New Scenario for Testing: Grim Reapers Inspired US vs Chinese CVBG Battle

[AndrewJ]

Same for me. Reloading it showed no extra. Definitely something funky on my end.

[AndrewJ]

I just noticed that when a KJ-600 is shot down, both the 'points.plan.KJ-600' and 'points.plaaf,H-6 down' events fire.

Both of them have the 'destroyed.plan.KJ600' trigger.

Was the H-6 down event intended to have the 'destroyed.plaaf.bomber' trigger instead?

[Craigkn]

Updated scenario attached.. I fixed the H-6 scoring issue I think.

Playthrough notes (that are fixed):

- U.S. Global 4 and BlackSky Pathfinder-1 satellites detected and ID'd some small units that they should not have been able to see. The satellites have 1M resolution, and the object imaged is larger than 1m, however I am not happy with how many were discovered, so for balance, I may significantly reduce the number of U.S. satellites. The USN player dose not really need satellites anyway, the area of operations necks down as you move west, and the PLA CVBG is hard to miss.

- China Maritime Militia ship's custom name shows up to the USN player, which is not ideal. I will rename the ships to blend in better.

- Very happy with the addition of the LCS. Without the USN having proper FFG's, the ship is crucial for the scenario, and allied ships of similar function are too slow. While the LCS (and its boats.. ) provide an advantage during one phase of the operation, if you let them get too far out front, they stand a good chance of taking a YJ-12 to the face. Better to lose a LCS than a DDG, however. Either keep them under CAP cover or close enough to a DDG to provide air defense support.

[AndrewJ]

- U.S. Global 4 and BlackSky Pathfinder-1 satellites detected and ID'd some small units that they should not have been able to see. The satellites have 1M resolution, and the object imaged is larger than 1m, however I am not happy with how many were discovered, so for balance, I may significantly reduce the number of U.S. satellites.

Boy, you're not kidding. The Carbonite just flew over in clear weather and laid out the complete formation of all those small units in a 700 mile long swath, in the space of a few seconds! Handy, but probably not all that realistic.

[thewood1]

Its probably realistic they are detected, if not visually, then by EM. Whats not realistic is the processing time to ID and send the analysis out to navy units. I would expect delays of hours.

[Craigkn]

Pending further comments that may require changes, I think I am "done" with this scenario - but happy to adjust anything based on feedback. I want to post this to Steam eventually, so please offer any comments!

I did a full playthrough and made a few adjustments. I lost in the end, during the big air strike (which failed) on the adversary, in the excitement I let my battle group stop dead in the water (after it reached its last waypoint), something ID'd it and DF-26's wrecked me. Silly move, and realistically the navigator would not let that happen, but I was able to test 85% of the content.

Planning and sequencing the air strike is difficult. My preferred strike package is based on LRASMs, with MALD-J, AARGM-ER, and SDB2's to add complexity. An issue is that the LRASM's fly a slight bit faster than the MALD-J, and I have had zero luck using the mission planner to execute this. Ideally, the strike is led with F-35C's in Anti-Air loadouts to spot targets and chase off CAP, and then a herd of MALD-J, behind that are the LRASMs, and stacked behind them are the SEAD/DEAD package (EA-18G & a two F/A-18s). Once PLAN starts to fire off SAM's, the SEAD group fires off a volley of AARGM's, and the Growlers follow the strike package in as far as they safely go. The two UCAV's carry a few SDB2, which I launch at max range, to help saturate the target. All of this assumes that you have already attrited the PLAN's CAP, splashing as many J-15 and KJ-600s as you can.

This playthrough, despite the PLAN having nearly zero air cover, I was only able to get 2-3 missiles to hit the Fujian, which did minimal damage. While I was mentally planning a follow on strike (I had 26 hours left in the scenario), the DF-26's quickly ended the days events - however the whole strike package was able to land in Saipan. I ended the scenario at this time - the Fujian was doomed however, the two USN SSN's were closing on her quickly. You could cheese this scenario by keeping the Vinson parked off Guam and send the two SSN's after the PLAN.

Other observations: The Philippine Sea turns into a small lake the closer you get to Taiwan. My CVBG was about 300nm away from the Fujian BG, still in blue water, but I was absolutory swarmed by subs, spicy container vessels, and other random missiles flying my way. With that may enemy sensors, it was just a matter of time until someone got a targeting fix on the Vinson and then the ballistic missiles would fly. Ideally you would launch a strike as far as possible - using the LRASM's full 500nm range - but if the Fujian's air cover (both fighter and AEW) is up, your missiles will be found and shot down.

