NationStates Jolt Archive

Lieutenant Lewis Page turned in his seat as the VAH-184 Speartips squadron commanding officer, Commander Nicholas Warren, stepped into the briefing room. The idle chatter stopped as one of the other officers called out, “Attention on deck!”

Before the assembled pilots and navigators had finished rising to their feet, they were waved back down by their commander. “As you were gentlemen.” He waited for the shuffle to die down in the briefing room as they retook their seats and got pen, paper, and other assorted items ready.

“Gentlemen, earlier this afternoon, the Griffincrest Corporation officially rejected our ultimatum. They even said that they looked forward to the idea of a fight. In response, Lord Protector Hutton has officially declared them to be a piratical organization and directed the navy to, quote, ‘rid the seas of these filthy vermin’ end-quote.” At this point he paused out of necessity, as the squadron commenced cheering and hooting. The Griffincrest Corporation had a rather poor reputation amongst Rosdivanis.

As the celebration wound down, Commander Warren continued. “We will be the vanguard of Fourth Fleet’s opening strike. This is a half-strike, only one of the carrier’s in each group will be launching its heavy attack squadrons; the other will provide two squadrons of Lightnings for fighter escort. Keep your eyes open, there’s going to be a lot of aircraft out there tonight. Big sky, little airplane might be true, but there will be nearly six hundred of our aircraft out there tonight, plus some of his.”

Clicking a handheld presentation tool, Commander Warren started cycling through various images and charts that were being projected onto the wall. As always, PowerPoint was the number one resource for briefings. “Our target is the Griffincrest First Fleet. It, 6th Fleet, and 10th Fleet are currently attempting to blockade the realm of Shofercia. Our task is to defeat each of them in detail.”

There was an audible collective intake of breath and a low murmur as the fleet size and composition was displayed on the wall. “While it is large, the Griffincrest fleet is mainly for show. Don’t let the sheer numbers concern you. The large majority of the fleet is composed of fast attack craft and diesel-electric submarines. They are worthless out on the open ocean and will be forced to surrender themselves or be destroyed with impunity if the rest of the fleet is destroyed.”

“The Charon class frigates are effectively point-defence capable only. They possess two twin launchers for SA-N-4 Geckos, naval versions of the landbased Osa, the SA-8. It is of no threat to you but may cause some attrition among the missiles you launch. Similarly, the Neptune class cruiser only possesses Umkhontos for missile based air defence. Those are only useful for point defence due to limited range and ceiling.”

“If you get too close, the Rajput class destroyers could pose a potential problem. They are armed with naval versions of the SA-3 Goa. While this is an extremely old system, and our decoys and jammers are more than up to the task, it would be much better if they were not a threat at all. As a result, they will be your primary target. The Hoot Owls will assist you in clearing away any Rajputs in the path to the carriers. Checkertails will then attack the four Forrestal class aircraft carriers that give them an aerial capability.”

“The remainder of the opposition consists of battleships,” loud snorts now being heard from the squadron; the Commonwealth Navy was a firm believer in naval airpower, was it any wonder that the naval aviators were extraordinarily derisive of battleships? “Eight of them are of the Homeland class, possessing nothing more than self-defence capabilities. The remainder are from DMG Military Industries,” at this the snorts turned into outright guffaws of laughter; DMG was well known for making a brisk business of ludicrous claims backed up by flashy presentations to gullible politicians.

After a few minutes, the laughter subsided and Commander Warrens continued his briefing. “These possess the most capable air defence of the fleet, with the proviso that this is DMG that we are talking about. We might see Standards or similar from these, so don’t get cocky. Avoid these ships as best you can. Once we start penetrating, they’ll be receiving the full attention of our electronics warfare birds. There are thirty three of them, thirty two of the Chieftain class and one of the Kraken class.”

At this point Lieutenant Page stuck his hand in the air. “Sir, you mentioned four Forrestals in the fleet. What can we expect for aerial opposition?”

