From: BillR54619@aol.com Subject: Cold Wars (Was Re: [consim-l] RE: Things are very slow here) In a message dated Mon, 12 Mar 2001 5:04:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, "Mike Mnich" writes: > I like good after action reports. Okay - you talked me into it. Here;s an after action report, on Cold Wars from last weekend. I got up to Lancaster about noontime on Saturday. I really intended to pitch into a 4 hour game, since I signed up for a 25mm Kursk game. But things didn't quite work that way. Wandering into the National Security Decision Making Game, I sat down at the Russian inbriefing just long enough for one of the gamemasters to ask me if I wanted to play. Well,m figuring that I could break off by 5 PM, and not ever having played NDSM, I said, "what the heck" ? Then he asked me which side I wished to be on, and stuNational Security Decision Making (NSDM) Game (the two countries played "live" were Russia and Iran), I stupidly volunteered to be an Iranian. The Iranian players were already caucusing, and although they first made me a Mullah (in NDSM, there is an Iranian president, a council of mullahs headed by a sinister figure called the Rabar, and a largely powerless parliament called the Majlis. The army and revolutionary guards can bring down any government byh declaring a coup (assuming they both agree to this) and getting a requisite number of votes from the players, a disproportionate number of whom are Shiite clergy, with other Majlis factions representing business, technology, oil interests, radical students, and so forth. I ended up playing the technologists. Now, I had a very interesting problem, because what I needed to meet my faction goals was a true guns-and-butter policy from the Iranian government. I got points for increasing trade with the west (indeed I got good points for friendly relations with the US), but I also got points for building the bomb, and increasing the armed forces. Well, the Mullahs did an interesting thing in the first turn - they cut defense even more than the secular business interests in the Majlis had done. They even cut back on the Islamic bomb. AND they also cut the security forces. The original Iranian president quit the game, and I was one of the three presidential candidates. The Rabar vetoed the defense minister and myself, leaving the "radical clergy" candidate as the only alternative. As the GM said in the AAR, Iran was radicalizing. Well, enough was enough. The armed forces and security police were seething, ready to coup. I threw in with the army, and down went Abdul. But the Mullahs had the last laugh. Pleading forgiveness, they promised a change in policy if only we would take Abdul's cousin Abdullah as president (same player, nobody really dies in NDSM). And so we did. And for a couple of annual turns, things were just jolly in Teheran. The reinstated radical clergy president ran a sort of parliament in being, consulting everybody, making deals, assigning missions. GNP went down, but we were assured, would go up once the West saw the benefit of trade. We had a cool deal on heavy equipment with Germany, right before the bottom fell out, I myself negotiated an oil-for-telecommunications equipment deal with the Italians. And then the dark side took over. The Mullahs were being difficult, threatening to conduct heresy trials, and in general obstructing our rapid progress as a nation. So the president started making noises that he wanted the Rabar gone. And we screwed up - we trusted him. But, as it turned out, the radical clergy player, despite his excellent leadership, never forgot who he was, or the objectives for which he was playing. My job was to become president, or barring that, at least Minister of Economic Affairs. His job was not to be president. It was to make one of the Mullahs into the Ayatollah. Well, a very odd thing happened when the coup attempt hit. The Rabar survived. Although the great majority of the players voted against him, the security police stuck by his side, and the coup failed. The radical clergy president had chosen a less radical Mullah for Ayatollah, but instead the Rabar deposed the radical clergy president, and achieved absolute power. So he fired the entire cabinet, and bought off the armed forces and security police players by giving them cabinet positions. Then chaos broke out. The Rabar ordered the US president assasinated. Then a nuclear bomb exploded in Tehran. Everybody thought the US did it, but the security police claimed it was a Russian bomb. And of course, the Russian Army went on alert, big time. Some Iranian players actually left the room, to "flee the country" as it were. I also ended up in Silicon Valley, to set up my own .com startup in earnest, even though the Rabar/Ayatollah offered me some concessions on the nuclear program (at one time, they had 43 !! points on it, but logic returned, and I got a minimal investment of 3 points. But the business player asked if I'd walk out with him, and we hoped that if enough players went on strike (even a couple of the Mullahs joined the dissident faction) the armed forces and the security police would take power. But it didn't work out. When I "left the country" GDP growth went to -6%. But the "Mad Mullah" held onto power to the end. The controllers even voted him, together with the radical clergy ex-president and the Hezbollah player one of the top six players - for surviving. So, evil played NDSM, and evil won. Who sez that games have to have a happy ending ? Well, it was beyond six, so I blew my reserved game. The NDSM folks had some miniatures games that were linked to events in the game - Indian-US Navy Harpoon action out by Diego Garcia, a Columbian drug war scenario, (hosted by Pete Panzeri), and a Russia-Nordic fight using MBT rules. I did the MBT game. In some ways, it just wasn't my weekend. Having argued about the soundness of Russian arms on this list, I have to report that the Evil Empire isn't what it used to be. Commanding a hybrid task force with a reconnaissance company (10 BMPs, no dismounts)two tank companies and a motorized rifle company, I have to report that I was not able to beat a Swedish Leo 2A5 company (-) - really two tank platoons, what appeared to be an antitank platoon, and perhaps two mech platoons, once reinforced by an Estonian tank company (or was it just a platoon) (upgunned T55s_ an entire BRDM/AT5 company, and a truckborne infantry company. Having to capture 4 of 6 towns, we only got into one. We did have some decent artillery support, which killed about half of the BRDM/AT5s. And the motorized rifle company was still reasonably healthy (I just had them mounted on yucky MTLBs)We did eradicate one of the Swedish Leo platoonsl, loosing only six T-72s - is there a more worthless and obsolete tank in the world ? - in the process. My BMP recon, although having no room to manuever, did manage to clear out (and in some cases, gun down in cold blood) the Swedish AT platoon and about 3 or 4 of the IFVs (some brand with a 40mm cannon, no ATGM missiles). with only six BMP losses. The Swedes (as I now understand on reflection) had fought forward with all their AT, one tank platoon, and one mech platoon, and ended up fighting my BMP recon at ranges of 100-1000 meters. So at the end of the first phase the score stood: Russian Kills: 3 Leo 2 tanks 4 ITOW vehicles 4 IFVS Nordic kills: 6 T72s 6 BMPs Pretty even count, though I'd give a slight advantage to the Russians. However, as a doctrinal example, this was a pretty ugly action. The two tank companies (both reinforced by a MRP) went on line and just overran the Leo position, which was a nice hull down hornets nest. The T-72s had to close to 400 meters before their main guns had any effect on the uparmored Leos. The BMP recon company, far from executing the snoop-and-poop mission I had planned for them, was forced to attack straight out of march column when they ran into the ITOW vehicles. They volley fired, and knocked out their opponents one after the other, even got onto the flank of the Leos. So things were going so well that I went into exploitation mode, and as the remnants of my BMP recon company charged down the road that split our first two objectives - they ran raight into a Swedish fire sack - two Leo 2s and 2 IFVs. And died. In the rain. At night. (Did I mention that we were simulating a night action, and that our inferior Russian sights were no match for Western thermal imaging systems ? Well, I just did.) We were all getting a bit punchy, and the GM started making jokes about "passive aggressive commanders" -"You must think its all about YOU !!" The Nordic players, who didn't appear to know much about armor tactics, were beginning to catch on. Then the Estonians showed up, just in time to deal with the two Russian tank companies, coming in at 50% strength to secure their assigned objective. Should have gone Hasty D. Oh, yeah, I "advised" my left flank commander not to go in. And yeah, I gave him the arty battery. But he went in anyway, and for a second, when the artillery smashed up 6 of 10 BRDM/AT5s, I almost thought that he'd get into the town on the left, even as I was dismounting the battalion headquarters company and a motorized rifle platoon (with my one battalion headquarters tank in support) to clear the town on the right. But it didn't happen. Just like it sez in the field manuals, the Russian advance guard battalion dies in a murderous crossfire attacking the second battle position. So then I went to bed. After 8AM mass, I got into a nice game of Classical Hack, a Successors scenario. Well, I can't tell you the whole story of that game, for there is a twist and that would be telling, but suffice to say that when I assaulted an ailing elephant with my peltasts, the thing rampaged and chased off all my light cavalry, about a third of my force. I did use my Macedonian heavy cavalry in the appropriately sweeping manner, scattering the enemy's archers and slingers to the four winds. but neither my peltasts nor my heavy cavalry managed to break up the pike sygmata which we found in extremitis, and hoped would panic and break the most exposed part of our foes line. And of course, we all sat around and argued who would have one, when time was called. Bill R. From: "Bliss, Gordon D" Subject: RE: Cold Wars (Was Re: [consim-l] RE: Things are very slow here) I'll say a little about the Harpoon game that Bill mentioned below. I didn't play in the NSDM (stopped by towards the end of the initial briefing, thought it was full - my mistake) but did play in the Harpoon game afterwards. The basic scenario was that we (as American) had to defend Diego Garcia from a possible attack from the Indians. We had 4 ships, a Tico, a Spruance, a Burke, and an O.H.Perry. We had a total of 4 P3's and 9 F16's based on