Search the Community

File Name: Swedish Submarine Incident October 17-24, 2014. Historical scenario/Alternate history scenario. File Submitter: broncepulido File Submitted: 08 Nov 2014 File Category: GIUK Swedish Submarine Incident October 17-24, 2014. Historical scenario/Alternate history scenario. A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for the EC2003 Battle for GIUK Gap Battleset and the HCDB-140909 1980-2015 era Platform Database. Image from Wikipedia Commons: Swedish corvette K31 Visby in Aura river in Turku during the Northern Coasts 2014 exercise public pre sail event, 31 August 2014. Author: MKFI. This scenario is designed to be played mostly from the Blue/Swedish side or from the Red/Russian side. You should play a few times first the Blue side to avoid spoilers, and only later play the Red/Russian side if you've interest on it, but I think the victory conditions are very difficult to get for an AI-controlled Blue side. Years after the demise of Soviet Union, the prudent, neutral and natively well-armed Sweden did start near 2008 to downsizing clearly his armed forces (Forsvarsmakten), retiring whole categories of weapons systems, as the useful HKP-4B/C/D Boeing Vertol Kawasaki KV-107-II (CH-46 Sea Knight-derivative) twin-rotor ASW helicopters, specially configured for shallow and difficult waters. All this despite the habitual submarine incidents that had taken place continuously since at least 1962 on the Swedish territorial shores and archipelagos, originated in Soviet clandestine activities, of which the most obvious and memorable event was the stranding of S-363 "Whiskey on the Rocks Incident" in the vicinity of the sensible naval base of Karlskrona in November 1981. But from the other side of the Baltic Sea the President of Russia Vladimir Putin was working for years in a plan to recover the Russian Empire and later Soviet territories, to reinstitute the greatness of his Russia, to guarantee his passage on the History as saviour of the Rodina, and doing return the ghost of the past. Some months before the Crimean and Ukrainian crises, from 8 December 2013 begun the deployment of updated Su-27SM3 Russian fighters in the Belarusian 61st Fighter Air Base at Baranovichi, with all the pilots deployed qualified as Pilot First Class, and later apparently to form a full Flanker regiment to be based at Lida 206th Assault Air Base from 2015 (the Su-27 was previously retired from Belarusian service in December 2012).. Also, deployment of advanced Iskander surface-to-surface missiles and a battery of the very impressive S-400 Triumf/SA-21 SAM in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad between Lithuania and Poland (Formerly Konigsberg in East Prussia. What better excuse to request a land bridge from Russia, nobody remember the very near Danzig Corridor and the 1939 German Ultimatum to Poland?) can give some ideas about future events. More clear even from 7 April 2014, when after only a day of occupation by Russian affine forces was proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic. At last in Autumn, as another of the multiple World Crisis of 2014, in October 2014 were intensified Russian military flights with long range elements in the Pacific and Caribbean areas, Black and Baltic Seas shores and so far as the Portuguese Atlantic Coast. But the more eye-catching and symptomatic incident on 17-24 October was the Swedish submarine chase of unidentified submerged object, with multiple but unclear sights on Kanholmsfjarden in the Stockholm archipelago and radio transmissions linked to a military site in Kaliningrad, compatible with a Russian submarine in distress. All with the addition of at least three Russian-operated civilian ships very probably equipped with submarine holding bays orbiting the near Baltic zone: NS Concord, a converted 105000 tons oil tanker sailing in circles in middle of the sea for one week, R/V Professor Logachev (an 3900 tons standard ex-AGI Project 12283M ship), and the 18425 tons LPG tanker Sibur Voronezh with very reduced IR signature, the two tankers operated at last instance by the Russian company Sovcomflot (SCF). On this scenario the idea is to show the currently reduced ASW capabilities of the Swedish Armed Forces against a possible multiple midget submarine menace, at the same time facing and defending against some limited Russian air incursions potentially menacing the nimble Swedish surface ASW elements. Is present the current Swedish OOB (the in service JAS.39C Gripen Block 19 (2010) and Block 20 (2012) have a slightly improved radar than plain JAS.39C, but are not yet armed with Meteor or Taurus) , and the limited Russian OOB showed in the scenario is as accurate as possible on open sources in October 2014. Enrique Mas, November 2014. Click here to download this file

An very impressive and detailed 339 pages document about U-2, her flights, and her sucessor A-12/Oxcart, with some comments of Chris Pockock: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/

File Name: Operation Ivy Bells, 1971. File Submitter: broncepulido File Submitted: 27 Jan 2013 File Category: WestPac Operation Ivy Bells, 1971. The Halibut finest moment. This picture of USS Halibut in San Francisco Bay is a USN official photo apparently in public domain, retrieved from navysource.org, published on that site as courtesy of Darryl Baker. A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for the WestPac Battleset and the HCCW-120614 Cold War Platform Database. This scenario is designed for play by the US/Blue or the Soviet/Red side, to avoid spoilers is better to play first some times the US/Blue side and only after play the Soviet/Red side. The noisy and peculiar USS Halibut (originally SSGN-587) was previously a Regulus strategic missile carrier later converted in a apparently conventional SSN, after the Regulus cruise missile was retired and his patrols deleted just some months before the introduction of the SSBN patrols. But Halibut was not a quiet fish. Halibut was converted for special covert operations in the Cold War, exploiding the room of her cavernous hangar, but her conversion and her missions not yet full exposed or detailed (aside this one, Halibut was previously employed on at least another great mission, Operation Sand Dollar, locating on 1968 the accidentally sunken K-129, a Soviet Golf-class SSB, for her ulterior recovery in Project Azorian). The basic design was developed by Dr. John P. Craven head of USN Deep Submergence Systems Project. From summer 1971 she was equipped on the after deck with a fixed divers decompression and lockout chamber simulating a DSRV submersible, for very deep saturation divers breathing an helium and oxygen mixture with methods researched at SeaLab. Operation Ivy Bells was based on the intuition of Captain James E. Bradley Jr. director of undersea warfare at the Office of Naval Intelligence about the existence of a undersea communications and telephone cable in the Sea of Okhotsk between the Soviet SSB/SSBN base at Petropavlosk in the very far and almost isolated Kamchatka Peninsula and his Pacific Fleet Headquarters near Vladivostok. The idea was, one time determined the cable emplacement (and previously guaranteed his existence in the same mission!) to tape it with a device working through induction, without violate physically the cable, and even with the adequate legal converture within the bounds of international law, out of the three mile limit of the Soviet territorial waters. The mission was a complete success, the cable was taped, and the Soviets delivered unencrypted plain text messages by the cable, thinking it was sure. Later, other cables will be taped by other US submarines, but this was the first one. And so, on October 1972, Halibut sailed with her captain Commander John E. Mcnish from Mare Island to hunt the West Shore of the Kamchatka Peninsula with the covert mission of retrieve debris of the SS-N-12 anti-ship missile, but actually after signals of fantasy cables and to an uncertain future. Probably this is not an easy scenario. Enrique Mas,January 2013. Click here to download this file