Operation Desert Falcon 7/6/27

[fitzpatv]

Situation

It is 2027 and a number of Islamist groups have fused to form the United Sahel Liberation Front in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have just added Chad to their territories, which also include Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. This has made the French presence in Chad untenable and, indeed, a small detachment of troops and some 500 civilians have been trapped at Messenya airbase, in the South-Western corner, a good arm’s length from the capital, N’djamena. Paris has resolved to rescue the civilians (at least), but is hamstrung by having few assets in the region.

There is a French naval task group in the Gulf of Guinea, consisting of the helicopter carrier Tonnerre (with 16 unarmed Guepard transport choppers) and the frigates Admiral Ronarc’h, Alsace and Normandie. The ships mount a total of 32 MdCN cruise missiles, which are naval versions of the SCALP, with a range of 760nm. In French-aligned Gabon, you have three Atlas transports and two Hercules tankers at the capital, Libreville.

Everything else (French, anyway) is in France. At Orange, near the Mediterranean coast, there are 24 Rafale MRCAs. Eight are on fighter loadouts and the others are split evenly between SCALP cruise missiles with 215nm range and AASMs with a 35nm reach. In support at nearby Istres, there are eight Airbus tankers and a Sentry AEW plane.

The US has agreed to help by providing a Globemaster from Ramstein in Germany. This carries five Rapid Dragon pallets, which are dropped by parachute and then each release nine AGM-158Bs, with a range of 430nm, at desired targets.

Messenya is defended by a small unit of light tanks and six of light-armed marines, with a Stinger team (only) for air defence. The 500 French civilians are represented by 50 units of Cargo at the base.

Needless to say, the USLF has no naval capability and there is no threat to the Tonnerre task group. The insurgents do have the former Chadian Air Force, which has an estimated three Fulcrums, up to twelve Chinese-built Thunder MRCAs, six Frogfeet, some elderly Hurkus piston-engined attack planes and a few transports. Their airports, at N’Djamena, Abeche in the SE and Faya-Largeau in the N have unknown numbers of SAMs, MANPADs and AA. N’Djamena has a dangerous HQ-12 unit and both it and Abeche have Gainfuls. On the ground, the USLF can field infantry with high explosives and ‘technicals’.

A mission constraint is that any French aircraft that overflies Libyan territory incurs a VP penalty. This imposes some difficulty for planes RTB’ing to France, as the direct route the AI will pick by default will often graze through Western Libya and need manual correction. Libya has Goa sites at Tripoli and Benghazi, but you really shouldn’t need to go anywhere near them.

Assessment and Planning

My first thought was that the USLF had the capability to brush aside the defenders at Messenya long before France could get anything there. A minor blessing is that, in practice, they don’t attempt to do so.

Tonnerre needs about four hours at Flank (just 19 knots) to get inshore close enough to launch the Guepards and get them to Messenya. The FFGs need a bit less than that before they can fire MdCNs at ground targets.

Sending transport aircraft in without fighter cover is extremely risky, so the Rafales will need to establish air superiority decisively in the brief window of opportunity they will have after the long flight to Chad. The USLF could, of course, opt to keep their planes grounded during that period and bring them out later to hit the transports and it turned-out that this was, indeed, their strategy. That left us with knocking out their runways (one per base) with cruise missiles from the ships and Rafales. Note that the French don’t have a single ARM...

Fortunately, the SAMs at N’Djamena are too far away to interdict operations at Messenya, so any threat here would come from MANPADs or mobile AA accompanying any infantry assault on the base.

I did some calculations, based on aircraft cruise speed at maximum altitude and the amount of fuel carried by the Rafales and tankers. It was hard to be precise because of the number of variables, but as a rule of thumb, I reckoned that I needed 96 individual re-fuellings if I used all 24 Rafales and had capacity for 120. This assumed refuelling over Central Algeria and near the Chad-Niger Border in both directions and I marked waypoints accordingly.

The Globemaster and Sentry should, I reckoned, be able to get in and out without worrying too much about endurance.

It was clear that the Guepards would not be able to reach Messenya without refuelling over Cameroon on the way, or Libreville without doing so on the way back. I was far from sure that the two Hercules tankers would be able to support 16 of the large choppers.

There were 50 civilian passenger elements at Messenya and each Atlas could take 11, leaving 17 for the choppers. Unless the Atlases started flying at the outset, they were not going to be able to do two return flights in the 22-hour time limit so, even if we could get all 16 choppers out and then back to Libreville in time, we would still be one civilian element short. The Briefing implied that we would score points for each element evacuated to Libreville and lose points for any lost or left behind by the end.

