pmaidhof

Well done, thanks again Brad

Yet another career altering event.

Hi Stillwell, Brad's data appears to be what I have from Page 8, Issue #24 April 2003 of the Naval Sitrep. An article Chinese Flank Attack by Peter Grining. There are also stats for the alternative Chinese Flanker Radars in a sidebar. I am not 100% certain if these are "Smarter Radar" compliant as that listing came out the following Sitrep (#25 October 2003), however a cursory look at the N-001VE Zhuk from the Chinese Flanker article did completely match the stats for it in the Smarter Radar listing. Pete

Belay my last...

N. Korea ditches nonaggression pact with S. Korea By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer Jae-soon Chang, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 30, 4:02 am ET SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea said Friday it is ditching a nonaggression pact and all other peace agreements with South Korea, in an apparent attempt to use the threat of an armed clash to press Seoul to give up its "confrontational" stance. The communist nation also said it will no longer respect a disputed sea border with the South, raising the prospect for an armed clash along the Yellow Sea boundary — the scene of deadly skirmishes between the two navies in 1999 and 2002. South Korea said it regretted the North's latest move and warned it won't tolerate any attempt to violate the border. Analysts said Pyongyang's threats could signal it is preparing for an armed confrontation, but only as a way of ratcheting up the pressure on Seoul to get the neighbor to soften its hard-line stance — and attracting President Barack Obama's attention. "This signals that North Korea will stage a provocation" — probably near the maritime border, said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University. The isolated regime could then use the threat of an armed clash to pressure Seoul to change course with the North, said Yang Moo-jin, an expert at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies. But Kim added that any skirmish would be limited in scale and intensity because Pyongyang is aware that serious deadly clashes would irreparably harm relations with Seoul — and Obama's new administration, whose attention the North is seeking, he said. A Defense Ministry official said the military has stepped up vigilance along the land and sea borders with the North. The official, who declined to give his name citing department policy, said more guard posts have been installed along the land border, but could not offer details about what's been done on the sea border. Yonhap news agency said the navy deployed a warship near the maritime boundary and strengthened radar and other surveillance systems. The ministry official said he was checking the report. The two Koreas technically remain at war because their brutal, three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. The peninsula remains divided by a heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, with thousands of troops stationed on both sides of the border. Relations had warmed considerably over the past decade, with Seoul's liberal leadership adopting a "sunshine policy" of extending aid to the impoverished North as a way to facilitate reconciliation. But South Korea's current president, conservative Lee Myung-bak, has not committed to accords signed by his predecessors — a stance Pyongyang says proves his hostility. The regime cut off reconciliation talks soon after he took office nearly a year ago. Lee has refused to give in to the pressure, saying he will "wait" until Pyongyang agrees to return to the reconciliation talks. On Friday, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea — a ruling Workers' Party organ in charge of ties with Seoul — declared all past peacekeeping accords with the South "dead," claiming Lee is escalating tensions with the regime. "The group of traitors has already reduced all the agreements reached between the North and the South in the past to dead documents," the committee said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The statement specifically mentioned a nonaggression pact that the two sides signed in late 1991 pledging not to invade each other and to seek peaceful unification. The so-called Basic Agreement has served as a basis for future peace accords, such as summit agreements signed in 2000 and 2007. It also said the maritime boundary off the divided peninsula's west coast will be "nullified." The U.S.-led United Nations Command unilaterally drew the Yellow Sea border, also known as the Northern Limit Line or NLL, at the end of the war — but Pyongyang claims it should be redrawn farther south. "The position of our military on the NLL is firm," Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said. "If the North violates it, we will sternly respond to that." The latest verbal attack from Pyongyang comes as both Koreas watch to see how Obama's North Korea policy takes shape. After eight years of icy relations with the Bush administration, Pyongyang hopes to have improved relations with Obama, analysts say. Obama has said he would be willing to meet with Kim Jong Il if it advances the effort to disarm the North of its nuclear capabilities. Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said the government regretted the North's move and urged the regime to defuse the tensions through dialogue. The Defense Ministry said its troops remain on alert, though there have been no unusual moves by the North's military. Earlier this month, the North's military accused the South of preparing to wage war and said it had adopted an "all-out confrontational posture" to rebuff any southern aggression. Seoul denied plotting any attack on the North. North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, signed a pact in 2007 with five other nations — the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Russia and China — agreeing to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for aid. That process has been stalled since August, and talks in Beijing in December failed to get the process back on track. ___ Associated Press writer Jean H. Lee contributed to this report. Find Associated Press Article here on yahoo.com

