Lodamun

[imperialpearl]

As with most things, it must all come to an end. The Lodamese Air Force and the Commonwealth Air Guard capped off Exercise Afterburner 4 yesterday, ending the month-long exercise that brought together the advanced equipment, training and combat prowess of nations such as Egelion, Hutori, Istalia and Kalistan as part of a series of simulated and practical aerial combat exercises which sought to push these nations and their pilots to their limits. The exercise’s principal coordinator, Lt. Gen. Jerome Miklaszewski, stated that the exercise had placed interesting and dynamic scenarios at the feet of the participants, who in their respective trials, had ‘outdone themselves’. Pointing to these successes, Lt. Gen. Miklaszewski stated that it was further evidence of the importance and usefulness of exercises such as Afterburner in providing combat formations with the means by which they can put the tactics and strategies they have developed over the years into practice. “I think the success of this exercise is evidence of the fact that theory has to be put into practice to determine its worth. A lot of nations place significant effort and energy behind developing unique strategies and tactics, which in turn become the very doctrine by which these formations operate. I think that Afterburner provide the perfect conduit through which those strategies and tactics can be stress tested and, if needed, reformed,” Lt. Gen. Miklaszewski explained. The exercise saw the Lodamese contingent, comprised of the Lodamese Air Force, the Lodamese Navy Naval Air Forces and the St. Christopher and Millford State Air Guard, pitted against the likes of the BLUFOR: Royal Hutorian Air Force, the Royal Eglian Air Force, the Istalian Imperial Air Force, the Imperial Air Force and the Kalistani Air Force, as no nation had been cleared to act as aggressors/REDFOR. The following is a recap of the individual sub-exercises conducted by the participating nations. 

Men Plan, God Laughs

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Scenario 1: Pista Denegada (Runway Denied) - Royal Egelian Air Force

A Royal Egelian Air Force Rafale R5 on an apron at Alford Air Force Base for Afterburner 4

The scenario, according to its principal architect Col. Keith Murphy, began with a simulated attack on the Alford Air Force Base, which rendered much of its facilities, including its runways, inoperable. As a result, their combat operations would have to be conducted from unconventional locations. According to Col. Murphy, his prior meetings with the leader of the Egelian contingent, Divisional General Iker Hernan de Leon, revealed that Egelion had been aiming to enhance its early warning and rapid response capabilities. He noted that although it would have been to the benefit of the Egelian pilots to design a scenario which would have likely entailed a simple “scramble and intercept”, it was believed that the pilots would have benefited from an additional layer of complexity. As part of the scenario, the Egelian pilots would have had to conduct take-offs and landings on designated strips of the highway alongside conducting turnarounds (the period between an aircraft's arrival and its departure, where it refuels and rearms) on the same highways. “It was certainly a very nerve-wrecking experience. For many of us, landing on a highway was not something we had done before. There’s so much to consider, especially with weight; you have to know what the aircraft can do because too much ordinance and the aircraft can’t take off from the highway. But we were nonetheless capable of doing it with assistance from our instructors from the Millford State Air Guard,” Cpt. Juan Francisco Conejero, an egelian Rafale R5 pilot, explained. Beyond the highway turnarounds, the egelian contingent was tasked with intercepting ‘fast-movers’, acting on intelligence from their Centenario-2 AWACS. Unionfighters and Rafales would take off from the highway and, via coordination from the AWACS, which provided a real-time picture of the aerospace environment, seek out and either escort or eliminate the ‘fast-movers’. These fast-movers were LF-16s of the Lodamese Air Force who had been specifically tasked to ignore all attempts at establishing communication between themselves and the AWACS aircraft. “We wanted the egelian pilots to get up close and personal and experience the pressures of identifying and engaging non-compliant aircraft. What we’re attempting to do here is to demonstrate that it shouldn’t be about speed, but the way in which they do things. To control how these very real situations are resolved peacefully,” Col. Murphy explained. According to Murphy, the egelian AWACS crew stood out as they demonstrated a degree of tactical and operational awareness well beyond LAF (Lodamese Air Force) standards.

