ORIGINAL: cscrutinizer
The side briefings need a bit of work. The grammar and spelling are bad, and what the heck is an iron pungus? I've seen better briefings in community pack scenarios. Also, EMCON alpha, but both sides have all their ship radar on?
The Orbat is also all over the place.
-From the US side, they use the carrier and airwing assigned to Japan (which never really leaves the west pac). I didn't check with the home ports of the various escorts and what not but the Carrier is a pretty big one
-For the air wing itself, there should be max 12 jets per squadron. Right now, there are 47 Super Hornets assigned to the ship, but that's split (wrongly) between three squadrons. The numbers should be rebalanced and a squadron of F/A-18F Super Hornets added from the Diamond Backs.
-MH-60S should not be assigned to HSM-51 because that's a MH-60R squadron.
-The C-2s should not be on board as they are usually stationed at a nearby airfield to ferry stuff to the carrier. COD guys don't sleep onboard if they don't have to.
-VAQ-141 should have 5 jets. There are two more detachments of Growlers (which is a lot) in this scenario but all are labeled as part of the same squadron.
-A similar issue exists with the E-2s. If you want land based AWACS, these should be E-3s.
-The F/A-18C squadron is listed as VFA-34 but they are retiring their last baby hornet this very week. Renaming them to a Marine squadron (which they actually are in the database) would make more sense.
-The EA-6B Prowlers don't belong because you already have a ton of (better) jamming assets in the Growlers. Furthermore, both the Navy and Marines have retired their Prowlers AND the chosen squadron, VAQ-129, is actually a non-deploying training squadron. For Growlers.
-I confess I don't know much about USAF squadrons (I'm a Navy guy) but on first pass I immediately noticed that you have a ton of KC-46A Pegasus tankers, which are brand new themselves. I think 20 by this October may or may not be doable, but I sincerely doubt that ALL of them would get tasked to this conflict.
-Speaking of conflict tasking, there's also a lot of aircraft in a maintenance status. While maintenance woes are very realistic, the nature of this doesn't lead me to believe that they'd send a squadron of down jets to participate. What normally happens (controversially) is healthy planes are taken from non-deployed squadrons and sent to deploying ones. While they will still inevitably have issues on deployment, it's much less likely to be in numbers >50%.
-From the Russian side three things caught my eyes
-The presence of Patrol craft on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Nevermind that some of these might be from the Caspian Flotilla, that's a very tall order logistically to get them there, and doesn't offer a lot of tactical sense.
-Kuznetsov is pretty hard down right now, I think even the biggest Russian optimists might have a hard time making a case for it to be available come this October. That said, it's a nice asset in the scenario so this could be waved with a sentence in the briefing.
-It's mentioned that the Russians get the "PAK-FA" which is now known as the Su-57. But for the life of me, I couldn't find any on their side (insert stealth plane joke here). This is actually realistic because of how few and troubled they are, and on the US side adds some ambiguity of a paper threat. But for the Russians, they should be removed as a mentioned asset in the briefing, or added.
If the scenario author would like to PM me I'd be happy to help with more ORBAT research, as well as the briefing. It's an exciting and topical premise, but I think it could use a bit of polish.
