Dale Hillier was asked to write six Harpoon scenarios for the United States Naval Institute.

Here are Hillier's comments and information about the scenarios.

USNI #1 — Operation Door Kicker

When AGSI asked me to comment about the scenarios I had made for them, I really needed to go back and carefully look at each one. I wasn’t short of scenario ideas; I just had to give it some sort of structure. For that, I looked at “Sea Power 21” and it’s six attending components.

This scenario would be my attempt to create an example of “Sea Strike.” Here, United States Naval elements have to force the Straight of Hormuz against a hostile Iranian presence. With U.S. forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only option left is air power. The lack of foreign basing removes land-based air from the equation, leaving the Navy the only force to do the job.

This was supposed to be a typical forced-passage problem. The player has a mobile force tactically limited by the [projected] carrier air wing and must push through. For most players, this is straightforward — find the threat [in this case mobile missile launchers] and destroy them.

However….

That would have been too easy. What’s to prevent the user from throwing the big stick of the carrier battle group into the fray? Given enough time and tactical information, the player could have wiped the floor with his opponent. So, I threw in a variable by adding a convoy of fast sealift ships with minimal air defences. However, this still didn’t remove the problem that the player, with command of a carrier air group, could still rather easily accomplish the requirements set out. This really wasn’t what I had in mind, especially considering that I’ve never really been what I call a “carrier admiral.” Having several squadrons of attack planes at your beck-and-call [A-6 forever!] makes life too easy. Clearly there was a redesign in the works.

This is no small feat with ANW.

So — I added a new side “United States Navy” as opposed to “U.S. Carrier Battle Group.” The CVBG gets its own side now, but the player can’t use it. However, the player still needs help to clear the Straight. To accomplish that, I tasked several elements from the battle group to the new player side. This totally changed the scenario’s dynamic from one of blowing your way through the Straight to being more cagey and using less offensive punch.

Time, however, required some changes. The Loitering Attack Missile of the LCS has now been removed from the project, which will require a change in the database on my part. This isn’t really a big deal, but finding the time to do it is.

Trying to find the balance is often the hardest part of any scenario. Often the art of compromise is the best way to accomplish it.
 
USNI #2 — Spratly Island Scrap

This scenario is meant to showcase littoral warfare using the new platforms built for the Chinese Navy. It’s a low-tempo scenario that will be more suited to beginner players. It’s not easy, as it will require some thought on the part of the player [not every scenario will be about blowing things up, as fun as that is in a virtual environment].

When this was created, I had to look at something other than a conventional surface engagement. It’s not that the Chinese aren’t capable of doing it, but with only half a dozen remotely modern ships, then it would make little sense to use them without some sort of backup … that they don’t have.

So, we’ll have to use guile instead.

When testing this scenario, I came across a problem in the database that required addressing. It had to do with guns and how they work under the Harpoon system. The guns use what is called an ATA type of PH system. This is where there is a flat PH value of 30%, but it also allows for negative values. The problem is that the PH value represents a time frame of 30 seconds. So, on a second-by-second basis, the value is 30 times what it should be. The end result is that guns are nowhere near as effective as many players believe. Personally this is a hard pill for me to swallow because I was used to guns getting at least one missile during an attack. What convinced me of the need to change was a model of the 1973 Battle of Latika where the Israelis won a missile-boat action against the Syrian Navy.

The problem in my scenario was that I added several batteries of SSMs for good measure, and one of them managed to get a bead on the Israelis. Normally this would be bad news for the Israelis right? Wrong -- I watched as the Israeli 76mm Compacts smoked all but one missile that blew away one of their ships. It was then I knew I had to do something.

But what to do? There’s more to it than just lowering the ATA. I had to take into account the burst, rate of fire, the PH, etc. But when I finally started modeling flight times of rounds, that’s when I knew I had to quit. There is such a thing as being too anal and you can’t cover every circumstance. Besides, I know that the guys who do the modeling for the paper rules know much more about this than I ever will. Even if I do take that .50 cal course the Canadian Coast Guard is offering.

As with the first scenario, I may update it eventually. I really don’t think that a Burke is necessary, but if I went with something else, I might unbalance the scenario. I’ll have to test it some more.
 
USNI #3 — The No Dong Dance

Leave it to the North Koreans to come up with the funniest names.

I’ve always found the DDX concept interesting, so I decided make a scenario about it. I suppose that the whole concept of “Sea Power 21” would be that it’s the natural evolution of “From the Sea” but, like Hughes says, you have to know technology to know tactics, and that’s how I proceeded.

North Korea is much more unpredictable than anyone can even hope to expect here, so I went straight into hostile mode. The ROK and USAF are trying to deal with the air situation and thus present mostly a sideshow. The Japanese, with their DDGs deployed, are there as a ballistic missile shield, although I was rather torn about using them due to their constitutional issues regarding offensive operations. Recent statements from the Japanese government have been giving mixed signals, but this is why we have simulators.

Tactically using TLAM would have been too easy for the user to get the job done. I’m not saying that the U.S. [remember, I’m Canadian] wouldn’t have used it, but there is little fun sitting 1,500 nm offshore and blasting targets using TLAM.

Of course, sitting offshore and plinking targets with the AGS from 100 nm is hardly easier but at least I can put ships in the Styx envelope and see how ESSM works. I’ll even add two LCSs class ships in for good measure; just hope that the North Koreans don’t get any Styx or Silkworm missiles off. Real life rarely mimics what happens in simulations. Historians will note that the Japanese learned that at the Battle of Midway, and I’ve seen the U.S. make the same mistakes in exercises, although that war hasn’t happened.

