Desert Storm 2 - The Thin Red Line 15/8/90

[fitzpatv]

Situation

This one tries to explore what would have happened had the Iraqis followed-up their conquest of Kuwait with an invasion of Saudi Arabia before the Coalition was properly ready. You can only play the coalition side.

Without going into exhaustive detail, you have two CVBGs (Roosevelt and Midway) in the Persian Gulf and another (Saratoga) in the Eastern Mediterranean. The La Salle SAG from Scenario 1, now reinforced with more frigates, has moved up the Gulf, closer to Iraq.

Properly ready or not, you still have substantial land-based air forces scattered from Incirlik in SE Turkey through Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman. These are overwhelmingly American and cover the full range of categories apart from strategic bombers.

On the ground, things are less encouraging. There is a thin screen of Saudi troops along the Kuwaiti border, with more protecting two Northern oilfields and the cities of Dhahran and Riyadh. They don’t have the numbers or firepower to withstand Saddam’s army and its likely air support. SAMs (Patriots, I-HAWKs and some vehicular MANPADs) protect the airbases and the Northern oilfields.

Iraq has no navy, but their air force has not been sent to Iran (as in reality) and is ready for action. They can field Fulcrum, Foxbat, Mirage and elderly Farmer fighters, as well as some ex-Egyptian F-16s, donated by Cairo for the Iran-Iraq War. More Mirages, Fencers and Frogfeet provide an attack capability, though they have only limited numbers of stand-off weapons. A few Blinder bombers might be equipped for Kitchen strikes on land targets and some RF-4 recon Phantoms and Mainstays are in support.

Iraqi SAMs are limited to Gainfuls and it is not clear at the start how many are accompanying the invasion force, which boasts a variety of T-72, T-55 and Chinese Type-69 tanks, plus mechanised and ‘leg’ infantry. Artillery, AA guns and MANPADs are curiously absent.

Planning

Holding the Northern oilfields seemed impractical and the best choice for the Saudi mechanised infantry/armoured screen was to trade space for time, falling back towards Dhahran on the E coast. I put all land units on Weapons Free to optimise their chances of firing first if necessary.

The Saratoga CVBG headed for the Levantine coast at Flank to shorten the range for strikes. It was nice not to have to worry about ASW for once.

With the scenario starting at night, a number of our strike aircraft (notably the Walleye Intruders on the carriers) would have to wait for dawn.

It seemed a good idea to mount TLAM strikes straightaway at the enemy airbases in Kuwait and also the one at Al-Azraq which was, somewhat inexplicably, in Jordan. Iraq itself was covered by a No Fly Zone (as were Syria, Lebanon and Egypt), so I left them alone.

Events

15/8/90 20:00Z: A message from High Command suggested that Iraq would begin invading Saudi Arabia at around 21:00Z. However, well before this, they began sending RF-4s across the border, supported by F-16s. Fighters from Midway, Dhahran and Prince Sultan (Riyadh) engaged, while our TLAMs struck home on the undefended target bases. We lost an F-15 downed (-2VP) and an F-14 damaged, but destroyed 66 Iraqi aircraft (3 Mainstays, 11 F-16s, 24 Fulcrums, 3 Mirages, 5 RF-4s, 12 Fencers and 8 Frogfeet) for a VP each, as well as four hangars and four AvGas tanks. This made the score +64 and Average.

21:00Z: Word arrived that an Iraqi delegation would be leaving Baghdad for Tehran at around 22:00Z to try to bring Iran into the war. We were told to shoot it down, so two F-14s from Roosevelt were sent over NW Iran. Iran has no combat aircraft in this one, so this was safe enough.

Another RF-4 was downed over the oilfields.

At 21:30, we were told that the Iraqis had crossed the border but, unexpectedly, at Al Qurayyat and Turaif in the NW, near Jordan. Saratoga sent 3 Intruders and a TARPS F-14 in that direction and I diverted my SR-71 recon plane there, too.

22:00Z: We passed a frustrating hour. The two F-14s found only civilian airliners over NW Iran and had to RTB for lack of fuel, allowing a gap before their replacements could arrive.

Meanwhile, the SR-71 and TARPS Tomcat found no trace of Iraqi ground troops in NW Saudi Arabia, nor could we detect anything in Kuwait.

Several aircraft then took-off from the supposedly-neutralised Kuwaiti airbases, just as our CAP was nearing Bingo Fuel.

23:00Z: I realised that the SR-71 had its ground search radar off and, with this remedied, we soon found a couple of small Iraqi battle groups near the captured towns. The Intruders attacked with IR Mavericks, but such were the firing restrictions with these weapons that I had to tell the AI to Auto-Engage. This worked and the planes hit a BRDM scout vehicle that proved to be the command unit for the formation. The crazy way the scenario works, destroying this caused the entire force to change sides (!) as well as scoring us 5VP and liberating the lost towns. Subsequently hitting a Type-69 tank did us no harm and the attack planes returned to the carrier.

Simultaneously, I had to deal with two other situations. The enemy aircraft turned-out to be nine strike Mirages, which headed for Dhahran, but we had enough ready fighters to down the lot without much trouble.

Meanwhile, the replacement pair of F-14s, now also low on fuel, spotted the Candid transport en route for Tehran, escorted by several Foxbats. Despite the odds, they engaged, put the fighters on Engaged Defensive and broke through to dispose of the transport, which scored 49VP. They then escaped, covered by a third pair of Tomcats, as the Foxbats elected to RTB rather than pursue.

Somehow, agents on the ground in Iran instantly recovered information from the Candid crash site, which revealed the location of the HQ for the invasion. We were told to insert special forces nearby, using Chinook choppers at Dhahran, to mark it for destruction. The same message confirmed that killing the BRDM with each Iraqi battle group would cause the whole associated force to surrender.

The score was now +124 and a Minor Victory.

By now, numerous Iraqi ground units had been spotted on either side of the Kuwaiti border.

16/8/90 00:00Z: Three F-15s, carrying a dozen bombs each, attacked three of the Iraqi formations. The latter had no mobile SAMs, AA, MANPADs or fighter cover and it was all too easy. The three battle groups were quickly induced to switch sides and we had bombs and fuel left with which to attack more.

At this point, the messing about with the allegiance of units caused an ‘Object not set to instance of object’ error (sound familiar?) and the game crashed. Investigation of the Lua Log (attached) proved that this was because the game couldn’t find the designation of the affected battle groups on the Iraqi side.

There was no possibility of continuing and the scenario had been too easy and incongruous, anyway. Hopefully, things will improve later in the series...