Air power

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by Paul Wykes
Hi,

I don`t know how relevant this information is (or how accurate) but I`ve got the following from a book I`ve got to hand (published in 1989)

Thanks Paul!

[jrcar]

Rob you are right with your abbreviations but only major airforces (like US and USSR and maybe UK) have the "cab ranks" (using dedicated aircrew and aircraft like A-10 and SU-25) and usually only when they have local or complete air superiority. For every one else it is very rare, and usually only carefully planned, when and if you get some Close Air Support.

And you don't get it in bad weather conditions

Cheers

Rob

Originally posted by RobertCrandall
I was rereading this with great interest. I'm a little unsure of the abreviations though. Is "BC" = Battery Commander, "BG" = Brigade Group. "Regiment" follows the British convention in Canada and refers to what our American friends would call a battalion.

Did you see this 'cab rank' stuff? That was the practice in WW2 I have read and was highly regarded in practice. I didn't know they still did it though - it implies a considerable surplus of available sorties to be able to put them up just on spec like that - so is that strictly a US thing? I presume your experience suggests that the Canadians learned from the Brits not to expect that sort of luxury....

Does anyone even know now what the OB of the respective air forces was? I thought we had 2nd TAF in the north and 4th TAF in the south but I can't find it now that I am looking for it. Also, each WP front would have its own air army but I don't know the designations. Anyone have that off the top of their heads?

Cheers, Rob.

[IChristie]

Actually, by BG I meant "Battle Group" which is a battalion sized combined arms organization. In Canadian doctrine the assigment of Close Support Arty personnel is as follows:

Forward Observation Officer - Combat Team (Company)
Battery Commander - Battle Group (Battalion)
Regimental CO - Brigade Group (Bde)

Arty obsevers move with the "supported arm" and more or less form part of the HQ group although they may deploy some distance away to get a better look at the terrain.

A FOO fireplan typically uses his bty and the BG's mortars

BC's fireplan typically uses all three bty's of the reg't plus any other Bde fire support resources

CO's generally only coordinate deliberate fire plans (i.e. 12 to 24 hours in advance) and would draw on arty in the div and corps reserve as well as his own reg't.

[jrcar]

Oops my bad! Sorry

Cheers

Rob

[IronManBeta]

My summary of the preceeding discussion follows. Hopefully I haven't mangled it too much. Coding starts this week at long last.


Flashpoint – Fixed Wing CAS Sorties

1. Doctrine for both sides allows for a certain number of fixed wing air close air support sorties within 40 km or so of the forward edge of battle area (FEBA). Whereas this is an extremely high-risk area for these valuable assets, availability will be limited and reserved for high payoff targets. Long-range artillery and helicopter assets remain the preferred platforms for routine fire missions within this zone.
2. The game will offer a simplified Fire Support Coordination Center (FSCC) screen that represents the divisional coordination of all fire assets. (We should move the off-map arty to this screen too.) The screen identifies the type and quantity of generic fixed wing air sorties that have been made available [0, 2 or 4] for use by the player during the turn.
a. ‘Cab Rank’ sorties - are available for use subject to a 5 minute delay. Generally, only US forces would have cab rank air sorties available.
b. ‘Fire Plan’ sorties - are subject to a minimum 30 minute delay since they must be coordinated through a Corps / Army HQ first.
3. The player can request some or all of his available sorties to be used against a CAS target as of a certain time, which is not less than the minimum delay and not more than 30 minutes beyond the end of the current turn. He has no control over the mission profile otherwise (not his job). Ordnance is presumed to be conventional (not nuclear) HE bombs. Precision guided bombs? Fuel air explosives?
4. Five minutes prior to air strike arrival all artillery fire into the general area (CAS target and surrounding eight locations) of the strike will cease. All helicopter units will move out of the area. Arty fire cannot resume until five minutes after the observed conclusion of the air strike.
5. On arrival the air strike commander will evaluate the situation on the ground with a view to deciding if one pass (safer but less accurate) or two (riskier but more accurate) is indicated. Factors to consider are:
a. Ability to clearly ID the target [are there any visible enemy units at all in the target location: yes / no, the intended target may have moved away in the meantime, use standard spotting rules to get an idea],
b. Closeness of friendly units [< 1.5 km?, yes / no], and
c. Hostile air defense threat [high, medium, low].
6. Generally the result will be:
a. AD high, and either no clear target or friendlies are close: abort, else
b. AD medium and no clear target and friendlies are close: abort, else
c. Friendlies are close or AD is low or no clear target: two passes, else
d. One pass.
7. If the CAS target location is empty of targets when the air strike arrives, it will still be bombed unless the mission otherwise aborts.
8. A sound effect is rendered of an approaching jet(s) for each pass and the CAS target location is flashed. AD fire SFX is rendered. The actual path of the aircraft is not shown and does not necessarily go through the CAS target if this is the first of two passes.
9. The impact zone is determined based on the original CAS target location and calculated accuracy of the drop. This is a ‘national rate’ modified by visibility / weather, number of passes, and effective AD fire.
10. On the ordnance delivery pass the bomb SFX are rendered in the impact zone [just one 500 m x 500 m location in size?] and combat losses immediately taken to all units in the impact zone.
11. If an aircraft is shot down then a crash location is picked at random on the map and the appropriate SFX and animation are rendered. All units in the crash location take combat losses.

