Black Gold Blitz Re-visited 20/11/17
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2025 2:58 pm
I actually played this one some time ago and won rather easily as the Saudis. Ever since, I’ve wondered how I would manage as Iran, so it seemed as good a place as any to start my playthrough of the Command:LIVE scenarios.
To recap, tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran escalated during 2017, with small clashes initiated by both sides until it got to the point where both parties were raring for a full-scale fight, aiming to cripple each others’ oil and gas facilities in an orgy of self-harm.
As Iran, you face a technologically superior adversary and are primarily on the defensive. The hope is that an initial salvo of ballistic missiles and some sabotage operations behind enemy lines will do enough damage to claim some kind of victory. Otherwise, it’s a case of protecting your own installations.
This is an air war, with both sides keeping their navies out of harm’s way and Iran refraining from blockading the Straits of Hormuz to avoid upsetting the Americans and the other Gulf States, which are all neutral.
Iran has a force of 32 F-14s at Isfahan in the interior, two-thirds of them armed with Phoenixes and the remainder with modified HAWKs. Their other aircraft are less impressive, with a squadron of 10 lowish-endurance Fulcrums at Dezful and several groups of Phantoms armed with mid-range Sparrows at Hamedan (N), Bushehr (central coast), Bandar Abbas (SE coast by the Straits) and Char Behar (far SE coast). Some ex-Iraqi Fitters have been incongrously loaded with Aphids as quasi-fighters at Kharg Island, near Bushehr. There are also some poorly-armed and generally obsolete Tigers, Freedom Fighters and early-model Mirages which are best kept out of the way.
Options for strikes are limited to 14 Fencers inland at Shiraz and four Frogfeet at Bushehr, though the Fitters could be re-equipped. All of these aircraft are stuck with iron bombs.
There are numerous SAM sites, notably at Bushehr, but the best stuff (including two Gargoyles) is back defending Tehran and unlikely to play much part. The Gammon sites at Bushehr and Bandar Abbas have just six missiles each and, like the HAWKs and Gainfuls, struggle against low-flying targets, so you need to cover with fighters.
The main liabilities are at Bushehr, Bandar Abbas and a great swathe of oil wells near the Kuwaiti border around Ahvaz. The first two have fixed and nearby fighter defences, but the Ahvaz area is totally dependent on fighter cover from elsewhere. Several vulnerable sites are spread-out along the coast between Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, with more scattered inland and you can’t realistically hope to protect everything.
Special Actions can be used to request standard sabotage operations or desperate attacks on a Patriot battery near the Abqaiq oil storage and comms facility and al-Kharj airport, where there are Saudi support aircraft. This costs nothing, but chances of success are questionable.
You have six batteries of ballistic missiles (6 shots each), but four are Fatehs with limited range and the others are Shahabs, which have a CEP of a kilometre!
Other considerations:
- the default score of zero is a Disaster
- Iran has no AEW aircraft and is dependent on ground-based radar and CAP to detect threats
- because it’s an old scenario, you cannot forbid cranking with SARH missiles (like Phoenixes, Sparrows and Alamos) which puts Iran at a further technological disadvantage, as a lot of shots will go blind as the firing aircraft turns away to maintain range.
20/11/17 13:00Z: Launched all the Fateh missiles at the refineries and export terminal at Ras Tanura and Jubayl, N of Dammam, while the Shahabs were fired at Abqaiq and a group of outlying oil wells. I also requested the sabotage operations, reserving the other Special Actions for later (I feared a penalty if they went wrong). I soon found that Patriot missiles now hit ballistic weapons on 80%, which is a vast improvement on their efficiency in the past. The Fateh strike hit a refinery for 200VP and an AvGas tank for 100 while damaging other targets. Every single Shahab missed, though only two were actually shot down. A second refinery soon burned down for another 200VP.
The Saudis retaliated with their four DF-21 ballistic missiles and these took-out a geothermal power station for 5VP. Iran is compensated for its disadvantages by the VP schedule and aircraft losses cost nothing.
Two enemy F-15s intruded over Bushehr. The duty Phantoms avoided them and set them up for the SAMs, which bagged both for 100VP each. Saudi Tornado attack planes followed and the Phantoms and SAMs were hard-pressed to destroy most of the ALARM anti-radar missiles they carried. Some got through and did some damage to our SAMs and radars, though not to a crippling extent.
Other Saudi aircraft picked-off the vulnerable targets between Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, destroying three radars for nothing, plus a refinery and three more geothermal plants for 5 each. It was proving difficult to see the Storm Shadow missiles responsible in time to react.
