Baltic Encounter (Update)

This is the first single mission in Naval War: Arctic Circle and it is set in the Baltic Sea, with my forces arrayed just south of Karlskrona, Sweden sitting atop some shipping lanes which makes the scenario quite plausible. The description indicates that enemy forces are putting pressure on Germany and Denmark. Although there is no information on these enemy forces, at least I am told that I am on my own out there as there are no land based aircraft available to assist.

The objective of the mission is straightforward enough: destroy at least two surface combatants while not losing two or more of my surface ships. From the outset I verify that my weapon orders are set to “Fire on all Cleared Targets” with “Threat Detection as Hostile”, “Automatic Evasion” and “Automatic Active Sensor Response” all checked.

My surface force is comprised of the Absalon, Hamina and Visby. My initial orders are to launch helicopters from the Absalon and Visby to patrol forward towards the first contact, a Kamov Ka-27 anti-submarine warfare helicopter approaching our area. My helicopters are two AW-101 HM2’s from the Absalon and one NH-90 NFH from the Visby (none have any air-to-air capabilities in which to remove the Helix from the picture).

At 13:16 one of the AW-101’s locates the first enemy surface combatant, a Project 206MR Vikhr FQP, a hydrofoil missile boat that, while quite small would count as at least one of the two surface combatants required to win the scenario. At 13:19 I order the Hamina to fire a volley of four RBS-15 surface-to-surface anti-ship missiles at the Vikhr.

At 13:21 one of my patrol helicopters locates the first major enemy surface combatant, the Admiral Sergey Gorshkov. The Visby is ordered to fire off its RBS-15’s and Absalon contributes a punishing salvo of 16 Harpoon missiles at the target. Almost immediate to this engagement, the patrolling helicopters also locate the last major enemy surface combatant, the Steregushchiy.

The Vikhr missile boat is struck and instantly destroyed at 13:29 giving me one more ship to go before winning the scenario. At 13:36 the Gorshkov takes hits from the Harpoons and is significantly damaged. At 13:39 the remaining missiles make it through the gauntlet of anti-missile fire and destroy the warship, thus completing the objectives.

The total time of the mission using time compression was 11:40 while the simulated game time was 1:09:39. The only complaint that I have about the way the mission ends is there is no opportunity to “clean up”: that is I would have liked to prosecute the other major surface combatant. Instead, as soon as the mission objectives are achieved the game instantly ends.

Update: I tried this scenario from the other side, and before my Ka-27's could obtain visuals on the NATO ships, I had a dozen or so Harpoons coming down range at my units. Game over, man.