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This interesting historical scenario recreates the Iranian raid on the H-3 Iraqi bomber base in 1981. Iraqi Badger and Blinder bombers had been a thorn in Iran's side and the Islamic Republic did a deal with Syria which opened a backdoor route to attacking their airfields in NW Iraq, previously out of effective range. The Syrians allowed Iranian aircraft to use Damascus Airport to stage aircraft after the raid.

You can only play the Iranian side. At your disposal are 10 F-14 Tomcats, armed with Phoenix missiles, which totally outclass anything Iraq has. These must cover 26 elderly Tiger IIs and 13 Phantoms. You also have two Boeing 747 tankers, already at Damascus and two Boeing 707 tankers at Tabriz in NW Iran. Two Bell choppers played no active part in my playthrough, though they can be given Ferry loadouts. Iran also has I-HAWK SAMs and ground-based radars.

The Iraqis rely on a mix of outmoded MiG-21s, with some early-model Floggers and somewhat more dangerous Mirages. The Badgers and Blinders are just targets on the ground, as are some Fitter attack planes and Foxbat recon aircraft. In the air defence department, they have Guidelines, Goas and mobile Gainfuls, along with a selection of radars.

Not all of the Iranian strike aircraft are ready at the start and I felt it wise to wait the necessary 10 hours (the scenario lasts 24) to load eight of the Tigers with bombs. That gave me 12 bomb-armed Tigers, 4 Phantoms with bombs and 4 more with Standard ARMs with which to conduct the strike and 3 recon-model Phantoms to scout ahead. I could have re-equipped the other 14 Tigers and two Phantoms as well, but I was unsure of the level of enemy CAP to expect and opted to retain fighter loadouts.

The route to the target is pretty obvious, hugging the Iraq-Syria border. Along the way, you need to pass enemy airfields around Mosul and Kirkuk, overfly two switched-off radar sites, squeeze through a gap between the border and a Goa site backed by radar, then go SW towards H-3.

11:00L : While waiting for the strike planes to ready, I began by sending a recon Phantom along the route, covered by a pair of Tomcats. The Iraqis responded by scrambling 6 MiG-21s, which were massacred for 15 VP each. The Phantom revealed that the fixed Guideline site at H-3 was supported by no less than five batteries of Gainfuls. These could be avoided by coming-in low at 250', but we would then need to pop-up briefly in order to bomb.

12:00 : I sent an ARM Phantom to H-3 as the recon plane continued to observe. Four more MiG-21s tried to intercept, but were picked-off by a Tomcat and the two fighter-loadout Phantoms.

13:00 : The ARM Phantom blinded the radars of two Gainful batteries, then headed to Damascus, where only Ferry loadouts were available to it. Usefully, the recon planes could operate normally from this base. Standard ARMs outrange all Iraqi SAMs in the scenario.

14:00 : A second ARM sortie blinded a third Gainful site. Meanwhile, a Tomcat, returning to base at Omidiyeh (E of Basra), used its missiles to down two more MiG-21s on CAP in that Southern zone.

15:00 : The third ARM Phantom blinded a fourth Gainful and also destroyed the Guideline's Spoon Rest radar.

16:00 : Another returning F-14 shot down a Flogger patrolling near Baghdad.

17:00 : The final ARM sortie blinded the last Gainful site and also took-out a Long Track radar. None of this scores any points. I noted that supposedly radar-less batteries were still firing at my ARMs, but with no success. Perhaps they were getting data from other radar installations around the airfield?.

21:00 : I launched the main strike, with 4 Phantoms and 14 Tigers, timing take-offs so that everything arrived at a reference point on the border at the same time. The tankers from Tabriz were then able to refuel the Phantoms, but not the Tigers, which just had to plough ahead and count on getting supplies at Damascus. Meanwhile, the ARM Phantoms had readied with Ferry loadouts and were being sent back to Hamadan in Iran.

22:00 : The attack went in and destroyed the Guideline site, a Badger, a Blinder and not a lot else. Attacking with bombs can be like that. It wasn't easy for my recon planes to identify where Iraqi bombers were because they were mostly in hardened shelters, so it was mostly a case of bomb and hope. Each destroyed Iraqi bomber scored 115 VP.

23:00 : As the strike planes landed at Damascus, a Tomcat went after Iraqi fighters around Basra. Two MiG-21s timed it perfectly to land as they were being shot at, a third was shot down as it replaced them and a second F-14 then needed three Phoenixes to get a fourth.

02:00 : Two more MiG-21s were nailed near Basra, followed by one of Baghdad's Floggers at 03:00.

10:00 ; After this, the Iraqi Air Force wisely stayed home and I passed the time attacking SAM sites and radars, even if this scored me nothing.

So it ended in a Minor Victory, with a score of +500. Iran suffered no losses, while Iraq lost two bombers, 18 fighters, 16 radar and 9 SAM elements. As in real life, it was more a propaganda coup than anything else.