“Griffincrest likes to do things cheap, they’re a profit oriented business after all. Likely opposition is modified Folland Gnats. The Gnat is an old plane, dating back to the 1950s. It’s a subsonic airplane armed with a pair of 30mm ADEN cannons. They’ve added the capability for two AMRAAMs to the aircraft, but whatever onboard radar they’ve shoved in there isn’t going to give them the range or capability to utilize them past the fifteen to twenty miles where the AMRAAM can start going active. Without the ability to provide mid-course guidance, they’re very range limited.”

“Don’t bother trying to manoeuvre against them. If you have one or more coming after you, just accelerate to supersonic and get away from them, our fighter buddies will be along to help momentarily.”

“Griffincrest also claims to operate the Candrian FA 15 Cardinal, but we believe this to be a propaganda claim only. The Cardinal is too large for carrier operations*. However, in any event, we’ll have F-35s providing cover.”

As Commander Warrens finished, another pilot raised his hand, “Sir, what’s the source for all the intelligence? This is a tad more detailed than we’re used to.”

“Intelligence is from industrial espionage, ELINT, a few Ferret missions, and Shofercia sources. Coastal radars, patrol planes and the like. This will probably be the best intelligence we have for the duration of the conflict, I expect our HUMINT and other assets to degrade once the shooting starts.”

“We’ll be penetrating at 35,000 feet and Mach 1.5, that will put us above most of their SAMs and too fast for their fighters to try and intercept. Lightnings will be conducting a fighter sweep forty miles ahead of us. We’re not looking to come in all stealthy like this time, we’re going to come in swaggering and smacking them upside the head

Raucous cheering filled the room at that statement and even Commander Warren allowed a smile to appear on his face. “Get a good sleep, we’ll be launching while it’s still night. Admiral Bolton wants to hit them as they are waking up. Give them a nice little wake-up present.

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Lieutenant Page shook slightly along with his aircraft as the first of the carrier’s twenty-four Furies launched. To say he was nervous could perhaps be labelled an understatement; it would be his first time in combat after all. But while he was nervous, he was not scared. Actually, he was eager. This was what he was trained for and spent his life preparing for.

“You ready Robin?” he called back as he applied a bit of power to taxi to the catapult. For whatever reason, Lieutenant Page had managed to acquire the callsign of Batman. Inevitably, of course, Lieutenant James Anderson was now known as Robin.

“We’re good to go!” answered ‘Robin.’ “Certainly going to prove that old straw about war being 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror.” And so they would. The target was approximately a thousand nautical miles away, a two and a half hour transit. While that was certainly within range for the Fury, whose four Harpoon Block II missiles were stored in an internal rotary launcher, the F-35C Lightning IIs had been forced to rely on only 4 internal Meteor missiles and two external ASRAAMs due to the need to carry external drop tanks full of extra fuel.

As the catapult kicked him forwards, Lieutenant Page could spot out of his eye the dash of light that indicated an F-35C conducting a supersonic zoom-climb to launch an anti-satellite missile at a Griffincrest reconnaissance satellite.

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*On the matter of the FA 15 Cardinal: Candiro has confirmed on IRC for me that it is not capable of operating from the Forrestal class aircraft carrier. Aside from that, the catapults (C 7 type) and arresting gear aren’t strong enough for it. The C 7 only develops 42 million foot-pounds of force, that’s enough to accelerate a 70,000 pound aircraft to 116 knots. The Mark 7 arresting gear could, in an emergency, take 60,000 pounds at 105 knots. However, the Cardinal would be coming in heavier and faster than that, which would snap the arresting cables and lead to the loss of the aircraft. Given that the Cardinal is rather heavier than 70,000 pounds when taking off, it’s not going to be able to be accelerated enough to provide for a safe takeoff. But the clincher is that Candiro himself says it cannot be done.

OOC bits: Fourth Fleet is composed of four task forces. Each task force consists of 6 Intrepid class fleet carriers ( http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=955&st=0#entry2419834), operating in three divisions of two carriers each. Each of these divisions is escorted by a nuclear powered destroyer leader ( http://z13.invisionfree.com/The_NS_Draftroom/index.php?showtopic=3429&hl=) and seven nuclear powered destroyers (equivalent to a Flight IIA Burke). There are also two Thetis class CVENs and eight Seawolf class submarines. The submarines and CVENs run independently of the task forces. I can't find the stats though for the CVEN, I think it was on Mac's old board that got DEATed. Charles de Gaulle sized, chock full of fixed wing ASW planes such as the S-3 Viking.

