Yishten

Upon further review, I believe there's an error in my flight plan-- I think hovering is only available at VLow altitude. As such, the new flight plan would do away with the hover step in favor of an additional 30 nm cruise speed travel at 310T prior to dropping to VLow, ceasing emissions, and returning to the ship.

Stoykiy's MR-145 Lev (Kite Screech) controlling the AK-130s and the Monolit (Band Stand) controlling the 3M80E Moskits are surface mode; the MR-123 Vympel (Bass Tilts) controlling the AK-630s and the MR-90 Orekhs (Front Domes) are air mode. EMCON is tight-- all radars and sonars are not broadcasting. None of the merchant radars are broadcasting either. I believe the intention -- to be verified with CV32's orders -- is to head the formation at 290T until the merchants are about 12 nm off the Saudi coast, and then to turn to 310T and continue to hug the 12 nm limit of territorial waters. Looking at the loadout options for the Hormone B, I don't see much use out of any of them, and the extra duration from sending it out clean will be worth more. If it's not already the case, the intention will be to get it fueled and alerted at the earliest possible time, with the intention of launching it to travel, under strict EMCON and at Very Low altitude until it gets some separation from the convoy. We did not work out very specific details previously, so my instinct is make it 20 nm at 90T under FMP at VLow (30m) altitude, and then to turn to 310T, climb to 2100 m altitude and throttle back to cruise speed. At that point, the Hormone would activate the Uspekh-2, and I believe one of our escorts plans to begin emitting at that point as well. As for flight mission planning, if I've done my math right, the Hormone will have used 30 nm of endurance getting out to station and about 1 more climbing to Medium altitude. At that altitude, clean, it uses an additional 10% per mile traveled, and will need to return to the ships that will be moving further away, so to be safe I would like to make sure it has 60 nm endurance to get back to the ship, so that gives it 114 nm endurance on station accounting for the reduction at Medium altitude. I believe every 2 minutes 30 seconds hovering it uses 2 nm endurance, so barring some contact to change the plan: After it gets 20 nm from the convoy and climbs to Medium, I anticipate moving it at 310T at cruise speed for 30 nm, then have it hover for 60 minutes (using another 48 nm endurance), and then descend to VLow altitude and return to the ship under cruise speed (ceasing emissions when it begins the descent).

From what I can tell, yes, it looks right to me. Incidentally-- is there a way to zoom or otherwise change the scale on SimPlot Viewer?

I agree with Stoykiy being slightly ahead and Ladnyy being slightly behind, yes. I don't think there's any downside to trying to skirt territorial waters-- worst case scenario, it does nothing for us-- but I worry about the time spent in a straight 270T run to get there (we're starting 100 nm and they claim 12 nm, I think, so 5.5 hours?). So, maybe 290T until we come close to the territorial waters, then turn more northerly?

Good point. So if I have my geography correct, we are moving to the northwest (call it 315T?) so both warships to the starboard side, Stoykiy forward and Ladnyy rear, 1 nm spacing, speed 16 kts; merchants in line, Maykop followed by Zhukov followed by Dnepr.

Sounds good to me. So put the merchants in line, 1 nm apart, slowest in front and fastest in back, with warships one near the front and to port, the other near the rear and to starboard of the line, 1 nm out from the merchants? Heading toward Kuwait and moving at 16 kts?