Changelog:

- Moved the small ISR devices to the Maritime Militia side. Having them under PLAN meant they were all flagged as hostile, and that caused a bunch of irritation with various missions. This is better anyway, as the devices were deployed by the Maritime Militia.
- Re-added a very nasty container vessel. I had to, the Club-K is way too awesome of a concept (http://roe.ru/esp/catalog/marina-de-gue ... ve/klab-k/). China has a version for the YJ-18.

[AndrewJ]

I finished off my playthrough of V1.3, and here’s how it worked out for me.


SITUATION

War has broken out between China and Taiwan, and the US has been drawn into the mix. We’ve been ordered to take a US carrier group, currently arriving from the direction of Guam, and attack a Chinese carrier group which is blockading the area east of Taiwan. In addition to our carrier group, with its mix of F-35s and F-18s, we have a pair of SSNs, and a handful of tankers and drones on Saipan. The area between us and the enemy carrier is full of merchant (and not so merchant) shipping, infested by enemy submarines, and girdled with sensor buoys, while the Chinese mainland is densely packed with anti-shipping ballistic missiles, aimed directly at us. The trick will be to strike from range, and somehow avoid being detected by the enemy.


THE PLAN

The carrier group is ordered to tighten up into anti-missile formation, and slowly head WSW towards the Philippines, with the LCS scouting ahead. We need as much advance warning of the enemy as possible, so two AEW patrols are pushed out further than normal, hundreds of miles NW and SW of the carrier, with distant F-18 CAP stations N and S of the carrier in case of any flanking moves from that direction. Our oiler is ordered to retire east, out of the theatre, since it is too slow and vulnerable to bring closer, and our subs are sent directly west towards Taiwan.

Our F-35s are ordered to begin long-range sweeps westward, supported by MQ-25 tankers, looking for enemy reconnaissance assets and the carrier itself, and hoping to provoke a fight with the Chinese carrier air cover. The sooner that can be destroyed, the better.

(I made a few edits before beginning. All F-35s were switched over to internal-only loadouts. External missile loadouts waste their stealth capability, which will be vital, and reduce their range. Some of the ECM Growlers and F-18s were also switched to lighter loadouts, to give increased range and endurance. At this stage of the battle we’re so far away from the enemy that flight time is more important than extremely heavy missile loadouts.)


OPENING STAGES

As the carrier gets underway, we start to detect the broad belt of sensor buoys that have been laid across the east side of the Philippine Sea. We’ll have to pass through this belt, so poking a hole in it will be essential. Strafing the buoys has no real effect, so the leading LCS sends out its helicopters, confident they can pop the stationary targets with JAGMs and gunfire. This doesn’t work either: 16 JAGM shots, 1 hit! HMG rounds bounce off the buoys with no apparent effect! Perplexed, the captain orders his two fast boats to dash ahead and try and shoot the buoys with Hellfires and cannons. The little boats struggle ahead through worsening weather, but the admiral is fed up with waiting. A pair of MQ-25s take 16 SDB-IIs and blast a broad path through the belt. (This action, in itself, will signal where we’re coming through, but at least they won’t have a targeting solution on our ships.)

In the air, we’re finding extensive Chinese drone activity, as well as numerous MPA and ASW Cubs up and about, and the F-35s start executing them with polite efficiency, while the MQ-25s bring them fuel. As they progress west they soon detect signs of the enemy ships, and confirm their position with brief radar fixes. The carrier group is down south by Luzon, while a 3-ship ASW group is up north near Okinawa, and they seem to be headed towards each other. Strangely, the carrier doesn’t seem to have any of its planes or helicopters up at first, and it’s not until 0350 Z that we see any sign of air activity from them.

Once that begins, the F-35s are happy to prey on the enemy, and over the next few hours they engage and destroy the enemy fighters and AEW using a combination of long-range missiles, stealth, and CEC. The warships aren’t engaging us with SAMs, even when we get within 50 miles of the carrier group, and the one-sided fight is entirely in our favour. The endless stream of UAVs and MPA is gradually whittled down, and seems to have mostly stopped by 1800Z. At 1900Z we find one drone coming in from the north side of the theatre, which provokes some worry about very-long-range planes potentially hooking around from the NE. A set of F-18s are sent that way for a look, but nothing turns up.

