Norrland Defence, 1990 (SwAF) Release

[frosen]

Any chance you can repost your scenario? [:)] The link is unfortunately dead.

[Schr75]

ORIGINAL: frosen

Any chance you can repost your scenario? [:)] The link is unfortunately dead.

Hi Frosen

It´s in the community scen pack.
You can download it here:

http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=1876

Søren

[frosen]

ORIGINAL: Schr75

ORIGINAL: frosen

Any chance you can repost your scenario? [:)] The link is unfortunately dead.

Hi Frosen

It´s in the community scen pack.
You can download it here:

http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=1876

Søren

Thanks! [:)]

[Lupson]

Thank you for this scenario Skjold! I really enjoyed it.

(Mild spoilers below!)

I think I did pretty well, mainly through a lot of micromanagement of my JA37s. I did lose a total of 12 JA37s which honestly was a few too many, I attribute some of those losses to the AI making less than sensible choices while in "Engaged defensive" mode.

Anyway, I tried to keep at least three flights of 2 or 4 JA37s in the air at any one time. Given that surge ops allows 3 really quick re-arm/re-fuels this was sustainable throughout the scenario for me. The big hasse is how to counter the AA-10 equipped Su-27s who can fire their missiles at approx. twice the distance of my Skyflash. Also, I think the Flankers had 4 or 6 AA-10s per plane while the JA37s just can carry two Skyflashes (Rb-71). However, by micromanaging my flights using the fact that the Flankers fire at maximum range. I let one flight approach and directly turning tai with lit afterburners once the Flankers fired. This usually works fine and by coordinating and redoing the above stunt (basically trading distance for missiles) with the other flights, I could pretty easily deplete the Su-27s of their long range missiles. The Skyflashes was however not very effective against the Su-27s, but could at least be used to make them go defensive and use some other flight to get closer for AIM-9L shots. I think my final tally was something like 8 Flankers killed for those 12 JA-37 - not a very favorable rate, but I also killed every single Fencer or Flogger that came our way. When the scenario concluded I still had plenty of JA37s left. However, a war of attrition with JA37s vs Flankers isn't likely to be sustainable for long.

On the naval side, I started by losing one of my northern corvettes to a Fencer attack while the other one was damaged. For some reason the two Kilos just off the archipelago was surfaced or at periscope depth, so my Hkp4s helis dispatched those two easily using depth charges for the northern one and a torpedo for the southern one.

As for the invasion fleet, I waited until I had all my anti-shipping planes ready, 6+4 AJ37s with RBS-15F and 4 AJ37 with Rb-04E. I coordinated so 6 planes attacked from the north, 4 from southwest, 4 from south and my three Penguin-equipped patrol boats launched their Penguins coordinated with the Viggens. A total of 40 anti-shipping missiles. The main group had really effective defences, their SAMs killing most of my missiles and their AAA also taking a heavy toll. The first assault sank two of the three small corvettes, one Krivak and one Sovremenny. One of the Soviet ships got off a salvo of their own anti-shipping missiles against my patrol boats, but JA37s nearby shot down most of their SSMs so only one of my patrol boats were lost.

Given surge ops, after half an hour or so my 14 AJ37s were ready for another go at the remaining ships, who seemed to have depleted their stocks of SAMs. The expenditure page reported about 140 of those naval SAMs fired. While the FFG and DDD still shot down quite a few missiles during the second attack with their close-in defences, they were quite outmatched and all were sunk.

I don't think this scenario was particularly difficult (think I had 340 points in the end), perhaps due to me exploiting the AIs tendency to fire AAMs at maximum distance and perhaps also since surge-ops maybe was introduced into the CMANO engine after this scenario was designed?

I do however think it would be much more difficult if the Soviets would allocate more Su-27s and/or MiG-29s to establish air supremacy, maybe some long-range missiles at my key installations and if the surface group had had long-range SAMs I would be in much worse problems.

[Gunner98]

Nice AAR thanks - I haven't played this one in years.

it would be much more difficult if the Soviets would allocate more Su-27s and/or MiG-29s to establish air supremacy,

Skjold - I think you could achieve the same effect by reducing the WRA range to about 1/2 way between the Skyflash range and AA-10 Max range. The player can use the same tactics but it will be more difficult to spoof the AI. Some MiG-29s would be reasonable by 1990 in the Baltic I think, and far more effective and survivable than Floggers.

Might try this one again...

[Lupson]

Thanks, happy you liked the AAR. And a huge thanks to you for the Northern Fury: H-Hour book. Recently bought it and I think it was really good, probably the best WW3 read since Red Storm Rising!

Another suggestion for the scenario designer may be to include a few J32E Lansen for Offensive ECM. Could be useful both when attacking the ships (perhaps providing a few extra seconds to the ASM:s before being engaged by ship SAM-systems or theoretically to decrease the engagement distance for the Su-27s. I do however highly doubt that the early 70's (?) jammer tech on the J32E does much good vs relatively modern radars. I did some testing with the scenario in the ME and my findings about J32E jamming effectiveness were quite inconclusive. The ships (when switching sides) were clearly marked with JAMMED, but I could see no real difference in SAM efficiency or launch range. The ECM modeling in CMANO seems to be quite complex so I'm sure there's a lot of parameters affecting jamming efficiency.

Also, a quick sidenote:

IRL, AJ37s on anti-shipping strikes would fly in 4-ships where plane #4 often would carry an U22 / U22A jamming pod and a chaff/flare dispenser instead of Rb04E / RBS-15F. However, in CMANO the U22 pods are Defensive ECM pods so they are of no use except when trying to spoof incoming missiles trying to hit the carrying plane. AFAIK, the real U22 pods listened on a selectable radar band (settable in the cockpit) and when detecting radar energy on a frequency on the selected band, it would automatically try to jam that frequency. Only worked in a forward arc of maybe 60 degrees or so. I imagine fire control radars painting incoming missiles would "leak" radar energy past the painted missile(s) onto an approaching aircraft in the same heading. The U22 pod should in that case try to jam - which in my humble layman opinion would be a case of "Offensive ECM". (Note: Pretty much all my knowledge about the U22 jammer and the AJ37 comes from playing way too much DCS: AJS-37 Viggen)