New Scenario for testing NF 11.1 Vagar Vengeance

[Gunner98]

Another in the Northern Fury Series. I have jumped a scenario here as I'm reworking 10.5 & 10.6 into a single scenario. This one takes us away from Iceland briefly and back to the Faroes

Unfortunately, I haven't had much chance to test this so I would consider it an ALPHA version. I believe most of the events work but have not had a chance at balancing or refining the timings. Any comments or critique is welcome.

B


This scenario is playable by NATO:

You are Commander of TG Invincible and supported by the French carrier Clemenceau, surface, subsurface and amphibious forces as well as land based air elements; your task is to unhinge the Soviet defences, protect reinforcing airborne operations and clear the defenders out of the Faroe Islands. All while protecting civilian infrastructure and preserving your force. The Soviets however, have other ideas.

[magi]

This sounds interesting .....

[magi]

the brief is a fine read.... very nice indeed... personally i do not believe you need the all exclamation points... your dialogue in its tone is well expressed in itself.... except the one about buggering up the air field....

the operation seem somewhat complicated with a number of co-related missions for a simple fellow as myself... i would like to request a synopses of the missions following the brief.....

time to fire it up...

[Gunner98]

Thanks magi

Your not the only one who has asked for task summaries. My briefs are too long and complicated but am not sure how to change that. I will add the following to the bottom of the briefing:

Task summary:

• TGs Invincible & Clemenceau: Conduct Sea Control operations, gain air superiority, conduct ISTAR, SEAD, CAS and targeted strikes.
• TG De Ruyter: Conduct an ASW/ASuW sweep east of the islands than position itself to the NE.
• TG Birmingham: Conduct an ASW sweep ahead of the Amphibs throughout
• TG Fearless: Conduct amphibious landing at Torshaven. Deliver 3 SBS teams, then position off the town to debark troops
• TG Intrepid: Conduct amphibious landing at Runavik. Deliver 3 SBS teams, then position off the town to debark troops
• HMS Upholder: Deliver SBS Teams, then Sea Control & ESM.
• HDMS Narhvalen: Sea Control & ESM.
• RAF Lossiemouth: AEW, ECM, MPA and Tanker support plus two daylight airstrikes and some precision night ops.

General: The player will have to come up with ways to conduct the following:

• Support the para-drops, there are 4 of them, the first is fairly easy, the last couple could be quite complex. You lose major points if you lose C-130s
• Ground Support and Targeting, ideally there should be nothing left on Vagar by the time the morning para-drops deliver 1 & 3 Para. First you need to find the targets however.
• NGS: an implied task, will help with destroying the 317th Bn, but you need to find and protect the resources to do this.
• Neutralize the airport, but not damage it.

Note: I need to work out a Lua event to simulate the capture of the airfield. In the interim, you may wish to put those units occupying the area on Wpns Hold, so they don’t just shoot the place up.

Hope this helps

B

[magi]

gunner.... dont change them... your writing craft is really getting good.... it adds a lot of real ambiance and enhances your scenarios in a novel way.... a summery as above is perfect addendum.... and easier to reference to...

i believe the lead asw ship (f96 sheffield) in tg invincible should have at least one ready helo with an asw loadout....

[wild_Willie2]

Hi Gunner,
I have been giving this scenario a go and I am having once again severe difficulties with suppressing the Soviet air defenses. As there are no airborne jammers available, the only way to suppress these SAM sites is to try and use ARM missiles to knock some of them out so the following massed low level attacks have at least some chance of getting through. But the available forces only have 8 AS-37 Martel ARM missiles ready for use and I can't even knock out the P-80 radar with these as all eight of them get intercepted before they can even get close to the target :s .I even tried to combining the AJ Martels armed Buccaneers with the AS armed ones and still all weapons and bombers get shot down before they can even hit the P-80 radar. Then I got desperate and send in every last ground attack AC at once and it was a total massacre but I did manage to put a single bomb on the radar.

So either tone down the air defenses a bit or put in much more ARM missiles, it took some experimenting but I found out that it takes at least 20 ARM missiles, all fired at once just to take out the P-80 radar..

The Brits and the French are totally under equipped to take on these SAM sites without suffering grievous losses.