It is most definitely in one of the mid-20's Naval Sitrep. I had eyes on it yesterday and was about to type it in here when I was ordered off the computer by my 5 yr old. I'll re-post issue/page/data tonight.

What I thought, but might not hurt to ring some more bells on high though.

No problem. Its what we do around here, we anticipate your needs, even before you're convinced you really need it. Well then How about what Stillwell anticipates!

hehe, thanks. I have the J-10 info...just have not put my finger on it since reading the initial request.

Stillwell, I agree and for have quite some time maintained that Sea of Dragons is woefully in need of an update. That said, there are quite a few recently developed Chinese platforms found in Naval Sitreps and Harpoon Naval Review 2003. A quick look through my collection I found many of the surface ships, however not the version you list, like a Type 052B instead of your desired Type 052C. The is certainly a Su-30MKK, and I've gamed a J-10, just have not located the stats yet. Pete

I did know that. I was just stirring the pot being the parochial (READ: USMC) person that I am here. Thanks for the wiki. Two interesting points, 22 years of service in the intervening time since Nunn-McCurdy was passed and still can claim ignorance on it; the second being I like the SecDef loop hole.

Perhaps you touched a nerve with so many naval and aviation projects late and well over budget, and never recall having heard of Nunn-McCurdy I could not resist.

Always with the negative waves Leyte. Let me guess the Nunn-McCurdy Law only applies to USMC acquisitions?

Marines join counter-piracy mission Find Marine Corps Times article here. By Trista Talton - Staff writer Posted : Friday Jan 23, 2009 13:30:36 EST Members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit are participating in counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, a spokesman for Marine Corps headquarters said Thursday. Amphibious transport dock San Antonio, the flagship for Combined Task Force 151, is carrying a reinforced Marine platoon, said 2nd Lt. Josh Diddams. Officials will not say how many Marines are on the ship, which left Camp Lejeune, N.C., in late August with the Norfolk, Va.-based Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group. A typical Marine infantry platoon consists of about 40 troops. Task Force 151 is a multinational force recently organized to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases along Somalia’s coast, where last year more than 40 vessels were hijacked, including a Saudi tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weapons bound for Kenya. The task force is operating in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Sailors and Marines on the San Antonio spent weeks preparing the ship for its role as the command ship and afloat forward staging base for the task force, according to a Navy report. Marines on the ship include those with 3rd platoon, Golf Infantry Company, a military police detachment and intelligence personnel, according to the report. The MEU, which recently left Kuwait after two weeks of training at Camp Buehring, did not respond to questions about the anti-piracy mission. [Me: I remember well my RUSEX - reinforcement of unarmed shipping- exercises in the 1990 Mediterranean, fast roping onto various ships wary of skidoo-riding PLO types or other malcontents of that time. ]

