Don of a New Era 10/11/2016

[fitzpatv]

Order of Battle
This scenario assumes that the Russo-Ukrainian War broke-out in 2016 and that NATO got involved from Day 1. It covers the opening 24 hours of the conflict. You can play either side, but NATO is the default, so I chose accordingly.

NATO is limited to air and naval forces, as ground troops cannot be committed in the scenario timescale. Their initial stance is defensive, with no aid to Ukraine allowed until authorisation arrives. Ukrainian forces are under AI control and the player has limited visibility of them, though a number of NATO special forces units are in-country and can provide information (some are behind Russian lines in the Crimea).

In the Black Sea, you have the Arleigh Burke DDG The Sullivans, the modern British destroyer Duncan, the competent Turkish frigate Gediz, a less-capable Bulgarian frigate (Verni) and two next-to-useless Romanian frigates, along with a Turkish diesel sub. HMS Duncan is in an exposed position in the Eastern Black Sea, albeit close to the Turkish coast and the two Romanians are detached and too near to the Crimea.

In the Eastern Mediterranean, there are two NATO warships, the Arleigh Burke Laboon and the SSGN Georgia, both of which have impressive numbers of TLAMs.

Air units are dispersed from the UK and Spain to Cyprus. At RAF Fairford, there are eight US strategic bombers (3 B-1s, a B-2 and 4 B-52s) with a variety of land-attack stand-off weapons. Some fighters have been reserved for escort purposes and there are also some tankers and a Cobra Eye ELINT plane which can, theoretically, detect ballistic missile launches once airborne. There are more tankers at Ramstein in Germany.

In Northern Italy (Ghedi/Milan and Aviano), there are numerous attack planes able to hit land, naval and radar targets, as well as some Sentry AEW planes (one of which is already aloft over Romania). Further S at Gioia del Colle, you have a force of Eurofighters which are a little too far back to help much in Ukraine but could provide a screen from strategic attack on the fleet HQ at Naples. At Sigonella on Sicily, there are more Sentries, some tankers and Poseidons and Orions for maritime patrol and ASW.

There is a small force of Greek F-16s at Larisa and some more Orions at Souda Bay in Crete. In Cyprus (Akrotiri) the British can field six Typhoon Eurofighters with some Sentries and UAVs and the US has two U-2s there as well. Two more Orions are stationed at Rota, Spain and can be moved E.

Turkey is distracted by a Russian-inspired Kurdish offensive, but can still provide a decent proportion of its air force. There are tankers at Incirlik, Wedgetail AEW planes at Konya, EW and ASW planes near Istanbul and large formations of fighers and attack planes at Ankara and further E at Merzifon.

NATO has turned Bulgaria into a major air base and 10 F-22s, 6 F-35s and 12 F-15s are stationed at Bezmer, backed by 5 Growler EW planes. However, eight of the Raptors have land-attack loadouts and replacement ammo is in short supply. Similar considerations apply further W at Graf Ignatievo, where there are numerous F-15s and F-16s with tankers and Compass Call EW planes.

Romania has a token force of Sidewinder-armed F-16s (Portuguese cast-offs) which are best kept out of the way, while Hungary has leased some Gripen MRCAs from neutral Sweden (with modest fighter loadouts). All these are best kept in reserve.

Ukraine has a Krivak III frigate, a Grisha II corvette, 20-30 Flankers and Fulcrums, some choppers and plenty of SAMs including Grumbles, Gladiators, Gadflies and Gammons. Though the NATO player can’t see them, numerous other Ukrainian ground units are present, acting as targets for the Russians.

Unlike the usual situation in the Fury series (I’m pretty sure Bart wrote Don of a New Era), the great majority of your aircraft start ready and there as many logistics problems as is customary. This is no doubt down to the need to have a balanced scenario, playable from both sides. It also makes sense in that both sides would have known for some time that war was coming.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is at sea, with the cruiser Moskva, three modern Grigorovitch frigates, an upgraded Kashin Mod DDG and numerous PCFGs, plus maybe three Kilos (torpedoes only) and as many AGIs. Together, these units have an impressive number of long-ranged anti-shipping missiles.