W.

[Gunner98]

Ok Willie

I'll taker a look - we've got an ice storm happining here so i can't go do what the better half wants me to do anyway. [:D][;)]

[Gunner98]

OK

Here is Ver 1.1. Have added a couple EC-130s and a squadron of Tornado G1's with 4 birds loaded with 4xALARM each which should do the trick.


B

[wild_Willie2]

Ok, V1.1

I can now knock out the P-80, at the cost of 4-5 Tornado's. Since the 1.09 update, jamming has been severely toned down and the S300/S400 series SAM's have become exceedingly deadly, even with jamming. I would also suggest to move some SOF forces to the south side of the island to act as spotters as you have no recon air assets that can survive contact with the Soviet air defenses and strike aircraft need to first locate the SAM units before they can hit them. They thus have to circle the islands and still get shot down in droves before they can attack the air defenses. Also move the first air drop back a few hours, there is now hardly any time to conduct any comprehensive suppression campaign.

I would also move up the ready time of the ELINT Nimrod to the start of the mission, most of the allied AC don't have ELINT or radar warning equipment and thus get nailed by SAM's before they even know they are being fired upon.

Your air defense setups are getting exceedingly more difficult to break, and with the underequipped Brits and French on the receiving site, it's not getting any easier to take them down.

[Schr75]

Hi Gunner

It´s impossible to reach the Runavik Debark zone as it´s landlocked.
If you zoom in really close you will find that the lowest elevation in what looks like a narrow fjord is +1m, so your landing ships can´t reach the zone.

I would suggest moving the zone a few miles to the south.

S

[magi]

what willie says.... i had the same problem.... with no time to do ISR missions there are many surprises when you get over red area... i tried it adding two tornado's with alarm loadouts... they closed on their targets cutting the range of their missiles in half before they launched and got creamed.... you can get pretty close to targets flying low and using terrain for masking... but as soon as you pop up its a bad deal..... will try this new one... thanks for the changes...

[Gunner98]

Thanks all. Am on the road again so will be a week or so befor I can do the changes.

I meant to make that Nim ready but forgot. Will do. Will also add SOF and back off the first para drop by a couple hours.

When I plotted that landing area I had the relief layer up. Looked fine but did not check depth or test it. Will fix

Thanks for the help

B

[magi]

okidokie.... have fun....

[AndrewJ]

So I've got the Upholder parked in its zone, the HAHO went in and out of its zone, the gun drop went through its zone, but I've got nothing happening on the ground. I got a few messages indicating drops had started, but nothing after that. Has anyone else had this problem?

[magi]

i havent gotten that far... im having a hard time destroying the red IADs.... how did you do it.....? im going to have to attack them a second time....

[AndrewJ]

So I set the Warpac side to weapons hold and let the scenario run to see what the paratroopers would do.

I got the following events only:

HAHO INITIAL CONTACT 6:30:00 PM
Vince Navy, this is Razor 1 (24 Sqn #1). Herky-bird with 33 Soles inbound for HAHO jump in 60 minutes, transiting from A1 to A2. Request escort and SEAD. OVER.


7 PARA INITIAL CONTACT 6:30:00 PM
Vince Navy, this is Razor 2 (24 Sqn #2). Inbound, 8 Bugsmashers with mud-guns, ETA 90 min, IP BRAVO 1, transiting in the weeds from BRAVO 2 to BRAVO 3, Egress BRAVO 4 to BRAVO 5. Request escort and SEAD. OVER


HMS UPHOLDER ARRIVES AT DEBARKATION AREA SBS A 7:00:20 PM
Sir, The Upholder has arrived in its debarkation area; they will need to remain at periscope depth for the next10-15 min or so to unload their three SBS teams


1 PARA INITIAL CONTACT 3:30:00 AM
Vince Navy, this is Gander (30 Sqn #1). Inbound, 18 Birds with 1 Para, ETA 90 min, IP CHARLIE 1, transiting heavy and low from CHARLIE 2 to CHARLIE 3, Egress CHARLIE 4. Expecting hot reception - Request escort, SEAD, ground support and fire plan. Bulldog following with 3 Para in 15 minutes on DELTA track. OVER


