About This File
Submarines Galore 2014!!!, late May 2014, Alternate history scenario.
A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for the EC2003 Battle for GIUK Gap Battleset and the HCDB-130818 1980-2015 Era Platform Database.
Image from Wikipedia: Portsmouth, Va. - The nations newest and most advanced nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Virginia (SSN 774) passes the skyline of Hampton, Va., with the campus of Hampton University seen in the background, on its the way to Norfolk Naval Shipyard upon completion of Bravo sea trials. Virginia is the Navys only major combatant ready to join the fleet that was designed with the post-Cold War security environment in mind and embodies the war fighting and operational capabilities required to dominate the littorals while maintaining undersea dominance in the open ocean. August 25, 2004. U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 2nd Class Christina M. Shaw(RELEASED).
A submarine-only scenario without other diversions, inspired on origin by some old scenario booklets of the Harpoon 3 series but very modified on this 2014 Edition, good for testing submarines (specially the new ones included after HCDB-110831), submarine tactics, sonars, torpedoes and other ASW weapons. Perhaps the Western submarines are numerically over-represented, but it's reflecting the original and very reduced in number of submarines paper scenarios. Also it's configured as a vanilla scenario for lazy players wanting to enjoy a simple pastime, and with the aim of replayability thanks to the aleatority of the starting positions and of the units presence or not presence. I think it's playable at the 10 or even 30 minutes time compression ... before doing any contact.
From February 21, 2014, well staged by President Putin, were unveiled and erupted multiple simultaneous crises in Ukraine, Baltic States and China. With a feeble and hesitating Obama Administration, and when the international relations and foreign policy "experts" and "analysts" were expecting for the start of a new cold war, it was very difficult for the uncoordinated and surprised Western Powers to see another path than that of the war. At least the first ten boats of the very advanced Virginia-class SSN were commissioned on less than the programmed budget and even eleven months before the scheduled date. Also, the Russian submarine fleet has not been very updated from the Cold War end, and has substantially shrunken in number. To keep low the political and social unrest because the war imminence and also because exceptionally bad weather, the opening naval actions were limited to discrete submarine operations, in a situation remembrance of the 1939 Phony War and of the 1994 Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor (where both Japan and the United States are in war against the other, but both governments are occulting the fact to his respective public opinions to prevent the collapse of the stock markets), but these underwater actions were not less decisive or murderous than a full open war.
Enrique Mas, May 18, 2014.