The Bear Bites Back - Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

hello YouTube sidekick here with another chapter in the balloon goes up our ongoing story about a waraa invasion of West Germany and what it might have looked like Through The Eyes Of Your Average hog driver now we've done a few of these videos already so if you want to catch up you really might want to look at the balloon goes up playlist I'll put a link on the screen and in the description if you're interested in taking a little part in the unfolding drama uh feel free to drop by my Discord and check out uh we're starting to host multiplayer familiarization and training sessions as well as live exercises uh now why do I make a distinction between training and Live Well if you continue watching I think you're going to find out um just in case you haven't watched the other videos let give me let me give you the uh TLD drr version of what we're doing um in this scenario I set out to simulate a warsa pack invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany now I wanted the Warsaw pack units to behave the way their Doctrine said they would and I wanted to fly the a10s on missions that Doctrine said they would have been given using tactics they would have been expected to use that's all I started out trying to do the results have been unexpected I tried it in single player and realized that it basically couldn't be done to recreate this experience required a multiplayer environment and it required one in which all of the pilots were committed to the same idea of trying to recreate the same thing luckily I was able to find such a group or rather they kind of found me uh and we have learned a lot about this scenario the first thing that we all learned is that this is really not like any other DCS experience that we have had we needed to learn some skills and we also needed to unlearn some habits that we have formed to make this scenario work and that's why it takes some time to get familiar with the scenario before you go live and that's because in the live X we have a very strict two strikes and you're out rule in other words when the second hog goes down the game is over no exceptions the server Mission ends which means if you don't know how to play this game you are going to end up making your teammates pay the price so it really really really does pay to get proficient before you try to go live seriously let me show you what I mean uh now uh so here we see that the hog drivers have manned their planes and they're taxiing out to take off now I will point out that all of the people all of the guys flying this Mission have flown the training Mission and most of them have flown it more than once fact you've seen uh maybe most of them uh in some of the previous videos that I've posted including the last one which showed a very very successful training Mission so my point is that these guys know not only what they're doing in DCS they're all very talented Pilots but they also know this scenario well so what's going to be different today well in some ways surprisingly little uh the area of operations is going to be the same as what they've flown before the enemy order of battle is going to be the same as they've seen before the enemy tactics are going to be the same as the ones they've seen the enemy using before the Armament on their Hogs is going to be the same as it has ever been so what's different where's the challenge in that well the only thing that is really different is the route that the enemy will take towards friendly forces in other words the part of the area of operations where the players are going to have to hunt for the enemy is different that's pretty much it but it was all the difference in the world as you'll see and maybe you know maybe it's better to show that than to tell it so as you can see everybody's on their way out to the area of operations that's it from the far side of the river over there and now here they have all arrived at the bullseye you can see them in their little Marshall stack a little flock going around the bullseye so let's take a minute and talk about exactly what they're going to be doing today and if you've seen the other videos You'll see where the differences are so as I was saying it's the same area of operations we've used before you'll recognize it if you've seen the other videos you can see some of the major landmarks we we have two towns we call one lesin the other chicklets the central wooded area in the middle we call Central Park um this by the way is known as christening the ground and has turned out to be a very important uh thing to learn how to do if you're going to fly this scenario now uh this blue line here is uh the forward line of owned troops so everything on the other side of that uh may be uh the enemy but the uh ground Commander has also set a green line here which is known as the fire support coordination line fscl and we are not authorized to engage any Targets uh on the near side of the fscl so we have to be on the far side of the fscl if we're going to engage targets without having uh the ground essentially direct us onto those targets and this is to make sure that we minimize the chances of Friendly Fire basically the Army doesn't want the Air Force playing in its backyard right now they think that their Attack Helicopters are proba and their artillery are going to be sufficient to deal with the Enemy that they find what they do want the Air Force doing is keeping the uh the other echelons from catching up to the advanced guard they want to pull the advanced guard away from its reinforcements and then they want to take it out with their own organic