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Aust CO-OP Campaign - background


Gibsonm

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Here is a little bit of background reading to set the scene.

Most likely details:

Time: 2000Z /GMT

Day of the week: Saturday (makes it Sunday morning in Aust)

Date: TBC.

Briefing:

Background information for ADF Campaign

For several years some of Australia’s neighbours to its North and North West have expressed interest in its mineral wealth and suggested the formation of a co-operative venture where such resources might be shared amongst the group.

Australia has, for various reasons, declined this invitation and maintained its sovereignty as an independent nation.

Since November of 2010, Australia has suffered an abnormally high number of severe storms and cyclone activity during the “cyclone season”. This has resulted in flooding and damage to civilian infrastructure in Darwin on the North Coast, Port Hedland on the West Coast, and Townsville, Brisbane, Regional New South Wales and even Regional Victoria. These last four being on the Eastern seaboard.

In response to this series of incidents beyond the capacity of Local and State authorities the Federal Government committed Australian Defence Force (ADF) assets to support the damaged civilian infrastructure and to aid the members of these communities.

This is in addition to the ADF’s ongoing commitments to some 22 overseas deployments.

Those who thought Australia should share its abundant natural resources decided that now was the time to strike, bargaining on the ADF being unable to respond and for the Federal Government to be weak in its response due to its need for support from the Independent members to remain in power.

The morning of 28 February, 2011 was fairly normal at RAAF WILLIAMTOWN. On the military side of the shared airfield the FA-18 Sqn was just leaving on a “short hop” deployment to RAAF TINDAL. The neighbours had been warned of the early morning departure and the number of noise complaints were low. The RAAF Air Defence Guards had scheduled a capability demonstration on their newest piece of gear, the Javelin anti armour weapon.

The Base Commander had been warned out about another unusual visitor in the form of an An-124 scheduled to arrive that morning carrying some specialist equipment for the mining industry. He had brought forward the FA-18 Sqn’s departure to de-clutter the airfield with that beast on the ground.

The staff in the control tower noticed the large An-124 blip on their radars but were concerned by a formation of smaller blips preceding it. One of the ADGs quipped about who was doing the remake of “Apocalypse Now“ on Stockton beach as the lead Mil 24 Hind loosed off a salvo of rocket and cannon fire at the RAAF base.

RAAF WILLIAMTOWN does not have dedicated air defence capability so apart from some “out of role” Javelin engagements, they could do little to stop the air assault.

Meanwhile in the port itself, two roll on / roll off ships that had arrived the previous day started to disgorge their cargo which in no way matched the manifest of cars and light commercial vehicles.

The Forces Command Duty Officer was initially dismissive when he was rung by the Regular Army Adjutant in an Army Reserve unit based in NEWCASTLE and told “Contact T-80, advancing through the gate” in an excited but calm tone. However he took it more seriously when the crackle of coax fire came over the ‘phone line, rapidly followed by a stream of expletives and the ‘phone being dropped.

Communications with that unit was lost but soon after the issue was confirmed by a stream of Twitter and Facebook entries from civilians in NEWCASTLE and in one case a YouTube video.

Within 4 hours the threat forces had control of NEWCASTLE’s port and the Airport / RAAF WILLIAMTOWN. The largest coal exporting harbour in the world was now in the control of an as yet unidentified foreign power.

Concurrently on the West Coast, threat forces seized and occupied the Iron Ore exporting hub of Port Hedland

Australia’s Response

The Prime Minister and Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) met to discuss the situation and both agreed that it was resolved as soon as possible in Australia’s favour.

The Prime Minister contacted the UN and worked the ‘phones, waking up a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washngton, D.C. and the principal occupant of 10 Downing Street, London. Both pledged support on the diplomatic front.

CDF advocated a two pronged approach.

In the West to deny the invaders supplies by closing the air-sea gap and to effectively lay siege to Port Hedland. Commanding Officer, 2nd Cavalry Regiment was tasked to provide a land cordon to prevent any possible breakout to the interior. His “Ready Tp” was dispatched by C-17 from RAAF Darwin with the remainder of the two Sqn force deploying by road.

His plan was simple. Block the roads and if the enemy were silly enough to try and make it across the desert, he wasn’t going to get in their way.

Port_Hedland.jpg

In the East, CDF appreciated that as a large number of Australians were involved and the lodgement was a mere 160Km North of Sydney, more kinetic measures would be required to expel the invaders.

The remainder of 1st BDE, (1st Armoured Regiment, 5th and 7th Battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment, 1st Combat Engineer Regiment, 8/12 Medium Regiment, RAA and a Squadron from 2nd Cavalry Regiment) had their notice to move timings “crashed” with fwd elements leaving that afternoon. However it would be a long move from Darwin to Sydney.

Other units already on a shorter notice to move deployed to the Area of Operations (AO) but their ability to respond rapidly is due in part to their “light” nature and these could merely observe and report while the heavy hitters did their battle procedure and deployed.

Closer to Sydney but still involved with flood cleanup in Brisbane, the 7th BDE began re-rolling from defence aid to war fighting.

To the West of NEWCASTLE, staff of the School of Infantry based at SINGLETON (the nearest sizeable Army concentration) began contingency planning to turn part of the training area into a “firm base“ for 1st and 7th BDEs with line of communication links to SYDNEY via the Putty Road. In addition, CO School of Infantry assessed what sort of capability the staff and trainees could create if required.

