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Send in Cobbie and Hijack.
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Jun 15, 2017 05:07
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Looks like Iceberg or Canada Express received a lot of supplies around the opening of the mission. Likely new equipment we'll face next round. Hopefully not another whole PMC.
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Jun 19, 2017 05:25
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RandomPauI posted:Just to be clear, as I understand it: The only thing to add is AngerPeace may have landed someone in the south, refer to the potentially AngerPeace superyacht and the abandoned landing craft there that we haven't yet pegged to any particular party.
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Jun 26, 2017 03:48
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Anything we could possibly do here is going to cause more chaos, which will tank Mitsuhashi's share price even farther, which will mean a further buying spree from both Hasegawa's. I don't see the elder winning out in this hostile takeover unless we find the daughter and prevent her from doing that. That said, if we find her and offer her a deal that might be our best way of de-escalating with a paycheck. She's also likely the person who best knows where the nuke is, because she's the one who stole it in the first place. Nevermind Russian or Chinese involvement, those are only going to be a thing if this information gets blown wide open somehow. All that said, BNSC and Iceberg are going to go balls out for these next operations. I'm actually nervous we don't have the planes or arsenal to throw down with an all-in from both of them.
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Jun 26, 2017 23:56
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Unless they put the nuke on the sub and all of this searching is moot because no one actually knows we just sent it to the bottom. In which case we get to cover an operation to dredge it up again in the future. Don't think it's likely but that's the kind of twist that could happen.
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Jun 27, 2017 08:51
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I know Bad Weather / Perfume is trying to minimize the exposure of our Hinds but the LZ's still crap. Fighting our way through a number of angry Chileans and not even being within 40 miles of Savoonga (across mountains and baren rock), which is our primary objective, seems questionable. On the other hand Southern Comfort did a similar thing and there aren't any roads at all for their Bradleys and M113s. But I just can't see us advancing without sticking Cobbie's boys back into the Hinds. A 40-mile march across cover-less rocky terrain in horrific weather? I don't think we should or even could do it.
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Jun 27, 2017 21:36
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Oh, welp, I missed Yooper's time warning. Oh well, next time.
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Jun 28, 2017 05:44
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I'm for giving it to Sammie because the implied CIA connections mean opening ridiculous opportunities with procurement.
TheDemon fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 04:27
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slothrop posted:I think we need to have a discussion about what we'd like our force to look like going forward as having some clear goals can simplify these decisions. I'm for more Gripens. The Meteor alone makes them worth every penny. Enough Gripens mean air superiority against anything but F-22s or J-20s. Their short-leggedness is more something we've had to work with than something that's prevented us from using them well. I don't really think our air to ground is half bad; the F-4s for all their age seem excellent, and the big Tornado package we have means decent standoff strike capability. If anything I wouldn't mind another 4-6 F-4s. e: Or Intruders. The A-6E has a great set of weapons. The slight problem we seem to have is that we reply on the Gripen for everything. As we've seen in this theatre, they're not invincible, and we won't always be able to put them into the skies. I'd like to have some backup planes that can carry SDBs. Strike Eagles would be ideal? If we can find an F-16 variant that can carry them that would fine too. Or just more Gripens if they cost less or are easier to acquire. Better recon assets or a second Prowler might be worthwhile. Unsure what there even is out there for that though. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 04:47
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power crystals posted:Also something that can fit MALDs to help with SAMs. Wonder if there are any surplus B-52 around.
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Jul 2, 2017 05:31
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Having spent my evening looking up way too many aircraft, I think if we're adding anything I'd take Gripens and American F-16s over anything else, not counting specialty aircraft like a Growler. Strike Eagles could substitute for Gripens depending on cost/availability, they do basically the same thing. American F-16s can carry MALDs and long range cruise missiles in addition to decent AMRAAMs. I wouldn't bother with more foreign F-16s, not that they're bad, they just don't add any capability. If we can find them on the cheap, we should pick up some A-6E Intruders. They're old-ish so they shouldn't cost an arm and a leg, but they have ridiculously versatile loadouts. Something like this: 8-12 Gripen 4 Greek F-16 4 American F-16 6 F-4 6 A-6E Intruder 9 Tornado 4 Kfir X motley crew of ancient bomb trucks That's presuming we don't lose anymore planes, but we almost certainly will by the time this campaign is over. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 08:01
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AmyL posted:I mean, the smart play is to give up the nuke to the IAEA but well... The one flaw I find is that the IAEA is going to want to publicize that they finally recovered a nuke. That could eventually blow the Mitsuhashi / Taiwan secret wide open and then China gets real mad at Japan and things get interesting. Go to the CIA and the nuke disappears. Maybe someone bad gets it but it doesn't have a large chance become WW3. I don't think there's any good situation to selling or having a nuke though, so it's basically pick your poison.
