Red Flag, 2017 Youtube Series

[BunyapSims]

This is a playthrough of the Red Flag, 2017 scenario by Tomcat84. This is a VERY complex situation so the first few videos will be dedicated to setting things up, looking at what we have available, and checking out what we are up against. The first two are available here and the rest will follow soon.

[wild_Willie2]

Curious to see how he handles it as this is a THOUGH scenario, I’ve personally tried it twice and failed both times
The fighters respawn is the killer and I ran out of AA missiles before I could finish the mission.

[Tomcat84]

Excited about seeing you tackle this one.

I hope it turns out to be a success, I dont want people to think the scenario is unbeatable [:'(]

But yeah there is a lot of fighters and you need everything you've got. You're on the right track saying that you shouldnt have those MALD carrying Block 40s just go home after but use their AMRAAMs too etc.

Cant wait to see things unfold!

[mikkey]

Nice scenario choice, look forward for continuation.

[BunyapSims]

Thanks again everybody. Parts 3 and 4 are now available.

Tomcat, I am finding it to be very do-able but I make a pretty big mistake concerning one of those confounded Rolands you placed to the southeast that puts me a little behind the curve. More on that later.

An idea I am toying around with for now or maybe in another attempt is to send all the dedicated AWACS and ELINT aircraft home and showcase exactly what a 5th gen aircraft can do in these situations. I would love to showcase the F-22s and F-35s a little more and am convinced that with proper planning I could do just as good a job as I am going to do here with 1/4 of the force. More on that later as well.

[Tomcat84]

Nice to see things starting to develop.

Think your MALDs havent been targeted just yet cause the enemy is seeing so much jamming he doesnt have a good idea they're there yet. Sometimes you can have too much jamming haha

I'm a bit concerned though that the enemy fighers are just going to have the MALDs for breakfast real fast and not really see it as any more than a tiny speed bump.

Also I am worried about your SEAD Patrol. They tend to fire at any and every radar they see, including EW radars etc that you might not want to waste HARMs on.

Guess I'll have to wait and find out what happens [:)]

[BunyapSims]

Yes sir, good points. [:)]

On the SEAD Patrol, lets say hypothetically that it plays out pretty much as you describe or worse. [;)] Is there ever a good time to use a SEAD Patrol mission against known threats? I am beginning to think this mission type is great for rooting out and killing hidden SAMs/AAA as they pop up but little else.

What would you have done here? Land Strike missions against the known threats? Manual targeting? Multiple SEAD Patrols with smaller boxes? I suppose either could work...

Again, great job on this scenario. This is like a full stand-alone game in itself. [:)]

[Tomcat84]

Ha!

Well, hypothetically... [:'(]

In a complex scenario like this a SEAD patrol just gets overwhelmed by the amount of emitters. The whole SEAD mech needs some work with manual targeting specific radar types and how the SEAD patrol mission works etc. The devs are aware of this but it's obviously a complex task so more for 1.10 and beyond.

So I just micromanage, but that's how I always operate and I know that probably doesn't really work for your videos haha.

My technique would be to first clear the enemy fighters out the push in non jamming MALDs to try and locate any unknown SAMs, immediately followed by SEAD to target any fire control radars that come online. JASSMs and storm shadows flying in at the same time against known important threats.

And then the actual strikers when the environment is permissive enough, probably just behind the jamming MALDs to confuse whatever is left. All the while place some caps in between the regens and the targets to hammer down on scrambling additional fighters.

Not easy to pull off though. Especially when you're recording haha

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: BunyapSims

Yes sir, good points. [:)]

On the SEAD Patrol, lets say hypothetically that it plays out pretty much as you describe or worse. [;)] Is there ever a good time to use a SEAD Patrol mission against known threats? I am beginning to think this mission type is great for rooting out and killing hidden SAMs/AAA as they pop up but little else.

What would you have done here? Land Strike missions against the known threats? Manual targeting? Multiple SEAD Patrols with smaller boxes? I suppose either could work...

Again, great job on this scenario. This is like a full stand-alone game in itself. [:)]

Try smaller boxes and you can click and drag reference points anywhere, anytime. This lets us specify targets as they pop up.

Mike

[BunyapSims]

Yep, great tips!. [:)]

Part 5 is up, same link as above.

[wild_Willie2]

Damn, I also should also have set the default AMRAAM launches to a single missile for fourth gen. fighters

But why didn't the F-22's try to evade the Adders, I have never seen them flying docilely away from incoming missiles?