It is estimated that Russia has about 300 combat aircraft ready to support their offensive on the Donbass front, which is intended to link Crimea with other Russian territory, then sweep along the coast to invade Moldova as well. These air forces cover the full range of fighters, attack planes and support aircraft with which Command players are familiar and extend to Blackjack and Bear strategic bombers with Kluge and Kodiak cruise missiles which can hit targets 1,600nm away. Amongst the fighters are some brand-new Su-57 Felon stealth types. The Arrow, Amos and Adder C A2A missiles outrange NATO types, but are thankfully in short supply and mostly reserved for Felons and Foxhounds.

Crimea is stuffed full of high-end SAMs, notably several regiments of the latest S-400 Growlers. Also on the peninsula are batteries of Iskander ballistic missiles and Bastion, Sepal and Sennight anti-shipping weapons.

Note that there are no Russian land units in the game apart from SAMs, radars, etc and Spetsnaz recon teams. The progress of the land fighting is abstracted.

Assessment and Planning
It is feared that Russia will try to use strategic bombers to hit any or all of the JHQ at Naples, the HQ at Izmir or the AEGIS Ashore ABM facility in Romania. I assigned the Italian Eurofighters at Gioia to protect Naples, some Turkish F-16s to cover Izmir and some of the F-16s at Graf Ignatievo to screen the Romanian sector, giving each tanker support. A few planes would be on CAP at any given time, with the rest on-call if missiles were spotted by AWACs. Note that NATO has NO SAMs (apart from the AEGIS ABMs and the ones on the ships) anywhere in this scenario.

In general, the Black Sea promised to be a lethal place for shipping and it made sense to get ours out of the trap as quickly as possible. HMS Duncan faced a lengthy run along the Turkish coast to the Bosphorus and the two Romanian destroyers were best-advised to head for port in Constanta. Everything else headed for the Sea of Marmara at Flank, with the Turkish SSK left on picket duty and an ASW plane hunting zone was established on the approaches to the Straits.

We didn’t know when the authorisation would arrive to help Ukraine. Until then, it seemed best to stay on the defensive and to regard the Russian Navy as an achievable prestige target. There would clearly be no Russian ground units to bomb except for those in the Crimea, which would be a tough nut to crack.

The TLAMs on USS Laboon and USS Georgia were a valuable strategic asset and, as neither ship was in any danger, I moved them nearer to the S Turkish coast in readiness to fire.

The Cobra Eye at Mildenhall looked like an intriguing unit and I launched it straightaway, but in practice it detected nothing of value all game.

The Action
10/11/16 07:00Z: Primorye-class AGIs were soon spotted shadowing The Sullivans and Duncan, which gave them the slip by going to Flank and keeping sensors dark.

Tankers moved to W Romania, Naples and Izmir. It was, otherwise, a quiet opening hour.

08:00Z: The Russians began attacking Ukraine, but not us. We were not authorised to intervene.

Apart from AGIs, there was no initial sign of the Black Sea Fleet. Was Russian jamming that good?.

The game soon began to suffer from similar chronic performance problems to those I experienced during Pacific Fury 3. At times, it was unplayable, but it varied. Explicably, things were at their worst while the Russians were bombing Ukrainian ground forces. Using a Disk Clean-Up utility apparently freed 15GB of space on my laptop. There was also a Microsoft Edge update repeatedly trying to happen and it seemed that Command was not allowing it the memory to do so, judging from Event Log errors. Once this finally got installed (for all the use it is), things got better, but there were still times when the game would stop dead with ‘Not Responding’ messages on the screen. At others, it ran perfectly smoothly.

Heavy fighting was happening over NE Ukraine and Russian strikes soon sank both of the Ukrainian warships in the NW Black Sea. In all, in the first hour of hostilities, Ukraine lost 32 artillery, 6 SAM and two SSM units, while 55 Russian aircraft (mainly Fulcrums and Frogfeet) were downed by the defenders. Helpfully, Ukrainian losses cost nothing, while each Russian aircraft loss scored us 2VP.

At 08:30, we were warned that there were signs that Russia intended to escalate things and attack NATO. Should this happen, we were authorised to strike targets in the Black Sea and Crimea only and were told emphatically not to fire first.

At 08:40, Ukraine requested assistance, but our hands were tied.

09:00Z: With the score +188 and Average, the Russians had by now lost another 39 aircraft but were beginning to wear Ukraine down, destroying 6 of Kiev’s fighters and 100 ground elements. Ukraine issued a further request for NATO air cover.

