Raid on Kismayo 2013

[fitzpatv]

This small scenario covers an attempt by US special forces to capture an al-Shabab courier and other terrorist leaders at a safe house near Kismayo in Somalia. You can only play the American side. Under your command are the helicopter carrier Kearsarge and the 'littoral combat ship' Independence. These carry a Fire Scout unmanned chopper, a Seahawk, 2 Viper attack helicopters, 2 Harriers and 4 Osprey aircraft, the latter loaded with Marines.

It had been reported that an al-Shabab courier was due to land in a Cessna aircraft at Jilib airfield, near Kismayo, before being taken to a nearby safe house. The Cessna was duly spotted by a team of SEALs posted near Jilib and the Fire Scout (which I'd already launched, as it has enough endurance for the whole 5-hour scenario), was sent-in to track the courier as he transferred to a convoy of vehicles. If the terrorists spotted the Fire Scout, they gave no sign. The UAV followed them to a rural location NE of a prominent lake and detected 4 infantry platoons, 2 ZU-23 AA guns, 2 quad 14.5mm AA guns and a truck-mounted 12.7mm MG guarding the location.

Clearly, taking-out the AA guns was the first priority, so I left the Fire Scout to loiter out of their range and sent-in the two Vipers. These dismantled all of the AA guns and did some execution amongst the infantry, despite three of their Hellfire missiles malfunctioning.

I then launched the two Harriers, followed by the four Ospreys. All four of the Harriers' Paveways malfunctioned against the surviving infantry, leaving me with no weapons apart from the 25mm cannon on the fighters and the 12.7mm MGs carried by the Ospreys. I needed to fight the Doctrine rules in order to use these guns against ground targets, the control being 'A/G Strafing' on the main Doctrine window. With this problem overcome, I was able to wipe-out the rest of the al-Shabab infantry.

That left the Safe House, which was just a 300 DP Medium Building. Orders were to capture the courier (who had made no attempt to flee after the attack started), so even if I'd had any Hellfires or Paveways left, just blasting the place didn't seem to be an option (though the game gives you no clue either way). Orders were to land the Marines from the Ospreys. Here, however, I fell foul of the apparent lack of any game mechanic for unloading 'Cargo' (I noted that the Marines were, in any case, classified as 'Weapons'). I tried setting-up a Cargo Mission, using Reference Points around the Safe House, only for the game to instantly declare the Mission over and RTB the Ospreys with the Marines still on-board. Experimenting with deleting the Mission and creating another one for a landing zone that I hadn't previously reached led to similar frustration. As the game was a clear, bloodless win in any sane terms, I quit at this point.

I still have the save game and would be happy to try any solutions anyone can offer to this problem - if only to avoid tripping over it again in future games where it might be more important.

[fitzpatv]

I notice from reading the other AAR on this scenario that the old CMANO version had defined landing zones for the Marines. Presumably they unloaded once an Osprey was moved to them. It's possible that this feature was somehow removed for the CMO version, creating the impasse described above.

[Eboreg]

You seem to be unfamiliar with the Cargo functions...

[Eboreg]

Step 2:

[Eboreg]

Step 3:

[fitzpatv]

Thanks as always to Eboreg for the advice. Replayed the scenario and eventually got the desired result. With the A/G Strafing setting sorted-out, the Vipers sufficed to wipe-out the terrorists without needing to use the Harriers or Ospreys. I then got an Osprey to the Safe House, carrying ALL the Marines (apparently) and unloaded them to get the win with a score of 2,900 (2,000 for capturing the courier and 100 for each of the nine al Shabab units destroyed).

Hopefully, this post will help other players with the Cargo rules, which really aren't very clear. When the game shows a plane to be carrying 24 Marines, it's natural to assume it is doing so. Unfortunately it isn't and, as Eboreg has pointed-out, you have to do it manually. It's worth noting that, having brought-up the Un/Load dialog, you need to select the infantry (or other) unit on the ship side of the box and then click Load One or Load All before anything will happen, finishing with OK. One Osprey seemed to suffice to carry all the Marines in this case as, after clicking Load All, there were no more left to transport.