Scenario 2: Ghost Train - Royal Hutorian Air Force

A Royal Hutorian Air Force HF-0 Stealth Bomber 

The RHAF scenario, according to its creator Col. Benjamin “Ben” Haley, was designed to draw on the experiences of the pilots’ combat experience, given that most of the Hutorian contingent were reportedly ‘veterans’ of the Second Kundrati War. At the very basic level, the scenario assumed that an opposing force had established a complex anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) network, comprised of a layered air defence net complemented by fixed air wings. It began with a deep reconnaissance flight by the HF-0 Ghost, which relied on its sensor suite to designate targets and map out the battlefield. Col. Haley stated that an additional layer of difficulty was ultimately thrown into the scenario with the absence of a dedicated AWACS component. “You had the HF-0 gathering intelligence, but there was no AWACS to coordinate and share that real-time information with the other aircraft. Pilots ought not to become too dependent on overwhelming support, because there will be instances where they will have little to no support and will be expected to complete the mission against all odds,” Col. Haley explained. Owing to the aircraft’s datalink and networking capabilities, one of the HF-35s acts as a standing-in AWACS command node, sharing information from the HF-0’s initial reconnaissance sweep with a planned sanitisation strike. At the scenario’s perimeter, HF-19 electronic combat/reconnaissance aircraft were primarily tasked with mapping out and actively jamming the ‘enemy’s’ air defence and communication array. Col. Haley stated that the use of the Guardian-air defence batteries was a last-minute addition, which had been requested by the Hutorian commander, Maj. Gen. Liam Pendergast. The sanitisation strike occurred approximately two hours after the HF-0 had ‘left’ the area of operations (and landed at Alford Air Force Base). It was primarily led by numerous flights of HF-35s, who were specifically tasked with engaging and defeating the enemy’s (REDFOR) combat air patrols. St. Christopher State Air Guard LF-15s and Lodamese Air Force LF-35s formed the backbone of these enemy combat aircraft. “The LF-15s have a radar cross section the size of a metal barn, so they were certainly easy pickings. The LF-35s, however, did prove to be difficult, given that we were basically fighting against ourselves. But that provided a unique opportunity for us to exploit: we were aware of what these planes could do,” Cpt. Elliot Lambton, an HF-35 pilot, explained. HF-13AS capped the scenario off with a coordinated close air support campaign against the jammed air defence network and the command and control (C2) centre.

Scenario 3: Aquila Silenziosa (Silent Eagle) - Istalian Imperial Air Force

An Istalian Imperial Air Force F-43 parked next to a Lodamese XF-43 during an expo on the sidelines of Afterburner 4

The Istalian scenario took on a shape similar to that of the Hutorian scenario, albeit with the absence of a dedicated strike against a command centre. According to its designer, Col. Irving Fischer, the scenario had been designed to test whether the IIAF was capable of utilising its broad spectrum of equipment to execute an otherwise complex strike. The scenario placed the IIAF at the edge of a complex web of air defence systems supported by electronic warfare platforms and dared the nation’s pilots to execute a logistics strike against a major hub behind this air defence “wall”. The Ajace AASC-5400 stood out as a major asset in the scenario, having proved its value in mapping out the simulated air defence network and, similar to the Hutorian HF-0, provided real-time intelligence to the subsequent strike force. The scenario truly came into its own when the Ajace F-50 penetrated the air defence net, utilising their stealth capabilities to avoid combat air patrols led by LF-15s and LF-18s. According to Col. Fischer, although the Istalian fighter did not remain undetectable, it was nonetheless difficult for Lodamese pilots to acquire a comfortable enough solution to fire test missiles. “It was a bit frustrating because you can tell when you’re being actively jammed. We didn’t have the coordinated cueing as we’d usually have, which would have allowed us to hone in on these threats. So we had to depend on IRST pods on the LF-15s,” Capt. Andrew Holder, an LF-16 pilot with the Millford State Air Guard. Despite these early successes, the scenario experienced a series of unfortunate circumstances which ultimately prompted its premature conclusion. In the first instance, the Ajace F-43s and the Magistro-Leonardi G-21s, which formed the backbone of the broader strike package, struggled to make meaningful progress in the lead-up to the strike itself. Pilots reported a litany of issues, including radar blackouts and navigation drift, which resulted in the strike missing its target by several kilometres. Additionally, the SHB-450 stealth bomber, which had been attached to the scenario, had to be grounded as a flaw related to its stealth plates prevented the aircraft from taking off. Lt. Gen. Miklaszewski stated that both he and Col. Fischer had met with the head of the Istalian contingent, Air Brigade General Magno Palmeri, where they explained how the nation’s shortcomings with respect to the state of its equipment had ultimately tainted an otherwise positive opener.

