Sahel Slugfest 20/2/21

[fitzpatv]

The premise for this one is simple enough. China wants the mineral resources of the Sahel and provides backing for a new regime in Sudan, building-up a strong military expeditionary force there. This alarms neighbouring Chad, which calls-in former colonial power France. Matters come to a head as Sudanese troops mass on the border. You can play either side, but France and Chad is the default.

Two Chadian battalions are facing a Sudanese division and a Chinese airborne brigade, backed-up by an estimated fifty Chinese 4th generation fighters and thirty Sudanese attack planes. China has also provided its client with some modern HQ-9 and HQ-16 SAMs and has moved a couple of SSNs into the Red Sea.

Off the coast of neutral Eritrea, France has the carrier Charles de Gaulle, lightly-escorted by the destroyer Chevalier Paul and the frigate Aconit. The group has modern Aster SAMs and the 100nm-ranged, dual-purpose version of the Exocet, but is worryingly light on ASW. The best available sonar has a range of just 16nm and there are just two ASW choppers, neither of which is even on Quick Turnround.

De Gaulle has ten Rafales, armed with Meteors and MICAs for aerial combat and another twelve with a SCALP cruise missile each for strikes. There are also a couple of Hawkeyes for AEW.

Far away (Sudan and Chad are BIG), the French have just SIX Rafales with fighter (Meteor) loadouts, based at Faya Largeau in the North of Chad. Nearby, at Ouadi Doum, there are another ten Rafales set-up as strike aircraft. Of these, six carry SBU-54 Hammer missiles with a decent 35nm range and the others outmoded short-ranged Paveways. All have missiles for defence, the Paveway-carriers being compensated with Meteors.

At the Chadian capital of N’Djamena, in the SW corner of the country, there are two Sentries for AEW and four Airbus tankers.

Near the contested border region, Abeche air base houses ten Mirages with 4nm-ranged Paveways and a half-dozen French and Chadian choppers with ATGMs. Chad has no fixed-wing aircraft.

A number of French SAMs and MANPADs are posted at or near the air bases, but most are short-ranged Crotales, only N’Djamena having advanced Asters, which it is unlikely to have to use.

The troops on the border are all under AI control and are basically just targets for the opposition. They have a single Stinger team (also AI-controlled) for air cover.

Clearly, the French and Chadians are up against it!. The latter are heavily-outnumbered on the ground and there are few fighters stationed in the area, with only a small qualitative advantage against Chinese Firebirds and Flying Sharks (Flanker copies) with advanced PL-15 missiles. The carrier fighters are too far away to render much help.

De Gaulle is vulnerable to attacks from subs (probably using cruise missiles to begin-with) and aircraft. The Chinese also have YJ-12 SSMs, but they start out of range and are only a threat if the French squadron moves North. Whether they can hold depends very much on how much the Chinese (facing a two-front battle) decide to send against them, the size of Sudan cutting both ways in this respect.

Received wisdom from past reviews in this Forum was that the solution was a cruise missile strike, taking advantage of enemy radars being off. However, I soon found that the CVBG’s Exocets will never get into range of anywhere except Port Sudan, leaving the dozen Rafales with as many SCALPs to do what they can.

Everything else would have to be committed to the fight on the border, where caution needs to be the order of the day.
Taking a look at the enemy air bases, I reasoned that Port Sudan would have the MPA Cubs and was the most likely location for the Chinese Flounder attack planes. Tankers and AEW planes were probably at and around Khartoum and Wadi Seinda in the centre. If the Chinese were going to try a paradrop, the transports would either be at a forward base on the border or, more likely, at Nyala or El Fashir, a little way to the East, as would the Sudanese attack planes and Chinese choppers.

Overall, it seemed best to use the naval Rafales to close runways, though it was questionable whether they would have the range to reach Fashir or Nyala. A fighter could usefully be posted on the approaches to Port Sudan for early warning and to take-out incautious MPAs before they could spot the CVBG.

Perhaps realistically, I didn’t know in advance whether the Chadian troops would put-up a fight or just collapse under attack, nor whether the enemy army would actually move across the border and drive on our air bases.

