Category: Weird Wargaming

Weird Wargaming: The All Union US Military Part 2: Air Force(s)

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Part two of this alternate history series.

Background/USAF

Until September 9, 1998, the US Air Force and Navy was mostly in a holding pattern. About the only large procurement decision was going ahead with the A-6F and F-14E Super Tomcat programs due to the continued USSR, leaving the Super Hornet as a paper plane in this timeline.

Then the Sovereign Union destroyed 80% of Romania’s air force on the ground in minutes, and panic set in. V/STOL research and dispersed operations immediately began taking the highest priority, and as an interim measure, the first major foreign-built fighter in American service since the AV-8A was made in the form of the F-21 Griffin, aka the Gripen. A huge fight ensued over whether to phase out the F-16 or keep it. The results were mixed.

US Naval Aviation

The US Navy and Marine Corps have a mixture of Super Tomcats, F/A-18A-Cs, Sea Gripens, F-24 NATFs, and A-6Fs in a support role. The Intruders and Hornets are being phased out. No, this is not just an excuse to run scenarios in CMO.

5th Gen/Updates

A lot of helicopters, high-performance VTOLs, and the F-24 being “Phantomed” into the Air Force as well. The equivalent of the F-35 is just the F-35 B/C equivalent, since a pathological fear of normal air bases exists. (Ironically the Sovereign Union does NOT have quite a fear despite knowing what it can dish out, but that’s another story).

Soviet Romanian War At Sea

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Naval forces in All Union’s Soviet Romanian War were bound to play a peripheral role. Romania had a small and weak navy, a relatively short coastline, and massive conventional amphibious landings were geographically dubious and militarily even more so. Constanta was overrun and surrendered almost immediately after the war began. Even Soviet historiography talks very little about what they and the Bulgarians did at sea, mostly just mentioning bombardment, surveillance, transport, and other routine supporting tasks. Most naval infantry units fought on land.

Yet it would be a mistake to assume that the navies did nothing or that there was no drama. Although overshadowed by the crossing of the Danube and the massive deep airborne operations, one of the largest postwar aerial/amphibious landings was conducted in Tulcea County.

  • Units near Bolhrad would cross/lift/fly over or infiltrate via smaller boat.
  • Heliborne units from the Black Sea would stage and make large landings in the depths. Black Sea Fleet aircraft and ships would naturally support them.
  • The Tulcea operation was considered lower priority and was assigned fewer resources and, uncharacteristically, had its commanders given instructions to not try and force it if the initial advance stalled. (In contrast, the Danube Front units tasked with taking the Constana area were told to rightfully treat it as a high-priority one).

Notable events:

  • September 8-9: Landings. Many inoperable Romanian ships destroyed in port.
  • September 8: Romanian corvette M290 sunk by SS-N-14 missile. Romanian submarine SC-02 sunk.
  • September 9: Sole successful Romanian air attack against Soviet Warships. Missile craft Kittivyek sunk by Romanian MiG-21s. Two other unsuccessful attacks. Five aircraft and four ASMs shot down.
  • September 10: Gunboat PSKR-710 destroyed by mine. Four Romanian craft sunk. Romanian submarines Pastrav, SC-01 sunk.
  • September 11: Final attempted Romanian air/missile attack on naval targets. Completely unsuccessful. Romanian submarine SC-05 sunk by Soviet submarine S-39 in the first post-WW2 mutually submerged sinking. Soviet landing ship SDK-303 sunk by mine.
  • September 13: Tulcea operation completed with mutual link-up.
  • September 14: Final surface engagements of the war, a duel between small boats in the north and Bulgarian ships sinking an attempt to flee southeast into the open ocean, presumably to Turkey.
  • September 16: Final naval engagement. Romanian submarine Ton sunk.

The main takeaway was that ASW was successful (no Soviet ships lost, no disruption) but it was under ideal circumstances (being able to just smother a small area).

Rates of Advance in (Fictional) Practice

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So a while ago I did the obsessively number-crazed Soviets studies on their planned rates of advance. Looking at my descriptions and map games writing in All Union, I’ve thought “hmmm, how could this go in practice? Or at least fictional speculative practice?”