Events

7/6/27 20:00Z: I launched the eight Airbus tankers, 24 Rafales, Sentry and Globemaster straightaway. The practicalities soon became apparent. For one thing, it took some fifteen minutes to get everything into the air. The tankers were slightly slower than the Rafales at Cruise and needed the best part of an hour to get up to that speed, all of which affected my earlier calculations, adding uncertainty.

There were a large number of civilian flights about, moving between various neutral airports. This seemed to be to introduce the possibility of the French shooting one down by mistake, but I was far from sure that this justified the drag on game performance they would cause. More later…

The strike force wasn’t even across the Mediterranean before Rafales started going to tankers to re-fuel. So much for the strike radii quoted on the Air Ops window!. Especially as all of the MRCAs took-off at slightly different times, it was impossible to allow for the variables. Now, Rafales were turning round as they hit the AI’s refuelling threshold (not Bingo Fuel, of course) and flying back along their earlier paths. All I could do was change my plans and have all of the tankers accompany the MRCAs to the Chad-Niger border. Another worry was the AI’s tendency to send everything to the same tanker.

The Briefing does suggest that all of this is best handled by the Mission Planner, rather than manually, but I have profound doubts whether this could deal with all of the variables involved. In-flight refuelling remains one of the shakiest parts of the game.

We had some satellites operational and these confirmed the presence of the HQ-12 at N’Djamena and the Gainfuls there and at Abeche. It seemed that Faya-Largeau was lightly defended. Six Thunders were flying CAP over the Chadian capital.

21:00Z: We began to receive news reports, which added some atmosphere, but little else (you can turn them off via a Special Action). Apparently, the abandoned US Embassy had been torched.

The strike crossed the Algerian coast.

22:00Z: With refuelling continuing ‘on the hoof’, the strike passed its first pre-set waypoint, E of Tamanrasset in Algeria.

23:00Z: One over-used Airbus had to RTB and I had to make sure it didn’t overfly Libya. Could the Mission Planner really calculate which of 24 aircraft should refuel from which of eight tankers at all times during this long haul?

8/6/27 00:00Z: By now, three out of eight tankers were homeward-bound and the whole thing was becoming something of an act of faith. At least I had five left and was nearly in-position to strike.

01:00Z: A naval MdCN strike clobbered the runway at N’Djamena (the enemy SAMs were asleep) and also took-out the USLF HQ for 20VP and a traning camp for 10. A second training camp was spared by a malfunction.

The Globemaster dropped its entire payload on the most remote target, Abeche, devastating the runway and minimising the risk of any interference from that quarter. It then returned safely to Ramstein, skirting around Libya.

Rafales fired a succession of SCALPs at the runway at Faya-Largeau. Repeated hits were scored, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d closed the base. Unfortunately, the AASM Rafales needed too long to get into range, so I called them off. With hindsight, I should not have used them. It was time we headed back to France, so the strike withdrew.

The Sentry had seen no sign of enemy fighters and they must all have been on the ground during our attacks. Perhaps I could have left the eight Rafales with fighter loadouts at home, too and the tankers could have given the eight SCALP planes 1:1 service?. Easy to be wise after the event.

02:00Z: The Hercules and Atlas aircraft launched from Libreville.

There were repeated and unnecessary ‘Cry Wolf’ AI Emergency messages about returning tankers hitting Bingo Fuel. Those concerned were in no danger, but the messages continued, much to my annoyance. This feature needs to be removed from the game.

I also noticed that closing returning tankers for refuelling didn’t stop Rafales that had already decided to do so trying to replenish from them and this occasioned more manual correction, reversing of course and attendant risk.

03:00Z: With the Hercules tankers in position over Cameroon, I launched the Guepards, which immediately went Bingo and RTB’d, because the AI had decided that they would fly at 2,000’ instead of their maximum of 19,300’. This happens before the player has any chance to intervene. To add to the irritation, the AI has a fixation about diverting Guepards from Tonnerre to the frigate Admiral Ronarc’h, which ended-up hosting six of them. It wasn’t even the nearest ship…
I managed to get three choppers to fly towards the tankers at 19,300’ and hoped for the best.

04:00Z: The three Atlases reached Messenya and loaded passengers (66% of the total). They now faced a four-hour turnaround time.