[DavidW75]

Patience pays off again. Great to hear Rob. Good luck with the coding.
A day over is a day closer

[jrcar]

Rob that looks good. Note that PGM's are normally so stand off that the mission profile would not be on the map (I'm thinking laser designated low-hi-low toss bombing from 5-15km, but that would need a unit to designate the target), but in the timeframe of the game I think iron bombs are the primary weapon, followed by strafing (A-10, F-16, SU-25).

I think the SOVIETS could have organised a "cab-rank" type system, but it would be more tightly controlled and less responsive unless you were the directly supported unit. My understanding of the US concept was that any HQ in the area on the net could call juicy targets.

Are you including chemical weapons in the game? TACAIR would include those.

Maybe you need a mission profile as well, be it strafing or bombing (iron, , submunitions, PGM, chemicals)?

For a two ship formation I think an area of effect of 500x500m is appropriate, with maybe a bit of random leakage into adjacent squares, especially along the track of the target.

The effect on armour (unless strafing or submunitions) should be negligable, its softer units like HQ's, arty and log elements that are the main targets, also enemy assembly areas and fixed facilities (bridges).

BTW did you think about TACAIR recon missions (including UAV's)? An imagery intelligence report is normally prepared and disseminated within 30mins of a recce mission returning to base.

chers

Rob

[IronManBeta]

JRCar - Thanks for the added thoughts! Recon I can't really worry about now, but the others ought to be feasible.

[Sabre21]

Rob

Here is something that will help you with the Air Force OOB for Nato and WP for 1989.

Sabre21

[Blackhorse]

Rob,

Question in regards to one point:


4. Five minutes prior to air strike arrival all artillery fire into the general area (CAS target and surrounding eight locations) of the strike will cease. All helicopter units will move out of the area. Arty fire cannot resume until five minutes after the observed conclusion of the air strike.

I was just an American ground-pounder, but I thought that in the event of a war our friendly, reliable, courageous Air Force was going to rely on the "big sky, little bullet" doctrine: providing air support even at the risk of having a friendly artillery shell down our own aircraft. As for the Pact, I seriously doubt they had the communications and command-and-control necessary to provide the level of real-time coordination necessary to keep artillery, aircraft and helicopters out of the same air space.

[IronManBeta]

Does anyone else have an opinion on either of these two issues? I can see peacetime intentions being one thing and wartime realities being another.

One of my concerns is that since a modern arty barrage is so incredibly violent it would be virtually impossible to visually identify a target under bombardment. I am somewhat less concerned about an arty shell intersecting an aircraft in mid-air, but low level straffing a zone under bombardment sounds like a complete non-starter to me. This is where we need the voice of experience to chime in!

Also unasked is the question, should all friendly anti-air assets be stood down if a friendly airstrike is supposed to be coming in? Friendly fire is no joke either and it can happen to anybody. Or should I be assuming that every single AA asset on the map will blaze away at everything that is aloft? They aren't supposed to of course, but lots of crazy things can happen....

Cheers, Rob.

[jrcar]

Well the theory is the arty stops... I can appreciate there would be times when this may not occur BUT AF chaps are notoriously reluctant to go in in these circumstances...

