The solution I’m leaning toward comes from JCS Chairman Hugh Shelton’s comment in one of the Pentagon briefings that the operation occurred exclusively at night. So my current working model is to allow Surge ops and have a No-Nav Zone for the US/UK side placed over the Iraqi target zone from 6am to 6pm local time every day. This is chalked up as a CENTCOM operational limitation to the player. From a designer POV the only thing this limited me on was the possibility of adding CSAR coding, since the recovery of downed aircrew could easily spill into daylight hours over the battle zone. Daylight hours will be a little boring for the player but since the Iraqis aren’t doing much they should be able to time compress through it pretty quickly. Nights will be exciting because they can get at least two strikes off in that time and it mirrors the actual operational method used.
In a way it was almost easier to research the Iraqi Orbat. Published info re: Desert Fox had a good grasp on what targets had been established by type. Objectives were the IADS, C3 facilities, Republican Guard, ‘WMD Security’, WMD Research/Manufacture/Storage, specific airfields thought to support helo ops vs separatists and a single POL location near Basra thought to be a transshipment site for smuggled oil. Each class had a number of assigned targets and there were several specifics provided in media and after-action reports. With some cross referencing and refined Googling I think I’ve created a good representational group of targets in each category. Had to guess on some placement, of course, but it looks right so far.
Game Logic
The next hurdle to consider is that Desert Fox is unusual in that the Iraqi IADS was very quiet, at least against aircraft operating above AAA level - lots of Youtube footage of AAA blasting the night sky. Odds are good that the Iraqis knew that they were in for a limited air offensive and Saddam wanted to save his good stuff for any serious attempt to invade (aka OIF in 2003), so not much of a fight was made. So the question is, how do I represent this in the game and still make a operational environment that commands respect from the player?
I have a few methods in mind at the moment. The first is to offer three play modes - Historical, Normal and Aggressive. Normal will assess US/UK aircraft present in certain IADS engagement zones and periodically have a % chance to switch selected SAM units from HOLD FIRE to FREE FIRE ROE for a short period of time. I will also incorporate Dummy SAM sites, including some in the Target set. Testing will show what a good % to activate might be in Normal mode, but the player will know that there is a danger and they can’t be overly complacent. Radar coverage in Normal mode will be provided by cycling EW radars for short periods of time, include radars who’s locations are not known at the beginning of the scenario, and making sure that if one EW radar goes down another (if available) comes up shortly thereafter. Finally there are IADS Nodes and Command Centers for each IADS Sector whose destruction will effect SAM units’ ability to gain EW radar info and potentially reduce their Proficiency. Historical mode reduces the % Chance to Engage to a lower order while Aggressive puts the IADS on full war footing. These seem like easy adjustments to make via Lua based on player choice from Special Actions.
Next Time - Events, Scoring, Data Structures and Scripting