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Jul 2, 2017 08:43
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I'd honestly be okay with the CIA could "only" get us some decent Falcons and Intruders. Although Strike Eagles and Super Bugs would be a thing. Potential with K&P is fine too. Just as long as we don't enable these megacorporations to go nuclear in their apparent war.
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Jul 2, 2017 20:30
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Dance Officer posted:Weren't the Intruders scrapped? They were retired in '97 There are almost 50 in the boneyard. If I were the USA I'd sell those airframes to people like our suppliers. Might be better to go for something else but hey, I'm a fan of the plane.
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Jul 2, 2017 22:39
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Nick Esasky posted:Honestly, i think we're okay as far as generic mud-moving goes. Everything in our fleet can toss at least 2 LGBs or GPS bombs at something and sometimes more. The problems i do see with our A2G capabilities are as follows: Well, we did win a campaign for the Indians, so maybe they're willing to part with some Mig-29Ks. Russia might also have some. Fulcrum-Ds can carry 4x Krypton C, 4x Krypton A, 4x AS-20, or 4x Adder A (45nm), which are better than our Phantoms in a CAP pinch. I would definitely be okay with these planes. Though honestly our A2A is our biggest problem right now since we lost those Gripens.
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Jul 3, 2017 02:48
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The only way we'd get the A-6 is if the US started to sell all their boneyard planes (surprisingly plausible in this universe) and we picked them up third-hand.
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Jul 8, 2017 05:44
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Coffeehitler posted:I was actually looking at the boneyard on google maps the other day and there's like one Aardvark and 3 Prowlers there. So unless the Navy/Marines have some other boneyards somewhere (I looked at Davis-Monthan), they just straight don't exist outside of museums/statics. Well, what are these? 
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Jul 8, 2017 07:05
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Anta posted:Are we that worried about SMARF anyway? Didn't we kick their rear end last time? We're a little less capable than back then right now, but how much of a threat are they? Are they a problem if we see them coming? SMARF would be like Canada Express in that they fly modern american/american-derived aircraft. Since they come out of airbases on our backline they'd be pretty difficult to deal with at knife-fight range; we'd be trading with them at best.
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Jul 13, 2017 10:49
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It seems to me that Midori is just after the $$$$$. SMARF is one thing, but she's the kind of person who will deal. If we have no other good options, once we have the nuke, we can blackmail our Japanese corporate overlords on our silence, because if we say something it means war with Russia and/or China. We're also propped up by American investors, so the USA may be one of the safer places we can land after a hot exit. And it seems to me that deliberately putting recon elements over St. Lawrence Island mean the USA may be wanting to retake their land, which could be the out of all outs. That said, I wouldn't count on it without a deal in place. Worst comes to worst, the Angolan government really likes us 
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Jul 13, 2017 22:20
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If Canada Express isn't bitter about losing all their hornets we might be able to hire a few globemasters?
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Jul 15, 2017 07:41
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We're based in Russia, though...
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Jul 23, 2017 04:23
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The US Navy has cargo planes.
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Jul 23, 2017 05:32
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I'm just not a fan of going it alone here. Mitsuhashi is dependent on Russian bases and Russian ports as much as we are. I would not be surprised if they chose to side with the Russians. In fact, I think it's probably a done deal already. If our current set of airbases become hostile we have to have Cobbie successfully take Savoonga before it happens. And operating out of the gravel strip at Savoonga surrounded on all sides by hostile entities is not my idea of a good time. I know we don't want a rep for turning on employers, but our employers aren't paying us. Just leave and announce we didn't get paid. No pay no mercs, that's how it works. We need someone like BSNC on-side, or even the USN. The only thing that stops me from immediately voting to strike a deal to play chair force for the USN is that that battlecruiser would wreck us and we probably can't touch it. So I'm for option 3, let's talk to BSNC and the Navy and see if we have options to rebase somewhere else in the region like Hooper Bay while continuing our nuke hunt.