14:00Z: I requested additional ballistic missiles via a Special Action but was not surprised to be turned-down.
Another facility was lost, possibly burning down from earlier attacks.
15:00Z: The score was +670 and a Minor Defeat. Not much was happening on the sabotage front.
16:00Z: A Saudi refinery burned down (or was maybe sabotaged) for 200 more VP.
The enemy were sending pairs of Eagles across the Gulf towards Bushehr on Afterburner, then withdrawing when they found no targets. I exploited this by sending F-14s after them as they turned back, but scored just one kill with 12 shots at decent chances. Still, 100VP.
17:00Z: Another Saudi refinery burned down, taking the score to +1,170 and Average.
We made a second intercept over the Gulf. It took five shots to kill an Eagle at roughly evens chances and two more then arrived and needed just one try to knock down an F-14. The intercepts were only possible if the Tomcat was at an early stage in its patrol and had enough fuel to chase on Afterburner, so opportunities were limited despite the repeated Saudi surges.
18:00Z: Several Saudi planes approached Bushehr. It looked like a strike, so I sent-in three Tomcats. Too late, I realised that I was facing Typhoon Eurofighters and their deadly Meteors snuffed-out my fighters efficiently.
20:00Z: On the basis that there was a gap in the stream of enemy sorties, I risked sending a lone Frogfoot to raid some isolated oil wells S of Kuwait. Six fighters soon appeared and the Su-25 beat a hasty retreat.
21:00Z: The Saudis seemed to be keeping their Eurofighters on the front line by using tankers, which gave them superiority over the Gulf. Matters weren’t helped by the Iranians having lousy aircraft identification, so it was hard to tell Typhoons from the more manageable Eagles.
21/11/2017 00:00Z : The Saudi SEAD Tornadoes returned and, unescorted, five were downed for one F-14, but the score of +1,776 was still Average. There were some bugs in evidence, with some ALARMs slowing to 102 knots at 30’ and a couple of F-14s insisting on following their plotted course, in defiance of Doctrine, after being taken off a Mission.
01:00Z: Typhoons downed a Phantom which was trying to RTB at Bushehr. I then lost an F-14 trying to pursue a pair of withdrawing Eagles. By now, the Saudis could cover retreating planes with the next pair of incoming fighters and it seemed prudent to abandon attempts to engage anything over the Gulf.
To win, we needed an enemy raid that we could inflict losses on or a desperate escorted strike on the Saudi oil wells near Kuwait.
03:00Z: Half-a-dozen Saudi fighters swept towards Bushehr and all turned away at once, so an F-14 tried to chase them. Four shots went wide on roughly evens chances and the enemy then needed just one try to down the Tomcat, admittedly on 80%.
05:00Z: I risked the Special Action against the support aircraft at al-Kharj. It did no harm but achieved nothing of consequence, either.
06:00Z: The AI managed to lose two Typhoons, presumably by messing-up its fuel calculations. This took the score to +1,970 and I suspected (rightly) that I needed +2000 to win.
09:00Z: A Typhoon approached unusually close to Ahvaz (which, for some unaccountable reason, the enemy made no attempt to attack all game). The Eurofighter did manage to down a patrolling Fulcrum. Odd things then happened as, instead of dying, the MiG just froze on-screen and became non-selectable. Matters only righted themselves when I quit and re-started.
10:00Z: Time to gamble. The plan was to use the six Fitters at Kharg as cannon-fodder, then follow-up with five Tomcats and all the Fencers and Frogfeet in a bid to destroy the oil wells near Kuwait.
11:00Z: It was a great success!. The Fitters were all lost, but managed to dogfight with the Saudis and actually got a couple of kills with their Aphids!. Five Fencers and a Frogfoot were lost and the Su-25s were unable to attack, mainly because the Fencers had swiped all the targets, though endurance was also a factor. A radar and nine oil wells were destroyed despite issues with coming-in too low (ground altitude means you need to be at 3,000’) and two Eagles and a Typhoon were shot down.
Several vengeful Saudi fighters pursued as far as Bushehr, abandoning their earlier caution. There, despite being ludicrously lucky with spoof rolls, a Typhoon was downed by HAWKs as it pushed its good fortune too far. An F-15 then swerved away towards Ahvaz and was intercepted and downed by a Fulcrum.
18:00Z: It ended in a Triumph, with a score of +3,570.
Iran lost 9 fighters (including 7 F-14s), 6 Fitters, 6 attack planes, 5 radars, a refinery and 5 power stations.