Eight Fencers lifted-off from Gvardeyskoye in the Crimea, suggesting that they might be about to attack NATO shipping. By now, Sullivans, Gemlik and Verni were converging on the Bosphorus, the two Romanian ships were in port and Duncan was being followed at a distance by several Russian PCFGs. The Moskva, Kashin and three Grigorovitches were in position to dominate the Black Sea to the SW of Sevastopol.

10:00Z: Still no Russian attack on NATO. Score now +214 thanks to Ukraine’s valiant defence, with a total of 107 Russian aircraft now downed by SAMs, MANPADs, fighters and AA for seven Ukrainian fighters.

11:00Z: Russia attacked NATO, with a shoal of Kluge cruise missiles spotted heading for AEGIS Ashore. A half-dozen F-15s intercepted over Romania and thwarted this initial wave of two-score missiles.

Sullivans, now en route through the Bosphorus, sank the nearest Primorye shadow for 5VP. The score was now +214 and a Minor Victory.

However, a huge flock of over a hundred Kodiak missiles followed the Kluges over Romania. There were too many for CAP even had they been detected in time and AEGIS Ashore was demolished, costing us 100VP due to a loss of prestige and the way the event exposed Europe more than before to nuclear attack. It appeared that Russia had thrown everything at AEGIS Ashore to make certain, refraining from attacking Naples or Izmir, though it took a while before we could be sure of this.

12:00Z: Eight Turkish Maverick F-16s attacked Russian shipping off their N coast, four sinking the stubborn AGI that had been following Duncan and the others disposing of two Nanuchka PCFGs that were prudently retreating towards the Caucasus shore.

A large force of Russian Flankers from Novorossiysk in the Caucasus came Afterburning after the F-16s, which escaped. The Sukhois then fanned-out over Central and Eastern Turkey, causing much evasion on our part. Unluckily, two coincided with a big TLAM strike from USS Georgia and thinned it out a little.

13:00Z: Most of the TLAMs reached Gvardeyskoye, where they destroyed 12 fuel and ammo stores for a VP each and used-up a lot of defending SAMs.

Turkish F-16s on pop-up CAP from Merzifon went after the Flankers as they RTB’d and bagged four, even using short-ranged early-model AMRAAMs.

Two Maverick F-16s hit the last of the three AGIs in the W Black Sea, leaving it afire and down to 5 knots.

14:00Z: A concerted strike by the two Orions from Rota, Tornadoes from Ghedi and F-16s from Ankara and Merzifon was resisted stoutly by the main Russian SAG. However, several HARMs hit the Moskva, which slowed to 10 knots.

USS Laboon hit Sevastopol port with TLAMs, destroying 6 facilities and sinking a Tarantul PCFG in dock.

Six Turkish F-16s attacked with AGM-154s and HARMs, sinking the Moskva for 15VP and the Kashin and a Grigorovitch for 10 each.

15:00Z: One of the remaining Grigorovitches died of its wounds and the other was finished-off by a Kormoran Tornado, which then paid for underestimating the range of the Growlers near Sevastopol. NATO air losses cost 2VP each.

The Flankers made another annoying deep-penetration sweep. Again, we avoided them on their outbound leg and went after them on their way home, the Turks downing six without loss.

A trailing Kormoran Tornado finished-off the crippled AGI.

A 12-plane strike from Graf Ignatievo was mostly forced to retreat in the face of a surge of enemy aircraft from Gvardeyskoye, but HARM F-16s did some damage to radars and crippled a Grisha corvette in the harbour approaches, which later sank.

All this time, the Russians were continuing to lose aircraft over Ukraine, taking their losses to-date to 146, including three Felons and eight Foxhounds.

16:00Z: One of the long-sweep Flankers had evidently located our ships before being downed, as the Russian surge turned-out to be mostly composed of Fencers (including a jammer), with a modest Flanker escort. Turkish F-16s and F-15s and 35s from Bezmer enjoyed a ‘Fencer Party’, downing the lot without loss. The score was now +347 and a Major Victory.

An update told us that Ukraine was requesting strikes on Russian ground targets in the Donbass and the commitment of NATO ground troops, but we had neither the resources nor the authorisation to comply.

17:00Z: Two F-16s made a HARM raid on the Crimea, but found that the Russians still had plenty of Growlers and had to beat a judicious retreat.

18:00Z: Our strategic bombers (minus the slow B-2 with its short-ranged weapons) now arrived over Romania and attacked the Crimea, supported by four HARM F-16s from Aviano. Two of the latter were lost to Growlers (which HARMs, we found, do not out-range) but severe damage was done to Sevastopol harbour (three piers scored 16VP each) and aircraft on the ground at Gvardeyskoye.

