Desert Storm 3 - First Night 17/1/91

[fitzpatv]

Situation

This one covers the first couple of days of Coalition air strikes against Saddam’s Iraq. You can only play the Coalition side. The main emphasis is on hitting a range of targets around Baghdad.

To do the job, you have three carrier groups (Saratoga/Kennedy in the Eastern Mediterranean, Roosevelt/Midway and Ranger in the gulf), a screening group of destroyers and frigates with the LPD La Salle and a wide range of land-based aircraft. The latter include British, Italian, German and even Belgian units spread from SE Turkey through Saudi Arabia to the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Diego Garcia. Notable components of this force are three groups of B-52s (with a mix of iron bombs and AGM-86 cruise missiles) and C-130s with Daisy Cutter BLU-82 bombs that, if you can deliver them, do 5,148DP!. Strike elements are amply supported by tankers, recon and EW aircraft.

Most of the bases on the Arabian peninsula start with a dire shortage of munitions, but a fleet of cargo planes stands ready to remedy this. You don’t get the details before you start, but are given a proper briefing a short way in.

There are a couple of anomalies in the Coalition order of battle. A couple of ships (Spruance and Knox) appear in two different task groups, while some of the aircraft in the Saratoga/Kennedy group are correctly apportioned to the two carriers at Unit level, but are mostly on Saratoga at Group level. So far as I could tell, this has no adverse effect on play, however.

Since Scenario 2, the Iraqis have re-discovered their Navy and have some Osa PCFGs, a few tiny patrol boats and a Kilo, which I’m pretty sure they didn’t have in real-life (the database shows it as Russian, not Iraqi).

In the air, they can field Fulcrum, Foxbat, Flogger B and Fishbed fighters and Mirage attack planes with Exocets. While they have batteries of Scuds on land, none are in range of any Coalition targets (which are all well back from the border). As for SAMs, they are limited to Gainfuls, Geckoes and Guidelines (with integral Grail MANPADs in the latter case). They have no independent MANPAD teams or AA. Tanks and infantry are represented, mainly around Baghdad, but there is no ground fighting in the scenario.

You are given four bridges around Baghdad as targets and otherwise have to do recon to find others. A more extensive target list is specified some way into the game.

Iraq and Kuwait are covered by some kind of Exclusion Zone but, it practice, it doesn’t seem to exclude anything.

Events

17/1/91 00:00Z: As in Scenario 2, the Iraqis are hopelessly vulnerable to TLAM strikes and the Saratoga and Ranger groups began by launching at all their airbases, aiming for hangars and Guideline sites. I’d noted that the Roosevelt/Midway group started on Weapons Hold against land targets and soon found-out why I shouldn’t have altered this, as they began launching wasteful numbers of Tomahawks at outlying radars (of which Iraq has a double line along the border). I stopped this after three weapons had been launched at the same radar.

Presently, instructions arrived on how to send three transports at Incirlik, one at Al Ain in the UAE and seven at King Fahd at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to the bases that were short on ammo. Mostly, these are easy milk-runs and all can be initiated straightaway by Ferry mission. The only potential issues are a flight from Dhahran to Prince Sultan, Riyadh and the three from Incirlik to King Faisal, King Fahad and King Khalid in Western Saudi Arabia, which could potentially be interdicted by enemy fighters. For Prince Sultan, I relied on having a head-start and fighter cover, while the Galaxy and two Starlifters from Turkey took a roundabout route over the Mediterranean, Egypt and Northern Sudan, as necessary, before being assigned to their Ferry missions on the final approach. Saratoga supplied some Tomcats to help local F-15s protect the arrival at King Faisal, near the Israeli border at Tabuk.

A Hercules C-130H quickly made the ridiculously short hop from Al Ain to Al Banteen in the UAE, scoring 5VP and enabling the preparation of aircraft on Reserve/Ferry loadouts at that base, which takes 3-6 hours.

We spotted three Osas and two Swary patrol craft suicidally advancing down the Gulf towards the La Salle group. The hidden Kilo was far more of a concern, as ASW assets were less than ideal. We had no heavyweight MPAs (three Nimrods can only be given Maritime Surveillance loadouts) and the limited supply of Vikings didn’t carry as many sonobuoys as those in the Fury Series, set three years later. La Salle and her consorts didn’t have enough choppers to provide adequate cover and (given that the SSK could have been anywhere, even in the Mediterranean given the crazy things that happen in this campaign) all task groups moved at Creep, using active sonar.

TLAMs hit Umm Qasr airbase, near the Kuwaiti border, taking-out 3 Fulcrums, a pair of Fishbeds and most of a Guideline site, scoring 1VP per plane.

More hit Shaibah airport, at Basra, clobbering 15 Mirages, a Fishbed and a Guideline, the latter scoring 2VP.