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Jul 23, 2017 07:04
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Nick Esasky posted:As it is, we hold air superiority in the theatre, with both BSNC and Iceberg having maybe 2-3 planes that could be called fighters left. Against that, we have 4 Gripens and 4 Falcons, with 5 Phantoms and 4 Kfirs that can also fill the role, if less capably. We have no major threats in the air unless either the US or Russia starts shooting us and move modern fighters in-theatre, in which case we're screwed even if we get 4-6 emergency reinforcements. This is true, but point of order, SMARF flies 4th generation fighters and we may well have to fight our way out through them. Even with all that, we had air superiority last mission and enemy planes still flew right by our helicopters. So we can still gently caress up, especially if Blue Star or Canada Express has something in reserve. Plus, all our Gripens are grounded for the next phase of this mission as we used them all last mission. That "half force" problem isn't going to go away by the time we receive reinforcements. quote:As far as unexpected A2G losses go and what they might mean, even beyond whatever multiroles we feel we can spare from CAP, which i feel is a large number, we have 8 Tornados, 2 AMXes, and 2 Mirages specifically meant to move mud, not to mention our various Sovcrap which would LOVE to go and bomb one of those big ol' FOBs or something. With the Mamba proved to be toothless, the Crotales around Savoonga blown up, and the Rolands in the area being unable to shoot munitions inbound to blow them up, i feel like the only real SAM threats are a)The Crotales around Gambell, which are far off from our area of interest; or b) MANPADs, which are going to be a threat wherever we overfly on the island. I could see us taking loses to carelessness or bad luck if we're feeling like hunting for targets below cloud level with Brimstones or Mavericks, but i don't see any ways we take significant losses if we use most of our planes to just drop Paveways/SPICES on things Cobbie says need to go away. After all, wasn't half the point of taking the risks associated with blasting a path to drop Cobbie in last mission the ability for him to find our targets for us instead of us having to gently caress about with Damocles pods in the shittiest of weather? I would agree that as long as we hold air superiority we control the pace of A2G operations. The only slight problem is if we have to at some point engage the Russian battlegroup, which would be suicide no matter what we have in the air. That thing can swat pretty much every missile we have out of the sky simultaneously, just look at all the systems that can engage "Missile" here. So we have to avoid doing that.
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Jul 25, 2017 06:27
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Centurium posted:Re-Edit: Look again at Yooper's post. The Velikiy is in (or just left) Vladivostok, and the box Hallsey sent to us reaches from just off Attu Island to just off the coast of Kamchatka. Yeah, the thing is I'm not sure how we're supposed to help or indeed pass intel to the Americans when their operational area is 1000 miles away from ours.
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Jul 27, 2017 03:03
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I think "take Savoonga" as an objective makes sense, it's not like this place is a small city or a sprawling African slum, it's a collection of shacks, population at most a thousand even with all of BSNC and Blue Star's people here.
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Aug 1, 2017 04:13
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Roeben posted:But what if there are still smarter, secret nazi's amongst us trying to influence the LP from within to create a free mercenary state in africa? This is a more practical plan as it masks our real objective, the only real problem is that we'd have obviously failed to secure the airfield for Mitsuhashi by withdrawing at that point.
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Aug 2, 2017 09:23
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It seems, then, that the operation should be entirely focused on suppressing enemy things (missiles, anti-ship missiles, artillery) and securing the nuke site. Phase 3 would involve extraction and also betraying Mitsuhashi.
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Aug 2, 2017 19:09
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There's no way the game properly models this, but the Durandal is designed to disturb concrete and paved runways. I don't think it would be particularly effective against gravel given how it works - I could be wrong, I'm certainly no expert on bombing gravel runways, but the Durandal has this primary warhead -> secondary shockwave thing going on designed to disturb hard runway surfaces that doesn't sound like it would work the same against gravel.
