Pyrpolitis 2014

[fitzpatv]

I've been doing a few difficult scenarios lately and this was no exception, being billed as the second-hardest in the Standalone Pack, behind Sultan's Revenge.

It's based on a real Hellenic (Greek) Air Force exercise from 2014. The premise is that an aggressive Turkey is about to invade the island of Chios (near the Turkish mainland). Greek planes are assigned to neutralise the covering squadron of four SAM-toting frigates, covered by a strong Turk Hava Kuvvetleri CAP. You have eight hours, so there is no real chance of a second strike if the first one fails.

The Turks fly F-16 Falcons, most of which have 60nm range AMRAAM C-7s, whereas most of your fighters have the older 120B model with a 40nm range or the 45nm MICA. They are backed-up by tankers and Wedgetail AEW planes at a safe distance.

You have eight Falcons and eight late-model Mirages and must split these between escort and strike duties. There are also AEW planes and a quartet each of elderly Phantoms and Corsairs. Neither side has ground-based SAMs, though both have plenty of radars.

Your initial loadouts are sub-optimal and some reassignment is helpful, but this takes 6 of the 8 hours. This sounds like it might be a good idea, as some of the Turkish fighters might run out of endurance by then. I switched the four Blk52 Falcons on Crete to AGM-154C stand-off weapons which outrange the enemy ships' SAMs, while retaining some of the longer-ranged AMRAAMs for defence.

About an hour in, seeing some enemy fighters RTB and not knowing where the Turkish ships were, I did a preliminary mission, sending-up an AEW plane with a single older-model Falcon for escort. The idea was to send the AEW plane W as quickly as possible to keep it safe. Located the ships, but more fighters quickly arrived. While I had time to get the Falcon back to base, the Turks pursued the AEW plane most of the way to Corfu and shot it down. I learned that losing planes costs no points, so there's limited harm in taking risks here.

A bit later, I tried to take advantage of the enemy refuelling from a tanker over the Aegean, using three more Falcons. They promptly broke-off and attacked and, in the ensuing dogfight, both of their planes and all three of mine were downed in a total wipeout. Destroying enemy fighters scores no points - it might be different if you can catch a tanker or Wedgetail. It caused the Turks to mount a lot of other sorties, but this mattered not at all, as their CAP is inexhaustable.

After six hours, I launched a mass attack, using Corsairs and Phantoms in an effort to draw fighters away from the attack Falcons and Mirages. The Turks responded with what seemed like around 20 fighters. In the mass dogfight, I lost 18 aircraft, including all of the AGM-154 Falcons before they could fire, for 8 enemy Falcons. The Mirage attack planes outlasted the battle, aimed all eight of their Exocets at the frigate Salihreis and, to my surprise, sank her. This scored 750 points and made it a Minor Defeat (you get 250VP for damaging a ship).

I then read Kung Pao's excellent review of this scenario on the forum. He'd come to similar conclusions to myself about the desirability of waiting-out the Turkish CAP and attacking after 6 hours, having optimised loadouts. He'd also assembled his strike just W of the island of Andros, which rises to over 3,000' ASL and approached at 100' to minimise the risk of being detected, which sounded like a great idea. He'd also swapped the Corsairs' iron bombs for more useful Mavericks (which don't outrange the SAMs, however) and used these and the similarly-armed Phantoms as a follow-up force to finish-off cripples. Finally, he'd switched the older Falcons to using HARMs against the ships' radars and split the newer Cretan ones between SPICE 1000 Mk83s (much like AGM-154s, but doing less damage) and extra AMRAAM C-7s for CAP. I decided to stick with AGM-154s for the Cretan planes on the basis that I needed every shot at the ships and couldn't beat their CAP, but otherwise gave his strategy a go.

In summary, it worked well for him, but isn't guaranteed to do so. The Andros rendezvous was indeed a brilliant ploy and I was able to get the strike there at much the same time and undetected. Only then did I launch an AEW plane to spot the enemy ships.

However, Kung Pao had coincided his strike with the Turkish CAP leaving its post. This didn't happen for me and I had to battle past six Falcons before I could attack. Shot these down, but lost 3 Corsairs, a HARM Falcon and 2 Mirage fighters in the process.