Friendly fire is an unfortunate reality. Again in theory all AD assets in the zone that the strike goes in are supposed to 'check fire'. Again in a war this may/would not occur.

Maybe a flag for the first one? 'Arty stops yes no' with a chance the aircraft aborts anyway and/or a chance of the aircraft getting destroyed.

The second one should be a random chance as well... **** happens, with low moral units likely to blaze away anyway?

I suppose Rob are you tring to do a doctrinal/training game or the real grittieness of a war that never was.

Cheers

Rob

[IronManBeta]

Well, I am still not quite happy with the design.

At what speed would a CAS sortie actually fly as it made the attack? What would be a reasonable generic upper and lower speed that would cover most cases? My guess is that the speed would be quite high and at this game scale the attack would be over in an instant. This impacts the way air defense is resolved considerably!

"Combat speed" for a A-10 Thunderbolt II was 700 kph, so it could fly the entire 20 km width of the map in just 1.75 minutes. Cruising speed was 555 kph or 2.16 minutes. Is this a long time or a short time for air defense weapons to get into action?

Cheers, Rob.

[IronManBeta]

Targets can easily move from one point to another in the time it takes for an airstrike to arrive. If a pilot is told to hit a particular piece of ground but when he arrives it is clearly empty and there are a pile of enemy vehicles just 500 or 1000 m away, all else being equal, it makes sense to me that he would shift his point of attack to the observed target of opportunity.

Is this unrealistic? Or would be have to attack the target location as originally assigned regardless? Or would he abort the original mission, call in for instructions and ask permission to attack the target of opportunity? I believe that they are more or less in constant contact with their controllers (electronic warfare permitting) so presumably it would be but the work of a few seconds to get clearance to alter that attack to suit the circumstances. I would expect this to be a constant part of every drill and rehersal, but does anyone know that for sure?

I could frame the mission so that it is "attack this location and nothing else" or "attack the best target of opportunity within x meters of this particular location". The latter is a new thought to me (!) and might make for a more realistic game.

Thoughts?

Rob

[jrcar]

Good questions Rob, I can't answer them at the moment BUT I don't think an A-10 would fly that fast because it needs target acquistion time as well. (Just asked a few people and while no definitive answer the general answer was slow....).

Acquisition for AD assets is why items like Shilka have Radar (and RAPIER, SA13 etc) so as to get the bearing of attack so as to reduce engagement time. I have no experiance with "cloud punching" so I can't advise if this is a long or short time.

I think its reasonable for the airstrike to re-target within a radius of upto 2km, as long as its the same target type (Ie you are tasked to take out a bridge, and take out vehicles instead, that would be 'wrong' IMHO).

It should be 'attack this target type with X m of this point'.

Cheers

Rob

[byron13]

I don't know anything about Air Force doctrine or the capabilities of Soviet AA weapons. But the A-10s I saw flying around and making runs on poor 'ole me seemed to be flying fairly slow - probably 300 knots or less. Since their tactics are to pop up, do a violent roll onto the target, and then shoot, it would seem that they would need some acquisition time, which can only be gained by flying slower. This is even more true if they are attempting to line up a cannon shot on one or maybe even two targets.

Seems to me that we should be able to find a CAS jockey somewhere to help out. I would think we could call a reserve unit with A-10s that hasn't deployed to Iraq, talk to the operations officer and, after they've checked out the web site, they would be happy to talk. We could also call some Air Force museum that keeps things like doctrinal manuals, contact a squadron web site for someone willing to discuss the doctrine of a fifteen years ago, or even call the Air Force Academy. There's bound to be some frustrated fighter jockey sitting at his desk on spring break that would love to talk about the good old days. You know, kind of like Sabre and his stories about flying through tunnels in his Cobra. We all love to talk about this stuff, and I would think any pilot would be happy to help because this is old doctrine and they can verify Matrix's credentials on-line.

Just a suggestion. Better to have the real poop than have a bunch of us non-pilots speculating.

[IronManBeta]

Hey Byron - that would probably be overkill! Your own observation was just the sort of thing I was looking for - in the real world they have to slow down to get the time to line up the shot properly. If that is what you experienced then that is what I will go with.

The air stuff is somewhat abstract anyway - the main part is to get a reasonable end result in terms of casualties in the impact area. Knowing they slow down from a 385 knot max combat speed to circa 300 knots tells me what I need to know...

