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Hi, I am a beginner and I want to ask more experienced players how they would choose tactics for the Baltic Ballet scenario? I tried to play it twice, but the S-400 system always had a big problem for me. I will write to you how I thought about it and what I tried. Can you write me how you would proceed and what my decisions were wrong.

1. Info about 2 Russian submarines.
-I'm moving the A-19 Uppland northeast to search for the first PLA-671 Victor contact. Speed creep, depth -66. I'm trying to keep her between Visby and the last contact of a PLA-671.
- A-19 Gotland moving to the southeast to look for a second contact PLA-885, as well as to stay between the K 21 Goteborg and potential contact. Speed creep, depth -66

The goal is to reveal the position of the royal submarines and not allow them to get to my ships.

2. Buyan (67)+ Skunk 69
-K 21 Goteborg move north, speed under cavitation. Her job is to keep the Buyan and Skunk 69 in the gun range, while being out of range their weapons.

3. Buyan (68)
-I send K 31 Visby to the southeast and I send 2x JAS39C from Ronneby base to find the exact position of Buyan.

At that time, he was still at peace with Russia. I also send a pair of JAS 39C from Ronneby base over the island and Visby air base. Approximately in such a situation I will record SAM missiles and Russia becomes an enemy.

The exact position of Buyan 68 is already determined, so I sunk it with shots from K 31 Visby. Also Buyan 67 is sunk by shots from K21 Goteborg. I can also identify the SKUNK 69 as a Russian vessel from the aircraft and subsequently I will also sink it.

Subsequently, there were only some air battles, a expensived air attack on the S-400 (I managed to destroy it with Iskander at the cost of heavy losses). S-400 will destroy almost all of my bomber JAS39C and most AA aircraft. In the meantime, I will destroy the Russian airborne aircraft, but then only air battles will follow (with NATO firces F22 and rest of my JAS39), which are also very expensive for me (almost 1: 1). I never found Russian submarines.

I manage to collect a score of about 900b, but it seems expensive paid.

How would you handle this scenario? How to deal with the S-400 and have minimal losses?

Hi rusopp

I gave this scen a go last night and the way I see it, you have two options.
Fight the Russians alone and accept heavy losses, or use the US forces in Norway and crush the Russian forces without too much difficulty.

I chose option two.

At start all your JAS39´s are loaded with IRIS-T missiles instead of the much longer ranged Meteor, so I started to reload all A/C at the northern AB with Meteors. The rest was switched to quick turnaround. The JAS39 is designed to be turned around very quickly, so you can generate a lot of sorties with this option.

First get your AEW plane up on a patrol just outside range of the SA-21 battery, and at the same time setup a jamming patrol with the Compass Call from Norway in the same area.

The AEW plane will give you the locations of the Russian ships, so you can attack them at will. Officially you are still at peace with Russia, but you can easily provoke an "incident" by flying a plane into SAM range and have them fire at you. This is very "gamey" I admit but it works. Kill the ships but save as many ASM´s as possible from the southern ship as they are also capable of engaging land targets.

When the shooting starts, make sure you have a pair of F-22´s on patrol around Gotland, but outside SAM range.
There´s no point in fighting on the enemy´s terms, so let his patrols come to you and kill them one at a time. The combination of stealth and jamming should enable you to get close enough to get high Pk shots. Remember to launch replacement aircraft soon enough so that they will arrive on station before the previous pair runs out of missiles.

This should actually give you enough points to win without taking out the SA-21 site, but if you want to do it, you should use the EA-18G Growlers as jamming escort for your F-35´s carrying JASSM´s, followed closely by the WCMD carrying F-35´s. The JASSM is a stealthy missile, so the SAM site will probably not detect them until it´s too late, if you make sure there´s a ton of jamming on the same axis. And if you time it with a bunch of ASM´s from the Swedish ship, you can saturate the SAM site. Just make sure that you hit it with cluster bombs just after the cruise missiles hit, so it doesn´t have time to reload.

That´s how I did it, but I´m sure you can do it differently.

Hope this helped, and remember to never fight fair. Always maximize your advantages, and the enemy´s disadvantages.

Let me know how it goes.

Søren

PS. There´s a few more details that I´ll let you figure out for your self[;)]

Another gamy way to deal with long range IADS is to bait them to fire at you at edge of their range and then immediately turn away or dive. If you don’t have enough stand-off weapon or actual decoy that is.

You can use a large number of fighters to bait them. Each 4th gen and up can bait 2 missiles each time. I don’t think any IADS unit in CMO has over 100 missiles overall or over 50 missiles loaded and ready (maybe S400 has 64 loaded and ready? Can’t remember), so it’s generally doable to bait them to run out of ammo, especially in large scenarios where you have a lot of AC and time.

Against SARH or TVM systems it is easier. Just dive under the horizon and the missiles will lose track. Against missiles with active terminal guidance like those from S400 would need some micro. You can approach at high altitude and afterburner away immediately after enemy missile launch. Don’t dive or you will lose speed. Also turn off auto evasion. This way you can hopefully drag the missiles to run out of fuel or at least having their PoH greatly reduced. Final tip: when approaching enemy range, do not fly straight towards IADS. Fly at an angler, so when you turn away (directly away from IADS) your AC do not need to turn that much. This can save some time spent on turning and let your AC travel a bit further before the missiles catch up. May save a life.

You can also approach below horizon or with terrain masking, turn to tangent to the IADS (say the IADS is to your east, then you should fly north or south), ascend above horizon, and then dive immediately after enemy missile launch. After descending below horizon or behind terrain like mountains, turn to the opposite direction (still tangent to the IADS) and after burner away. In this way, the missiles would still use your last known bearing and course to calculate an interception point, but since you have changed your course to the opposite direction after diving, the missiles will reach the interception point, turn on active seeker, and find nothing there.