19:00Z: AGM-86s from the B-52s did substantial damage to the other Crimean air base at Belbek.

20:00Z: Two Maverick Falcons tried attacking three Tarantuls off the W coast of Crimea, but were driven-off by the Growlers.

21:00Z: Four F-15s took-out two Sepal batteries for 1VP each and hit the Gvardeyskoye runways with AGM-158s.

22:00Z: USS Laboon fired five TLAMs at the troublesome Growler near Yevpatoriya in W Crimea, but it still had the ammo to stop them. Some F-15s followed-up, but also failed to get through.

23:00Z: An AGM-158 strike from Aviano (four F-16s) finally cracked and damaged the Growler site, opening the way to attack several SSM batteries nearby.

11/11/16 00:00Z: Two Turkish F-16s went after the Tarantuls with AGM-154s, only to find that they lacked the endurance to cross the Black Sea. Worse, two Flankers arrived just as they realised this and nothing would persuade the AI to let them escape at Afterburner because of their fuel situation. I tried to jettison their ammo to get around this, but it simply didn’t work (it seems it can only be done when the plane is actually being fired-upon). Mercifully, the Flankers were also short of fuel and broke-off before firing, allowing the Turks to escape.

01:00Z: An F-15 did more damage to the Growler site.

02:00Z: I was finding that planes with a choice of tankers to refuel from couldn’t make-up their minds and kept moving from one to the other. Even with one tanker refusing to serve them, they insisted on following their plotted course instead of refuelling and had to be Unassigned and given another movement order before they would comply. One day, the developers will get in-flight refuelling to work seamlessly…

An F-15 strike did yet more damage to the Growler and two adjacent Greyhound sites, despite several Foxhounds putting-in an appearance.

03:00Z: F-16s from Aviano sank the elusive Tarantuls with GBU-54s.

Despite our efforts, the Ukrainian President (don’t think it was Zelensky in 2016) went on TV to condemn NATO’s ‘inaction’. From their perspective, I guess, we hadn’t intervened on the ground or attacked Russian ground units in the first 20-odd hours, but he should try reality…

Apparently, the Russians were advancing to close the gap with the Crimea, mirroring their swift initial progress in the real conflict.

A Kilo arrived off the Bosphorus and was duly detected and then sunk by a Turkish Meltem ASW plane for 10VP.
An F-16 destroyed a Stooge SSM battery at the W tip of Crimea, scoring just 1VP. An F-15 finished-off the Growler (1VP for all that effort) and also a Greyhound.

04:00Z: Eagles took-out some Stone, Sennight, Iskander and Gainful batteries in W Crimea.

05:00Z: An AGM-158 strike hit a radar and some more air defence units, killing two of the latter, including a Greyhound.

The F-22 squadron from Bezmer was let-off the leash and wreaked more destruction on Russian SSMs and SAMs in W Crimea with its GBU-39s (handy stand-off weapons, but land targets only).

06:00Z: A final AGM-158 strike got a radar and finished a Gladiator/Giant SAM site. Two multi-mission TLAMs from Laboon, aimed at a Buyan PCFG, were intercepted by Flankers.

07:00Z: It ended in a Triumph, with a score of +558.

NATO lost the AEGIS Ashore facility and three attack planes.

Ukraine lost an FFG, FFL, 20 fighters and 196 ground elements.

Russia lost a CG, DDG, 3 FFGs, an SSK, an FFL, 7 PCFGs, 3 AGIs, 100 fighters (including four Felons), 109 attack planes, 6 support aircraft, 6 UAVs, 3 Bears and 120 ground elements.

Overall, when performance allowed, this was good fun to play. It was easier than the general run of Fury scenarios, because almost all units started ready, there were relatively few logistical issues and lots of resources were available. Whereas many of the Fury scenarios are stacked against the player to provide a tough challenge, this one had to be balanced to be playable from both sides. It would have been closer had the Russians scored for Ukrainian losses, as they no doubt do if you play from their side. After all, Ukraine scored a decent proportion of our VP.

[Gunner98]

Great report Vince.

I did indeed write this scenario and am glad that it is still interesting and challenging. The requirement to play from both sides does change the design dynamic somewhat, these are also a lot more work to build for that and other reasons.

Glad you enjoyed it.

B