Though I am not sure what ship options are available to the Red side, looking briefly at the Annexes for appropriate platforms that I know of, I am not tremendously impressed with their destroyer choices (unless I'm missing something). The Vosper Mk5's are decent, though, and the Combattante IIB, though a bit of a one-shot glass cannon, represents a credible threat at range. Leaving aside the Combattante's Harpoons, though, it looks like there's a roughly 20 nm threat window for some damage among the various platforms, with the Sea Killer II's on the Vosper Mk5 offering some of the best threat at range. The Red airpower is a bit of a wild card, though. Red has a better idea of where we are starting from, where we are going, and we tend to represent a cluster of 5 relatively slow moving targets. In this context, Red may prefer to approach under stricter EmCon than I used during the last scenario; on a similar token (again, unless there's something I am failing to consider), I'm not really sold on the benefit of strict EmCon for convoy escorts, at least ones in a position where so many variable are already known to the opponent. I wonder if we don't lose relatively little (giving away a probably already-pretty-easy-to-guess location) for a pretty significant gain (the earlier, and farther away, we detect the Red ships, the better position we find ourselves in to respond). That does touch on something else, though: when I was the aggressor, my orders-- explicit and implicit-- were straightforward: engage the convoy and its escort, sink the merchant, damage the warship. It was up to me to implement it, but it was unambiguous. Looking at it from this side, though, some of our objectives are clear: get to the target (looks like that'll probably take roughly 18 hours, give or take, at top convoy speed), don't let the merchants get hurt, try not to get too hurt ourselves. Some are less clear: "respond resolutely to any hostile action." From a purely game-outcomes-based perspective, we would be best served by identifying and then immediately firing upon the Red warships with intent to disable; and I know I argued in favor of just such an approach during the last scenario, but in hindsight it is apparent to me that I felt able to do so precisely because the aggressor's role was clearly stated-- to ignore, for example, potential political ramifications was easy because nothing implying one should consider the political ramifications was in evidence as part of the scenario. Here, though, the order is to respond to hostility-- and barring something self-evident, such as being fired upon or targeted with fire control radar, I find myself reluctant to disregard this element as, in this case, it IS part of the scenario. Regardless of how that is approached, though, I still find it likely that detecting the Red ships as early as possible remains useful enough to potentially warrant being willing to give away our position. Related to that is the Hormone B. Useful for helping to locate the Red ships; when it comes time to fire on them, useful for OTH targeting, though depending on how we interpret hostility, that may or may not be as valuable. Potentially useful to simultaneously accomplish locating Red warships while avoiding giving away our position, if we fly it away from us and let it broadcast instead. I worry a bit about that, though, if only because it may reduce out ability to detect air targets in time to effectively respond to them. I have also briefly mulled over the idea of separating off one escort to operate independently either to draw away Red ships (quite probably doable, but at a good chance that we lock ourselves into a draw at best by getting the decoy severely damaged or sunk) or else to attack them from an unexpected angle (not very realistic when we don't know where they are, and even if we did, if we're not pursuing the attack). So, I considered it, but I'm far from convinced it's worth pursuing-- though if we do pursue it, I can really only see it being effective as a decoy maneuver (and another problem I see with that is that if the decoy fails to sufficiently harm the Red ships, the convoy is slow enough that it's likely they'll just catch back up again, now against fewer escorts...so, I suppose if we're going that route, it only makes sense for the decoy to be Stoykiy. So, all that having been said, and with the further caveat that I'm just thinking out loud (so to speak) right now, I guess for the moment I favor the idea of keeping the escorts together, moving at convoy speed toward Kuwait, maybe having Ladnyy broadcasting and send the Hormone off in a different direction, broadcasting. In so doing, we afford ourselves a good chance of detecting either Red ships (with the additional help of the Hormone), detecting and responding to incoming aircraft and/or missiles, or both, and if we are really lucky they either pick up the Hormone's emissions but not Ladnyy's or else think the Hormone is traveling with Stoykiy splitting off and move to intercept a ship that is not there, all only at the cost of potentially giving away our true position (which might have already been guessable anyway). Okay, there. My initial thoughts, in a sort of stream of consciousness, unfortunately. I'll keep thinking about it, and will check back in to see what your thoughts are.

Reading further, it seems the helicopter is "not normally carried." What is our ref's call in this case. And will it be Stoikiy as in the original scenario variants?

While conflicted in that the helo aboard is a step more complicated than I've heretofore taken (and insofar as I don't want to be a lead weight for my team), still if you're leaving the choice to me and if you wouldn't be put out, yeah, I'd take the Sovremennyy.

i don't love the idea of a pre-Gauntlet Udaloy, but a Sovremennyy is hard to pass up, and/or a Krivak could have a role.

Although still willing to make room for others, I'm more than happy to volunteer for, let's say, blue this time.

I'm game, though having just played, if you get flooded with interest I'm willing to sit it out if need be.

If you ultimately opt to run something with room for me, I'm certainly happy to participate.

Although I was a player, I figured I would also post here briefly to add my thoughts on blue side, mostly because I concur with CV32. When I had considered what I would've done from the blue side, I figured I would mostly be playing to try to achieve a draw. To that end, I worry that trying to remain undetected would have served me poorly in that red side had a fairly good idea of where I would be. Since red has the initiative, I would've started with my radar is active and upon detecting an opposing warship, would move to intercept with all speed. I would already be moving in the presumptive direction of the red warship prior to detection. The goal would be to close to within 8.5 nautical miles as quickly as possible and to launch missiles at maximum rate thereafter. In all likelihood this would result in more than 25% damage to my warship, thus ensuring that I do not achieve victory, but may be able to think the red warship without damage to the merchant.