This nevertheless left me with enough planes to stand a chance and a window in which to attack. However, it was a narrow one, with another swarm of Falcons launching straightaway (the number of Turkish fighters is ridiculous and they are technically superior to most of yours, so you can't beat them). Delays were caused by a) planes needing to adjust altitude and face the right way to attack, b)the enemy ships not having their radars on, so I couldn't initially fire HARMS (used a Corsair to provoke them) and c) planes going Engaged Defensive when a missile was fired anywhere near them. On the last of these, I'd put the fighters on Auto Evade = NO, but not the attack planes. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

For all this, I got-off my attacks on the ships....but such was the SAM umbrella that not one scored a hit. I spread my fire, but concentrating might or might not have made a difference, since it was essentially the same number of SAMs against the same number of missiles. Besides, you need to hit at least two targets to better a Minor Defeat, so what do you do?. Once the Turkish aircraft closed, I lost another 13 planes for two of theirs, but it's hard to fight when your fighters are low on ammo from earlier and you're trying to mount a strike at the same time.

So it ended in a Disaster, with a score of zero. I'd actually done better the first time.

As a footnote to the designers/developers, I found that it is impossible to switch-off being notified about enemy missile launches (New Weapon Contact) using Options, Message Log. I know enemy missiles are bad news, but you DON'T need to know EVERY TIME one is fired. It is a real nuisance when you're trying to concentrate or are expectantly awaiting one of your own missiles striking a target. Rant over.

So, in short, very tough and not for the faint-hearted.

[Knightpawn]

After some failed tries I managed to get a Major Victory on this very challenging scenario. Here is how

0. I established a AEW support flight above Peloponnese
1. I rearmed the 4 F16 Block 50 in Volos with Harms
2. I rearmed the 4 F16 Block 52 with 4 AIM-120 C each
3. I rearmed the Corsairs in Araxos with Mavericks
4. Once all loadouts were ready:
4.1 I established a 4 F16 B52 CAP (AIM 120C) south of Myconos and a 4 Mirage 2000 CAP (MICA EM and IR) North of Andros with orders to fire at 75% max range with the aim to force the Turkish cap go defensive early (rather than killing them)
4.2 At the same time I established a SEAD base above Skiros and 3 naval patrols took off: The Mirage 2000 with the Exocets from Tanagra, the F4E from Andravida (Mavericks) and the Corsairs from Araxos (Mavericks), all ingressing at 300ft and order to go down to 200ft in the patrol area
4.3 Once the Exocets were in the air, the targets turned radars on and this created targets for the Harms. Once the Harms were in the air, the 4 F16 Blk 50 joint the CAP north of Andros
4.4 the F4Es and the Corsairs entered the target area and those who survived (auto evasion was set to OFF) launched their Marvericks

All the above lasted about 45mins

Screenshot 2025-10-16 002447.png (5.27 MiB) Viewed 365 times

AS OF: 1/30/2014 2:30:45 PM

SIDE: Greece
===========================================================

LOSSES:
-------------------------------
4x A-7H Corsair II
1x F-4E Phantom II
1x Mirage 2000-5EG Mk2


EXPENDITURES:
------------------
15x AGM-65B Maverick EO
6x AGM-65G Maverick IR
8x AGM-88B HARM
11x AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM P3I.3
8x AM.39 Exocet Blk II
7x Generic Chaff Salvo [5x Cartridges]
1x Generic Flare Salvo [2x Cartridges, Single Spectral]
6x MICA EM
1x MICA IR



SIDE: Turkey
===========================================================

LOSSES:
-------------------------------
1x F 240 Yavuz [Meko 200TN Track I]
1x F 246 Salihreis [Meko 200TN Track IIB]
1x F 490 Gaziantep [Perry Class, Gabya Class]
2x F-16CJ Blk 50 Falcon [Peace Onyx IV]


EXPENDITURES:
------------------
8x 127mm/54 HE-CVT [HiFrag]
3x 20mm/85 Mk15 Phalanx Blk 1 Burst [300 rnds]
11x 25mm Sea Zenith Burst [20 rnds]
6x 76mm/62 Compact HE Burst [4 rnds]
2x AIM-120B AMRAAM
21x AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM P3I.3
1x AIM-9X Sidewinder
8x Aspide
4x Generic Chaff Salvo [5x Cartridges]
5x Mk214 Sea Gnat Chaff [Seduction]
12x Mk245 GIANT Flare
2x RIM-162B ESSM
24x RIM-66E6 SM-1MR Blk VIB