Spratly Spat 2016
Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2026 5:07 pm
Situation
An alliance of South-East Asian states challenges China’s control of the Spratly Islands, with limited support from the United States. In 2016, China’s development of the archipelago was less advanced than it is now and the air bases (apart from Woody Island in the Paracels) are not yet active. You can play either side, but China is the default. Note that initial allocation and deployment of submarines for each side varies from one playthrough to another.
China has sent the Liaoning CVBG to protect its bases in the Spratlys. It comprises the former Soviet carrier and an oiler, with three destroyers and two frigates as a close escort and two corvettes further out to either flank. In this instance, I was also given a Kilo SSK and one of the corvettes was randomly moved further South, closer to the enemy, as play began. The escorts have some powerful SAMs and plenty of long-ranged anti-shipping cruise missiles.
The Liaoning has six Flying Shark fighters and four attack variants of that design, the former carrying PL-12s and the latter YJ-83 cruise missiles. There are also some AEW and ASW choppers, but the carrier air group resembles a European, rather than a US one.
On Woody Island, there are ten Flankers with PL-12s. Further back, on Hainan, China has deployed a dozen Flounder attack planes, twelve older Finback fighters (which still have PL-12s) and five ASW Cubs. One of the latter is already aloft near the Liaoning, but two of the others start without ASW weapons and this can only be improved-upon by giving them sonobuoy-only loadouts.
At Guiping Mengshu on the mainland, there are 13 Badger bombers and four tankers. Six of the bombers are on Reserve loadouts and changing this takes most of the game.
Land-based assets consist of a few MANPADs and radars on the Spratly reef structures.
Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and the US have put together an SAG of two destroyers, three frigates, a corvette, a coastguard cutter and an oiler. These ships carry anti-ship cruise missiles, but most are outranged by the Chinese, the best being the supersonic Hsiung Fengs aboard the Taiwanese DDG Ma Kong. They have a respectable SAM array, the core of this being an American Arleigh Burke, the Chung Hoon.
The Allies are rather better served in the air. Though they lack a carrier, they have plenty of Hornets and Flankers (plus older Fitters and Hawks) stationed in a ring of bases from Vietnam to the Philippines which form a bag around the contested Spratly region. This enables them to act against the flanks and even rear of the Chinese CVBG. Some Prowlers, Orions and Hercules tankers provide support.
Depending on random allocation, the Allies can have a variety of different submarines.
The Chinese are constrained in that they cannot attack anything outside a quadrilateral (V1-V4) around the contested zone until they are fired-upon. Even then, they are not allowed to attack land bases outside the Spratlys.
Events
15/8/16 21:00Z (05:00L): The Allies start Neutral. A couple of Hornets and a Prowler went on CAP from Bautista air base on Palawan, while two Malaysian Flankers and two elderly Hawks approached from East Malaysia to the South. A Filipino MAR-Maritime recon plane flew W from Luzon. Given the limited numbers of Chinese carrier fighters, the CVBG would clearly struggle to defend the vulnerable reef structures from air attack.
The Allies themselves had a couple of air bases in the islands, but they housed no aircraft and it was uncertain how functional they were. While these were conventional-looking airfiedls, the Chinese reef structures were represented as ships and could theoretically be sunk.
22:00Z: The MAR-Maritime overflew the Liaoning. There was no longer any point in keeping radars and jammers off, so we lit-up. We were still not allowed to attack and, as the default score of zero was a Major Defeat, it occurred that the AI could win by just holding back. On the other hand, at 20 knots, it would still take the CVBG several hours to actually enter V1-V4 and doing so might alter that equation.
23:00Z: I found that the Woody Island Flankers couldn’t refuel from the Badger tankers, so their time over the task force was going to be limited to a couple of hours at most – such are distances in the Pacific. The carrier Flying Sharks and the Finbacks did probe refuelling and the tankers were drogue, so it was another case of that ambiguous chestnut.
18/8/16 00:00Z: I sent a Super Frelon AEW chopper further forward and located the Allied task force just as it was entering the disputed zone, doing 5 knots. Liaoning was some 245nm to their North and ideally needed to engage at 100nm in order to bring all of its anti-shipping missiles to bear at once (in a co-ordinated attack with the Badgers, Flounders and strike Flying Sharks, plus a couple of missiles from the Kilo). At a converging speed of 25 knots, we still had a while to wait…
04:00Z: Hostilities commenced when two American Hornets went after the Chinese AEW and ASW aircraft. A couple of SAMs dissuaded them and they went RTB. It showed that even HQ-9s were ineffective at 50% range, so I re-calibrated them to fire at 25% instead.
05:00Z: There were repeated lunges by F/A-18Cs, which lacked the endurance to engage when they insisted on hurtling around on Afterburner.
