NFZ Baltic 7/3/22 - the AAR

[fitzpatv]

The Situation

This scenario is disturbingly close to contemporary reality. It assumes that the North Atlantic Council has been crazy enough to vote for a No Fly Zone over Ukraine, thereby escalating the already senseless conflict there. As commander of the NATO forces in North Central Europe, you are ordered to back this up with strikes to neutralise the Russian bases in the Kaliningrad enclave (principally the airbase at Chernyakhovsk and the naval port of Baltysk) and then establish sea control in the Central Baltic, while holding-off any Russian retaliation.

As a ‘scenario balance feature’, Russia gets satellite recon and NATO doesn’t though, in practice, it doesn’t seem to matter much. US strategic bombers are not available to limit escalation (see below) and you are not allowed to move or strike into Russia proper or Belarus for the same reason. Note that war has not been declared at the outset and the Russians are considered Unfriendly. Sweden and Finland have opted to stay out of things.

The Russians are known to have substantial SAM defences around Kaliningrad, with more in Belarus, from where they can interdict Polish territory. Two SAGs, each of three missile frigates, are known to be somewhere between Gotland and Latvia and there are lots of PCFGs off the coast of Kaliningrad. Russia’s 6th Air Army is responsible for defending the region and has an assortment of mostly Northern Fury era airframes with improved weapons, notably the highly-effective Adder missile. Also around Kaliningrad is an array of Iskander and Stooge SSM batteries, used against land and surface targets, respectively.

For NATO, the German SSK U-35 is patrolling SE of Gotland, aware that at least one Kilo might be in the vicinity. Off the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, there are three of that country’s PCFGs, along with a hapless selection of Latvian and Norwegian minesweepers and layers. The aged Polish corvette Kaszub (gun-armed) is far too close to Baltysk. Further W is the mainstay of NATO’s naval forces, TG60.3, consisting of the DDG Arleigh Burke and five FFGs of differing nationalities and capabilities. The problem here is that they are in a widely-dispersed formation within range of Russian SSMs. Steaming out of the Oresund to reinforce them is a second Arleigh Burke DDG, the Donald Cook (plus more minesweepers, which should stay well away).

NATO air groups are spread-out from England to Estonia. In the UK, you have the big American base at Lakenheath, with lots of F-15s and F-35s. Further N at Coningsby are some RAF Typhoons, while you have some Reaper drones and ELINT planes at Waddington, tankers and more ELINT at Mildenhall, tankers at Brize Norton and some British F-35s at Marham.

The French bring a squadron of Rafale MRCAs, plus a few Mirages, Sentries and tankers, while the Dutch have a few F-35As, some Reapers and a pair of tankers.

In Germany, there are more tankers and Sentries. Spangdahlem houses some American F-35s and F-16s, the latter having your sum total of FOUR HARMs with which to suppress enemy air defences! At Laage, we have our old friends from Baltic Fury, the Steinhoff squadron, now flying Eurofighter Typhoons.

Denmark has a few F-16s with old B-model AMRAAMs, plus a couple of maritime recon planes with no ASW capability.

Swidwin in Poland is home to a squadron of Polish Fitters, which shouldn’t be let anywhere near the action. By contrast, at nearby Miroslawiec, you are given a squadron of leading-edge US F-22 stealth fighters though, importantly, only two are ready at the start. Elsewhere, there are some US F-15Cs at Lask, Polish F-16s (with older AMRAAMs) there and at Poznan and some Fulcrums at Malbork and Minsk-Mazowiecki.

NATO’s forces in the Baltic States are somewhat isolated. There are no aircraft in Latvia, some Polish and Danish F-16s at Siauliai in Lithuania and a handful of US F-15 fighters and Belgian F-16s (latter with AMRAAM Bs) at Amari in Estonia.

You have a number of Patriot missile batteries scattered across the region, but experience has taught me not to rely on them. In the Baltics, you have little more than MANPADs to support your fighters.

Assessment

As I’ve said in an earlier post, the v.1307 settings have given Russian fighters an advantage in combat because their missiles have longer burn times. Here, NATO needs to rely on the aircraft with AMRAAM Ds (and maybe Meteors if the rules adequately support their ramjet propulsion).

It took ages to analyse this and set doctrine for aircraft and I nearly lost the lot when a bug associated with trying to set WRA for Patriot firing ranges caused the game to crash. Best not to touch the third (MSE) category.

