About This File
A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for the EC2003 GIUK Battleset.
This scenario is designed for play by the BLUE side.
Okean (Ocean) 70, conducted by the USSR during April and May 1970, was the largest exercise held by any navy since the end of WWII. Hundreds of surface ships, submarines and land based aircraft participated simultaneously in several worldwide operating regions, including the Barents, Norwegian Sea, Baltic, and Mediterranean, as well as in the Pacific. Five years later, in April 1975, another major Soviet naval exercise, dubbed Okean 75, repeated the same kinds of ASW, anti-carrier strike and amphibious landing drills. Another exercise was expected to occur in Spring 1980. But it did not happen. Events such as the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year earlier had heightened the risk of a confrontation between the superpowers. Later in the year, and rather unexpectedly, the Soviets began gearing up for what was expected to a large scale Okean style exercise. NATO did not know it at the time, but Okean 80 would prove to be the launch of a full scale attack by the Warsaw Pact.