Having thought about this a bit longer, I would like to add some additional notes: To have focused my attacks on the escort was aggressive and possibly (hopefully) unexpected. It is an approach potentially rife with real-world faults. In a realistic situation, I would expect-- indeed, maybe even hope-- that my hands would be more tied. However, in this case, a decisive victory condition called for damage to the Sposobnyy; and the lack of granularity in the victory conditions meant that I would have to either settle for a tactical victory at maximum, or else fire at least one shot at the warship. Now, with the proviso that this probably just serves to highlight that I am, by no means, an international relations expert, my thoughts on this could best be summed up as "in for a penny, in for a pound." If I'm obligated, ultimately, to provoke an international incident by the fundamental goals set before me, I might as well make it an effective international incident. I don't really mean this as a criticism of the scenario, though perhaps, ultimately, it is one. But for the sake of argument, let's say I decided I wanted to focus on the merchant, and do the bare minimum damage to the warship, say after the merchant was sunk. My first thought to this end is that I am almost certainly accepting that I will be sunk eventually. This is not an issue, as far as the scenario limits are concerned: as long as I do enough damage before I go down, I can still achieve any level of victory. But if I'm targeting the merchant primarily from the mindset of seeking to play more realistically, at least from a foreign relations perspective (as opposed to some tactical consideration that makes it a superior choice that I, in actual practice, have failed to note), I think I'm doing myself a disservice; I would anticipate that, barring an explicit demand or order to the contrary, actually surviving the encounter would be as much a priority for the captain as avoiding an international incident. That's not to imply that it's literally impossible to sink the merchant, damage the warship, and survive; it's just so unlikely as to be functionally impossible. If I had reconciled it all, though, I think I would approach it with the same fundamental tactic. The Vosper Mk5 weapons are superior at ranges from 8.6 nm out to about 12 nm, so although I initially would hope to circle around the the outside of the convoy to put myself closer to the merchant than the warship before being detected if possible, ultimately the plan would be to try and keep the range above 8.5 nm while firing rapidly on the merchant. When the warship approached closely enough to make that impossible, my next best bet would be to try and close to closer than 1.9 nm, where I again have an advantage. My worry, however, is that in covering that gap, I would be faced with a larger number of incoming missiles than I could effectively handle, would be significantly damaged and thus slowed, and would lose any ability to manage the range against the warship, resulting in my rapid destruction. I have reason to believe this approach has a solid chance of achieving a tactical victory, albeit not an absolute; but I equally have reason to believe this approach has little chance of achieving a decisive one.

Oh, ok. That's fine. Since my experience with Harpoon is limited, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding something. Thank you.

I have posted in the AAR thread. Thank you for running the game-- I had a good time, and would be thrilled to play again if and when you run something else. Since the game is over, out of curiosity, I wondered if you would be willing to clarify the deal with the Don-2. Was the merchant broadcasting, or did I misunderstand what the Ship Data Annex was trying to get across about the radars and the Units business?

Thanks, you two, for a great game. I had a great time, SimPlot Viewer is excellent, and I would definitely be interested in tossing my hat into the ring again. If you get a response about the question, assuming it's the one I had asked about, I'd be very interested to know what the answer was. Thanks again!

Obviously, all of my observations are inherently biased by my limited perceptions. I'll start, though, with SimPlot Viewer. From a player perspective, I think it's an excellent tool. The learning curve, at least for me, was reasonably simple, with just a bit of trial and error to get the hang of it, and it offered a well-organized and ready source of all necessary data with regard to the observables. Obviously, I cannot speak to how I would feel about it from a referee standpoint-- I fiddled a bit with the SimPlot files but found the learning curve steeper and trial and error far less effective-- but as a player, I think the Viewer is definitely effective. My observations of the scenario, too, are limited, having only played the one side, one time, against a single opponent. Clearly, it was-- intentionally, both in part of the authors and in choice-- a straightforward one, with limited platforms and limited potential for the unexpected. It allowed me to operate with a level of cavalierness that may generally be untenable-- I felt comfortable, for example, basing an ID of my targets off a number of circumstantial pieces of evidence that I might not have felt sufficient in another, more complex setting. That said, though, that straightforwardness and the resulting cavalierness may have been the main things that gave me a shot at anything much better than a draw. My initial impression of the situation suggested to me that I was going to have a difficult time of it. Yes, I had the higher quality (sea skimming, better range) surface-to-surface missile in a 1:1 comparison, but in the right situation, my opponent was capable of launching twice as many missiles-- and far more simultaneously-- than I, each of which would do equal damage to my one. I could expect to survive, maybe, 2 volleys of that, if I let the opposing warship get too close, and would do significantly less damage over the same time frame. As documented earlier, I had come to the conclusion that I could either concentrate on the merchant, which I reasoned would give me the best chance of achieving some type of victory, but also gave me the greatest chance of suffering some type of loss; or I could initially concentrate on the warship, wherein I could virtually guarantee to receive a result no worse than a draw, albeit at a reduced chance of achieving a victory. I opted for the latter approach, and I suspect I was only able to procure victory by being willing to fire-- in this context-- with limited confirmatory data. Even so, there were certainly moments that I questioned the outcome. Fewer Sea Killers hit than I had banked on, and on a couple of occasions the opposing warship came closer than comfort would allow, especially since I knew I had done damage but had no way, certainly at that range, of gauging whether that damage had weakened the warship's fire capabilities significantly. Fortunately for me, the greater range capabilities of my weapons and the loss of speed from early damage from the sea skimmers left me capable, for the most part, of controlling the range with my superior speed, which I think was ultimately the key to success for the red side. I do not think I would approach this scenario differently from the red side, though obviously enemy action could result in the need to modify the plan during execution. However, I recognize that some of the factors that worked in my favor during this scenario that allowed me to operate with greater certainty despite more limited data would not be present in other scenarios. I think that, in a more ambiguous situation, I might have been better served by going after the merchant primarily, but in such a case my specific approach would also likely have been a great deal more circumspect, and following that train of logic too much further just results in greater and greater speculation.