PACAF’s “Vision” Thing By Richard Halloran Find the air force Magazine article here. A new wargame tells airmen what it will take to hold the line in the Far East. Pacific Air Forces has begun to forge a doctrine of AirSea Battle with the intent of deterring any Chinese, North Korean, or Russian military aggression in Asia and the Pacific. The doctrine is in its early stages of development, and initial findings are being drawn from a two-phase wargame called Pacific Vision, held in October. Pacific Vision’s first phase looked out to 2016, and was centered on Air Force operations. This wargame focused on the weapons, bases, and combat forces that PACAF already had on hand. The second phase looked out to 2028 and included naval aviators and submariners from the US Navy as well as a contingent from Australia’s armed forces. In this phase, officers taking part in the exercise brainstormed a series of alternate futures. Of particular interest was one scenario that the planners called "Dr. Strangelove’s World." Gen. Carrol H. Chandler, who commands PACAF from its headquarters at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, said, "Pacific Vision provided ... a foundational assessment of where we are and what we need in the Pacific." Col. Martin Neubauer, the command’s director of intelligence, added, "The easiest way to guarantee an undesirable future is to refuse to think about it." Neubauer ran the game. In the first phase of the wargame in early October, the airmen concluded that US airpower would be sufficient to defeat a "near-peer competitor" in the Asia-Pacific region over the next seven years—provided the United States adopted a strategy of dispersal and made certain critical force investments. For the "near-peer competitor" in Pacific Vision, read "China"—but Air Force officers cautioned that the main adversary in the Far East could be a resurgent Russia. In any case, the wargame was intended not only to test strategic plans but to help prevent any miscalculation of US power and intentions, a priority for American commanders in the region. Chandler said in an interview that he asked his staff "to look at what we think we need to carry out our mission, particularly when we have finite resources." The Air Force’s internal results didn’t mesh with the media’s first take on this issue. In contrast to PACAF’s assessment that it could realistically expect to defeat a serious foe through 2016, a contemporaneous RAND study, widely cited in the press, claimed that US airpower in the Pacific would be inadequate to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan in 2020. Virtually all analysts believe a battle over Taiwan, the island claimed by China but informally allied with the US, is the most likely cause of hostilities between the US and China. RAND analysts took part in the Pacific Vision wargame, but PACAF officers said that the wargame and the RAND study were actually not connected. RAND’s analysis also included future capabilities and a somewhat longer time horizon. In Pacific Vision’s first phase, a Red Team played the near-peer competitor and was instructed to "play dirty." This meant that these adversaries were to employ Chinese weapons, communications, and tactics to the fullest, with little consideration to training, maintenance capabilities, and political constraints. Two Blue Teams, reflecting PACAF as it exists today and will be by 2016, were engaged. After two days, they were "reset" to run the game again with what they had learned. (In effect, that gave evaluators four sets of conclusions.) PACAF’s officers immediately determined that Washington should disperse its fighter, bomber, and tanker forces well before the start of hostilities. These assets, they said, should be redeployed on an arc ranging from Alaska in the north to Australia in the south, with intermediate bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Southeast Asia. This, they said, would complicate and frustrate any adversary’s targeting. Force Projection Needs That, in turn, underscored the need for ready American access to bases for forward deployment, and for intensification of efforts to cultivate good political relationships with the nations along that arc. Chandler said Pacific Vision "clearly drove home the importance of ensuring access to airfields around the Pacific Rim. You cannot ‘surge’ engagement, and we must ensure our ability to project airpower from forward bases in the region." That means, among other things, strengthening relations with treaty allies in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia—each of which could impose political constraints to curtail US freedom to operate. The same would be true of friendly nations, such as Singapore, with which the US lacks a defense treaty. Still other nations, like India and Indonesia, are already being cultivated by the US but are not yet ready to "sign on" as friends or military partners. Vietnam presents an intriguing case. The nation was, of course, engaged in military hostilities with the US, in one form or another, from 1954 through 1975. Still, it harbors long-standing animosities toward China. Touchiest of all is the case of Taiwan, situated just 100 miles off the coast of China. It is already the target of more than 1,000 Chinese missiles and is vulnerable to bomber attack, so relying on Taiwan as a potential base of operations does not make much strategic sense. The Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarines armed with cruise missiles would need to be dispersed like the land-based aircraft, but more needs to be done to integrate these vessels into war plans, said PACAF officers. Pacific Vision emphasized the need to harden hangars, command posts, electrical plants, ammunition depots, and supply warehouses to withstand attack. This is particularly true on Guam, which is being built up as a critical forward base. Moreover, said PACAF planners, crews equipped and trained to repair damaged bases should be positioned to move quickly to wherever they are needed. Runways, for instance, would need to be repaired within hours. Because of long distances in the Pacific, more tankers are required to support combat operations than were needed in Europe to deter the Soviet Union. The wargame also validated the advantages of the stealth technology that permits B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters to evade radar detection. "We are sure that we can shoot them before they can see us," said one officer. Even so, the game also underscored the vulnerability of unprotected commercial communications channels on which the Air Force relies. China demonstrated its anti-satellite capability by knocking out an inactive satellite with a missile in 2007. Few expect China to hold back in the event of a shooting war. Pacific Vision confirmed the need for greater numbers of Global Hawks, the large unmanned reconnaissance airplanes that can survey 40,000 square miles a day in all weather. The first of three Global Hawks to be based on Guam will arrive on the scene next year. Officers also discovered that the US has lagged in cyber warfare, from jamming enemy radar to attacking computer networks, as well as protecting US radars and computers. The 13th Air Force’s air operations center at Hickam, which would coordinate an air war in Asia, has been up and running for two years but needs to improve controls over PACAF’s dispersed forces. In the second phase of Pacific Vision, the wargame’s organizers asked the players to imagine the role of the US in the world 20 years hence. Scenarios included everything from the existence of a "Pax Americana" in which the United States dominated the political scene, to a return to the isolation of the 19th century with no alliances. The future that got the most attention—the so-called Dr. Strangelove’s World—was the least comfortable and perhaps most dangerous of the alternatives. It conjured up an America that was tired of war, having fought more or less continuously around the world since 1941 (World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Lebanon, Panama, Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan). Its armed forces had long since been stretched to the breaking point, and the American people have been fatigued by repeated economic crises, political divisions, and the continuing War on Terror. "That’s not where we want to be," said Neubauer. He emphasized the need