I'm not sure what Aurora's sandpapering means...
In any case I built a quick and dirty 1970 scenario in Command: Modern Operations. Two forces, 500nm apart on courses 45 degrees off direct closure, an hour or so before dawn. On one side, eight guided missile Cruisers (Chicago, Truxtun, Bainbridge, and 5 Belknaps and Leahys) against 4 CVAs (Coral Sea and 3 Forrestals) with their air wings.
First impression #1: holy crap there's a lot of planes on 4 carriers in 1970!!! 40 A-6s, 96 A-4s and A-7s, 96 Phantoms and Crusaders, a whopping 22 E-2 Hawkeyes, and a host of RA-5Cs and EKA-3s.
First impression #2: damn, theres a lot of SAMs on the other side. 500+ Terrier, Tartar, and Talos.
Set all EMCON on both sides to "blaze away" and the cruisers to Weapons Free... kill enything that comes within 260nm. Set the doctrine choice for the cruisers to "Use SAMs in anti-surface mode". Then I took over the carriers and hit "go".
Set up CAP, AEW, and ELINT/Jamming patrols, then aunched 8 RA-5s on a WW2 style search pattern. Two of them hit pay dirt, picking up the cruisers emissions and immediately triangulating all 8 ships. And then one of them died, too close to a Talos.
Since I had a fix I launched 32 A-6s with support. 24 of them carryong a mix of iron bombs and Bullpups (LAShM in game terms?) and 8 of them B-models flying Iron Hand, with a mix of AGM-45 and AGM-78 Anti-Radiation Missiles (ARMs). They also had one EKA-3 for offensive jamming.
Things got weird.
First, the Chicago expended all it's ready Talos missiles to take out a pair of RA-5s, then entered a lengthy (though historically accurate) reload cycle, leaving the Terriers approximately 30nm range as the longest reach weapon on the SAG.
I went lazy on the strikes and did zero mission planning or tweaking of mission parameters. I also didn't use CMO's mission planner to get simultaneous strikes, which was a mistake. The result was a gaggle of A-6s cruising toward their initial points at 415 kts and 36000 feet... and those IPs were inside Terrier range. Commence SAM-Spam! Shockingly ineffective SAM Spam...
I played it through rhe initial round of ARM strikes, and none of the bomb or Bullpup A-6s had even begun an attack run, they were too busy dodging SAMs. Results after the first 10 minutes of action:
- Over 120 SAMs (approx 20-30% of the group's total loadout) fired at the recon element, the strike element, and the incoming ARMs, for a grand total of 2 RA-5Cs and 5 A-6s downed
- 32 ARMs fired at the cruisers... none even scratched by defensive fire. Not all the ARMs hit, but every cruiser is damaged to varying degrees, and three of them have fires on board.
And there's about 150 more strike aircraft waiting to launch once the range between forces closes a bit.
Notes for the next run-through.
1) Adjust Weapons Release Authorization for the Talos missiles, to slow down the spamming at the search planes.
2) Set up semi-intelligent EMCON for the cruisers, so they aren't just ARM-magnets.
3) Play with the strike planner and flight plans of the first strike, to be sure the Iron Hand jets go in first and make sure the strike planes aren't joyriding at high altitude inside SAM range.
4) Don't bother with the Bullpups (LAShM), just go with min-altitude iron bombs. The missiles limited range and typical release parameters make their employment suicidal against SAM-armed ships.
5) Put an appropriately ranged loadout on the A7s and A-4s so there's another 100 strike planes for the cruisers to deal with at the same time.
It was definitely a fun scenario to play through, if completely unrealistic. :-)