Many thanks, Rob.

[byron13]

Thanks for the unwarranted compliments. I'm just thinking that we're speculating a lot as to how long it would take CAS to arrive, whether they would attack a target under artillery attack, whether they would make a second run if the target moved, etc., etc., und so weiter, ad nauseum. Certainly a lot of the input already provided is valuable, educated, and based on some experience. But there ain't no source like someone that lives and breathes it on a daily basis and, like the input of some vets on other subjects herein, is the result of considering how peacetime tactics might work in an actual war.

Don't know where you're at on development, but I'll volunteer to try and find a fighter jock that could provide some input. Not going to put THAT much into it, but I'll take a stab at it.

Cheers, laddies.

[Sabre21]

Hi guys

I know I have been off the board for a while, but I will add my 2 cents worth here.

We used to practice on a regular basis a joint operation referred to as a JAAT..Joint Air Attack. This involved the close cooperation of close air support aircraft, and in every case I did this but one it was done with A10's. Also included was the use of Army Attack Helicopters and Artillery fires.

This mission could be pre-planned, as on a pre-determined engagement area, or it could be a hasty attack where all the pieces come together on a short notice...that's why we practiced it so much.

The way this would work is that the Army Aviation unit would be in control of the operation. The sequence of events would begin with the Attack helicopters engaging the enemy air defense assets within the engagement area with direct fire weapons like hellfire or tow. The timing of the sequence was very important.
As the first wave of missiles hit, the impact of artillery would occur within seconds. The A10's would also be inbound and as the rounds completed impact, the A10's would begin strafing the hard targets with their 30mm. As A10's vered off from performing 1-2 runs, usually a 2 or 4 ship attack, the AH's would have a second volley of missiles hit any missed critical targets followed by another impact of artillery as suppression as all the air assets egressed.

We worked on a 60 second clock. From the moment the initial Call for Fire with the artillery is started, the time of flight of the artillery rounds is calculated, anti tank missiles fired so they arrive seconds prior to the arty, followed by the first runs of the A10's all occur within the first 60 seconds.

The entire engagement from the initial attack by the AH's to the artillery's last impact was typically 2-3 minutes.

Oh...and if you ever get to watch A10's do their thing, it is mighty impressive, I usually hovered right at about tree tops and on many occasions I would lose sight of the A10's as they egressed and re-engaged the targets by using any terrain to their advantage including dipping down to treetop levels. On the run in they would pop up and go inverted so as to better see the target, fire and then dive for cover. Exposure was not very long...maybe 20-30 seconds at most. Just so you know the A10's had a canopy painted on the bottom side of the aircraft in them days to confuse ground observers.

Sabre21

[byron13]

Once again, great information from Sabre. While I absolutely believe that only through repetitious training, such as that described, will something ever work in battle, I also absolutely believe that the shock of a war as intense and as violent as one in Western Europe will severely impair the benefits of that kind of training until the shock wears off. Once everyone has gotten used to being fired at - maybe 4 - 7 days - I would think things would get back close to what was trained. It's kind of like the first couple of plays in the Superbowl: everyone is so jacked up for the first play that they're not thinking and miss assignments. People tend to think too much when the "game" first begins and forget their training. But after they've taken the proverbial "first hit," they settle down and play normally. And the stakes aren't nearly as high in the Superbowl as they are in the Mother of All Battles.

Not sure why I'm saying all this. I guess it's just consistent with all of my earlier posts that I would expect a lot of confusion and stupid mistakes in the first several days of battle, and the only reason anyone survives their mistakes is that the other side is making the same mistakes.

Yeah, the A-10s were fun to watch. Suddenly popping up, looking for all the world like a balsa wood plane, making amazingly violent maneuvers so close to the ground in slow motion, and leaving you with nothing but that distinctive whine in your ears and the realization that you were toast. And the sound of that cannon . . . . I don't understand the painted canopy, though. What the h**l good does that do? "Gosh, Igor, my lead was off because I thought he was inverted!" "I'm not launching because my heat-seeking missile won't track upside down exhaust plumes." Unless you've got some hot shot sniper trying to shoot the pilot (through the bullet proof canopy and titanium tub), what difference does it make? Of course, all of their after action reports would be wrong: the report of shooting down two inverted A-10s would be wrong becase they weren't inverted.