to have plans to cope with war fatigue. "It’s a bit like thinking about retirement," he said. "All the surprises will be bad if you don’t have a plan." This second phase, in which about 80 people took part, included the participation of some 25 naval officers, a handful of marines, and a few special operations forces. Some Australians were assigned to a Green Team alongside the two Blue Teams. The Australians, who work hard to maintain their alliance with the US, "forced the Americans to articulate what most of us had taken for granted," Neubauer said. Americans had assumed that open ocean surveillance by aircraft would be a naval mission. The Australians didn’t see that as obvioius, and pointed out that this is a Royal Australian Air Force mission for them. That drove a discussion on "who does what and where" that forced everyone participating in the wargame to discuss the best ways to divide responsiblities in a joint operation. When it was over, the PACAF staff set about drawing up its conclusions and fashioning a framework for AirSea Battle. When the final findings from Pacific Vision have been sorted out, Chandler will take recommendations to Adm. Timothy J. Keating, who heads US Pacific Command at nearby Camp Smith in Honolulu. If proposed force structure, basing, or policy changes pass muster there, they will go to the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Gary Roughead, for approval before eventually being submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Parallel to that, PACAF plans to submit its proposals to Andrew Marshall, the influential director of the Office of Net Assessment who advises the Defense Secretary directly. The ONA shop helped to finance Pacific Vision, and sent officers to Hawaii to take part. "Maintaining security and stability in the Pacific requires constant preparation for potential threats and crises," Chandler concluded. "That’s what Pacific Vision was about." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Halloran, formerly a New York Times foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington, D.C., is a freelance writer based in Honolulu. His most recent article for Air Force Magazine, "PACAF Between War and Peace," appeared in the August 2008 issue. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Extra Red Flag week allows for more missions Find the Air Force Times article here. By Erik Holmes - Staff writer Posted : Monday Jan 19, 2009 5:49:29 EST In the most significant change in its more than 30-year history, the Red Flag aerial combat exercise held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., will expand from two to three weeks for the exercise that begins in late February and will include a greater emphasis on close-air support missions. The changes will allow Red Flag to more closely represent how a modern war likely would unfold, said Lt. Col. Paul Johnson, deputy commander of Nellis’ 414th Combat Training Squadron, which runs Red Flag. “Red Flag has not evolved the same way as the rest of the world has evolved as far as the more capable threats that are out there and also the more capable weapons systems the U.S. Air Force currently has,” Johnson said. “To make it more realistic, we’re trying to go to this three-week Flag to get some more realistic training and try to cater more to what’s going on right now in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The number of aircraft participating will jump from an average of about 70 to more than 100, he said. The Red Flag expansion is a trial only, and Air Combat Command ultimately will decide whether to go with the three-week exercise for one or more of the five annual iterations or to return to the two-week format. The shift to the longer exercise was prompted by two training needs identified by ACC’s Realistic Training Review Board: to place a greater emphasis on the kind of close-air support missions the Air Force is flying in the Middle East, and to give F-22 Raptors more opportunity for integrated training with other air-superiority aircraft. CAS already has a role in Red Flag, but that portion is almost a separate exercise run parallel to the more conventional air-to-air portion, Johnson said. Now, CAS will become the focus of the third week of Red Flag. “Our typical Red Flag had a CAS scenario ... but there has not been as much emphasis placed on it,” Johnson said. “The last week, that is going to be the focus.” Johnson said that the service’s Raptors cannot operate alone in a future large-scale war: The F-22s would have to operate in concert with the less-capable F-15Cs, and Red Flag provides the only opportunity for Raptors and Eagles to practice together. There are two squadrons of F-22s at Langley Air Force Base, Va., and two at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, but each base has only one F-15C squadron, so there are not enough aircraft to provide both a collaborative F-15 force and an aggressor F-15 force to fly against. “F-22s don’t have a lot of venues to do that,” Johnson said. “To integrate with the F-15, you’ve got to have an adversary to fly against.” Another benefit of the longer Red Flag is that it could allow pilots to get more sorties under their belts. The exercise is designed to provide pilots with eight to 10 air-to-air sorties during the main large-force exercise, based on statistics from the Vietnam War showing that pilots are more likely to get shot down during those initial sorties. Red Flag was created in 1975 as an opportunity for pilots to fly those mistake-prone initial missions in an exercise environment. But in practice, said Maj. Keith Lowman, team chief for the three-week Red Flag, pilots usually fly only five or six air-to-air sorties during Red Flag because they also must fly the close-air support missions going on at the same time. “By doing two weeks of a full [large-force exercise] and then that third week focusing on CAS, we don’t have to pick between mission sets,” Lowman said. A ‘more realistic exercise’ The trial run for the three-week Red Flag will take place from Feb. 23 to March 14. The units will begin arriving at Nellis a couple of days ahead of time and attend briefings Feb. 22. Flight operations begin the next day. The schedule is meant to emulate a real air war, in which air dominance assets — F-22s and F-15Cs from Langley — are brought in to destroy enemy defenses before other aircraft enter the fight. Raptors dominate the first few days, destroying surface-to-air missile sites and other targets that could threaten aircraft. B-2s also would be involved in this portion of a war, but they are not participating in the exercise this time. There are only 20 B-2s in inventory, so they cannot participate in all Red Flags. The Raptors will be joined by F-15Cs to protect the refueling tankers and airborne warning and control system aircraft, as well as infiltrate enemy airspace and shoot down F-15Cs and F-16s that are flying as an aggressor force. “The first few days is kind of dedicated to … kicking down the door, taking down the strategic SAMs, making the airspace more permissive for the rest of the guys to roll in,” Johnson said. The next stage, during the end of the first week and the entire second week, will be similar aerial exercises involving second-wave aircraft such as F-15E Strike Eagles, Navy F-18s and EA-6B Prowlers, F-16s, Australian F-111s, British Tornado fighters, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles and C-130 variants. The F-22s and F-15Cs, the primary air dominance fighters, will depart after the first two weeks. The final week of the exercise is dedicated to close-air support, with A-10s and helicopters joining the fray. Three or four teams of joint terminal attack controllers from Pope Air Force Base, N.C., and Fort Hood, Texas, will also participate and practice calling in airstrikes. “That last week we’re going to flex into ... ground, urban warfare, close-air support, protecting convoys — again, something that’s more akin to what’s going on these days,” Johnson said. Whether the three-week format becomes the new standard for Red Flag will hinge on whether ACC leaders think the benefits of the longer exercise are worth the added costs. “It’s going to cost more,” Johnson said, “and we need to determine if it’s worth the money to try and change Red Flag to what a lot of people have wanted to see — a more mission-oriented, more realistic exercise.”