Inbound is 288 (minus a few dropouts for mechanical issues) A7D Fury ( http://z13.invisionfree.com/The_NS_Draftroom/index.php?showtopic=3588) Strike commanders are per squadron, with the senior squadron CO of each task force directing them as an overall force. Each squadron consists of twelve aircraft. Ignore the RCS in that link, it’s wrong.

As mentioned, the first two squadrons of Fury attack planes are armed with 4 Harpoon Block II missiles and are targeting the Rajput destroyers. Each plane will target all four missiles on a single destroyer. The third squadron in will target the four Forrestal carriers, twelve missiles per carrier obviously.

The fourth through eighteenth squadrons also carry Harpoons and are basically killing whatever they can find that’s a worthwhile target. FACs are being ignored though potshots might be taken at surfaced submarines. Expect overkill on the carriers (that’s normal, there tends to be excess ordnance spent on an already disabled target in wargames). The remaining six squadrons are armed with rocket-assisted 2,000 pound AP glide bombs to hit the battleships. They will not advance unless the battleship’s surface to air capability is suppressed. Due to the additional weight of their ordnance, they carried external drop tanks which were dropped prior to penetration

Alongside of them are 48 A7D-2W Electric Fury electronics countermeasure aircraft that have ECM pods hanging out of their wazoo (each of the regular Furies has a singular ECM pod of less capability mounted on their fuselage between the engine pods). They carry four AGM-88E AARGM anti-radiation missiles to toss off at radars on the battleships to blind them.

Forty nautical miles ahead of them are 228 (minus some dropouts) F-35C Lightning IIs. They are in loose deuce formation arranged in a line across the sky to act as an offensive fighter sweep. Another sixty are with the Furies. They still retain stealthy drop tanks at time of penetration. Internal armament is four MBDA Meteors with two MBDA AIM-132 ASRAAM external. Tactics are not to get into dogfights except against Cardinals but to keep speed and altitude up and use boom and zoom tactics against Gnats.

OOC: Sorry, I didn't check my TG's earlier, and missed this. Sorry about that.

Admiral Lucius Ironclaw was pacing back and forth in the command room of his massive flagship, the Kraken class dreadnought Luxuria. Around him, hundreds of ships bobbed up and down on the waves, all waiting for the impending naval conflict that was inevitably to come. Lucius, however, was prepared for this. He made sure that the Khan's, in their specially reconfigured tubes, were prepared to fire, and that the anti-missile and anti-aircraft defenses were all online, and ready to engage at a moments notice.

The Charon class frigates, the ships which the Rosdivanian intelligence was quick to discount, were no longer armed with the long obsolete Soviet munitions that they once were. Rather, they were armed with the powerful Skynet missile, developed particularly for this vessel some time ago. These frigates were going to be providing the bulk of the fleets anti-air and anti-missile defense, and hopefully, the Skynet would once again prove its usefulness in combat.

The entire fleet was alive now, men rushing back and forth, officers making sure that their crews were ready, technicians ensuring that all systems were on top of their game, and all measures being taken to ensure that everything would go smoothly.

Finally, the final preparation. Dozens upon dozens of space craft, already in orbit and well armed due to the conflict with Allanea, began to target the god rod and spy satellites of Rosdivan, hopefully blinding the enemy, and thus giving Griffincrest an edge against their opponent, and hopefully, this edge would be just what the Corporation needed.

Commander Michael King wished that he could crack his spine in the cockpit. Long flights such as this were boring, even as the radar warning receiver started showing the various surface radars. A few button presses and the unthreatening trash, which comprised most of the radars, disappeared from the screen. Another few button presses and the air to air radar came alive, showing hundreds of contacts. A second later, the Non-Cooperative Target Recognition system tagged those aerial contacts.