As discussed with Joel/AirborneRifles in my earlier post, the only way around the lack of SEAD is to try to overwhelm the Russian defences with a mass attack. I opted to use 2 Typhoons from Coningsby, 2 F-35As and 14 F-15Es from Lakenheath, 2 Rafales, 2 Dutch F-35As, plus 5 F-35Cs and the 4 HARM F-16s from Spangdahlem. These aircraft all carried stand-off weapons with ranges of 45nm or more, for a total of 186 glide bombs and 4 HARMs. By my guesstimation, this would enable them to engage outside the effective range of the Russian Growler SAMs, which I deemed to be a fraction of the database figure of 215nm. I spent a lot of time working out a schedule which meant that their ordnance would arrive at near enough the same time, allowing for launch times, missile ranges and speeds. Sure, there was War Planner, but playing the tutorials for it had shown that it isn’t as precise as it is made out to be and I could do without its quirks (the waypoint system is unclear, to me at least and very hard work).

A big issue was that the Typhoons and Rafales only support probe refuelling, whereas all of the NATO tankers are boom/drogue. I hoped to get around this by re-basing them to Poznan after launch. There was plenty of tanker support for the other aircraft and I planned to set-up a line W of the Polish border.

Another issue was Tomahawk support from the ships. Here, I wasn’t sure exactly where they would be when the strike went-in, given that TG60.3 was going to close formation and race W to rendezvous with Donald Cook near Bornholm. Another problem was being unable to fire missiles without making Russia prematurely hostile and sending them onto full alert, scrambling fighters and opening-up on my strike planes with SAMs. I did play around with the LOS Tool, as advised by Joel once I’d done my recon and, interestingly, this indicated that there could be a blind spot in the Baltysk Growler defences on the Northern side, albeit plugged in part by Gladiator and Greyhound SAMs (which are useless below 80’ and SARH, respectively). Perhaps this could be exploited? By the way, don’t feed this tool any target altitude parameters above a couple of thousand feet, as it won’t be able to handle the amount of processing involved and it could crash the game.

I also had to think about protecting my vulnerable assets. An Airbus tanker over the Baltic could be RTB’d, but Kaszub and the two Baltic States task groups were hopelessly exposed and could only run W as fast as they could while peace lasted. Joel says he protected the PCFGs with F-22s and F-35s, but there are only two Raptors and I felt the need to keep one back for emergencies, while the available Lightnings are back in Spangdahlem and will have limited time on station. In the end, I went with one F-22 and 4 Eurofighters from Laage – the latter would get a chance to test the capabilities of the Meteor and its ramjet.

The Action

7/3/22 04:00Z: First order of business was recon while getting liabilities out of harm’s way. Using an F-15E from Estonia and a Polish F-16 from Lask, I was able to build-up a good picture of the Russian defences, not just at Kaliningrad, but also along the Belarussian and Lithuanian borders. We found a Growler, 4 Greyhounds, 3 Iskander batteries and 4 jammers at Chernyakhovsk, where there was but a single runway to shut-down. It looked an altogether easier target than Baltysk, which had an insane 6 Growlers, 2 Gladiator/Giants, 3 Greyhounds and 4 jammers protecting the port and 5 Stooge batteries. Knowing how these things tend to go, I decided that it made sense to concentrate on Chernyakhovsk first. Success would close the airfield, the enemy defences at Baltysk would waste lots of SAMs with ineffective long-ranged shots and I should have time to mount a second strike later, backed by Tomahawks from the ships.

We also found substantial SAM defences around Hrodno and Kobryn in Belarus and also near Pskov in Russia, where there were SSM batteries, presumably the long-ranged Screwdrivers.

At sea, I counted 2 Buyan, 3 Shkval, 4 Nanuchka and 6 Tarantul PCFGs around Baltysk, the six FFGs between Gotland and Latvia and an Alpinist AGI shadowing TG60.3. I resisted the temptation to Harpoon the latter!

A Mail and Fencer E were on patrol and there was plenty of helicopter activity over Baltysk and near the Russian SAGs.

So far, there was no sign of Russian CAP, though some unidentified planes were patrolling between Pskov and St Petersburg.

The Airbus made it to Poznan and U-35, feeling uncomfortable with the capable Russian FFGs and Helixes bearing down on her, tried to get as far S as she could while peace lasted. Perhaps the enemy missile boats would be more suitable prey for her?.

I had some trouble with tankers and an AWACs taking-off on pre-set missions that I thought I’d deleted and hadn’t. Thankfully, I could afford to RTB them.

05:00Z: I was told that the NFZ over Ukraine would commence in one hour and that the Russians would be informed at that moment. It seemed a good time to launch the strike and reinforce the F-22 guarding the PCFGs with the Eurofighters. Five tankers were sent to the line on the German-Polish border.