Diego, and a Patriot battery there. We also potentially had an SSN in the area, but no direct control over it. The Indians had the former Russian carrier, with MiG-29's and Harriers, 2 Dehli DDs, and 2 frigates as well as a possible sub(s). They also had a Tu-95 Bear patrol aircraft. We were under rules of engagement such that we could not engage unless we were either locked onto with targeting (not acquisition) radar or actually shot at. The early stage were search, nobody knew exactly where the main enemy force was . We kept our 4 ships together and stayed behind Diego Garcia relative to the expected enemy direction of advance. The P3 rotated doing patrol loops looking for surface contacts. The big early incident was when their Bear declared an in-flight emergency, and started flying towards Diego. As an emergency we were obliged to allow them to land though we made them drop all ordnance, fly a tight path, stop all search radars, having 2 F16's escorting them in, etc.but they still managed to pull a trick and just as they were about to touch down, suddenly went to full power and pulled away - they came up with a good excuse that a guy who had jumped out on the approach was really the emergency and had tried to hijack the plane. We all knew we'd been had and that they likely picked up on at least a couple of our ships, but at least I and another person on the team convinced our CO not to shoot him down (which he wanted to do repeatedly) which would have lost us the moral high ground. A P3 (which now had an F-16 escort) later did locate the Indian surface ships and they sent up MiG-29's towards the P3. When they got within range, they locked on the P3 which gave us weapons release and the shooting started. The results of the first clash was 4 MiG-29s and 2 F-16s splashed and the P3 came away unscathed. I'm not sure why they made their move so early rather than closing in to launch a full attack - after the Bear incident, it would have been a good assumption that we were constrained from shooting, but they may have assumed that we couldn't fire at just lock-on. I didn't ask any of them after so I can't say. There followed an extended period of aircraft skirmishing as they sent out a couple of carrier strikes and we'd intercept them. The net results of this was that they knocked out the main search radar on DG and the acquisition radar for the Patriot, and then later sent a few Harrier-launched anti-ship missiles into the prepositioning ships based at DG for minor damage. They lost all their carrier aircraft (24 total) and we lost 8 of the 9 F-16's. Meanwhile we kept a P3 shadowing their ships (they never did try to intercept it again) and got the other 3 together for a harpoon strike which crippled one of the DDs. Unfortunately, it also damaged a Japanese tanker that they had been taking cover behind, but not fatally. Another P3 harpoon strike was launched just before the big showdown. By this time we had moved around DG to engage their fleet and they had enough info to target us. The P3 strike put some missiles into the carrier and DD but not before they had already launched. Thanks to the wonders of Aegis we took down a majority of their missiles before they even came close and the point defense took out a few more. They manged to get 2 small hits on the Tico and 1 on the Spruance. They had 1 of their supersonic missiles get through on both the Burke and the Perry and managed to miss both chances (~80% chance of a hit) - overall they had a pretty miserable die-rolling night. We vectored our missiles in to avoid the Japanese tanker and on our shots sank the remaining DD outright and crippled the carrier. The frigates escaped without damage. At this point we were also informed that our sub had arrived in the area but the GM ruled that the Indians would be calling for a cease fire and we didn't resolve any sub attack. Overall, I enjoyed the game and it was well run. The amount of time spent on actual combat was low, but I like this kind of high-tension, hide and seek game so it worked great for me. I looked in on the Estonia game a couple of times and will say it sure looked like the Russians were rolling things over at the start but ran out of steam at the end. I remember that towards the end one of the Russian players had a real fixation on killing this 1 Leopard on a hill and kept bouncing shots off until convinced that maybe he should also take some shots at the easy thin-skin vehicles running by. I heard about the result based on the villages but from a combat losses point of view, anytime attacking Russians can give as good as they take it sure sounds like a win to me. FYI, I also heard the US-side won in the drug-war game so the "good guys" won all three miniatures battles. Gordon -----Original Message----- From: BillR54619@aol.com [mailto:BillR54619@aol.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 10:16 PM To: consim-l@halisp.net Cc: billr54619@aol.com Subject: Cold Wars (Was Re: [consim-l] RE: Things are very slow here) Okay - you talked me into it. Here;s an after action report, on Cold Wars from last weekend. Well, it was beyond six, so I blew my reserved game. The NDSM folks had some miniatures games that were linked to events in the game - Indian-US Navy Harpoon action out by Diego Garcia, a Columbian drug war scenario, (hosted by Pete Panzeri), and a Russia-Nordic fight using MBT rules. I did the MBT game.