The Theory

Against NATO, 40-60 km a day on average was the goal. Against a weaker opponent (like one based on the Chinese conventional forces at the time), it was even more, around 70-100. By the 1990s GENFORCE (what I patterned the mobile corps off of), it was down to ideally 30-40, albeit against a stronger opponent.

Romania in Practice

As it stands, I focused mainly on the 17th Mobile Corps, and had a (fairly) detailed route after much Google Mapping. It left a line of departure from near Chernivtsi on September 8, 1998, and came to a final stop around Sibiu on the 16th-17th. On the way it cleared out the important crossroad town of Toplita, crossed the Carpathian mountain roads, and fended off an attack on its bridgehead near Dulcea.

Map is a vague generality. Different subunits progressed around different mountain roads and frontages. Length is hard enough, don’t ask me to do width.. :p

Using a pure napkin calc, this comes to 285 kilometers from the Chernivtsi border region to Sibiu, which leads to 8-9 days of high-intensity fighting, which means a very rough 30-35 kilometers a day. So not bad by GENFORCE standards, especially with a rough terrain making up for a weaker on paper opponent and with the counterattack at Dulcea costing it an entire day.

So not too bad….

The Problem

Of course the definition of “rate of advance” is incredibly arbitrary (does it mean anything in that unit, so can we count a patrol of BRDMs moving far ahead and encountering no resistance before circling and stopping, then the main force reaching that spot without issue later?) and depends a lot, as anyone would admit, on circumstances.

In the same war, many Danube Front formations barely made it past the river, and some that did moved at the equivalent of a brisk walk. But clearly a unit of press-ganged Bulgarians with 1940s equipment having to do an opposed crossing of a very long river and then facing coherent defenders with many fortifications is not the same as a high-tech, high priority force smashing across the plains against a broken foe.

The Empire Vs. The Commonwealth

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Reading Dominion got me thinking about an alternate history setup of a similar nature. Not a plausible one but a way to pit the British Empire against the ex-British Empire/Commonwealth. What got me thinking at first was the British in the book struggling to hold onto India. I’m thinking “hang on, this could be playable.”

So I fired up Command: Modern Operations and saw an opportunity to use many of the low-end WWII-era platforms, including German 1940s ones. I did a sample scenario and fell in love. So I expanded. It may or may not lead to anything more, but it’s something worth telling. Again, historical plausibility is not the main focus, so I’ve probably gotten a lot wrong.

The main forces are the fledgling independent Indian Army along with reinforcements of ANZACs and other volunteers, including American “Flying Tigers” in that animal’s home country. Opposing them are the Collaborationist UK Government and Germans, the latter struggling massively to project power. They still send the now-completed Graf Zeppelin carriers over. (Look, this isn’t a hard AH).

The scenario I did was of a bombing raid on Karachi from Oman-based Anglo-German bombers. (Why Oman? It was in range. Why Karachi? Partition into India and Pakistan hasn’t happened, at least not yet). While this scenario saw the attackers sweep aside the defenders and drop successfully with the loss of only one bomber, circumstances can always change. In any case, it was very interesting and fun to play in an area not typically covered by wargames, and got my imagination flowing.

BTR-92 Squad

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First I did my past piece on Mobile Corps squads, then came the BTR-92. Now the most ahistorically Soviet part of All Union’s military can be made with the two mixed together. In-universe, the creation of this squad was an extremely involved and controversial process.

  • Unlike previous examples, including the mobile corps own BMP/IFV squads, this operates two organizational fireteams. With lots of teeth-gritting, the doctrine emphasizes that “if necessary”, it can operate as a unitary squad or simple overall fire/overall maneuver element. In the Soviet-Romanian War, many did.
  • This has a full-time deputy squad leader for dismounts, whose job is pretty obvious. An emphasis was put on out-of-vehicle operations as these units were designed to spend more time outside.
  • The PDW is the A-91M. The LMG is the “Vepr”, one of many bullpup RPK proposals. The light RPG is in real life the South African (!) Denel FT5 (since a post-apartheid government would be very close to a surviving USSR, and since a post-apartheid arms industry would be very desperate, a license deal for this Goldilocks Rocket Launcher is not impossible).
  • This can be detailed in the Kestrel Publishing entry: Clash: Soviet BTR vs. Romanian TAB . Despite the name, about 80% of that book is just devoted to the Mobile Corps BTR reformation. The pieces on the Romanians basically amounted, cruelly but not inaccurately to “They just followed 196X BTR doctrine, had the equipment to match, and lost”.