06:00Z: The NFZ was enacted, but not much happened at first. Russia remained Unfriendly and simply put-up a couple of Flanker Bs over Chernyakhovsk. However, things began to go wrong with my strike plan. F-15s and 16s headed for the tankers because they were below 60% fuel – a setting I couldn’t change. Altering Doctrine to forbid them to do this didn’t work and I had to accept the situation and manage the slight delay the refuelling would cause.

A consequence was that the two Typhoons from Lincolnshire could not participate in the strike, as their fuel status meant they had to fire immediately (and light the touchpaper when other aircraft weren’t in position) or abort and divert to Poznan to refuel. I opted for the latter and, in truth, it made little difference to events.

Two flights of F-15Es continued to misbehave, repeatedly turning for the tankers when approaching their launch points. I found that, although I’d carefully set their Group Doctrine to forbid refuelling for the present, their individual Unit-level Doctrine was overriding this in true Murphy’s Law fashion. I corrected it, but it left them hanging back and the strike was beginning to look a bit ragged.

There was the issue of needing to fire the long-ranged Storm Shadows, SCALPs and AGM-158s before the Storm Breakers, AGM-154s and GBU-39s due to the greater distance. Trouble was that the Russians were liable to react as soon as they detected the launches. For co-ordination’s sake, I had the aircraft with the longer-ranged ordnance continue towards the targets for now. Not sure if War Planner addresses this. It seems good at getting aircraft to the same place at roughly the same time, but maybe not missiles of different types and speeds fired from those aircraft. In any case, given the unpredictable situation, any data I fed into War Planner would be a hostage to events.

At 06:41, this sort of thing happened. We were told that the Russians had responded aggressively to the NFZ and they abruptly went Hostile. So the strike had to start straightaway and did so, with the Russians responding with a blizzard of Growlers, many coming crosswise from Baltysk. Over 270 were fired in all and these are some of the best SAMs around.
The three Lithuanian PCFGs and their trailing minesweepers were caught like rabbits in the headlights. They did, at least, have some Harpoons and promptly fired them at the Russian missile boats, prioritising the more vulnerable Tarantuls and Buyans but not ignoring the Nanuchkas. I decided that the Shkvals, which have naval Growlers, were too well-defended.

My HARM F-16s hadn’t caught-up from refuelling, so I told them to fire at the nearest pair of Tarantuls (out of PCFG range), as they would never catch-up with the strike. Murphy then had them immediately turn to refuel – the Unit vs Group Doctrine issue again. I corrected this and they managed to sink both Tarantuls for 25VP each.

The PCFGs sank a Nanuchka and three more Tarantuls. They should have bagged at least one Buyan but, given two Shkval Growler shots at 33 and 38%, the AI rolled them both to intercept the Harpoons.

Meanwhile, the Russians attacked the defenceless minesweepers with volleys of SSMs. What a waste of ammo, but not in VP terms, as each of the little craft scored them 25VP and, appallingly, a transported Seafox micro-ROV scored 100 more as a ‘NATO Submarine’!!

Our Baltic CAP downed a Mail and two Helixes to keep U-35 safe (the choppers were heading straight for her, even though she was well below surface and at Creep). Meteors got kills 50% of the time at 25nm range – better than 10 anyway, but the weapon loses speed rapidly after its burn time expires. Russian and NATO aircraft score 5VP each.

The poor Kaszub had done her best to escape, but she never had a hope and was sunk by pursuing SSMs, costing 25VP. With hindsight, I should have sailed her right up to the Shkvals so that she could disable one with gunfire.

TF60.3 was attacked by a few SSMs, but was fairly close to Donald Cook by then and the strike was easily extinguished.
As soon as our strike commenced, the Russians began firing ballistic missiles. As in Operation Lightning Strike, they could do this well before anything got close enough to hurt them. Judging by the database, Iskanders carry 8 shots, Screwdrivers 16 and Stooges 8. Somehow, 386 were airborne in minutes, so there must have been ranks more of them deep in Russia or Belarus that I hadn’t detected. It was beyond belief (yesterday, Russia used an estimated 81 SSMs in a major strike on Ukraine, but I guess this was March 2022). This enabled them to take cheap shots at lightly-defended NATO installations all over Eastern Europe, with every target destroyed (even port cranes) scoring 5VP. Apart from a few THAADs, I had absolutely no defence. Note that the US doesn’t have strategic bombers in this scenario to avoid escalation risk. What do you think the result would be if Russia launched 386 ballistic missiles at NATO bases?