Firepower fair enough so today we are going to go hunting in this killbox here it's called killbox Saturn we expect to find the Enemy Inside this killbox if we find it anywhere else it's not up to us to engage it now this is this is the one difference between this scenario and the previous one before we used a different killbox that ran across the back of Central Park this time um this killbox is a little bit farther into enemy territory coming down out of the Foothills so what's the plan today well drawing on the lessons from having done this before we're going to do something very similar first of all the flights of marshal at Bullseye now we're going to select one flight it's going to be dagger flight is going to fly the low or sniper uh task which means they're going to fly in low over Central Park and then they're going to fly over the area we used we called the cup and then they're going to pop up and turn into killbox Saturn and try to spot the enemy while they're doing that the High cover flight flown by Hammer will be flying behind them and above them and trying to also spot the targets that they see in Jupiter and then they're both going to come back out and at the same time as that's happening the third flight which is saber is going to be flying OverWatch on the whole thing and particularly making sure that the sa sixes which are in the distance to the South um don't get active and don't surprise anybody so that's the plan let's see how it works in practice this is dagger flight they've just uh left the Marshall stack over the bullseye and they're starting their run into Central Park so their uh their intention is to fly pretty low over Central Park remember if uh from the previous videos if you get very high over Central Park you will attract the attention of the sa 6es that are in depth so you want to stay low over the hills and you want to stay low once you actually come out of the hills because if you get too high then you're getting close enough to the killbox or uh to other enemy units that you may not have seen so you need to stay low uh to stay below their notice as you can see dagger is doing an excellent job of staying low not just trimming the t-tops but actually almost mowing the grass you can see their High cover flight there and behind them there for a minute okay so they're crossing the open area south of Central Park the wooded Hills on the far side of those open areas is where they're going to start their popup and then they're going to go left looking for killbox Saturn which is over in that direction uh on this side of that green hill there so the time being though they're staying good and low make sure that they don't announce themselves to any enemy in killbox Saturn until they want to want to get a little bit deeper into the Zone before they do that staying in a nice loose Trail formation dagger 2's job here here they go up is to keep it tabs on dagger one and if anything uh uh ambushes him dagger 2's job is to find it and Mark it but not necessarily to engage it we remember we got lots of fuel and lots of time first we want to find the enemy then we want to uh take care of them now you can see if you're looking closely you can see the enemy in that open uh space that is killbox Saturn there's definitely a long line of vehicles from one end of it to the other so we have located the enemy time for dagger flight uh to get on its way they're not going to engage the enemy their job was just to find them so that we can plan another attack more carefully so they're going to get down low and ESS meanwhile Hammer flight is in High cover and they have are able to see the enemy as well if there had been any air defense activity then they would have been able to mark down where the air defense units were uh for later engagement but uh hammer also notices that we do seem to have a little bit of a problem this time he's been hearing a mud Spike from the sa6 site off in the distance there and it has actually launched on somebody um which did not happen in the training Mission so suddenly we have discovered one distance difference uh the High cover flight having to get in as close as they did it means that they're well within the weapons effect zone of the sa6 which means they probably can't fly high cover the way they did the last time so the team's going to have to come out and make another plan so dagger is on its way out of the area of operations flying low coming back over Central Park everybody's going to come back to Bullseye Marshall again uh and then have a discussion well actually uh the person designated as the mission Commander is going to make a new plan and assign roles to everybody else okay so here's the situation dagger's route worked out pretty well they got to see the enemy they were at a decent distance from the enemy they weren't in danger at any time if they'd known what they were looking for they would have been able to engage the enemy so we're going to send hammer on that uh route this time but Hammer's route on the last mission the High cover Mission wasn't really optimized because they weren't really able to pay enough attention to the Target area cuz they had to be worried about the s6s now quick study of the ground both by Hammer flight and by saber and OverWatch uh revealed the fact that there's a better place to do High cover and that's over on the other side of chicklets because even at a decent altitude there there's a hill between you and the sa6 site that we've identified and which announced itself in the last run so we're going to move the High cover task over to this side so while Hammer's flying the route that dagger did last time they're going to