There is then a delay of about 30 minutes' game-time before the load is completed. At the end of this, there is again no indication of whether the cargo is loaded or not, but this time it is.

You can then fly it to the target. I took the Osprey to Minimum Altitude and Hover before selecting Unit Orders and clicking Unload Cargo, but this might not have been necessary (the Marines in this scenario are marked as paradrop-capable).

It doesn't seem to be necessary to specify a Cargo Mission.

Overall, an easy scenario with negligible opposition but, as described, a useful learning exercise even so.

[Artran]

It's broken in version 1.5 (build 1307.5). I destroyed all enemy units except the safe house and unloaded the landed detachments near it, but nothing happened (I tried it several times). I also think that the special action "Perform Search and Rescue" doesn't work.

[ronmexico111]

It's broken in version 1.5 (build 1307.5). I destroyed all enemy units except the safe house and unloaded the landed detachments near it, but nothing happened (I tried it several times). I also think that the special action "Perform Search and Rescue" doesn't work.

Same result here, got a score of 500 at the end when the clock ran out. All of my Marine units were sitting within 100 to 50 meters of the safe house with the Ospreys circling overhead.

At the beginning of the scenario I waited until the plane had landed at the airfield and the SEAL unit said the terrorists had left in a vehicle convoy heading south. That's when I launched my MQ-8B Fire Scout to keep an eye where they were going. The thing I noticed was that in order to give the Scout as much time to shadow the target as possible I had to maintain it's speed at military power, rather than loiter or cruise which would've used up it's fuel at a much greater rate, as much as 2.24 to 2.83 times as much as military power. At loiter the MQ-8B Fire scout uses 1.73 kg. of fuel per minute. At cruise it uses 2.18 kg. per minute. At military power it only uses 0.77 kg. of fuel per minute. Before the vehicle convoy reached it's destination I was forced to launch my MH-60R Seahawk from LCS 2 Independence to continue shadowing the convoy. The Fire Scout eventually had to RTB to the Independence but I didn't think about it's unique fuel consumption situation and it ran out of fuel 22 nm. short of the ship since on RTB it switches automatically to cruise setting for it's speed, using almost 3 times as much fuel than it had calculated it had for the trip home. So much for the Fire Scout.

The vehicle convoy had left the airfield at 11:24 PM and arrived at the safe house at 2:11 AM, a trip which left me with an hour and 49 minutes to destroy the AA guns and infantry surrounding the safe house before the scenario was due to end, you only get 5 hours starting at 11 PM. Anyways, I destroyed all the targets except the safe house and then brought in my Ospreys to drop the marines and secure the building. The scenario ended on time and I never got a message about picking up the courier, so I'm in the dark as to what to do about that.

On a side note, when dropping off any cargo manually, always remember that the system will only allow you to do that from the Unit view, not the Group view on the map. I don't know why, but that's the way it works.

I guess the main issues with this scenario is the Fire Scout fuel situation and not being able to secure the courier at the safe house, maybe someone else can run this and have better luck than me.

[Artran]

I guess the main issues with this scenario is the Fire Scout fuel situation and not being able to secure the courier at the safe house, maybe someone else can run this and have better luck than me.

It's not the main issue, because you can track the courier and secure the position of the safe house with the other chopper (but it's definitely a bug). The main issue is that you can't win the scenario by capturing the courier. I've posted the solution here:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=344065

[Kushan04]

Fixed version attached to this post. Will be included in a future update. Please let me know if there are anymore issues.

I've updated the scenario to DB 499 to fix the fuel issue with the MQ-8 reported in DB 498. I made the changes Artran posted in the other thread. I also took the opportunity to update the scenario to use some of the features of Cargo 2.0. I removed the USMC Inf Secs on the LHD and replaced them with actual Inf Plt (US Marine) units. Correspondingly I updated the required scripts.