A third batch hit H2 airbase in NW Iraq, destroying 6 Flogger Bs and the local Guideline. At +36, it was down to a Minor Defeat.

Umm Qasr had managed to get a Fulcrum airborne, but an F-15, patrolling S of the border, soon disposed of it.

The supply flight to Prince Sultan arrived for another 5VP.

01:00Z: More TLAMs hit Al Asad airbase, dealing with a Guideline, three Fulcrums and three Fishbeds. More hit Al Jarrah, near Kut-al-Amara, wrecking six Foxbats, while the next batch arrived at Mosul, writing-off another three Foxbats and three Fishbeds.

A C-130H reached Al Dhafra in the UAE. Others arrived at Sharjah and Al Minhad in the same country.

The three TLAMs loosed without orders by the Midway group duly destroyed a Flat Face radar site for 1VP.

The SSN Dallas, detached from the Saratoga group so that she didn’t have to sail on the surface(!) hit the H3 airbase in NW Iraq with yet more TLAMs, but it turned-out that no aircraft were based there. A Guideline and radar were destroyed.

All-in-all, I felt a bit guilty about the TLAM strikes, as it was all too easy and the game might have been a better contest had I not mounted them. Quite a contrast to Northern Fury!

Despite all this, the Iraqis were still able to get some planes into the air. A Foxbat intruded near Kuwait, making for Dhahran and its speed allowed it to evade several Sparrows from F-15s. In the end, an Eagle got on its tail and downed it with a Sidewinder. I reduced the Sparrow WRA range to 10nm (from 19) against ‘increased manoeuvrability fighters’ like the Foxbat, which still allowed me first shot against the Iraqis’ early-model Acrids.

02:00Z: A C-130H reached Seeb, at Muscat in Oman, with scarcely-needed supplies. Others then reached Masirah and Thumrait, elsewhere in the Sultanate.

Two Fulcrums intruded, one towards Dhahran, the other in the direction of the Red Sea, evidently trying vainly to intercept our cargo flights. Again, they proved difficult to hit with SARH missiles, but Tomcats from Ranger got the first and F-15s from King Faisal the other.

A U-2 located EIGHT batteries of Scuds just over the Iraqi border, so a group of A-10s was sent after them with six IR Mavericks each, two Shrike F-4s covering in case of undetected mobile SAMs.

03:00Z: Another Fulcrum flew towards the King Faisal area and was intercepted and knocked-down by an F-14 from Saratoga. This removed any threat to the Galaxy flight to King Faisal, which arrived soon afterward.

Eight A-10s attacked the Scuds (using Auto-Engage, as Mavericks are hard to aim manually). The TELs were lined-up in neat rows with absolutely no protection and most were destroyed, four of the batteries being completely written-off for a VP each. Given the lack of SAMs, the F-4s contented themselves with picking-off a nearby radar (most Iraqi radars are switched-on throughout).

04:00Z: Starlifters reached King Fahad and King Khalid with supplies, completing the cargo operation.

A follow-up quartet of A-10s finished-off the Scuds. This took the score to +122 which, though only a Minor Victory, is enough to progress to Scenario 4 in a Campaign game.

HMS Gloucester’s Lynx chopper attacked the Osa boats, sinking two for a VP each.

05:00Z: A-10s with EO Mavericks took-out three radars NW of Kuwait, while two more sank the remaining Iraqi surface ships.

Something odd was happening. Iraqi aircraft types previously wiped-out (according to Scenario Platforms) were somehow re-spawning, albeit in small numbers. A Mirage sortied and was downed by an F-15.

06:00Z: Another Mirage made for the Saratoga group and was shot-down by CAP.

07:00Z: Four F-4s with HARMs and tanker support went after the dense concentration of Gainfuls and Geckoes (plus a Guideline) clustered around Baghdad. Three Gainfuls were disabled, one being totally destroyed.

An A-10 attacked the Umm Qasr area with EO Mavericks. As usual, it was impossible to target the weapons manually, so I had to Auto-Engage, which took the Thunderbolt down to low altitude. It dealt with one of two radars in the area, then tried to finish-off the remaining four components of the apparently-neutralised Guideline site. Unfortunately, one of these was a Grail MANPAD team and this took advantage of the one chance it got to down the plane, which cost me 3VP. Another A-10 wrote-off another two radars along the border, further West.

08:00Z: The Iraqis kept spawning more aircraft. They appeared to materialise over Iran (where Saddam did move planes in real-life), then fly diagonally across the map towards Egypt, disappearing over the Red Sea if they lived that long. Mostly, they flew without radar, which hampered our target identification (there are numerous civilian arliners, including Concordes, about), but also reduced their effectiveness at intercepting our returning strike planes as was, no doubt, their intention. The latest one (a Fulcrum) got as far as the King Faisal area before the local F-15s downed it.