turn into the killbox and pop up and try to engage the targets dagger is going to fly a high cover on the other side watch for threats and also see if they can pick off any of the targets that they had previously identified on their low sniping run so it sounds like a good plan we're trying to exploit the tactics that we've learned in the training sessions what could possibly go wrong well let's find out here's Hammer flying low over Central Park just the same as dagger did last time they're pretty hard to tell apart uh actually because uh they're both doing a good job just like dagger Hammer is staying low over Central Park then they're going to come down low out of the Foothills fly across the open area and their job is to get into the hills on the other side and then pop up so here they come down out of Central Park stay nice and low coming into the open area and now noticed they're a little bit closer to the enemy than dagger was and this is going to be part of the problem the other part of the problem is that they're actually turning in now rather than popping up first and taking a look they're doing their popup after they make the turn and this is where the problem starts because as as Hammer one gets up high he suddenly actually within range of the Sam site and he's taking evasive action but he hasn't flared he gets caught Hammer 2 coming behind also gets engaged and uh with not only the Sam's but the AAA now both of these guys decide to uh sell their lives dearly by engaging the ground targets but basically there's no avoiding it they are basically doomed at this point they were as soon as they got to altitude frankly and since they're doomed that means that this mission is over like I said folks the mission basically ended here cuz two strikes and you're up now we'll just take a wind the clock back a little bit and see what dagger was up to you can see that dagger can actually see the engagement going on if you look over top of his cockpit there and so he's trying to turn in and give some support but he's too far away to actually do anything about it although it is possible for him to use those signatures and uh picks a Target and he's going to take a Maverick shot uh which is what he should be doing but unfortunately we're never going to know whether or not it hits because the scenario is going to end before we get a chance to and that is the thing about the uh two strike rule that is really difficult um to get used to is that you don't get any second chances once the second hog is down the game is over and that's that so you don't even get to see what happens uh so that was not a particularly successful run luckily we had time in the session to do it again so we'll take a look at what happened when we went through it the second time the important thing to notice is that the real problem which the team identified was that hammer got just too close to the enemy before they got high enough to actually see them they turned in before they popped up and that meant that they were basically inside the weapon effect zone of both the sa9 and the shilas before they they knew what was happening they were up high they were exposed there was nowhere for there to hide for them to hide and they were basically doomed at that point there was no way out so you really do have to be much more careful about knowing where the enemy is compared to where you are by looking at the ground not by trying to look for the enemy and then you have to be very careful and very patient and make sure that you know where the enemy is before you try to engage them so you don't get too far into the weapon effect so and trying to sort yourself up so we're going to reset and try it again now this time we're using the same killbox exactly the same Mission so the team decided to use the plan that we used on the second run right from the original get-go on this one so we're going to do the low pass over Central Park and up into the hills on the other side we're going to do the high pass on the other side over chicklets so as with last time dagger taking the first low pass here they are again flying nice and low over Central Park and now making their way down out of Central Park into the lowlands in the saddle there now again killbox SN is over to the left it's that slash you can see through the trees way in the distance there on the top left so here they come over the low ground they're coming up into the Foothills on the other side they're going to want to go far enough into the those Foothills and stay far enough to the right that when they pop up they're going to have a good view of the target before they try to engage now dagger 2's job is not necessarily to engage it's to watch lead and try to keep him out of trouble so here we go lead is popping up dagger 2 staying with them and now they're both rolling in they're getting a good look at the Target area and once again they're not necessarily trying to engage on this one they're trying to mark down targets have lots of uh visibility on them they're flaring now and that's because they've identified that there are Sams and the Sams did take a couple of shots now something very interesting about DCS in the actual flight that we flew dagger 2 was actually caught from behind by an sa9 it was a very very lucky shot I'll tell you why I know that because in the track file replay I could not get that sa9 to hit dagger 2 a second time literally in the actual live playthrough DCS rolled the dice and it came up snake eyes and it just couldn't do it from then on so we have to assume that there's one aircraft down at this point even though basically I couldn't reproduce that in a track file