“Fucking idiot spooks,” groused Commander King as the radar identified them as F-14D Tomcats. “Ah well, not too much more of a challenge.”

“Alright guys, we’ve got we’ve got a couple hundred Turkeys ahead of us, look alive,” spoke Commander King over the radio. Data flashed from aircraft to aircraft as the other fighters powered up their radars and targets were assigned.

The F-14 Tomcat was designed and built before low radar observability became a major factor in aircraft design. Consequently, it had the largest radar signature of any fighter and was quite easy to detect, even at low power. By contrast, the F-35C had been designed for low radar observability, which meant that it could saunter in close. Perhaps more importantly, the F-35Cs were armed with the MBDA Meteor while the F-14D was restricted to the AIM-54 Phoenix and the AIM-7 Sparrow for beyond visual range capability*. While the AIM-54 was a very capable anti-bomber weapon, it was rather less effective at engaging maneuvering fighter targets. The MBDA Meteor, on the other hand, had been designed for use against maneuvering fighters and, being ramjet powered, was powered to the full extent of its range. Both the AIM-54 and AIM-7 were not, with the AIM-54 being a subsonic rock near the end of its range.

“Fox Three,” called King over the radio, which briefly turned into static as the rest of his squadron called out their own missile launches. Two missiles dropped out of his internal weapons bay, falling for several feet before their motors ignited and boosted them onto their Mach 4 journey. King had fired only a single missile at each of his designated targets. Others did the same, though it was more common to fire two missiles at each of the targets. Not all of the Tomcats had been targeted of course, since not all could be in the same area at once for obvious defense reasons, but as the remainder closed due to seeing their fallen brethren, they too would be locked up and engaged in their own turn. With a distance at launch of only forty nautical miles, it would only take a minute.

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Lieutenant Lewis Page scanned the skies as ‘Robin’ called out another missile warning. Having penetrated the enemy fighter cover thanks to the efforts of their fighter escorts, the Speartips were now heading towards the carriers and hence the escorting Rajputs that were their primary target. The chosen formation for this phase was one that maximized their self-jamming capabilities, granted from the internal equipment and an ECM pod that each carried on this flight between the engine pods. Also along for the ride was an ECM modified version of the Fury, the A7D-2W Electric Fury.

The aforementioned jamming made it extremely difficult for the Skynet missiles, which had Lieutenant Page similarly cursing the spooks, to home in on the Furies. Semi-active radar homing wasn’t the best possible choice, especially as it required a dedicated illuminator, thus reducing the number of possible targets severely, for use in a high-ECM environment. Worse, each missile was inexplicably exploding tens of kilometres away, rendering them completely ineffective; Lieutenant Page supposed that somehow the spooks had found the fuse’s frequency and loaded that into the jamming systems to detonate it far away.

“Do you have a firing solution yet?” he shouted back to ‘Robin.’ The sooner they and their squadron mates dropped their missiles, the sooner they could egress and return to being bored.

“One second; alright, missiles away, missiles away!” replied ‘Robin.’ The critical issue had been adjusting the paths of the missiles via waypoints to avoid the defensive fire of other ships while still managing to arrive on target at the same time. The computer system of the Fury did a fairly good job of doing that automatically, but it wasn’t quite good enough for Lieutenant Anderson’s tastes.

The four Harpoons dropped from the aircraft and, lighting their turbojet engines, proceeded on their separate paths to a single rendezvous.

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Above the low hum of the air conditioning, only the clacking of fingers on keyboards and the occasional low murmur of discussion could be heard. This room was one of the many Cyberwarfare Centers of the Commonwealth Army. They were conducting two age old missions: Cutting off the enemy’s communications and information warfare.

Break the networks and there was no longer a cohesive whole. Rather, each individual unit would be forced to rely on its own measures. All of the multipliers that modern means provided were only of value if they could actually deliver their information. DDOS attacks from zombie computers across the world, viruses, and other means were used for this.

Others focused on hacking into the networks and seizing information that would be useful to Rosdivani intelligence. Still others would hack into a system and plant disinformation to confuse and redirect Griffincrest forces.