The BTR-92

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Stable Diffusion has given me the chance to bring a vehicle from All Union to life. Now I had a vision of what the “BTR-92”, the wheeled mainstay of the Mobile Corps, looked like, but on the pages it was described only as “blocky” (and wheeled).

So how I made it: I first smushed some elements together externally. The top and turret came from other APCs, while the bottom (possibly meant to symbolize it being built on that truck’s chassis) came from a Ural-4320. Then I used it as the outline for a controlnet to avoid the “AI doesn’t know what shape to make it” issue.

It’s of course not perfect and with some nitpicking/hindsight, I’d probaby make something that looks less like a low-end APC/MRAP and more like a futuristic advanced one. But it’s still the general shape I wanted, and it was still very fun to make.

Coiler’s Culmination Calculator

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As a fun side project, I made my first (intentionally abstracted) wargaming tool. The goal is to see the culmination point of an offensive.

Assumptions: The attacker is consistently advancing, however, the defender is fighting back hard throughout. The units of the attacker participating in the campaign are not going to be rotated out, hence they will only receive small and piecemeal reinforcements/replacements throughout.

This simple tool works as follows:

  • The attacker starts with a point total of 100.
  • For each objective, roll 1d10. 1 means the objective is taken unopposed and the force suffers no meaningful losses. 2-6 is a minor engagement where the unit suffers a point loss equal to 1d6 points. 7-10 is a major engagement where the unit suffers a point loss equal to 1d6+10.
  • After every turn, the faction regains 3 points.
  • The offensive will have culminated when the point total reaches zero or less.

Example:

  • Objective 1: 9: 16 points lost. 3 regenerated. 87 points.
  • Objective 2: 8: 12 points lost, 3 regenerated. 78 points.
  • Objective 3: 6: 1 point lost, 3 regenerated. 79 points
  • Objective 4: 6: 6 points lost, 3 regenerated. 76 points.
  • Objective 5: 1: No losses, 3 points regenerated. 79 points.
  • Objective 6: 3: 5 losses, 3 regenerated. 77 points
  • Objective 7: 10: 11 losses, 3 regenerated. 69 points

Etc….

Figures of course can be changed depending on context.

The Cosmic Angels

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When it comes to Warhammer 40k, I do not have the highest opinion of or interest in the setting’s mascots. I’ve been an Imperial Guard fanatic (no not that kind) since day one of my interest in the setting, and this also applies to their spacefaring counterparts in their humongous flying cathedrals. However, I have made several fan Space Marine chapters (as every 40k fan is obligated to do), and the one with the most detail is the Cosmic Angels. With the aid of Stable Diffusion and some online “marine coloring tools” I made this infographic on them.

(And yes, it is definitely, totally a coincidence that my interest in Starmada and constant setting crossover battles coincides with me elevating an extreme fleet based chapter. Totally. A. Coincidence.)

Weird Wargaming: The SW40k Project

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I’m delighted to announce the initial release of a Starmada project of mine: The Star Wars vs. 40k fleet lists. Based on the fanfic, it aims to bring the battles from said fic to the generalist wargame. So far initial Imperial Navy and Republic fleets have been made. More, including Astartes, Separatists, and whatever else my brain thinks up, is planned.

Notes:

  • Ships are judged based on absolute and not relative size. This means the 40k ships are usually gigantic with the HP to match.
  • The Republic is a swarm fleet whose ships are almost always pound for pound inferior, just like in the fic itself.

Weird Wargaming: The Realistic Space Warship

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In the late 1970s, the BDM Corporation did a study for what a plausible space warship could look like (thanks to the invaluable Atomic Rockets for its analysis).

It has a spin-gravity crew quarters, is powered by nuclear reactors, and its armament consists of a laser in a de facto turret, a forward facing railgun, and a rear-facing particle beam (because the radioactive particles can’t risk hitting the ship).

The Space Shuttle in the picture is for scale-the whole thing is about two hundred meters long!