AAR: Crimean River [spoiler Alert]

By Brad Leyte

Our support of the Ukraine in its border conflict with Russia has broken up most of the enemy offensive, except in the Crimea, where the war is bogging down. Intelligence indicates that many Russian units are no longer getting consistent support or orders from Moscow and that some isolated groups of Russian forces are either surrendering or "melting away". There is, unfortunately, at least one exception. A rogue general in the Crimea has taken the opportunity to seize a nuclear powerplant. His intentions are unknown, but he and his compatriots are known to have ties to the criminal underworld in the Caucasus region. Our fear is that he may begin disassembly of the nuclear facility and sell weapons grade nuclear material to the highest bidder. The reactor and its support facilities must therefore be disabled or destroyed.

 

The loss of weapons-grade nuclear material is the greatest modern-day fear of most Western leaders. That fear would become a reality if this mission were to fail. With only four Harriers in the entire operation, the heavy lifting was going to be left up to the pilots of the helicopter gunships and the Marines and Special Operations troopers in their slicks / Osprey.

 

 

The Harriers were launched in order to clear a path for the air assault elements. Unfortunately, the pair of Harriers assigned to Simferopol air base declared mechanical problems and immediately returned to base. This meant that 50% of the available fixed wing assets were now declared unflightworthy and grounded indefinitely. This was a potentially crippling blow to the operation. The raid commander, in the finest tradition of Ranger "Can Do" spirit, elected to try and continue the mission without these vital assets. All "For Want of a Bolt"...

 

 

The situation looked grim, indeed. Numerous Surface-to-air missile [sAM] sites were quickly picked up by their distinctive transmissions as well as three armoured columns were also detected approaching Simferopol and the two bridges needed by the ground elements to cross into the Crimea. The Apache, Super Cobra, and Little Bird helicopters were able to quickly destroy this threat with rockets and Hellfire AGMs. The operation still looked feasible.

 

 

As the raid moved towards the nuclear sites, four Su-25 Frogfoot fighter-bombers attempted to intercept. The Harriers intercepted and destroyed three of them before the fourth was dispatched by a Super Cobra with a Sidewinder. The situation still looked nominal. The Harriers summarily dumped their load of bombs on SAM units in order to try and open up a breach in the defences. On their egress, both were shot down by the hideously lethal Grison-19 SAMs.

 

The Apaches then took to destroying most of the defending armoured forces and many short-ranged SAMs surrounding the bases. However, once they tried to approach the bases, they were quickly and helplessly shot out of the air. The Pantzir and SA-19 Grison systems easily out-ranged the 4nm range of the Hellfire missiles. The Apaches tried to swarm the defending SAMs in hopes of overwhelming them in sheer numbers. Their lives and their helicopters were thrown away for no gain.

 

 

Still, the commander tried to press the attack. His slicks had to get within 1nm in order to disgorge the assault troops. Sadly, they proved to be meat on the table for the voracious SAMs. After losing 30% of the assault element, the commander ordered a full retreat. To add insult to injury, a second wave of Su-25 Frogfoot fighter-bombers was launched from Russian bases. As they chased the retiring helos back to base, many more helos and Ospreys were shot down to them. Once they landed, National Command Authority ordered a full withdrawal from the region. They would have to get the fissile material another way.

 

Thanks for another challenging scenario. Still don't see how I could have done any better, but then, again, not all battles can be won. Just like in real life.

 

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FilesOfScenShare

Sounded like a real tough nut.

 

Thanks Herman.

 

Pete

Well, I think that things might have turned out very differently if I had not discovered three new game engine bugs in the process!

 

I like the feeling of real world, "Oh, Sh*t", when something breaks down and doesn't work. I know that Brad couldn't have planned for it.

 

When my Harrier landed and took a huge long time to get ready, I knew that the game wasn't meant to do that. It was a 'nice' surprise to have that particular monkey wrench thrown into the gears.