All this time, my strike’s missiles were en route to Chernyakhovsk, some hitting home through the hail of SAMs and doing some damage. Plenty more were on the way. Answering SAMs were mostly directed at the missiles and there was no fighter-on fighter combat. Four retiring F-15Es were lost to Growlers (three on odds of 20% or so and the only misses I noticed were due to SAMs petering-out). It seemed that the Growler had an effective range of 30-40nm (not 215), but is only truly deadly (when not lucky) at half that. Still a lot better than the Patriot (maybe 15, based on what happened in Persian Pounce).

Nothing at Chernyakhovsk had been destroyed and most of my missiles were still inbound when the game ludicrously terminated as a Russian Victory (NATO Major Defeat) with a score of -35, after less than two hours.

Aftermath

I let the clock run on a bit until just after 07:00Z to see what happened. The Lithuanian PCFGs were obliterated by the SSMs and each cost 50VP (twice a Russian equivalent’s value).

TG60.3 took-out the Alpinist AGI, but this scored nothing. They then withstood a heavy strike by Sizzler SSMs. One of these was engaged by a Meteor at 25nm and outran it as the missile lost way.

Russian ballistic missiles continued to score too-easy points for their side. By 07:00, 545 Iskanders, 48 Screwdrivers, 24 Stooges and 84 ship- or sub-launched SSMs had been fired. In the latter case, what price an F-22 and 4 Eurofighters, even if I’d been able to concentrate on using them?.

My strike closed the runway at Chernyakhovsk, and this would have scored 100VP. Two by-now empty Iskander launchers were eliminated for 25VP each, but I found that destroying Greyhounds and jamming vehicles scored nothing (by contrast to the Russian bonanza for anything they could hit with ballistic missiles). Had I known this in advance, of course, I would not have wasted ammo on them. As for the Growler site at Chernyakhovsk, I destroyed 15 of its 17 components for precisely nothing. AI gets lucky again. Nonetheless, the strike was actually a success.

At 07:00, when I’d finally had enough, numerous Russian strike aircraft were joining the party, predictably focussing on the soft targets in the Baltic States.

Sorry, Bart, but was it really meant to work like this??

[BobTank63]

545 Iskanders? Holy crap that's a lot. I'd argue that would be too much. Defense economics youtuber Perun put a ballpark estimate that the Russians had around 700 Iskanders total deployed operationally, not including those in storage. (See 46:33 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F7mt4r ... nnel=Perun ). Russia now aims to build 60 Iskanders a year. Shooting off 545 of your best missiles, even if it is a war with NATO, all at once seems very excessive.

Reading over the other NFZ scenarios, it seems this one is the odd one out in regard to difficulty.

[Gunner98]

Thanks for the AAR Vince

I'm not sure why the game terminated that quickly, looks like a problem. Agree that with hindsight and more analysis, we now know that the number of SSM/BM is too high and that should be cut down a lot. Also in my testing the accuracy of many of the BMs was lacking, missing many of the targets they were fired at, perhaps that was an issue back then which has been changed, sounds like they are more accurate now.

The windfall for the ROV shouldn't happen and that one is easy to fix. I would argue that port cranes are pretty critical infrastructure which enable container unloading, so worth VP, but I'll take a look and maybe tone that down a bit.

Of the 4 NFZ scenarios, this is the toughest and most contested. It should roll out much as you describe for the Russian play, early shut down, VP anomalies and too many missiles beside the point. This is a hornets nest of an area and they will fight hard for it.

A couple things I might have done differently is to use U-35 more aggressively, get her in amongst one of the Russian SAGs before hostilities and she can be devastating in the first minutes. Also I am not sure where you had TG 60.1 meet up, but pushing the Donald Cook as far east as possible will move a SAM umbrella over an area which will make it hard for the Russians to operate anywhere too far west.

I am away at the moment but will try and get an update for this one out shortly.

Thanks again

[Gunner98]

545 Iskanders? Holy crap that's a lot. I'd argue that would be too much. Defense economics youtuber Perun put a ballpark estimate that the Russians had around 700 Iskanders total deployed operationally, not including those in storage. (See 46:33 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F7mt4r ... nnel=Perun ). Russia now aims to build 60 Iskanders a year. Shooting off 545 of your best missiles, even if it is a war with NATO, all at once seems very excessive.

Reading over the other NFZ scenarios, it seems this one is the odd one out in regard to difficulty.

Yes Perun is really worth a watch. Very informative.