Meanwhile, our carrier group has been continuing WSW, SW, and SSW under cloudy skies, occasionally modifying its course to avoid passing too close to fishing boats. We’ve been keeping an eye on all the commercial and civilian ships, and making close low-altitude passes with our MQ-9 drone to ID them all. ESM operators on the Growlers report that some of them have unexpectedly powerful surface search radars, which are worrying. That night, the decision is made to sink a pair of those, which are close to the path the carrier needs to take. We presume that they are Chinese snoopers of some sort. Hopefully, we are not wrong.


ENGAGE THE ENEMY!

At 1500 local on the 20th, the carrier group is ordered to turn west and accelerate to full speed, closing on the enemy in preparation for a night strike. As darkness fall, our ships are about 800 miles from the enemy, and our strike starts launching. All the F-35s, all the Growlers, and most of the F-18s get underway, with tankers in attendance. Other than three Growlers with AARGMs, all the planes are packed with SDB-IIs. There’s been no sign of enemy CAP since the end of the first day, and nothing interrupts their journey. As they fly over the ocean, our subs below are launching their Tomahawk MMTs, timed to arrive at the same time as the airborne strike.

The enemy carrier group has 11 ships - two flanking frigates, and nine ships in a diamond in the center – and they are packing a prodigious SAM battery with colossal VLS magazines. The ASW group is also there at the same time, adding two more frigates and another destroyer to the defensive array. Our planes attack from the NE, supported by a wall of jamming from Growlers and F-35s. At the proper moment they launch, and swarms of SDBs start drifting through the dark night air towards the ships below. We had 38 planes with eight SDBs each, and all the MMTs from the subs: that’s 336 incoming offensive munitions (plus a few AARGMs).

The Chinese ships put up an amazing wall of SAMs (and my aging computer starts to crawl a bit under the load), and by the time their long-ranged SAMs have finished engaging they’ve shot down 135 of the incoming weapons. Now they only have scores of point defence missiles and cannons! More and more of my SDBs are intercepted and gunned down, but then its too late, and we start to get SDB hits. The outer escorts succumb first, and then the carrier itself staggers under the barrage. Finally, the low-altitude MMTs start smashing into targets with their big warheads, adding to the carnage.

The last action comes as the Chinese AOE neatly guns down four incoming MMTs with her CIWS, and emerges unscathed from the attack, while her dazed crew looks around at the ruins. The carrier and most of her escorts are gone. The AOE, one DDG (with no SAMs left), and both outer frigates are all that remain of the 11 ship formation. The ASW group has also lost one of her frigates, but the other two ships are still afloat. On radar, they can see a few targetless MMTs speeding off into the night, but that’s not their problem. Unfortunately, it is a problem for other shipping. The leftover missiles hit a fishing boat, a RO/RO, and, worst of all, a cruise liner, some of the ships hundreds of miles away… Casualties and political fallout are high.

(This raises an interesting technical question. Do long-ranged anti-shipping missiles have ‘self-destruct’ timers, which can be set before launch? I suspect they must, otherwise a long-ranged missile which loses its target has the potential to cause havoc to friendly forces hundreds of miles away.)


COUNTERSTROKES - BADGERS

A few minute later, as our strike is retiring, we suddenly get a warning that the Chinese are launching their bombers and sending them around the south of Taiwan in our direction. I’m not sure how they spotted us (and post-war records will show they actually haven’t, it’s just a general patrol launch), but they’ve got very long-ranged missiles, and they’re a potent threat which needs to be intercepted as soon and as far away as possible. Unfortunately, most of our planes are returning from the strike low on fuel, and there are just a few F-18s left on our distant carrier.

Calls go out to the retiring F-35s and a few of the rear-most F-18s, telling them to turn south west to cut off the Badger. Some are sent to our loitering KC-130 tankers first, for half a tank of gas, while those with the most fuel are sent directly into the fight. ESM soon picks up the Badgers coming through the Luzon strait with their radars on, but as we head in it’s apparent they’ve got some friends with them. There are J-10s out front, and our pilots initially consider trying to go around them to get at the bombers, but we’re low on fuel so time is critical. Instead, they elect to engage them directly and go through. After all, what can J-10s do to stealthy F-35s?

Not a lot, actually. But the stealthy J-20s lurking behind the J-10s are a nasty surprise, and we’ve suddenly got to do a lot of running away at perilously low fuel levels, desperately trying to dodge and evade their long-range PL-15s. The fight rages, as the Badgers split up into two groups, and we manage to kill some of them, and wound others and turn them back. Some J-20s die, and others just vanish and we have no idea where they’ve gone. Some trailing F-18s try and get the second pack of Badgers, only to have more J-20s pop up and put an end to that, and it’s not until we manage to concentrate the last of our fighter power that their stealth fighters are foiled, and the rest of the Badgers are downed or driven away.