Fair enough. From here, my intent is to open the range to the warship back out to about 9 nm and then to circle around it clockwise at maximum speed -- increasing to that speed as able -- keeping at 9 nm to approach the merchant as long as the merchant continues to pull away from the warship. I will fire the Mk8 continuously at the merchant during this maneuver. If the merchant moves to get closer to the warship, I will turn to approach both at maximum speed, but will instead be firing the Mk8 at the warship until she sinks, then at the merchant,

I think I need clarification about EO mode for the Mk8. It's not OP as such-- can it be used under local control? If so, does it suffer the penalties of firing under local control, or only OP suffers those? The description of EO seems to suggest it would not suffer the low visibility penalties that OP would, but I'm less sure about the 1/2 chance from just being in local control. The way I see it, I have two main options. The first would be to turn away and increase speed. I'm confident 17 kts is now Sposobnyy's maximum speed, so I should be able to open the range back up, and eventually continue radar-controlled Mk8 fires, perhaps even until she sinks. She's close enough that she might get within range of her Volnas briefly, but I can take a hit or two if need be, and the GDM-C would be in arc and might be able to help me with one of them. Within the bounds of the limits of the rules and the scenario, I have no doubt this is tactically the best choice, though it does exploit some concessions to playability and simplicity imposed by the rules and by the scenario if used maximally. It's, also, not the most exciting, frankly. My other main option is to turn toward Sposobnyy, increase to maximum speed, continuing to fire the Mk8 at maximum rate the whole time. I'll probably eat some Volnas, and the GDM-C will be out of arc to help me, though hopefully, between closing the range (perhaps eventually past minimum, though that's a lot of incoming missiles between then and now) and improving the damage capability and accuracy of the Mk8, I might come out of it the better. But if I'm going to do that, I'd prefer to have my Sea Cats available for counter-missile fire, so I would need to switch the fore Sea Hunter back to air mode, but then I'd need to fire the Mk8 under local control, and if EO is either not an option for local control or no better than OP for that purpose, well, in either case, such a maneuver is not likely to pay off-- whatever benefit the Sea Cats could offer in taking down Vonas would be offset by losing out on Mk8 fires during the approach.

So, I have a few queries that will affect my plans in the near future, although perhaps not just yet. 1) Right now, range to see a small target is 9.5 nm, but it will deteriorate, and it will be dark at 2000. Though I don't suspect I will be at this great a range that long, I am curious what, roughly, the range to sight a small target will be at that time. I know the scenario has not specified a moon phase, so I wasn't sure what kind of decrease we should be expecting. 2) The ESM bearing does not appear to be evident on SimPlot any longer. Am I no longer picking up an ESM signal? 3) Is there an ammo limit for the Mk8 that I have missed somewhere? For now, barring some change from the targets, keep current heading, slow to 8 kts, and continue maximum rate of fire for the Mk8 at the warship for 15 more minutes.

Plan to turn to 330T, plan to make speed 26 kts, and continue to fire the Mk 8 when it is in range (as long as it remains, and if it drifts out of range during the maneuver, when it comes back in range) barring further need for modification based on target responses.

There's an error above: I need to respond to a range greater than 11.4, not 12.4-- by 12.4 my gun's already out of range.

A pity-- I had certainly hoped the last Sea Killer would hit. Oh well, there's nothing for it. That's opened the range sufficiently, especially since it looks like the warship has turned away if I am understanding SimPlot correctly. So, to that end: plot to come around 270T, and reduce speed by the maximum possible 18 kts (I think at the end of that turn I'd be at 15 kts, then?), and keep the plan to make the aft fire director go to air mode and the fore fire director to go to surface mode. As soon as the fore fire director is available, it is my intention to fire on the warship with the 114mm using RA mode. My intent is to keep the warship at range and continue to fire upon her. To that end, I will be forced to respond to an evident change in heading or speed on the part of the enemy warship, and I will need to respond if the distance to the enemy warship increases past 12.4 nm or below 9.4 nm, and of course I would need to respond to any new unexpected sensor data or missile launch. Barring any of those conditions, I am content to continue at the new heading and speed and plot 114mm fire at every opportunity until such time as I have fired 8 rounds, at which point I will need to reevaluate my position regardless.