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Unfortunately, this one is rather topical. Iron Hand covers a crisis in the Nagorno-Karabakh region between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2014. Azerbaijan has obtained a leading-edge S-300/SA-10 Gargoyle air defence system and is using it, alongside older ones, to enforce a no-fly zone over its rival, Armenia. Russia intervenes on behalf of its Armenian ally, while Turkey remains neutral. You can only play the Russians and this AAR should not be taken to infer any personal bias I might have in the 2020 conflict - I have none and would much prefer to see a fair and lasting negotiated solution to the issue.

As the Russian theatre commander, you are ordered to take-out all Azeri Gargoyle, SA-5 Gammon and SA-4 Ganef sites and command structures while minimising your own losses and not allowing any downed pilots to fall into enemy hands. To this end, you have a formidable arsenal of aircraft, plus surface ships in the Caspian and a sub in the Black Sea mounting Kalibr cruise missiles. You also have defensive SAMs stationed in Armenia. However, only some of these weapons are effective against the Azeri air defences. Most of the air-launched missiles lack the range to engage even the old Goa SAM sites deployed by Azerbaijan without endangering planes. Most of the cruise missiles are slow and vulnerable to the high-performance SAMs. The Azeris also have numerous leading-edge MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, while many of your own fighters (including all your MiG-29s) are awkwardly boxed-into Armenia, between enemy SAM cover and an exclusion zone covering Georgia and Eastern Turkey. On the plus side, you can immediately see all of the fixed Azeri sites (Guidelines, Goas and Gammons) and the enemy completely lack a navy.

The biggest problem of all is the Gargoyle system. It has no real weakness against air attack, with a comprehensive altitude envelope and a range of 110nm, can engage even ballistic missiles (like the battery of eight Iskanders that you have in the Caucasus) and is deadly accurate. The Gammons have a range of 155nm and are central components of the Azeri no-fly zone, but are less capable of engaging high-speed missiles like Iskanders, Kitchens (on your two Backfires) and Krypton ARMs (carried by four Su-34 Fullback MRCAs).

Note that the scenario has a minor, but irritating bug, with the game throwing an error every hour because it can't generate a weather report.

Decided to make the most of the three days available and go at it carefully and gradually. As an experiment, I fired a Kitchen at a Gammon site in the W of Azerbaijan, with an Il-22 jamming plane aloft in the hope it would improve my chances (never sure of the effective range of OECM aircraft, so kept it well back). Found that Gammons can engage Kitchens, because the latter slow down on the final approach, but only at 30% chances and the Kitchen hit. Unfortunately, it only destroyed a couple of ZU-23 AA guns. What was interesting was the absence of Gargoyle fire.

The Azeris scrambled a series of MiG-29 patrols from Kyurdamir in the centre of the country, plus more from a second base at Baku. I'd already decided to leave air defence to my SAMs due to the danger from the Gammon site. This worked fine and, with the AI at its idiotic worst, all six of the Kyurdamir planes wandered into range of my Grumbles and were shot down for 25VP each. Note that the Russians mostly default to Weapons Hold and it's best to keep the Grumbles that way until the enemy planes are too far in to escape.

Decided to deal with the Gammon site and bombarded it with Kitchens and Iskanders. With 22 components, Gammon sites take a lot of destroying, but I managed it with two Iskanders remaining (500VP). This made life potentially safer for my aircraft in W Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, I had the Caspian squadron fire a Kalibr at the enemy command bunker near Baku, again to test the defences. A Gargoyle shot it down, but I couldn't fix its position. It had to be nearby, so I cautiously sent-out a Fullback with 160nm range ground search radar which outreached any Azeri weapon. This did the trick and located the Gargoyle, as well as three Ganef sites in SW Azerbaijan plus numerous mobile radars and AA guns/MANPADs.

At this point, I realised that, in this scenario at least, the Gargoyle had a surprising weakness. If it had been sensibly located in the centre of the country, it would have been next to invulnerable but, like the second Gammon site, it was on the coast near the enemy capital. However mighty it was against high-tech weaponry, it had no defence whatever against low-tech naval guns!!!. Sent the Caspian squadron to engage at Flank, praying that the enemy Fulcrums weren't loaded with bombs and rockets, as the fleet's SAM cover was weak.

While waiting, I made the most of the Fullback sortie and took-out three radar sites for 50VP each (you need +2000 to win and +1000 to draw). Also used the remaining Iskanders to damage one of the Ganefs. The sub Krasnodar also picked-off a Spoon Rest radar in the far W of Azerbaijan with a Kalibr, then a nearby Tall King for another 100VP total.

In due course, the three frigates and corvettes arrived off Baku, ignoring shadowing Fulcrums which made no attempt to attack. Despite the inaccuracy of the corvette Volgodonsk's impressive-looking Grad rockets, basic 100mm and 76mm gunfire made a sorry mess of the Gargoyle and Gammon sites for a whopping 1,500VP. I then used Kalibrs to take-out the command bunker. This scores no VP and, although you get a message saying that enemy air defence co-ordination has been damaged, there was no evidence for this in practice. I then took-out a couple of radars with Kalibrs to take the score to +2,500 and a Major Victory.

A nice, clinical, bloodless Russian victory. However, I couldn't resist seeing what would have happened had I gone for the Triumph. Find out in the next post...