Newcastle.jpg

Edited by Gibsonm
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Apart from diplomatic preasure, the EU could not decide on anything to aid "Down under".

However, as the german economy is dependent on free flow of raw materials, the MoD had now objections that a number of Officers and NCO applied for "unlimited leave" and boarded a plane to Sydney.

They are hoping to be accepted as volunteers to be trained and integrated into the Australian units.

Qualifications:

-NCOs trained at armour or infantry school in Munster or Hammelburg

-officers received additional training at military academy Dresden

-Out of area deployment experience on the Balkans and AFG

-"average" english skills

You should receive the their papers in the next few days...

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Knowing our bureaucracy and recognition of prior learning I’m sure they could form an Infantry Section or two. :)

Unfortunately we recently “upgraded” to some US kit so there will be some conversion training required but I’m sure you’ll fit in.

Biggest issue is probably acclimatising you to our Autumn (where its still 25 - 30 degrees C) but if these guys have just transitioned from ISAF they will be fine.

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Do you have a vacancy for a Pommie Merc Fire Director?

Skills:

Quick learner.

Artillery calling, Learned mainly through OTJ training during WW3

Keeping one's swede in one piece.

Being in the wrong place at the right time.

Being in the right place at the wrong time.

Escorting damsels in distress.

Excellent scrounging ability.

Crack shot with a laser. (Who isn't?)

GSOH.

Language skills:

English

Bad English (this is being my chief warfighting weapon)

Some Bad German.

So whaddya say?

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Sure,

But we may stretch your skill set.

I‘m not sure how much indirect fire spt my Cav guys need (again we want to avoid flattening the airfield to save it). Hence the FO is at SHQ. But certainly they may well request fires at certain points for you to process (I suspect there will be more call for guns in BG TIGER’s battle to our South - more news on that later).

However, we do have 1 x UAV and a flight of 2 x ARH that I think will be “your problem”. The ARH are currently in a pair but you could go away from doctrine and use them as individual aircraft.

Remember though that the tasking for both platforms (at least initially) is reconnaissance, not attack (“weapons tight“ - and I don’t want to hear “he tossed a stick at me so I had to fire a Hellfire back” stuff). :)

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Remember though that the tasking for both platforms (at least initially) is reconnaissance, not attack (“weapons tight“ - and I don’t want to hear “he tossed a stick at me so I had to fire a Hellfire back” stuff). :)

Moi?! Sir, you wound me.

Does it count as a stick if its moving at 300m/s?

:)

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Two observations that have emerged from play testing to date:

1. A reminder about crossing bridges.

Every TP has to clear and cross a bridge to get into their AO.

Any command apart from “march” tends to be fraught with issues, so remember to change to it as you cross the bridge itself (I forgot and remained with “Scout” with every TP leaving at least a vehicle “swimming” as a result). Those sort of non battle casualties can come back to haunt you and in the absence of “Instructor Host” mode I can’t magic move them back to you.

2. Remember the light pole “bug”.

CompanyTeam has done some brilliant work on the map (and has been a right Bas*ard with the Red AI plans :)) but rather than remove all the light poles, just remember to give them a wide berth or your call sign will slow dramatically).

Apart from that it looks “good to go”.

I’ll post a BG EAGLE thread tonight / tomorrow which will build on the background here and include a Situation Update and orders for the first “major muscle movement” by 1st BDE to expel our uninvited guests.

I’ll post the scenario there as well late Saturday afternoon my time (early Saturday morning for most) so you can download “pre H Hr” and avoid the possible delays when we get together.

Questions?

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Well as I have the server software on my machine ...

The general idea was:

1 x Desktop to be the server.

1 x Laptop to be Blue CO.

1 x Laptop to be Red CO (just in case the AI needs "adjusting")

My USB stick has eight licenses so running these machines locally should be OK and let the server just "serve".

Also the idea of posting the scenario to the forum should mean that people already have it (and the maps, etc.) before joining so that load is minimised.

Now if the hops, etc. means its a PITA, (i.e. at H+5mins its performance is glacial) then I might ask someone "up there" to act a server and I'll just participate from my end.

But my understanding is the load is fairly light once all the downloading is done.

That's the plan anyway. :)

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For all their helicopter based (flying through treacle, need of micro managing, and glacial reactions) faults in SB,

Those, Tigres once in range of their AGM114C are Bloody Lethal!

My one Helo was like our own personal F18, if it flew, it killed it.

(It took particular exception to Mi-24s, must be a gunship thing :confused: )

"This is MY airspace, bugger off!"

It also tagged a 2S6, which was funny. (If you could see it.)

Downsides:

The Hydras are useless, they didn't hit a f**king thing.

And the 30mm needs an AP ammo type, it spent ~ 90 rounds on a BRDM and all it got was a Crew Casualties and Immobilized.

I had a hoot when it was, "Ahem", allowed to go 'Weapons Free' :)

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Glad you liked it. :)

Posting some RL AAR points in the Mission #1 thread now.

Will follow up with "in scenario" AAR a little later.

Would like to test hosting "from here" next time (with Zip on standby as a fall back) otherwise I need to cue Zip (or another hoster) before I can publish a date for the next round.

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