[fitzpatv]

Bart,

TG60.1 rendezvoused with Donald Cook SE of Bornholm. If the game had let me, I'd have moved them E as you suggest, especially as the Russians must have used most of their Stooges and ship/sub-launched SSMs. Maybe I should have sacrificed U-35 as you advise and used the Polish corvette in similar fashion against the Shkvals.

A few suggestions:

- Make Russian and NATO ships worth the same number of VP i.e. 25 for a PCFG. It is only reasonable in a peer contest.
- Remove the sitting ducks (minesweepers, Polish FFL and PCFGs), as they give Russia a free lunch.
- Seriously consider forbidding the Russians from using ballistic missiles at all. It would balance the bar on NATO equivalents and US strategic bombers. Using ballistic weapons like that would carry a major risk of escalation - how could NATO be sure they weren't carrying tactical nukes?
- Getting rid of the 100VP ROV award would go some way to preventing the early finish, especially if combined with the above measures.

I'm encouraged to hear that the other NFZ scenarios are better-balanced. I'll do Indian Ocean Fury 2 next, then move on to the next NFZ one.

[BobTank63]

Thanks for responding to this Gunner, and I'm glad you will work to fix this. I think toning down the missile barrage is a good way to balance the mission (though I haven't played it yet myself, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt).

Fitzpatv, I think that some of your suggestions may be overcorrections.
1) While it is reasonable to expect that in a peer conflict you will take losses, the media and public within NATO countries probably won't see it that way. NATO countries are generally casualty averse, so any ship losses would be heavily criticized. Thus, NATO ships being worth more VP than Russia ones generally makes sense
2) While removing some ships like the mine sweepers might be a good idea, getting rid of all sitting ducks would perhaps be a bit idealistic. The Baltic is a confined place, and with the rapid buildup to war as portrayed in the background of NFZ, some ships being caught out of position and vulnerable makes sense.
3) Forbidding Russia from using BMs at all doesn't make sense. They are already using them in Ukraine, and considering how they are one of the weapons most capable of countering NATO's air power by striking airfields on the ground, it's likely Russia would use them in this scenario. The escalation risk is there, but saying that Russia won't use their TBMs because NATO might think they have nukes doesn't really hold up under scrutiny. Most of the Russian cruise missiles that would be used otherwise could also carry nukes, and they are more likely to be intercepted.

[fitzpatv]

Bob,

Taking your points in turn:

1. You're right, of course, but it's a case of real-world public reaction vs game balance.
2. Again, a matter of striking a balance. Perhaps the minesweepers could be removed, along with the Kaszub, while retaining the PCFGs, which can, at least, fight back?
3. The escalation issue is a moot point, but it would be a way of justifying a bar on Russia using ballistic missiles, just as it was used to rule-out the US strategic bombers (and any NATO ballistic missiles - do we have any in Europe?).

It all raises the question of whether we are trying to simulate what would have happened had NATO taken this potentially disastrous course of action (regardless of balance) or whether we are aiming for a well-balanced, enjoyable game. I know that some designers favour the former approach, but Bart prefers the latter in my experience. To achieve balance, we have to limit the overwhelming force Russia can bring to bear or give NATO some compensating advantage, even if this is done by tilting the VP schedule somewhat in their favour.

[fitzpatv]

Also watched the Perun video. As you say, interesting and informative.

[BobTank63]

Bob,

Taking your points in turn:

1. You're right, of course, but it's a case of real-world public reaction vs game balance.
2. Again, a matter of striking a balance. Perhaps the minesweepers could be removed, along with the Kaszub, while retaining the PCFGs, which can, at least, fight back?
3. The escalation issue is a moot point, but it would be a way of justifying a bar on Russia using ballistic missiles, just as it was used to rule-out the US strategic bombers (and any NATO ballistic missiles - do we have any in Europe?).

It all raises the question of whether we are trying to simulate what would have happened had NATO taken this potentially disastrous course of action (regardless of balance) or whether we are aiming for a well-balanced, enjoyable game. I know that some designers favour the former approach, but Bart prefers the latter in my experience. To achieve balance, we have to limit the overwhelming force Russia can bring to bear or give NATO some compensating advantage, even if this is done by tilting the VP schedule somewhat in their favour.

I largely agree that well-balanced, enjoyable games are better than ones that are purely realistic. I think this scenario can be balanced while taking into account realism. Now I completely agree with your 2nd point, taking out the minesweepers is what I meant in my original comment. But IMO 1 and 3 push things too far in NATO's favor. Just reducing the number of TBMs and taking out those minesweepers (and the 100 point ROV) will make things balanced.