so that's a interesting thing and you know hats off to dagger too it really was was a lucky shot on the day that we flew this so let's go over to the other side now and here is Hammer flight coming in and taking a look uh over towards Saturn waiting for dagger to be in position and they're monitoring the radio and it's really important for dagger to announce when they roll in so that we can get eyes into the target area and make sure we see anything that needs to be seen and if you watch very closely Beyond him there in the killbox Saturn area you will see the Sam Trail so he's actually able to spot the enemy engaging dagger which is the whole point so he turns in having seen where the Sams are coming from and decides to Target those with rockets which he does and as soon as the Rockets are gone he goes uh breaks away and importantly breaks down like I mean he gets down and actually manages to avoid uh being taken Under Fire from the killbox because he basically got down literally behind the trees he put the trees between him and the enemy and he gets away clean Hammer 2 was watching Hammer one and so they're going to regroup and decide what to do next dagger flight in the meantime came back out popped up turned around having marked down where the targets were fired a Maverick which successfully took out an sa9 so off to a good start so hammer is coming back out um to basically decide what to do again team is talking about how they're going to handle this and how they're going to attack it and then something unexpected happens and that's because in this scenario um it turns out that the advanced guard has deployed their air defense which consists of a bunch of man pads which are hard to see from the air but which are quite entirely deadly ammer one never even saw it coming you can see here's another look at where it actually came from on the ridge basically close to the forward line of own troops now Hammer 2 sees the launch and he's madly trying to warn his lead that he's got a Sam coming is Lee doesn't know why that would be true doesn't react in time Hammer 2 is trying to figure out what the heck is going on why are there Sam S sites there that's not inside our killbox and so he is uh realizing that he's suddenly flying over the location that launched the Sam he starts counter measures and he starts to break and try to get away but unfortunately uh he is just too high to make that work he Dodges the first Sam uh Sams are have a hard hard time hitting a10s from the front but once you're flying away from them if you're flying away High that's when the trouble is going to start especially if you stop flaring which is what Hammer 2 did which has uh the expected effect and that's strike two and game over so that was a better run uh but still not as good I think as the team had expected given how they successful they'd been in the training Mission so this scenario has a way of humbling you uh it just it just gives you things that you don't gives you things that if you react the way you're used to it's not the right way to handle it and it's taking a while I think for all of us to condition our responses to responding the way we need to instead of the way we've kind of been trained to by DCS up to this point so what really was the problem well partly the problem was that you know the mission designer who's currently speaking to you did throw those man pads in there and they're an entirely reasonable place by the way but I did throw them in there um in a place that the players had never seen them before but it was in a place that the players had been warned was supposed to be a place they didn't fly over very much because that was the Army's zone of Interest they weren't really supposed to be in there and effectively what I ended up modeling was that the advanced guard had deployed his own air organic air defense assets because they were in an engagement with the covering force and they had had decided to deploy which meant they'd put out their air defense they were mainly probably worried about Attack Helicopters but uh the a10s flew into their line of fire and paid the price because they weren't used to that being a place where they were threatened even though it was in front of the forward line of own troops which is something that they knew just hadn't registered until now that anywhere over enemy territory could be dangerous and that was a lesson that was very well learned of course the problem is that because we used the two rule you really didn't get a chance to do very much with that except um nurse the wound uh and come back and try it again so um I'm sure that a lot of those guys are going to be back for the next live exercise which should be in a few weeks it will use the same killbox so they will have a little bit of advanced warning this time although it may not be exactly the same Mission haha I will retain the right to add a few more surprises but um I think that you know it will be a very exciting Mission this one was and I think everybody's enjoying the challenge of trying to figure out how to solve this problem with the tools that DCS gives us but maybe not the tools that we're used to having in our tool bag at any rate if you want to take part in this this exercise please do feel free to drop by my Discord uh we'd like to see more players show up we'd like to let them experience what we've all been living through um and so come on by you'll be welcome and uh for now though thanks for tuning in I'll talk to you again soon and this is going to be sidekick signing off

Channel: Iain Christie

Views: 1,242

Keywords:

Id: 7xIEr4t05lc

Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024