COUNTERSTROKES – ASBMs

Back at the carrier group the staff are glumly staring at the skies, where a gap in the clouds is opening up for a few hours, and one of the Chinese optical recce sats is soaring almost directly overhead. Have we been seen? Yep. Within minutes we’re getting urgent messages warning us of missile launches on the Chinese mainland. The ASBMs are on the way!

The entire carrier group swings southwards, perpendicular to the expected course of the incoming missiles, and accelerates to flank speed as rapidly as possible. The destroyers light up their radars, jammers click on, SAMs are readied, and our returning strike is warned they might have a really exciting landing… The first RVs come hurtling in, and it’s soon apparent they’re going to miss to the north, behind us, which is a tremendous relief. The second set is closer, but still not entirely on target. Our SAMs engage some of the closest ones, and others pass by at high speeds and altitudes.

It’s a miss! For now. But how long until they reload? Everyone earnestly prays for the clouds to close in again…

(It looks like the ASBM code may not be working quite properly for these systems. Some didn’t descend, and others had divergent headings, actually turning and pointing backwards, as they flew along. I’m not sure if the results would have been different otherwise.)


COUNTERSTROKES – SUBS

The Chinese aren’t content with missiles and planes. The ASBMS are still inbound when our northern AEW plane starts yelling about low altitude vampires streaming out of the empty ocean almost 160 miles away, and cruising in our direction. Their subs want into the action too!

We’d love to send our CAP, but they were already drawn away to fight the Badgers and J-20s. Our last few F-18s scramble, and more get diverted from returning flights, and they manage to use their few remaining Sidewinders to intercept the surface-skimming missiles. Then another sub opens fire, not quite as far out, although it seems to be shooting at sensor ghosts, because the missiles fan out and head north, away from us.

A helicopter is sent to the most distant sub, at the extreme limits of its range, in the faint hope that the sub is still around by the time it gets there. The first few sonobuoys find nothing, as expected, and the crew are thinking of returning, when they pick up the characteristic sound of a sub going into a sprint! A brief course correction puts the helicopter over the target, and a single torpedo ends the life of a Shang. The crew turns back to the location where the second sub was spotted, finds nothing, and turns for home. They’ve gone about 20 miles when they get a sub contact behind them, as the sub blunders under a passive buoy.

The crew exchange glances. They’re extremely low on fuel. Ignore the sub and come home? Turn back with their single torpedo and engage? A hasty message wings to the admiral, who sends back the command to engage, and then turns the entire carrier group north to close the range with the thirsty helicopter. The torpedo hits, and the helicopter heads south again. So long as the carrier keeps heading north to meet them, they should just make it.

Of course, that’s when a third sub fires its missiles, from much closer to the NW! Our last F-18s manage to down the missiles in time, and helicopters come hurrying over from the ASW patrol in front of the carrier, finding and sinking it in efficient fashion. Meanwhile, our far-travelling helicopter makes it back to its destroyer, with about five miles of gas remaining.


ENDGAME

Now that the helicopter is safely aboard, and the last of our strike is landed, the admiral turns the carrier group south-east, and prepares to leave the theatre, passing around the southern edge of the belt of surveillance buoys. Most of our aircraft are reloaded for air-to-air missions, in case of more missile or Badger strikes, while a few are given SDB and LRASM loads for anti-shipping work.

In the morning, a group of six F-35s heads for Taiwan, with plenty of MQ-25s in attendance, and makes a sweep of the area east of Taiwan. Now that they have full fuel tanks, all their missiles, and are deployed in a coordinated fashion, they do a lot better than in the frantic hours last night. A pair of J-20s fall victim to a heavy salvo of missiles, and six more J-10s are also claimed, while the fighters confirm that the remains of the enemy surface groups are still present. A second sweep around mid-day finds no other aircraft in the area, and has to return home empty-handed.

Our SSNs arrive a few hours later, and proceed cautiously through the area. They’ve been cued on where to find the enemy, and they proceed to execute them with ruthless precision, using long-ranged torpedo attacks. By the time they’re done the seas are empty of enemy ships. They patrol the area, looking for Chinese subs, but nothing turns up.

The admiral is very pleased to receive the news of the sinkings, and stands down the preparations for another anti-shipping strike, while the carrier steams out of the area of operation. With any luck, it will be clear sailing until they meet up with their AO for some much-needed replenishment.