Incidentally, we didn’t have a single ARM, so going after enemy SAMs wasn’t an option. The briefing said that tanks, artillery and ‘Chinese personnel’ were the most profitable targets for VP.

20/2/21 00:00Z (03:00L): I removed all of the pre-set Missions, launched all 12 strike Rafales from the carrier and sent the fighter towards Port Sudan. In Chad, a single Hammer-armed Rafale probed South, using its powerful radar to search for the enemy ground units.

The carrier fighter soon located a coastal YJ-12 battery right on the Eritrean-Sudanese border, out of range of the De Gaulle. A Cub MPA then appeared and was duly shot down, not that it scored anything. To my surprise, the Rafale then went RTB (Shotgun), despite having been given Winchester Doctrine. I corrected this and returned it to station.
Investigation revealed that, while my Doctrine settings on the EMCON and WRA tabs of the new windows (v.1676) had been retained, all of those on the General tab had reverted to the default values!.

The Rafale from Ouadi Doum detected a large Sudanese troop build-up across the border, deployed in three groups (N, S and reserve). It attacked with its Hammers and took-out a T-55 platoon for 10VP. Two Firebirds intervened in response as the Frenchman RTB’d. In the process, he confirmed that basic Fantan attack planes were at the Forward Base.

By now, it was evident that the naval Rafales lacked the endurance to reach Fashir or Nyala, so they had to settle for hitting the Khartoum area and El Obeid air base in the South Central part of Sudan.

The Chinese mindlessly sent-out a second Cub MPA, which joined its predecessor in pieces in the Red Sea. It seemed they had no more.

01:00Z: The SCALP strike on Khartoum had mixed results. An HQ-9 thwarted the attempt on the International Airport, but hits were probably scored on both runways at the Wadi Seinda military air base at Omdurman. Further South, SCALPs ploughed-up the runways at El-Obeid, but it was difficult to gauge how effectively.

Five more Rafales with Hammers scrambled from Ouadi Doum and, on take-off, their General Doctrine tab settings again reverted to the defaults. I concluded that, under 1676, the only way to get the Doctrine you want is to assign it when a plane first takes-off. I later found that these settings are then retained reliably.

Thus far, the Sudanese ground forces had not moved forward and were probably not going to.

02:00Z: However, eight Sudanese Fencers then mounted a low-level strike on Abeche air base. Their altitude meant that they were only spotted late and I had no opportunity to call-in any fighters in time. All eight bandits were shot down by Crotales and Mistrals for 10VP each, but a couple lived long enough to bomb the airfield, wrecking two hangars and taking-out 5 parked Mirages and three Chadian Hind choppers. This cost us 100 VP.

Everything then happened at once!. The enemy strike prompted me to launch my remaining five Mirages while I still had them and add them to the strike on the Sudanese Army. Right then, a force of Flying Sharks appeared to the E of Ouadi Doum and attacked the base with KD-88 stand-off missiles. Two Rafales diverted from escorting our strike to intercept and every available plane scrambled from Ouadi Doum and Faya Largeau, even the ones with Paveways.

The initial pair of Meteor Rafales scored one miserable kill with 12 missiles. Fortunately, not only did Chinese 4th generation planes score 50VP but the Flanker-copies were handicapped by having strike loadouts and failed to fight back effectively. Eight Flying Sharks were downed in all without loss as our extra aircraft joined the fray. Their missiles wrote-off a single unoccupied tarmac space at Ouadi Doum.

On the border, we lost three more Mirages to HQ-16 SAMs, but their Paveways and, rather more so, the Rafales’ Hammers wrought considerable destruction, eliminating two T-55 platoons, two batteries of artillery and disabling an HQ-16. Two Firebirds tried to interfere, but a Rafale escort came-in on their blind side and shot both down for another 100VP. This put me well into Triumph territory on +480 but, with very few ready aircraft, I now had most of the game to defend that position.

Reports arrived of four more Flying Sharks crash-landing, possibly because I’d closed the runways at their base and the AI lacked a fallback plan.