The Guideline/Grail at Umm Qasr had it coming, so two Walleye Hornets from Ranger finished it off, along with the remaining radar nearby. More hits were scored by two more HARM Phantoms on Gainfuls at Baghdad. The score was now past the +150 Triumph threshold.

09:00Z: Some Shrike F-4s did enough damage to the Baghdad IADS that it could no longer shield the targets from attack, all the surviving SAMs being too far away to the North.

10:00Z: Another Fulcrum came-in from Iran and waylaid the returning Phantoms. Fortunately, it only damaged one F-4, then lost contact, due to having its radar off. F-16s from Riyadh were able to deal with it as the other aircraft got out of its way.

11:00Z: Tediously, another Mirage made a vague attempt to attack Saratoga and was shot-down by Tomcats.

At 11:30, we were belatedly told to commence strikes on Iraq!!. Priority targets were command and control bunkers, radio and TV masts, ‘communication facilities’ and telephone exchanges. Secondary ones included bridges and railway stations/yards, while the tertiary category encompassed military and police HQs, palaces and ‘military and industrial infrastructure’. A cluster of suitable targets then became visible around Baghdad, in addition to the bridges spotted earlier. Some were underground and hard to get-at. There were numerous civilian buildings (marked as hostile) which were not to be struck.

12:00Z: A more detailed list of targets followed.

Just as we were beginning to prosecute these, the Kilo made its appearance, about 4nm from the La Salle/Gloucester group. It got this close despite our moving at 5 knots and using active sonar. I’d sent a Viking from Ranger to support La Salle, but it was at the wrong end of its patrol area. What with OODA issues and most of the La Salle group’s ASROC-capable ships having the weapons on magazines (what you don’t check invariably bites you), it took vital seconds to turn and run as the sub loosed torpedoes at 70 knots and then fled in the other direction. Two or three hit the destroyer Kidd, sinking her for the loss of 5VP, plus 3 for her chopper. The Kilo was then sunk by a combination of ASROC and Viking for 2VP. A moral success for Iraq, I guess.

Meanwhile, AGM-86s from a B-52 took-out all four of the Baghdad bridges for 2VP each.

I tried using two F-15s with GBU-24s to attack targets at Baghdad but, as usual, it just wasn’t possible to get firing solutions with buddy illumination weapons (unless, perhaps, you use Auto-Engage or a Mission), so I had to RTB. A Foxbat then popped-up just where it was needed to intercept the returning Eagles and an F-111 which was trying to tidy-up the radars on the border with iron bombs. Our planes managed to get out of its radarless way.

The B-52, responding to the updated list, followed-up with eight more AGM-86s, which demolished half-a-dozen high-priority targets for 3VP each.

13:00Z: The Foxbat stooged on towards Israel and was dealt-with by King Faisal’s F-15s. Another appeared in the same area and flew in a straight line before vanishing (probably literally) over the Red Sea. All rather daft.

The La Salle/Gloucester group then loosed its TLAMs (kept in reserve until now) and destroyed another batch of targets, including Iraq’s last two Guideline sites. The VP awards didn’t always correspond to the priority list. For instance, a palace (tertiary) scored 5VP (perhaps it was a command and control centre), while a railway station (secondary) netted just 1VP.

To be honest, by this stage, it was getting utterly tedious. I was way past a Triumph and Iraq had no ships or subs, no effective SAMs and no aircraft apart from the incongruous drip-feed of single sorties from Iran. I wasn’t sure that I could face another 35 game-hours of this and decided to quit, apart from using the save file as a place to practice types of strikes.

I have to say that I’ve been very disappointed with Desert Storm so far. It has been too easy and, in places, too irrational and, tough though the Northern Fury scenarios often are, I prefer that to this. I’ll give it some thought and might switch to something else going forward.

[Eboreg]

One of the biggest things to keep in mind about the Desert Storm scenarios is that you need to follow orders as they come in, not just go balls-out the instant you load up the game (Perhaps with the exception of Bubiyan but that might be just be my own personal biases speaking). It can be a bit of a self-imposed limitation but it's important to keep the scenarios fun. Things do get a bit more tricky once you get to SCUD Hunt, though and Alliances is a massive difficulty spike.

[Blast33]

Remember is quite an old scenario.

I had the same feelings as you and started making my own orbat based on all the available info, incorporating also the grond stuff.

But I ended up with soo much units it was not playable.
(the AAR planning was horrible and there was so much going on to react to.
It quite an operation!

[fitzpatv]

I guess so. The problem has been that I don't know that orders are coming when I start a scenario and have been reluctant to just sit around in the interim.

I'll move on to Gates of Hell and follow your advice on that one to see what difference it makes.

Good to know that the difficulty level varies, at least.