06:00Z: The Ma Kong fired all of her Hsiung Fengs at the retiring corvette Suqian, sinking her at a cost of -500VP, but wasting her side’s best anti-shipping weapons in the process.
07:00Z: The co-ordinated strike went-in and annihilated the Allied SAG, the eight ships scoring 250VP each. At +1,500, it was still only a Minor Victory. Destroying seven choppers and two intervening Hornets scored us nothing and nor did the corvette Jingmen shelling the Filipino Thiru Island base under AI prompting until I told it to stop by applying Weapons Hold v Land targets.
The six returning Flounders were waylaid by a swarm of Vietnamese Flankers and were all lost, but aircraft score nothing for either side in this scenario.
Retaliatory air strikes from the Vietnamese and Malaysians saw 13 Allied Flankers downed for all six of Liaoning’s fighter-loadout Flying Sharks. No hits were scored on the CVBG.
07:00Z: Two Woody Island Flankers reinforced the CVBG while the four strike Flying Sharks re-armed with PL-12s. The Flankers downed a MAR-Maritime before being lost in an ill-timed encounter with two Hornets, just before the latter went RTB.
10:00Z: A few Hawks bombed the Southern reef structures, but did little damage and lost six airframes to MANPADs.
11:00Z: Three Vietnamese Flankers came-in and downed an ASW Cub, but were then splashed by SAMs.
13:00Z: The Malaysians thought it was worth losing two more Flankers to kill an ASW chopper.
18:00Z: After an extended lull, I livened things up a bit by launching one of the re-armed Flying Sharks to clear away a Prowler and Orion to the South.
19:00Z: A couple of Hornets came-in from the South and fired stand-off weapons at the CVBG, but the SAMs dealt with these.
20:00Z: A Flying Shark downed another Orion.
China was awarded 1,000VP for the carrier being afloat in the disputed area at game-end. This took the score to +2,500 and a Triumph.
China lost a corvette, 6 fighters, 6 attack planes, 2 Cubs and a chopper.
The Allies lost 2 destroyers, three frigates, a corvette, a coastguard cutter, an oiler, 29 MRCAs, 6 attack planes, two Prowlers, three MPAs and 8 choppers, plus an AvGas tank.
It turned-out that the Allies had been given a Malaysian and a Singaporean diesel sub, but these did not appear at any stage.
To summarise, a medium-sized scenario that has lengthy periods of relative inactivity and one spell of high excitement. It seems reasonably well-balanced and bug-free and there were no significant performance issues.
An alliance of South-East Asian states challenges China’s control of the Spratly Islands, with limited support from the United States. In 2016, China’s development of the archipelago was less advanced than it is now and the air bases (apart from Woody Island in the Paracels) are not yet active. You can play either side, but China is the default. Note that initial allocation and deployment of submarines for each side varies from one playthrough to another.
China has sent the Liaoning CVBG to protect its bases in the Spratlys. It comprises the former Soviet carrier and an oiler, with three destroyers and two frigates as a close escort and two corvettes further out to either flank. In this instance, I was also given a Kilo SSK and one of the corvettes was randomly moved further South, closer to the enemy, as play began. The escorts have some powerful SAMs and plenty of long-ranged anti-shipping cruise missiles.
The Liaoning has six Flying Shark fighters and four attack variants of that design, the former carrying PL-12s and the latter YJ-83 cruise missiles. There are also some AEW and ASW choppers, but the carrier air group resembles a European, rather than a US one.
On Woody Island, there are ten Flankers with PL-12s. Further back, on Hainan, China has deployed a dozen Flounder attack planes, twelve older Finback fighters (which still have PL-12s) and five ASW Cubs. One of the latter is already aloft near the Liaoning, but two of the others start without ASW weapons and this can only be improved-upon by giving them sonobuoy-only loadouts.
At Guiping Mengshu on the mainland, there are 13 Badger bombers and four tankers. Six of the bombers are on Reserve loadouts and changing this takes most of the game.
Land-based assets consist of a few MANPADs and radars on the Spratly reef structures.
Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and the US have put together an SAG of two destroyers, three frigates, a corvette, a coastguard cutter and an oiler. These ships carry anti-ship cruise missiles, but most are outranged by the Chinese, the best being the supersonic Hsiung Fengs aboard the Taiwanese DDG Ma Kong. They have a respectable SAM array, the core of this being an American Arleigh Burke, the Chung Hoon.
The Allies are rather better served in the air. Though they lack a carrier, they have plenty of Hornets and Flankers (plus older Fitters and Hawks) stationed in a ring of bases from Vietnam to the Philippines which form a bag around the contested Spratly region. This enables them to act against the flanks and even rear of the Chinese CVBG. Some Prowlers, Orions and Hercules tankers provide support.
Depending on random allocation, the Allies can have a variety of different submarines.