Scenario 4: Fort William Behind Us - Imperial Air Force

Unionfighters with the Luthorian Imperial Air Force on one of the aprons of the Alford Air Force Base

The Luthorian exercise established an interesting reversal for both BLUFOR and REDFOR. Whereas most scenarios up to this point had primarily begun with BLUFOR operating for a disadvantaged position, it placed the Imperial Air Force at the helm of a “well-oiled machine”. Col. Howard Caldwell, the scenarios architect, stated that it had been primarily designed to stress test the IAF’s experiences in the 2nd Kundrati War. As part of the exercise, REDFOR, which had been comprised of a mixed wing of Lodamese Navy Jump Jets and Millford and St. Christopher State Air Guard LF-15s and LF-16s, operated under the Commonwealth Air Guard’s dispersed base doctrine. In contrast, BLUFOR, which comprised the IAF’s Unionfighters, XF-43s and JF-40s, operated under their standard doctrine in the Alford Air Force Base. According to Col. Caldwell, the scenario called the IAF to attempt to disrupt REDFOR’s operations and thus reduce its operational capacity. Part of the challenge which the IAF had to overcome was, in the first instance, finding the bases. It was reported that the IAF’s four XF-43s played a major role in this section, utilising their powerful sensor package to develop a picture of the dispersed REDFOR formations. According to some IAF pilots, they had caught some of REDFOR’s aircraft in their turnaround when they were refuelling. “You could look at the targeting pod and see these faint heat signatures between trees, and while you might dismiss it as something other than an aircraft whose engine is cooling off,” Cpt. Liam Hunt, an IAF Unionfighter pilot, explained. “The scenario wasn’t aimed at determining whether they could strike targets effectively. It was more focused on whether they [the IAF’s pilots] could utilise the equipment at their possession to develop a comprehensive picture of the battlefield,” Col. Caldwell explained.

Scenario 5: Night Boat to Ananto - Kalistani Air Force

Kalistani AH-64 Jahs on the deck of the LCS-Pinsonto Amphibious Assault Ship

Although the exercise had been largely held in the highlands of southern Millford, Afterburner made an interesting detour to the Southern Mad Dog Ocean, where the scenario designed for the Kalistani contingent would have played out. Unlike the previous scenarios which had been designed and conceptualised by air force commanders from the wartime college, this exercise had been principally designed by a naval commander of the same institute, Captain Shelia Byers. According to Cpt. Byers, the exercise had been designed to place significant emphasis on the unconventional use of the Kalistani Air Force. In its regular operations, the Kalistani Air Force differs from its other regional contemporaries in that very little emphasis is placed on disciplines such as air superiority. Instead, the nation’s aerospace assets are primarily oriented towards supporting its maritime objectives. “I’ve maintained constant communications with Captain Davon Cole [the commanding officer of the Kalistani Contingent], who has played a central role in how this scenario played out for the Kalistani pilots,” Cpt. Byer said. The exercise saw AH-64s deployed on the LCS-Pinsonto, a Lodamese Navy amphibious assault ship alongside KF-25s and F/A-10 deployed from Chathill Naval Air Station in Portswood, and was primarily centred around a tiered, simultaneous naval action involving a strike against two ships and the recapture of an oil platform. The lower-tier action, the oil platform seizure, had been primarily carried out by a flight of AH-64s in tandem with rhib-borne detachments of the irregular navy. The irregular navy RHIBs were specifically tasked with boarding and recapturing the platform, whilst the AH-64s were to aid in defending the platform from incoming small oceancraft. The higher-tier action, the naval strike against the two vessels, had been carried out by a mixed flight of F/A-10s and KF-25s. Cpt. Byers noted that any realistic engagement, especially against an enemy warship, would be extremely difficult for aircraft to get ‘close enough’ to drop guided bombs. Thus, the scenario envisioned a simultaneous long-range standoff anti-ship missile-led engagement alongside a precision-guided munition strike. “The coordinated anti-ship missile strike was particularly devastating, especially given that it had virtually saturated the ship’s CIWS (close-in weapon system),” Cpt. Byer noted. She later confirmed that the two ships involved in the exercise, the LCS-Tommy Mason and the LCS-Nathan Hunt, reported that via the simulation, some 10 anti-ship cruise missiles had been fired at the vessels.