AO Yankee #19 Comm Site Raid Today’s action was a platoon sized raid of an enemy comm site in AO Yankee South. Looking at the insert point, objective and extract point, I saw that a number of linear danger areas would need to be crossed, to include the river. I would need to ensure that rehearsals include both inserts and one rope bridge procedures. The platoon was inserted by fast rope in the south-central part of the map, and off we went. Other concerns were that to approach the objective, another linear would need to be crossed, and again after the site was hit. Not the preferred method. Once we approached the river, it was determined to be deep, wide, and swift moving. Luckily we had our “combat swimmers” with us and the appropriate rehearsals completed. The location of the crossing site was a “tactical dilemma for me. Eastablish a crossing site within the swamp, or from a jungle point not far from the village in M(5) 29 (0). I’m not certain if any pre-mission intel told me if the town was deserted, or if not, hostile or friendly? Looking back on it, it was awefully close to the town, and most likely I would have swamped it if placed in a similar situation again, just some bad memories of moving through swamps in my rifle platoon days. The rest of the movement was mostly uneventful. Enemy Contact number started at 1 but was quickly reduced to 0. Once the ORP was checked out and then occupied, the objective was reconned. After security was established in both the northwest and southeast, the Support Element was put into place, followed by the Assault Element. The enemy turned out to be a handful of comm bubbas playing grab-ass around an comm-relay site at dusk. The attack went off well. Fire Superiority was quickly established and 4-5 enemy soldiers were eliminated by primarily M203 and M249 fire, despite 3x M-4 attacks rolled first, when the Assault Element attacked across the OBJ. The site was successfully searched for intel items before we pulled off of the OBJ. Once the platoon backtracked to the ORP, collecting security teams along the way, we conducted a hasty crossing of the trail and punching about 1000m into the jungle before we conducted a security half and disseminated info to all members of the patrol. The remainder of the patrol was again uneventful. Since we arrived in the area of the PUP a couple of hours early, we set into defensive 360 and waited until 0500 before we approached the LZ for extract scheduled for 0800. Questions and Comments: 1. I’m good to go with the “Readying of Equipment” concept. I still need to convince myself in the game that he who needs an AT-4, camera, claymore but did not carry it there, has it when he leaves the ORP. 2. If preparations and rehearsals are completed before the Insert Time, is it presumed that transportation is not waiting around to take us to the LZ early and that we spend more time on rehearsals, inspections, chow, etc. and cross the LOD on time.