The Chinese are constrained in that they cannot attack anything outside a quadrilateral (V1-V4) around the contested zone until they are fired-upon. Even then, they are not allowed to attack land bases outside the Spratlys.
Events
15/8/16 21:00Z (05:00L): The Allies start Neutral. A couple of Hornets and a Prowler went on CAP from Bautista air base on Palawan, while two Malaysian Flankers and two elderly Hawks approached from East Malaysia to the South. A Filipino MAR-Maritime recon plane flew W from Luzon. Given the limited numbers of Chinese carrier fighters, the CVBG would clearly struggle to defend the vulnerable reef structures from air attack.
The Allies themselves had a couple of air bases in the islands, but they housed no aircraft and it was uncertain how functional they were. While these were conventional-looking airfiedls, the Chinese reef structures were represented as ships and could theoretically be sunk.
22:00Z: The MAR-Maritime overflew the Liaoning. There was no longer any point in keeping radars and jammers off, so we lit-up. We were still not allowed to attack and, as the default score of zero was a Major Defeat, it occurred that the AI could win by just holding back. On the other hand, at 20 knots, it would still take the CVBG several hours to actually enter V1-V4 and doing so might alter that equation.
23:00Z: I found that the Woody Island Flankers couldn’t refuel from the Badger tankers, so their time over the task force was going to be limited to a couple of hours at most – such are distances in the Pacific. The carrier Flying Sharks and the Finbacks did probe refuelling and the tankers were drogue, so it was another case of that ambiguous chestnut.
18/8/16 00:00Z: I sent a Super Frelon AEW chopper further forward and located the Allied task force just as it was entering the disputed zone, doing 5 knots. Liaoning was some 245nm to their North and ideally needed to engage at 100nm in order to bring all of its anti-shipping missiles to bear at once (in a co-ordinated attack with the Badgers, Flounders and strike Flying Sharks, plus a couple of missiles from the Kilo). At a converging speed of 25 knots, we still had a while to wait…
04:00Z: Hostilities commenced when two American Hornets went after the Chinese AEW and ASW aircraft. A couple of SAMs dissuaded them and they went RTB. It showed that even HQ-9s were ineffective at 50% range, so I re-calibrated them to fire at 25% instead.
05:00Z: There were repeated lunges by F/A-18Cs, which lacked the endurance to engage when they insisted on hurtling around on Afterburner.
06:00Z: The Ma Kong fired all of her Hsiung Fengs at the retiring corvette Suqian, sinking her at a cost of -500VP, but wasting her side’s best anti-shipping weapons in the process.
07:00Z: The co-ordinated strike went-in and annihilated the Allied SAG, the eight ships scoring 250VP each. At +1,500, it was still only a Minor Victory. Destroying seven choppers and two intervening Hornets scored us nothing and nor did the corvette Jingmen shelling the Filipino Thiru Island base under AI prompting until I told it to stop by applying Weapons Hold v Land targets.
The six returning Flounders were waylaid by a swarm of Vietnamese Flankers and were all lost, but aircraft score nothing for either side in this scenario.
Retaliatory air strikes from the Vietnamese and Malaysians saw 13 Allied Flankers downed for all six of Liaoning’s fighter-loadout Flying Sharks. No hits were scored on the CVBG.
07:00Z: Two Woody Island Flankers reinforced the CVBG while the four strike Flying Sharks re-armed with PL-12s. The Flankers downed a MAR-Maritime before being lost in an ill-timed encounter with two Hornets, just before the latter went RTB.
10:00Z: A few Hawks bombed the Southern reef structures, but did little damage and lost six airframes to MANPADs.
11:00Z: Three Vietnamese Flankers came-in and downed an ASW Cub, but were then splashed by SAMs.
13:00Z: The Malaysians thought it was worth losing two more Flankers to kill an ASW chopper.
18:00Z: After an extended lull, I livened things up a bit by launching one of the re-armed Flying Sharks to clear away a Prowler and Orion to the South.
19:00Z: A couple of Hornets came-in from the South and fired stand-off weapons at the CVBG, but the SAMs dealt with these.
20:00Z: A Flying Shark downed another Orion.
China was awarded 1,000VP for the carrier being afloat in the disputed area at game-end. This took the score to +2,500 and a Triumph.
China lost a corvette, 6 fighters, 6 attack planes, 2 Cubs and a chopper.
The Allies lost 2 destroyers, three frigates, a corvette, a coastguard cutter, an oiler, 29 MRCAs, 6 attack planes, two Prowlers, three MPAs and 8 choppers, plus an AvGas tank.
It turned-out that the Allies had been given a Malaysian and a Singaporean diesel sub, but these did not appear at any stage.
To summarise, a medium-sized scenario that has lengthy periods of relative inactivity and one spell of high excitement. It seems reasonably well-balanced and bug-free and there were no significant performance issues.