06:00Z: After a lull, the Sudanese launched an attack on the Chadian Army. Two Fantans managed to fly right over the lone Stinger team, which accounted for the pair of them, but two more followed, along with a couple of Black Whirlwind helicopters. These used rockets and ATGMs to rub-out the MANPADs and also three infantry sections, an artillery battery and a T-54 platoon for a net loss to us of 120VP. The Chadians now had no air defence whatever.

07:00Z: A naval Rafale destroyed the YJ-12 battery with Hammers, but this scored nothing.

It appeared from their CAP dispositions that the enemy were using Fashir and Nyala as their main bases, so I hatched a plan to neutralise them with the SCALP Rafales. The four tankers took-off from N’Djamena and flew SE over the Central African Republic to a rendezvous point with the strike planes over South Sudan. The idea was to fuel the Rafales, then use the Faya Largeau fighters to draw the CAP over the bases away as they went-in with the SCALPs and closed the runways.

10:00Z: In the interim, six Hammer Rafales from Ouadi Doum hosed-down the Forward Airbase and also struck enemy tanks and artillery. Three Fantans and two Black Whirlwinds were wrecked on the ground and casualties were inflicted on the ground troops, with the Chinese CAP out of position, too far back to intervene in time. The score was now +650, where +250 is a Triumph.

11:00Z: Then disaster struck!. As the tankers and Rafales rendezvoused over South Sudan, I had the familiar aggravation of planes continually changing their minds over which tanker to use, ignoring my manual directions. I tried to Unassign all but one plane for each tanker, but it gradually dawned on me that the Rafales were not actually capable of refuelling from the Airbuses!!. I had no option but to abort the strike and RTB, but the delay had meant that the Rafales were dangerously far from the De Gaulle and it was going to be touch-and-go to save them. The carrier steered towards the coast at Full to make such difference as she could. I even considered jettisoning ordnance to lighten the planes (doesn’t work unless – perhaps- the plane is under attack) or trying Bearing Only Launches (can’t do this with the SCALP).

12:00Z: In the end, three Rafales ditched (two in the Landing Queue), costing me 150VP, which I accepted given my strong position in the scenario.

17:00Z: The Ouadi Doum Rafales attacked again, doing more damage to the enemy ground troops and restoring the score to +580. One plane inexplicably came-in at low altitude, contrary to orders, so that it couldn’t attack and I only got it to climb by RTB’ing it and then Unassigning it before returning to the fray. Ouadi Doum was now out of Hammers, so the Rafales were re-armed as fighters.

I pulled the two surviving Mirages back to N’Djamena for safety’s sake.

21:00Z: The carrier Rafales hit Wadi Seidna’s hangars with SCALPs, destroying five for 10VP each, along with a lone Flying Shark on the ground for 50.

21/2/21 04:00Z: The remaining four Rafales for which SCALPs were available hit the tarmac spaces at El-Obeid, destroying two Firebirds on the ground for another 100VP.

22/2/21 00:00Z: The AI managed to ditch another couple of fighters. Otherwise nothing else happened. It ended in a Triumph with a final score of +930.

France lost 3 fighters and 8 Mirages, Chad 3 choppers, two hangars and 31 troop/MANPAD elements.

China lost 20 fighters, two MPAs, two choppers, five SAM and five SSM elements and an ammo pad, while Sudan lost 13 attack planes and 73 troop elements.

Afterwards, I had a look at the Chinese order of battle and found that their two SSNs were only just out of their sonar range to the NW of the CVBG and that there had been enough attack planes with stand-off weapons at Port Sudan, Khartoum and Obeid to seriously endanger the French ships. Every Chinese fighter was PL-15 armed, while all of the Sudanese planes were in ground attack mode.

Overall, it provided quite an entertaining game, though the duration would have been better fixed at one day, rather than two. I’ll do what I can about raising the two bugs, which were more an issue with the game itself than the scenario.

[Eboreg]

You do realize that glide bombs can be pretty effective against older SAMs, right?

[fitzpatv]

Lots of things are quite effective against older SAMs, to be honest. The Guidelines weren't really a problem at any stage.