06:00Z: After much chaos and pain, most of the strike got back to the South of France. Most of the Rafales had to jettison weapons in order to make it (at least this functionality now works). I couldn’t save one Rafale, which was one of those that insisted on finishing its last movement order before obeying my RTB instruction and then found itself too far away from the tankers. This cost me 100VP but, as the Briefing had suggested that even a single French aircraft loss costs the player the game, I was thankful for small mercies (at this point, the score was -70 and Average). Three of the tankers also ditched over Algeria but, probably due to a bug, this cost nothing. There were false messages about a Rafale being ‘shot down’ and the aircrew getting captured, tortured and executed. I suspect that this would have happened even if the plane had ditched on the final approach to Orange or Istres.

With the three Guepards now re-fuelled over Cameroon and heading for Messenya on a Ferry mission, I launched four more, aiming to feed them through and see how well the tankers lasted. While a Hercules can refuel a Guepard (more than one at a time, in fact), it needs to descend to an appropriate altitude to do so, then go back to maximum altitude to conserve precious endurance. Again, the second group of choppers had to be Unassigned from the Ferry mission and moved to the tankers manually to avoid instant Bingo.

08:00Z: Messages erroneously reported (failed) USLF strikes against Messenya, which hadn’t actually happened because we’d wrecked their runways. One Hurkus seemed to have gotten airborne, only to ditch for 5VP.

The first trio of Guepards reached Messenya and loaded passengers. Two hours were needed to ready for the flight to Libreville.

I was then informed that I had shot down a civilian plane!. I patently hadn’t and, judging from Losses and Expenditures (no appropriate weapons used), neither had the USLF or even the Libyans. This ghastly occurrence was to repeat five times before the end, costing me 1,000VP each time and making the scoring completely meaningless. My best theory is that the neutral airports had limited fuel and eventually, on repeating Ferry missions, the planes eventually ditched.

The refuelling of the second quartet of Guepards then coincided perfectly with both the departure of the three Atlases for Libreville and the arrival of enemy ground units at Messenya. The French light tanks dealt with the first ‘technical’ to appear.

Once refuelled, the Guepards insisted on completing their previous movement orders before obeying the Ferry mission to Messenya, so I had to make manual corrections.

Two more ‘technicals’ appeared at Messenya. One was destroyed by the tanks but somehow took them out in return, depriving the garrison of their only weapons with a range of over 0.2nm. The other ‘technical’ then just stooged aimlessly about. Ground unit losses score for neither side.

10:00Z: More enemy ground units showed-up (another ‘technical’ and some infantry). Resignedly, I tried to turn the four incoming choppers around and return them to Tonnerre, but the game declared an ‘AI Emergency’ and re-directed them back to Messenya. The ensuing tug-of-war with the AI ended with two Guepards proceeding to Messenya and the others heading home, re-fuelling on the way.

11:00Z: The Atlases reached Libreville and the game automatically unloaded their passengers into the base’s Cargo. Surprise, surprise, this scored nothing!.

The three Libreville-bound Guepards with passengers launched and rendezvoused with the tankers, only for the AI to direct them back to Messenya once they’d refuelled!. I selected Libreville as their new base and put them on the appropriate Ferry mission (needed to edit this to specify a different altitude to that for the Atlases). The tankers, now getting low on fuel, needed to accompany the two groups of helicopters towards Tonnerre and Libreville.

Not long after this, the two Tonnerre-bound choppers hit their refuel thresholds and headed back to the escorting tanker.

15:00Z: Despite lots of aggravation (including repeated ‘AI Emergency’ messages), the Hercules tankers and the three Guepards with passengers made it to Libreville and the two empty choppers to Tonnerre (despite the AI again trying to re-direct them to the Admiral Ronarc’h, which was further away).

Two Guepards were left stranded at Messenya, with no hope of tanker support, while the enemy failed to press home their attack on the base. I could have launched the Atlases again but, as they lacked the time for the round trip, there was no point. I can’t see how all 16 Guepards can possibly be gotten from the ships to Messenya and then on to Libreville in the time limit.

18:00Z: It ended with a meaningless final score of -7,065. Of this, -6,000 was due to ditched civilian planes being blamed on the French and -1,000 because I had failed to evacuate ALL of the civilians. It transpired that you incur this penalty and score nothing unless you achieve perfection and get every non-combatant to Libreville, which really isn’t possible unless I have no idea what I’m talking about.

For the record, France lost a Rafale, three tankers (all to ditchings) and four ground elements. Six civilian planes ditched. The USLF lost an attack plane, an HQ, a training camp and 14 other ground elements (in combat at Messenya or during the strikes).

Judge for yourself whether you would like to play this...

[Eboreg]

Ahhh... the joy of babysitting long-range strikes...