So, I banked the Major Victory and continued. Things got much harder. To improve the score enough, you have to eliminate at least some of the three Ganef sites in SW Azerbaijan (and your orders are to destroy them all). These are awkwardly-located. Your Armenian-based planes can't engage them because their weapons lack the range to attack safely. The only solution (apart from long-range sniping with Kitchens, which are only available once per day) was (I thought) to manoeuvre my Fullbacks around the Caspian to attack from the East. This needed tanker support and something clearly had to be done about the Baku-based Fulcrum patrols, which could interdict any approach to the Ganefs.

I sent-in eight Su-27 Flankers, backed by a Fencer ECM plane and a tanker. Four Fulcrums came to meet me. Especially as the enemy only had Archer missiles against my longer-ranged Alamos, it should have been easy. Closing, I realised that my planes weren't firing, enabling the enemy to get into range. It turned-out that they were somehow on Weapons Hold, even though I'd switched them to Weapons Tight. Forced to fire all shots manually, thoroughly fazed and under real-world time pressure, I 'won' the duel 4-2. However, downed Russian aircraft score 200VP to just 25VP for Azeri planes, so I was back to a Minor Victory.

Worse, another four Fulcrums scrambled from Baku. The problems repeated themselves and I lost all six Flankers for three of the Azeris, leaving me on a draw before hurrying to the pub to watch Tottenham beat Man Utd 6-1 (soccer, for the uninitiated), which I wouldn't have missed for the world!.

Resuming next day, I had two downed pilots to rescue. Used a Hip SAR chopper to rescue one (50VP), but another two Fulcrums interrupted attempts to save the other one. In any event, the range was borderline and it was clearly desirable to use Mi-26 Halo choppers to establish a forward support base as described in the scenario briefing. Doing this wasn't without its problems. Having launched both Mi-26s as a group, I found that you need a SINGLE chopper to establish the base. You also need to select the Setup Forward Refueling Point row before you click Execute, or nothing happens (being at Hover and Minimum Altitude also helps, as with rescues).

As the enemy fighters landed, I sent-out another SAR mission, covered by my four remaining Flankers with a tanker and Mainstay AEW plane in support. Unbelievably, two more Fulcrums promptly launched!. Grimly engaged with the Flankers. With more time, I was able to work-out what was wrong. It seemed that, when I switched from Group to Unit View, the AI was reversing my Weapons Tight and Always Evade=No orders to Weapons Hold and Yes, resulting in the 'manual targetting, delayed fire and blind missiles issues encountered earlier. It hadn't previously happened to me because fighters aren't generally on Weapons Hold by default. Quite simply, this is a bug. With this resolved, I took-out both Fulcrums easily, much to my relief. The SAR mission then went fine.

Did what I could to retrieve more points. Krasnodar fired her last Kalibr at the Ganef damaged earlier, but it was swatted by a Goa. The Caspian squadron used their remaining missiles to take down several radars and further damaged the Ganef. Outrunning yet more Fulcrums as needed, Fullbacks attempted to fire Kryptons at the Ganefs, threading a course inland through the enemy SAM and AA sites. They weren't helped by the damaged site no longer radiating or by a pair of malfunctioning missiles, but scratched both of the other sites. At this point. all the Ganef sites stopped radiating, relying on nearby Goas for defence and rendering the Kryptons useless beyond taking-out a radar.

The Backfires were now available again and their four Kitchens finished-off the first Ganef despite two missiles again malfunctioning (200VP).

Waited a day for the Backfires to become available once again. Using a Fullback for recon, these got rid of the second Ganef, but were now out of the game, leaving me on +1,875, still 125 short of a win.

In desperation, I turned to my two Bear and two Tu-160 Blackjack bombers, based near Saratov. I then belatedly realised just how many Kh-101 and Kent cruise missiles these carried (8 and 12 per plane, respectively)!!. They might be slow and vulnerable to SAMs, but the enemy would be pushed to defend against 40 of them. Scrambled and launched. Didn't have the best of luck, as two more confounded Fulcrums launched at the wrong moment and weighed-in against the missiles, but it was still overkill and the last Ganef and an adjacent Spoon Rest (needed to take great care over target allocation but spared two missiles for the latter) were obliterated with plenty to spare.

So, a final score of 2,125 and a Minor Victory. It was a mistake to engage the Azeri Fulcrums and I'd probably have managed a Triumph had I not done so, but I wasn't to know the 8:1 VP ratio for aircraft kills in advance and was hamstrung by the Weapons Hold bug.

Overall, an excellent problem-solving scenario. Bit late now, but probably better to read this AAR after you've played it if you don't like spoilers.

This was one of my favorite scenarios. I experienced the same doctrine issues, but I fixed them by resetting the overall side doctrine before I started. Managed to get a Triumph.

Playing around with the scenario afterwards in editor mode, I discovered that nailing the enemy command bunker has a massive effect on the Azeri AD network. All non-target SAM sites get a nocomm status, meaning they can only get contacts from their own sensors. More importantly, it causes every SAM, including the SA-10 and SA-4s, to turn on their radars. If you have an ELINT plane up like one of the Fencers at a northern airbase, you'll detect every Azeri air defense unit in the country.

I also discovered the best use of the Iskanders is to knock out the bunker near the beginning of the game. They are armed with Penetrator warheads and the SA-10, while it can engage, does not have its radar on initially. A salvo of all Iskanders will knock it out, making the scenario significantly easier. It does require a couple of hours of waiting as the TELs have to drive into range.