3 PARA INITIAL CONTACT 3:45:00 AM
Vince Navy, this is Bulldog (47 Sqn #1). Inbound, 18 Birds with 3 Para, ETA 90 min, IP DELTA 1, transiting low and slow from DELTA 2 to DELTA 3, Egress DELTA 4. Request your help to clean out the bad guys. OVER


1 PARA END DROP 6:49:45 AM
Vince Navy, this is Gander (30 Sqn #1). Ground pounders away commencing egress. OUT


1 PARA EGRESS 9:05:55 AM
Vince Navy, this is Gander (30 Sqn #1). Heading home, good luck. OVER


1 PARA START DROP 9:22:35 AM
Vince Navy, this is Gander (30 Sqn #1). Dropping presents. OUT


Those were the only events that fired during the entire run. Anyone else getting results like this?


None of the paratroopers or special forces arrived.
Some events never happened at all (exit messages for arty drop, etc.).
Some events were well out of order (1 Para Start Drop being the very last message, for example). It's like some aircraft were triggering areas, and some were not.
The C-130s arrived in several clumps that were hours apart - they're on the 1/3 rule at the moment which is probably the cause. Not sure if this is intentional.
Should the para drop missions be 'one-time only'? They were rerunning each time they readied.
I think the HAHO jump is in and out of its area too fast for the 9 minute window to give the exit message - but that shouldn't affect the timer I think?
1Para timer unit not selected I think.


EDIT: It looks like the main problem's on my end. I'm getting the events to fire now.

[AndrewJ]

Magi, I didn't actually manage to destroy the entire IADS yet either. I made a combined attack from the north with all ALARMs and both types of Martels. This managed to get rid of all the surveillance radars and it damaged both SA-12s, but did not destroy them. The main thing it did was use up their stockpile of missiles (some of which had already been spent shooting at aircraft and ASMs when I was engaging the patrol boats). After that I was able to try and deal with the SA-15s, but the combination of low cloud and high minimum altitude on LGBs is making that very difficult at the moment. I was able to get rid of the damaged SA-12s (primarily to destroy their long range radar), but I will definitely need a second strike to deal with the remaining SA-15s that still have ammo. There's a million SA-18s down there too, yech.

[AndrewJ]

Aha! Now that I've got the events going this scenario makes much more sense. Get the Upholder in there with those SBS and go all Pebble Island on their ass! Hello Mr. Open Parking, please shake hands with my good friend Mr.C-4! What's in this kit-bag? Why it's a laser designator! Gosh, whatever shall we do with that?? Bwahahahaha!

[magi]

ok... thanks andrew...
i went in from the east at a thousand feet... using the terrain for masking.... first with the alarms and sea eagles.... they were going to be followed by strikers with lgbs and rocket loadouts once the aids were reduced... but that didnt go well enough...
the first problem was locating targets with no previous istar and getting red to light up long enough... i couldnt launch all my alarms as they were evading so much they had to refuel... i had some success... but not enough to follow through with my first strike plan... and i cheated and used two compass calls...
i was trying to do too much with too little and poor tactical doctrine... i am anticipating my second strike will be more successful...

[AndrewJ]

I've not been able to give this a full runthrough yet, but I'm wondering about the artillery drop.

I suspect the number of guns and amount of ammunition is somewhat optimistic considering there's only 6 Hercules doing the actual gun drop. You're dropping 12 guns, so that's two per airplane, which they can fit one behind the other when the guns are folded. However, when you add in pallets, parachutes, etc., then there's no room for any ammunition. (Incidentally, do L118s actually get dropped? I've found plenty of pictures of helicopter deployment, but none of parachute drops yet.)

In CMANO each two-gun section is equipped with 800 rounds of ammunition. Assuming we're firing L31A3 HE and using the L35A2 cartridge (no super charges) that's another 17 tons of ammunition per section, excluding incidentals like packing cases, pallets, parachutes, etc. That's 104 tons of pure ammo for both batteries, with packing I'm going to guess that's up over 120 tons, so that's another 7 C-130s at absolute max load, or 8 at max normal payload. (Assuming they're weight limited, not volume limited.)

So it looks like the British would either need more planes, or would have to deliver fewer guns and ammunition with the existing lift.