I had a quick look and in this scenario automatic evasion is set to NO, so that is why his Raptors almost got fried.

[BunyapSims]

Arrrrgh! Great catch, that explains it. Wow, in that case it could have been much worse. [:)]

[Tomcat84]

Hey it's mentioned in the briefings to check your doctrines [:'(]

2 random things I noticed:
- think you might have put a target in the B-2 strike mission that doesnt need to be there (the Revolutionary Guard HQ). So you can double check with the briefing which three you need.
- you did not set your gen 3 WRA to 50nm so I think a couple of 120Ds are fired at MiG-25s in the south west at maximum range which really hurts their PK.

Other than that it is fun to see someone else as they grapple with this scenario and fun to see the completely different plan someone else comes up with and then see how it plays out [:)]

[BunyapSims]

Thanks Tomcat, I'll double check the missions. [:)]

Ok, #6 and 7 are up. I haven't played it past the next video but I think I can easily salvage the situation. I'm tempted now to push the rest of the forces into the target area while the enemy is low on aircraft. The only problem with that is that there is a LOT of stuff identified in the briefing that I haven't found yet. [:)] Another option is to work the RQ-170s or maybe some F-35s in closer to get a better idea of where everything is. I'll probably do a combination of both.

[Tomcat84]

SEAD patrol worked out well haha

What did you have the HARM WRA set to salvo wise?
At least it baited some SA-11s into revealing themselves

Looking forward to what happens next.

The next part might be the most tricky.

[BunyapSims]

Ok, the final video of this phase is posted as well as a short time accelerated replay. [:)]

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Tomcat,

Oh wow, the SEAD was still allocating AGM-88s based on the target's missile defense value. That would have been 8 for the Roland (yikes!) and 7 for a lot of the others. I just ran it again quickly with salvos set to 2 and got more of the effect I was looking for. My faith in the SEAD Patrol mission type is restored. [:)]

I would have to go back and look but I doubt if enough emitters were active in the area to make SEAD with AGM-88s effective anyway, all the more reason to have saved the decoys to support the SEAD.

Just looking ahead to more potential pitfalls, am I right in thinking that setting automatic evasion to yes for all the strike aircraft is a bad idea in this scenario? My impression has been that auto-evasion tends to override everything else and prevent prompt engagement of ground targets. I could see strike aircraft getting in there, constantly auto-evading stuff, and never dropping bombs when it might be safer overall to have them dash in and out relying on jamming, countermeasures, and air cover.

Am I off base here or are there any other reasons you prefer setting auto-evasion to no?

[Tomcat84]

No that is part of the reason. It does basically override everything so yeah it can get them bogged down in an endless evasion rather than a "fingers crossed let's get in there and drop something" kind of mode.

But it's also because air to air I prefer being able to (manually) direct my fighters to run away from enemy missiles (kind of like you did by assigning OCA guys back to OCA marshal missions to get them east, except I would manually plot and get afterburner in there) so that the missiles either run out of energy or get a significant reduced for distance PH % degradation.

But it's all personal preference.

I would still worry about the HARMS focusing too much on EW radars which I dont care about that much but yeah the missile defence thing didn't help there haha.

Gonna watch your videos now. [:)]

[Tomcat84]

Two more comments after watching the video:
- I think the targets you destroyed up to now do not actually affect the enemy's capabilities. It's been a while since I built it all but I think it's the command bunker ones (that you are supposed to take out with the B-2s) that should have a degrading effect.
- You mention considering assigning SEAD aircraft to Land Strikes next time instead of SEAD Patrols. This might not do anything if during ingress or something a to that point unknown SAM switches itself on and starts shooting. I think it used to even cause aircraft to right away go RTB (Mission Over) if the targets were not actually transmitting since it would consider the HARM unsuitable but I think that may have been recently fixed so they still fly a flightplan over the target and then go home (without shooting if nothing radiates and shooting if something does).
- also don't forget that if you do micro manage SEAD a bit more, you could fire BOL HARM shots (Ctrl F1) into an area if you expect that currently quiet SAMs will light up while the missile is on the way. Only problem is they are easy to bite off on EW radars. For the future the developers will hopefully allow more specifics in that (e.g. only target FCRs or something). But SEAD is complex

[MorningDew]

Just wanted to let you know how incredibly helpful watching and listening to you has been. My enjoyment factor went up several notches when I am playing as a result.

Youtube videos like this are an absolutely gift.

Thank you!