And a final few were mass messaging the mercenary forces that formed Griffincrest’s military, promising high rewards to those who assassinated Griffincrest commanders, sabotaged equipment, passed on information, or otherwise conducted activity beneficial to Rosdivan and deleterious to Griffincrest. When one is hiring mercenaries, one must always remember that they, by definition, work for the highest bidder, and nationstates, by their very nature, have much more money available to bid with than do mere corporations.

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Space is much quieter than even the cyberwarfare centers. This is generally attributed to the fact that there is no air in space for sound waves to reverberate through, but the truth is that it’s actually because humans insist on being in clumsy large suits when they are out in the black. Try it on land see just how well you can hear or how well others can hear you? Pretty hard isn’t it?

Thus it was that no one heard any of the large KE interceptors as they lit off their engines and boosted towards the Griffincrest “solar sailors” with a fly-out velocity of 6 km/s. The solar sailors were large, unmaneuverable, and ungainly, relying on extremely low thrust ion and solar sail engines for their movement. As a result, they would be fairly easy targets and they also had a fairly difficult time getting into position to engage what Rosdivani satellites they could find. That they were targeting godrods, which the Commonwealth did not possess, made things rather more difficult too for the Griffincrest space forces.

And then they would go boom. Well, more appropriately, the solar sailors wouldn’t go boom per se. But after a twelve foot wide net impacted them at several kilometres per second, the vessel would rapidly, on the order of microseconds as the resulting energy was transmitted along the hulls of the vessels, disintegrate, becoming yet another collection of orbital debris.

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The rocket lifted off from the launch pad with a tremendous plume of flame, rising slowly towards the heavens. The Commonwealth had been in the habit of using lower cost satellites, with admittedly less capability than they might otherwise possess, and stockpiling spare satellites and launch vehicles to replace them in the event of a conflict, such as was now occurring.

This, however, was not one of those extra satellites, though several of them had already been launched. Rather, it housed a kill vehicle aimed at communications satellites high in geostationary orbit. Their high orbits require large vehicles, both to get up there, and then to have the fuel to prosecute a potentially maneuvering target.

It was not alone of course. Numerous other launching pads across the Home Islands and Havenite Rosdivan were sending their own kill vehicles into the skies. Deaf, dumb, and blind was how the Rosdivani desired Griffincrest to be and deaf, dumb, and blind was how they would end up.


*I know that there was some development work done for the F-14D to carry the AMRAAM, but that would restrict you to two AMRAAMs only unless you built an all new model (however, you specified the F-14D model). Wabpilot is a former F-14 pilot and explains the problem (http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/sreply/79900/t/Could-we-US-build-the-F-14-again-in-an-emergency-.html).

Lucius Ironclaw realized the situation not only against him, but against his entire alliance. He phoned back to Paradise City, where he soon began talking to the Board of Directors. There was no profit to be gained through a conflict with Rosdivan. Not only that, but the failure to capture Shofercia could be used as an excuse to raise the price of oil. Soon, Lucius had his orders.

To: Admiral of the fleet of Rosdivan
From: Grand Admiral Lucius Ironclaw

You have bested us. We are far to spread out, and are unable to continue figthing in such a way. We officially end all offensive operation against the nation of Shofercia, and are willing to pay damages to both your fleet, as well as the aforementioned nation. We ask that to avoid bloodshed, our fleet is allowed to withdraw back to our homeports. You may feel free to escort us if you see fit. Please respond with haste.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m44/rosdivan/e780a3f0.gif
Public Statement of the Commonwealth Navy

The Navy today announces the successful completion of a punitive expedition against the Griffincrest Corporation. Fourth Fleet, under the command of Admiral William Bolton, singlehandedly destroyed one of the three fleets sent by the Griffincrest Corporation to oppress the nation of Shofercia. In its mercy, the Navy, with the permission of Lord Protector Hutton, has permitted the surviving two fleets to withdraw following their cessation of hostile activity towards Shofercia and the payment of over one trillion USD in damages to both the Commonwealth and Shofercia. Future demands by the Commonwealth against the Griffincrest Corporation are likely to be more successful now that they have been reminded of the combat power they face.