I received my long awaited Solo Ranger from Omega Games, updated and re-released for its 25th Anniversary. It is not a typical hex and counter, or even area movement wargame. It comes with laminated maps, a military-type protractor, dice, and a gazillion mission cards. There is a paragraph based Tactical Events book that guides you through your mission. My first and only game so far was a squad reconnaissance patrol to scope out a enemy rocket site. You plan various aspects of the mission, how much ammo, what other ordnance or gee-whiz gear is carried and by who. Amongst personal weapons, we carried an AT-4, bino's, AN-PVS-7's, extra 5.56mm, extra 7.62mm, safety rope, a camera. We left behind a javelin launcher and its missiles, SPIE gear, claymores, and soe other things. You establish your route, (objective) rally points, etc. Movement is can be effected by how(over) loaded your people are. As it turned out, only one UH-60 blackhawk showed up in the pick up zone, so I had to implement the bump plan, and the squad entered the AO in two deparate serials. As it turned out, we snooped and pooped to the ORP, scoped out the rocket site undetected, and then egressed to the extract point. , crossing a linear danger area on the way out. It's a pretty cool, and unigue kind of game. It does have some semblance to John Antal's programmed tactical decision novels like Armor Attacks, and Combat Team, although to be honest Ranger pre-dates both of those books. From the site: Ranger was compared to Special Forces by Fire and Movement Magazine: Ranger is billed as the game of modern patrolling. You would expect it to capture these operations well. Actually it does. The emphasis is getting to the target and getting home again. Most of the actions are handled with an abstract combat system. Ranger is not a traditional board game. It is a solitaire game that is played on a laminated map. There is no hexgrid, or counters. Play starts by selecting a mission. Then you have to plan and organize the mission. Factors under the player's control are the size of patrol (squad or platoon), the weapons carried, the composition of the squad, the infiltration and exfiltration routes, what areas of the planned mission will be rehearsed, and so on. Just about everything is under the player's control except the mission, the method of insertion, and availability of certain support... Once the mission is planned and rehearsed, it...is resolved using a paragraph system. Since the situations are more generic and abstract, the system leads to more variability with replays. Many paragraphs can only be played once, and then you know the contents of the paragraphs and any replay is not very interesting... The actions at the target are abstracted so it is difficult to investigate various tactics for actually accomplishing a mission. This action is resolved by a die roll. So if you are trying to destroy some target, it is simply a die roll, modified by your preparations. In this regard, Ranger is not very exciting. It is also why the game works best as a solitaire system. If you want the excitement of stalking through a building looking for the hostages, then you need another game. Ranger was similar to Ambush! in that it was paragraph driven; however the latter game included counters and did have the "excitement of stalking through a building looking for the hostages" (in fact, quite literally, since one of the missions in Move Out, an Ambush! add-on module, was to track down and rescue half the player's squad, who started the mission captured.) Ranger had a much more serious approach to the subject, and Rooker felt the game could even be considered a training aid for actual military patrolling due to its realism. Ranger