Even if the other side is going to be a push over — we hope.
 
USNI #4 — Still Water Runs Deep

Since we’re showcasing the Navy’s new systems, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the Coast Guard, since they have their part to play as well. Not as the Navy (I’m with the Canadian Coast Guard) but with their own roles of border protection, counter smuggling, etc.

Drugs are always a sexy thing with which to deal and having just watched a movie or two, I figured I might as well try powerboats vs. the Stingray guys with their snipers and machine guns.

There are two things I had to deal with here — speed and accuracy. Firepower really didn’t matter since this really isn’t high-intensity naval combat. Of course, I could have gone into territorial verses the 200 nm Economic Exclusion Zone, but that was a bit beyond the scope of what I had in mind.

Powerboats are fast, and it’s the Gulf of Mexico, there’re going to be many merchants, so finding the targets was problematic. The new CN-235s that the Coast Guard is buying will help with their ISAR radar, but all that does it show what kind of ship is detected.

The next problem was target prosecution. Having never flown aboard a Stingray, much less shot from one, I really didn’t have (and still don’t have) any idea what it takes to shoot at a small boat from a fast helicopter. Fortunately, we don’t model lead in ANW, just Hit Percentages. I’ve already gone into that in my earlier entry.
 
USNI #5 — Littoral Warfare

Littoral warfare is so hard to model some times.

In my opinion, words like “littoral” and “brown water” are buzzwords describing a type of warfare that has been on going since the end of the 19th century. Reading all the literature that available on “Sea Power 21”, “…from the sea,” and the rest of the modern literature, seem to indicate that “littoral warfare” is a new thing.

History says otherwise.

World War II is replete with examples of littoral warfare, the most commonly known are the U.S. PT boat actions in the Pacific during WW II. There is extensive documentation of other PT/MTB operations in the English Channel and the Mediterranean, not to mention actions in Korea and Vietnam. It behoves us, therefore, to alter the terminology.

Perhaps instead of calling it “littoral warfare,” we should call it “coastal warfare.” Littoral, as a word, refers to a specific area what Wikipedia calls:

“[T]he coast of an ocean or sea, or to the banks of a river, lake or estuary. In coastal environments, the littoral zone extends from the high water mark, which is rarely inundated, to shoreline areas that are permanently submerged. It always includes the intertidal zone and is often used to mean the same as the intertidal zone.”

There is nothing in that definition that dictates the type of vessel, weapon, or sensor that should be used. Anything from battleships to rowboats could be used in the littoral, so why all this talk about a new generation of weapons designed specifically for the littoral?

Think about it. What is the difference between coastal artillery, torpedoes and missiles? More to the point, there is no requirement for a specific design to operate in a certain area. Torpedo boats participated in Jutland, which took place in the North Sea, and battleships were the primary shakers at Surigao Strait

There are only two things that have changed during the last 15 years from the end of the Cold War to the new reality. Information processing has become much quicker and (as a result) the pace of combat has become faster. One only needs to look at how COTS is replacing MILSPEC. How many commercial systems to you see adopted for the military? I was on a Perry-class a few years ago and saw a NT workstation on the bridge.
 
USNI #6 — The New Shores of Tripoli

I couldn’t really finish off this battle set without showcasing the survivor of the procurement process — the V-22 Osprey and the Marines as well.

I like the Osprey. It’s a good example of technology working, albeit 25 years late. And there’s so much expansion available for the bird. I read an older version of the "Guide to the U.S. Navy" and saw a hypothetical ASW version of the Osprey that would replace the S-3. By its very nature, it would also free up the other rotary type squadrons for other missions.

As for the Marines, land combat isn’t really modeled yet. In fact, it might not ever be; it’s beyond the scope of this simulation. Harpoon is a naval simulator after all. Land combat belongs to the humble realm of Steel Panthers, TacOps and others of its ilk. That being said, there is room for tactical level ground combat as long as it interacts with the naval core of the program. Hitting mobile SSM sites as in the first scenario would be idea. We can already change their position on a scenario-by-scenario basis (using random starting positions) but there’s no way to move them during a scenario.

So with these limitations in mind, players figured of a work around several years ago. We could have paratroopers as an aircraft loadout but they’d be modeled in the database as a bomb. The plane would fly over the target and drop the paratroopers. The “paratroopers” would then hit the target and destroy it.

And so we have our scenario at hand. Hezbollah and other groups are up to their old tricks again and have gotten their hands on material to make a WMD. In this case, it is a biological weapon since it’s much easier to smuggle in than a nuke.

Now before you start to object, I’ll say that while I may not have much in the way of military experience, I can tell you right now that I can bring in anything into North America if I tried hard enough. The existing measures taken to prevent the smuggling of — anything — into any Western port are insignificant to the amount of cargo and traffic that passes through their ports. There just isn’t any kind of money being put into the system for the scale that’s required. The current efforts are similar to a child taking a magnifying glass to a termite hill in Africa during the height of the dry season.

If we are to intercept a WMD or its components before they enter North America or Europe, then we’ll need good intelligence. For this scenario, we get it. As a result, this is really more a Special Forces gig that uses the Osprey than it is a ground action, but the premise is the same. Those who study the Arab-Israeli conflict will note some similarities to it.