Saudi Arabia lost 12 fighters (including 4 Typhoons), 5 attack planes, a radar, a pier, 4 refineries, 10 oil wells and an AvGas tank.
To recap, tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran escalated during 2017, with small clashes initiated by both sides until it got to the point where both parties were raring for a full-scale fight, aiming to cripple each others’ oil and gas facilities in an orgy of self-harm.
As Iran, you face a technologically superior adversary and are primarily on the defensive. The hope is that an initial salvo of ballistic missiles and some sabotage operations behind enemy lines will do enough damage to claim some kind of victory. Otherwise, it’s a case of protecting your own installations.
This is an air war, with both sides keeping their navies out of harm’s way and Iran refraining from blockading the Straits of Hormuz to avoid upsetting the Americans and the other Gulf States, which are all neutral.
Iran has a force of 32 F-14s at Isfahan in the interior, two-thirds of them armed with Phoenixes and the remainder with modified HAWKs. Their other aircraft are less impressive, with a squadron of 10 lowish-endurance Fulcrums at Dezful and several groups of Phantoms armed with mid-range Sparrows at Hamedan (N), Bushehr (central coast), Bandar Abbas (SE coast by the Straits) and Char Behar (far SE coast). Some ex-Iraqi Fitters have been incongrously loaded with Aphids as quasi-fighters at Kharg Island, near Bushehr. There are also some poorly-armed and generally obsolete Tigers, Freedom Fighters and early-model Mirages which are best kept out of the way.
Options for strikes are limited to 14 Fencers inland at Shiraz and four Frogfeet at Bushehr, though the Fitters could be re-equipped. All of these aircraft are stuck with iron bombs.
There are numerous SAM sites, notably at Bushehr, but the best stuff (including two Gargoyles) is back defending Tehran and unlikely to play much part. The Gammon sites at Bushehr and Bandar Abbas have just six missiles each and, like the HAWKs and Gainfuls, struggle against low-flying targets, so you need to cover with fighters.
The main liabilities are at Bushehr, Bandar Abbas and a great swathe of oil wells near the Kuwaiti border around Ahvaz. The first two have fixed and nearby fighter defences, but the Ahvaz area is totally dependent on fighter cover from elsewhere. Several vulnerable sites are spread-out along the coast between Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, with more scattered inland and you can’t realistically hope to protect everything.
Special Actions can be used to request standard sabotage operations or desperate attacks on a Patriot battery near the Abqaiq oil storage and comms facility and al-Kharj airport, where there are Saudi support aircraft. This costs nothing, but chances of success are questionable.
You have six batteries of ballistic missiles (6 shots each), but four are Fatehs with limited range and the others are Shahabs, which have a CEP of a kilometre!
Other considerations:
- the default score of zero is a Disaster
- Iran has no AEW aircraft and is dependent on ground-based radar and CAP to detect threats
- because it’s an old scenario, you cannot forbid cranking with SARH missiles (like Phoenixes, Sparrows and Alamos) which puts Iran at a further technological disadvantage, as a lot of shots will go blind as the firing aircraft turns away to maintain range.
20/11/17 13:00Z: Launched all the Fateh missiles at the refineries and export terminal at Ras Tanura and Jubayl, N of Dammam, while the Shahabs were fired at Abqaiq and a group of outlying oil wells. I also requested the sabotage operations, reserving the other Special Actions for later (I feared a penalty if they went wrong). I soon found that Patriot missiles now hit ballistic weapons on 80%, which is a vast improvement on their efficiency in the past. The Fateh strike hit a refinery for 200VP and an AvGas tank for 100 while damaging other targets. Every single Shahab missed, though only two were actually shot down. A second refinery soon burned down for another 200VP.
The Saudis retaliated with their four DF-21 ballistic missiles and these took-out a geothermal power station for 5VP. Iran is compensated for its disadvantages by the VP schedule and aircraft losses cost nothing.
Two enemy F-15s intruded over Bushehr. The duty Phantoms avoided them and set them up for the SAMs, which bagged both for 100VP each. Saudi Tornado attack planes followed and the Phantoms and SAMs were hard-pressed to destroy most of the ALARM anti-radar missiles they carried. Some got through and did some damage to our SAMs and radars, though not to a crippling extent.
Other Saudi aircraft picked-off the vulnerable targets between Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, destroying three radars for nothing, plus a refinery and three more geothermal plants for 5 each. It was proving difficult to see the Storm Shadow missiles responsible in time to react.
14:00Z: I requested additional ballistic missiles via a Special Action but was not surprised to be turned-down.