You would have to work at it to lose this scenario, but it's hard to achieve more than a Minor Victory unless you get lucky with the bombing. Things could have been much harder had the Iraqi radars on the border been on, most of those at H-3 off by default and if the Iraqi fighters had responded more energetically to the incursions.

One small confession. At one point, the two fighter-loadout Phantoms, which were on a pre-set CAP mission, launched under AI control and, while I wasn't looking, flew straight into the Baghdad air defence zone!. To make things worse, they were 5 minutes from Bingo Fuel and the Mission Doctrine had them going Engaged Defensive (inviting the Iraqis to fire more SAMs at them instead of escaping) and, when I corrected this, attempting to fly towards the tankers near Damascus to refuel. I don't often do this, but I had a recent save and this was so gross that I went back to it before either plane was shot down. Basically, unassign all planes from pre-set Missions and then delete them, as they are accidents waiting to happen.

Thanks for the great AAR on this!

This was one of my first CMO scenarios as a new player and one of my first posts on this forum was asking for help dealing with the SAM sites over the target airfield. This scenario took me hours with lots of reloading and I became intimately familiar with it wether I wanted to be or not haha.

There's a CAP mission that incorrectly has "investigate contacts outside patrol zone." for anyone attempting this scenario this change should be made before playing the scenario as it'll prevent the phantoms from engaging as they reportedly did above. I went into more detail on it as a whole here: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 3#p4990253

I actually really enjoyed this scenario as a new player, it helped me really learn the AI and Doctrine logic. On the surface it does appear as a deceptively easy scenario however, as the description and briefing allude to the difficulty comes from the fact that like the real operation that took place under the same name the entire scenario was designed to be played out with the strike and support packages under radar altitude at all times, with your aircraft never being detecting on the way in or out from the attack. This is best guaged by the enemy response, if the route is flown below radar and skirting the border as much as possible the enemy will never launch enemy CAP against you. It's not a loss condition that's hard coded in but generally speaking if the enemy launches any aircraft against you in this Scenario the OP is considered compromised as your assets have been detected.

This can be a huge pain especially as a new player as doing this successfully requires constant switching and juggling of doctrine settings such as Unrep, RTB behavior, etc. Once successful though it's really satisfying getting your entire strike package on and off target without them ever be detecting on radar, your refueling aircraft must also stay below radar coverage at all times in this scenario as the enemy will launch CAP aircraft if the support aircraft are detected on radar just as with the fighters. The refueling portion of this real life operation took place at only hundreds of feet above the ground which was incredibly risky! The amount of times I had to reload because an aircraft would turn to RTB or refuel at the wrong moment causing them to be detected on the enemt radar is too high to count.

I've been waiting for sime AARs on this to see how other people have dealt with this scenario and/or if they decided to take the intended "Remain undetected below radar altitude at all times" route or if there were other viable options that could also lead to a successful strike.

It's a deceptively simple scenario that requires constant attention to and changes to the doctrine settings to avoid your aircraft RTBing, refueling at the wrong time, turning towards the wrong tanker, etc where any unintended changes in flight regime could cause them to be detected. I can't count how many times I had to reload this fighting with the AI. It did help me learn a lot though.

I enjoyed this read through a lot, and hearing how you decided to approach this scenario thank you for the write-up.

Thanks for the enlightening reply. Penalising the player for getting detected would be a good way of making the scenario more challenging (though it doesn't work like this at the moment). I agree that it would also make it a good deal more realistic and truer to the real-life operation.

fitzpatv wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 4:46 pm Thanks for the enlightening reply. Penalising the player for getting detected would be a good way of making the scenario more challenging (though it doesn't work like this at the moment). I agree that it would also make it a good deal more realistic and truer to the real-life operation.

I absolutely agree.

I think with some of the AI issues or potential AI issues in CMO the designer felt best to leave it up to the player to decide if they adequately remained undetected based on how the enemy responds in this scenario.

The AI just requires too much micromanaging at the moment and can't make smart enough choices on its own (climbing up to 36k feet immediately upon RTB for example) to where an immediate pass/fail for detection wouldn't be window-smashingly frustrating. Staying undetected even without being penalized in this scenario required constantly fighting with and adjusting doctrine settings sometimes every few minutes when using compression.

The designer does incorporate the fighters being launched if you're detected which is supposed to serve as a way to let you know that the enemy is aware of your incursion and the secrecy of the strike is a failure. A successful completion of the scenario is an ingress, strike and egress without any fighters ever engaging your aircraft. Doing that while fighting with the logic of some of CMOs systems can be downright infuriating though.

Anyway, that's all from me. Thanks for the AAR and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your AARs in the future, there's a ton of awesome scenarios in the CSP.

Unfortunately sorting the CSP by difficulty sees more than a few broken scenarios in the first handful or so which I've been working on fixing (and fixing only, no adjustments) to be included in the next CSP update.