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Aug 3, 2017 09:12
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I've been using ShoreZone to look at the coast in this area. There's a pretty clear aerial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDOcVrNOLz8&t=1746s As you can see, there is exactly zero cover whatsoever down the coastal road and airport. The alternative is marching across a small mountain or along its slopes. The Savoonga plain is ideal vehicle country, if we had vehicles, and the town itself looks impossible to defend; even if we took the airport we would have all of one building to hole up behind. On the other hand once we breach the cloud cover it's amazing terrain for air support. It's also possible to pull pictures off the ShoreZone site but it's slow as poo poo for me so I'm not going to try. I can't actually download the snapshots in the later portion of the coastal survey, but they go all the way down the coastal road past where our infantry are now.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:48
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The best part is both missions call for SHORE BOMBARDMENT.
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Aug 4, 2017 08:22
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It seems wasteful to spend so much on bombing the airport facilities, so I'm going with poor life choices. Although I will note that in either plan, using the frigates in SSM range but not in SSM radar range holds some risk because of the game's weird perfect datalinks. Not a big problem as we call for killing the SSM quickly in both.
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Aug 5, 2017 22:24
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let them land then sink all their supply ships
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Aug 30, 2017 23:31
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At some point they cease being civilians and start being enemy combatants. Probably around the time they fly or boat onto the island and start trooping around with guns. They kind of read like ISIS-lite to me. That said, I don't see any particular reason to go out of our way to engage them unless they're obstructing one of our objectives.
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Aug 31, 2017 04:50
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Mission planning seems difficult, honestly, because you have to manage objectives, assets, capabilities, timing, unknowns, all the way down to individual weapon ranges and deployment restrictions. Even our best planners gently caress up regularly. If nothing else, I would start working from a good map.
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Sep 13, 2017 06:46
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Don't poke the bear Russian planes from non-Russian sources are poo poo. Not pissing off Russia is pretty much the only way to get decent Soviet/Russian planes.
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Sep 18, 2017 04:51
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thetruegentleman posted:What about some air-dropped antiship mines, either near the southern edge of the island to disrupt landings, or just in front of the submarine operating areas to slow the Battlegroup down? Who knows, might even get lucky if Russia forgot to bring a Minesweeper. Their ship list doesn't have a minesweeper in it, although helicopters can be used in mine detection. But I would agree that Mark 60s or Mark 67s could be useful here, if they can be deployed in time.
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Sep 19, 2017 20:50
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The Mays have air cover in russian fighters but are operating in a radar gap. Radar in the gap is provided by the two A-50U Mainstays which are hanging back behind the Kirov task group. If we can blind the russian fighters we may have a very small window of opportunity to zip in, Meteor the Mays, and zip out. Alternately, if we can sneak missiles in under the cover of the Mainstays then we can kill the Mays and ditch. The airfield at Casco Cove on Attu Island is still maintained for emergency use only. However, I don't expect we can manage to hit the Mainstays or the Mays from there. Looking at our options in smuggling in some SAMs:  The northernmost Bering Sea cargo route swings just past Attu Island. Along the coast of Kamchatka will be mostly Russian shipping and Russian/Japanese fishing boats. We may not have an in with the Russian task force or air force, but Mitsuhashi is rife with factionalism, and we still have BLACKMAIL on the elder Hasegawa - surely he doesn't want a visit from the Chinese who know he gave Taiwan their nuke? So: - Contact the CIA and/or the USN get us some nasty anti-air missiles that fit on fishing trawlers and the operatives to use them then abandon the boats. - Blackmail Hasegawa to donate two or three Mitsuhashi boats - they just have to be big enough to put missiles on. - Sail the now-armed boats to the ASW area, pop up the SAMs, shoot down the Mays. Use our own AWACS to provide datalinked targeting. Alternately, if the Americans can do something similar to the Mainstays, like say from a cargo ship, we can rush in and missile the Mays hopefully avoiding retaliation.
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Sep 19, 2017 21:31
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Maybe wait for them to rotate the Mays, then catch the one coming on-shift with a pair of sacrificial aircraft out of Attu? There's a long haul from Klyuchi to the subhunting area, so all we would need is accurate intelligence (maybe CIA satellite) for exactly when the next May takes off, and fast enough planes in Attu that the CAP which should be forward deployed can't catch us in time. But I think that's a very long shot, because the radar planes will see us coming and can vector interceptors. We could make it work by launching a diversionary attack at the same time. Maybe.
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Sep 19, 2017 22:41
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 15:55 |
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Davin Valkri posted:Ah, I have more questions! Some are for Yooper, some are for the thread in general. It was already stated that they're flying out of Klyuchi.
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Sep 20, 2017 04:59
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