Another facility was lost, possibly burning down from earlier attacks.
15:00Z: The score was +670 and a Minor Defeat. Not much was happening on the sabotage front.
16:00Z: A Saudi refinery burned down (or was maybe sabotaged) for 200 more VP.
The enemy were sending pairs of Eagles across the Gulf towards Bushehr on Afterburner, then withdrawing when they found no targets. I exploited this by sending F-14s after them as they turned back, but scored just one kill with 12 shots at decent chances. Still, 100VP.
17:00Z: Another Saudi refinery burned down, taking the score to +1,170 and Average.
We made a second intercept over the Gulf. It took five shots to kill an Eagle at roughly evens chances and two more then arrived and needed just one try to knock down an F-14. The intercepts were only possible if the Tomcat was at an early stage in its patrol and had enough fuel to chase on Afterburner, so opportunities were limited despite the repeated Saudi surges.
18:00Z: Several Saudi planes approached Bushehr. It looked like a strike, so I sent-in three Tomcats. Too late, I realised that I was facing Typhoon Eurofighters and their deadly Meteors snuffed-out my fighters efficiently.
20:00Z: On the basis that there was a gap in the stream of enemy sorties, I risked sending a lone Frogfoot to raid some isolated oil wells S of Kuwait. Six fighters soon appeared and the Su-25 beat a hasty retreat.
21:00Z: The Saudis seemed to be keeping their Eurofighters on the front line by using tankers, which gave them superiority over the Gulf. Matters weren’t helped by the Iranians having lousy aircraft identification, so it was hard to tell Typhoons from the more manageable Eagles.
21/11/2017 00:00Z : The Saudi SEAD Tornadoes returned and, unescorted, five were downed for one F-14, but the score of +1,776 was still Average. There were some bugs in evidence, with some ALARMs slowing to 102 knots at 30’ and a couple of F-14s insisting on following their plotted course, in defiance of Doctrine, after being taken off a Mission.
01:00Z: Typhoons downed a Phantom which was trying to RTB at Bushehr. I then lost an F-14 trying to pursue a pair of withdrawing Eagles. By now, the Saudis could cover retreating planes with the next pair of incoming fighters and it seemed prudent to abandon attempts to engage anything over the Gulf.
To win, we needed an enemy raid that we could inflict losses on or a desperate escorted strike on the Saudi oil wells near Kuwait.
03:00Z: Half-a-dozen Saudi fighters swept towards Bushehr and all turned away at once, so an F-14 tried to chase them. Four shots went wide on roughly evens chances and the enemy then needed just one try to down the Tomcat, admittedly on 80%.
05:00Z: I risked the Special Action against the support aircraft at al-Kharj. It did no harm but achieved nothing of consequence, either.
06:00Z: The AI managed to lose two Typhoons, presumably by messing-up its fuel calculations. This took the score to +1,970 and I suspected (rightly) that I needed +2000 to win.
09:00Z: A Typhoon approached unusually close to Ahvaz (which, for some unaccountable reason, the enemy made no attempt to attack all game). The Eurofighter did manage to down a patrolling Fulcrum. Odd things then happened as, instead of dying, the MiG just froze on-screen and became non-selectable. Matters only righted themselves when I quit and re-started.
10:00Z: Time to gamble. The plan was to use the six Fitters at Kharg as cannon-fodder, then follow-up with five Tomcats and all the Fencers and Frogfeet in a bid to destroy the oil wells near Kuwait.
11:00Z: It was a great success!. The Fitters were all lost, but managed to dogfight with the Saudis and actually got a couple of kills with their Aphids!. Five Fencers and a Frogfoot were lost and the Su-25s were unable to attack, mainly because the Fencers had swiped all the targets, though endurance was also a factor. A radar and nine oil wells were destroyed despite issues with coming-in too low (ground altitude means you need to be at 3,000’) and two Eagles and a Typhoon were shot down.
Several vengeful Saudi fighters pursued as far as Bushehr, abandoning their earlier caution. There, despite being ludicrously lucky with spoof rolls, a Typhoon was downed by HAWKs as it pushed its good fortune too far. An F-15 then swerved away towards Ahvaz and was intercepted and downed by a Fulcrum.
18:00Z: It ended in a Triumph, with a score of +3,570.
Iran lost 9 fighters (including 7 F-14s), 6 Fitters, 6 attack planes, 5 radars, a refinery and 5 power stations.
Saudi Arabia lost 12 fighters (including 4 Typhoons), 5 attack planes, a radar, a pier, 4 refineries, 10 oil wells and an AvGas tank.