broncepulido Posted August 24 Report Share Posted August 24 View File Gulf of Aden Clash. June 1986. Hypothetical/Historical Scenario. Gulf of Aden Clash. June 1986. Hypothetical/Historical Scenario. A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for EC2003 Battle for the Middle East Battleset and the HCDB2-170308 new standard 1980-2025 Platform Database. This scenario is designed with advanced Scenario Editor and to be run with HCE 2015.008+ or later. This scenario is designed to be played from the Blue/NATO-Yemen Arab Republic/YAR (North Yemen) side or from the Red/USSR-People's Democratic Republic of Yemen/PDRY (South Yemen)-Iran side. You should play a few times first the Blue side to avoid spoilers, and only later play the Red side. Image: The U.S. Navy nuclear-powered Task Force One on September 17, 1986, commemorating a world cruise on the 25th Anniversary of the 1964 cruise Operation "Sea Orbit". Included the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) which took part in the first cruise, accompanied by the nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers USS Truxtun (CGN-35) and USS Arkansas (CGN-41). U.S. Navy photo and as consequence in public domain, took from Wikipedia Commons and from the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) 1986 cruise book available at Navysite.de. This scenario is inspired and based in the article by Joseph Giuda "Harpoon Scenario: Hunting the Bear", published in the Harpoon SITREP 66, April 2024, but very expanded. The initial idea is very simple (read the Harpoon SITREP 66 article for more details): World War III started suddenly everywhere, and both sides forces are trapped in far places, long away of the main European theatre of operations, as reminiscence of many Imperial Germany naval forces at the World War I start. On this concrete case, the Soviet guided missile cruiser Slava (Sistership of Moskva, sunk by Ukrainian forces in 2022) currently on the Gulf of Aden and her escorts and all available forces in the region are ordered to neutralize or bottle up the USS Enterprise meagre CVBG, itself pretending to transit from the Red Sea through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the Indian Ocean. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are neutralized by a Soviet nuclear blackmail, have lost the control of its own air space, and its forces can't support the Blue side neither prevent the use of its air space by the Red side. Last but not least by years I was interested, and very ignorant, on the Yemen history (Also a very interesting country in the ancient era, with a wonderful architecture), its perpetual turmoil, its complex society and civil wars, its current times with Houties successful perturbing the maritime traffic even with the first use of operational ASBM, and many times thinking on design some Yemen civil wars scenario. At last I do it on this scenario, with the additional surprise found in the research of the original scenario, as it occurred just few months after the South Yemen "events" of January, 13, 1986 and the consecutive People's Democratic Republic of Yemen/PDRY (South Yemen) civil war actions, when PDRYAF lost a 75% of its assets, and the consequent limitation of its capabilities. A complex, surprisingly balanced and delicate scenario, pretended to be historically accurate about the possible historical forces, enjoy! Enrique Mas, August 24, 2024. Submitter broncepulido Submitted 08/24/2024 Category Middle East 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broncepulido Posted August 24 Author Report Share Posted August 24 Notes on some platforms: - SA-9b should be not equipped with any radar, but only with RWR/ESM locating system (System 9S12. Not in the East Germany ones, probably not for export: https://www.rwd-mb3.de/pages/9s12.htm ) https://www.rwd-mb3.de/frat.html - The Juliett SSG in the original Harpoon SITREP scenario has been replaced by an Echo II SSGN, as the missiles of the Juliett in the DB are not ship-attack capable (From 1965 all Julietts were equipped with anti-ship capable P-6 missiles, in the HCDB2 database is only equipped with nukes, some anti-ship, some anti-ground). - Both North and South Yemen employed simultaneously MIG-21MF and MIG-21bis at that time period. For sake of clarification in this scenario North Yemen employs only MIG-21MF (represented by Syrian MIG-21MF Fishbed-J 80) and South Yemen only MIG-21bis (represented by Algerian MIG-21bis Fishbed-L 80), and only these later ones equipped (if any present on this theatre) with R-60/AA-8 Aphid AAMs. - South Yemen Mi-24A Hind-A are represented by Libyan ones. - The presence of USS Salt Lake City SSN-716 is completely speculative, but historically plausible to complete the Enterprise CVBG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broncepulido Posted August 24 Author Report Share Posted August 24 Some sources: Main inspiration: Article by Joseph Giuda "Harpoon Scenario: Hunting the Bear" in Harpoon SITREP 66 Main, comprehensive and in deep source for the Yemens, the time period and importantly the internal "events" of January 13, 1986, destroying the 75% of South Yemen air force elements : "Hot Skies over Yemen, Volume 1, Aerial Warfare over the Southern Arabian Peninsula, 1962-1994" by Tom Cooper. Helion & Company 2017. Apparently not available on the Helion books site, try here: https://www.dhz-books.com/en-gb/hot-skies-over-yemen---volume-1,-middle-eastwar-no-11,-helion On the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) her air wing and her escorts: http://www.gonavy.jp/CV-CVN65f.html http://www.uscarriers.net/cvn65deploy.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Yemen https://armstransfers.sipri.org/ArmsTransfer/TransferData Ten Mirage IIIC based a Djibouti (this was hard to find!): https://www.defnat.com/e-RDN/vue-article.php?carticle=13606&cidrevue=386 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donaldseadog Posted Saturday at 10:40 PM Report Share Posted Saturday at 10:40 PM AAR **SPOILER ALERT** Well this was quite a long campaign. I should have kept a log At the outset I figured the locals were pretty evenly matched so decided to let my allies take care of their neighbours with only a bit of anti radar strikes from my carrier to get them started, in the main I'd set up a long range CAP, AEW and EW shield of my carrier group to north and east, take out the enemy establishments ahead of me to the west and saturate the immediate areas ahead with asw patrols. This seemed to go well enough for some time while I picked of plenty of long range AC coming down from the enemies bases to the far north. But then I missed a key strike and had a saturation of missile coming in at VHigh alt where I had limited ability to defend and lost a screening escort and suffered minor carrier damage. Meanwhile my friends ashore where doing well taking out SAM with the CAS loaded Fitter then coming in with numerous assault attacks to slowly destroy all enemy bases along our departure path. My own small surface group supposedly securing the exit to open ocean didn't do so well. A later investigation showed that an insufficiently experienced officer-of-the-watch was in place at a critical time, and a sub got through their asw screen to take a ship before they could track and sink her. They at least tried harder after this setback and proved more than useful in sending an enemy SG to the bottom once it was soften up with anti-radar strikes from the carrier. That success started to show political favour with declarations of a partial win. Our final hurdle, which had remained undiscovered for quite some time, was a heavily defended missile base on a lonely little island. With no aircraft defense it was just a matter of maintaining a continous line of anti radar then bomber attacks and it was destroyed and the declaration of total success issued. Thanks for putting this together Enrique. Another nice scenario. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broncepulido Posted Saturday at 11:47 PM Author Report Share Posted Saturday at 11:47 PM Great report Don, thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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