Agreed. I don't often do ASW as I'm more of a power projection kinda guy.

Aside from a handful of pbem scenario with an umpire. I have only played solo. Since there is no intended play balance, so long as you have an imagination, you can play through any scenario with a plausible result. Pete

I've been finding that my thinking cap works much better since I have transitioned to the dark side completely.

No Sir. Go back and start a 3min Tactical Turn undetected, and move forward again. Keep in mind that although a Naval Sitrep article Smarter Radar, Larry Bond and crew announced that one should no longer roll for detection, because if you are in range you should assume that you are. I prefer the element of chance, crewman distracted or whatever. I still roll for detection.

Shoot the archer, not the arrows!

"By the way, can you explain this whole Intermediate Turn to Tactical Turn change thing? I don't quite understand how it works. " The answer lies between 2.2.2 Intermediate Turn Sequences and 2.2.5 Transitioning to Shorter Turns. It is simply a tool to prevent unexpected things happening too quickly because the current game turn is 30min or 3min. When going from thirty minute Intermediate Turns to three minute Tactical Turns, it depends on when a player declares going to a shorter turn, either the Plotting or Detection Phases. For Intermediate Turns, simply the next turn starts in the Plotting Phase of a three minute Tactical Turn. If due to speed of a previously undetected attacker or other contact during an Intermediate Turn, per 2.2.2 you back up to the beginning of that turn and then procede. Since only movement and detection takes place in an Intermediate Turn, this prevents too much time elapsing after detection. While this is probably not structured "the best", it's getting late...for me, I hope that it helps. Please ask any follow-ups. Pete

If you mean the scenarios, just scale some down somewhat. Like the carrier air strike, scenario name escapes me, on some soviet ships, no need to launch the entire air wing. also, the convoy scenarios with countless merchantmen, again, scale it down until you get the mechanics down. 2-3 merchants and an escort vs an adversary sub, flight of aircraft, whatever..., game on!