When time stood still -- Cuban Missile Crisis at 50

Destroyer USS JOSEPH P KENNEDY JR sends a boarding party over to freighter Marucla during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. NHHC photo USN 711187.

You don't go through life without a close call or two. I think most of us can think of at least one occasion where, if things had gone a little differently, we might not be here. But for anyone over the age of 50, there was a collective moment when it could all of come to an end -- late October 1962.

The Kennedy today at Battleship Cove

I was too young at the time to understand what was going on. I was seven years old in 1962, and I can't even recall from this distance any particular feeling of dread during the crisis. I remember knowing that something bad was going on -- and like most members of that duck-and-cover generation, there was a certain low-level terror that never really went away. I remember being under covers and hearing the engines of passing aircraft overhead and wondering if that plane, THAT noise, was the ONE.

I, for one, felt an enormous sense of relief after 1989, that I hadn't even really understood was there until it was no longer there. Notwithstanding 9/11, which brought its own kind of terror, things have been different since 1989. There's still danger in the world, and dangers in life, but instant  annihilation is not one of them.

But in October, 1962 it was  a very real possibility. We know now that the danger was even greater than we knew at the time. And I'm no great fan of John F. Kennedy, as his poorly conducted foreign policy played a not inconsiderable role in causing the crisis in the first place.

Scene from the movie Thirteen Days

The military reality was that the Soviets were not well placed to come out on top of a 1962 nuclear exchange -- even by the horrific metrics that the concept of coming out on top would entail. Evidently well aware of the unfavorable "correlation of forces" (to use the Soviet term), Khrushchev found away out of the crisis that preserved the Soviet state -- if not his job. 

Still, there's no way that "winning" a nuclear war is still not an enormous tragedy for any country, let alone a democratic one. The scarring of the national psyche by 9/11 provides a hint of what a nuclear exchange might have meant for America. It's not a world any of us would want to live in. And, of course, many of us wouldn't have lived in it. How many might have died is impossible to say. A figure of 100 million Americans and 100 million Soviets has been bandied about. I'm very skeptical that it would have been THAT high (that represents more than half of all the people in the country -- 179 million -- in 1962) but even a tenth of that amount would have been an unthinkable loss -- dwarfing the toll of all American wars.

In 1962 the Soviets had about 3,000 warheads, the United States maybe 10 times that number. The Soviets only had a couple dozen ICBMs in 1962 (which is why the MRBMs in Cuba were so attractive) and therefore would have had to rely on bombers to get through. There can be little doubt that some would have made it, but it's fruitless to even guess how many and which ones. Would even one bomb going off in just one major city have not been a disaster?

Fortunately it didn't come to that, but for the next quarter century there was a pretty complacent view in many quarters about the possibility of "surviving" or even "winning" a nuclear exchange. In my opinion, it wasn't until the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 that I think it dawned on even the most hard-headed and cold-hearted that the consequences of a nuclear exchange made concepts of winning and losing laughable. Chernobyl, as massive of a disaster as it was, was merely a fraction of the fallout of a nuclear exchange.

From the IAEA FAQ on Chernobyl:
12. How does Chernobyl’s effect measure up to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The accident at Chernobyl was approximately 400 times more potent than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. However, the atomic bomb testing conducted by several countries around the world during the 1960s and 1970s contributed 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material to the environment than Chernobyl.

Note that the Hiroshima bomb was  about 16 kilotons yield, making it a tactical weapon by later Cold War standards.

From a gaming standpoint, there haven't been too many that looked expressly at the Cuban Missile Crisis alone, although it does figure as an important event card in the very popular Twilight Struggle game about the Cold war.  Maybe the most on-topic game legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the darkly comic card game Nuclear War, which first appeared in 1965 -- less than two years later.

From the larger standpoint of the human race, it's worth noting that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred just a little over 17 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe the scare was worth it, after all, because we've already gone half a century more without another nuke being used. That's a better track record than I think anyone could have hoped in 1962.

Strategy Page describes wargaming by Mexican Navy

An interesting, if general, article in Strategy Page describes some recent interest in naval wargaming by the Mexican Navy, inspired by exposure to USN naval wargaming, presumably at the Naval War College.

While US wargames rely heavily on computers, the article indicates a larger role for manual wargaming in the Mexican case. Given the kinds of threats the Mexicans have to cope with -- mostly drug cartels -- this seems appropriate. It's not like the Mexicans ned to track the activity of large fleets of ships, armed with clouds of missiles and backed by squadrons of aircraft like some NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation might  involve.

A more hands-on, creative and intimate approach by manual wargames would seem much more useful, I think.

The article doesn't mention any specific, but it does make me wonder if some version of the commercial Harpoon4 rules has found its way into the Mexican Navy's toolkit.

Is China making the Kaiser's blunder?

Reading a  good book like Castles of Steel is a good way to get the intellectual juices flowing.

It's shallow reading of history to find "lessons" in it. Cases differ and fact sets are never precisely the same, so you can't simply transfer directly from one case to another. But experience is valuable, and it's certainly profit from the experience of others after making allowance for what is different and what is similar.

Former Varyag

There's certainly reason to think that Germany's naval expansion at the turn of the Twentieth Century played a role in bringing World War I and even led Germany;s defeat. Castles of Steel repeatedly points out that German naval officers were shocked that Britain joined the war. And it's clear that Britain's entry into the war was hardly a forgone conclusion. It broke with long-standing British practice of playing balance of power politics and avoiding the commitment of major land forces on the continent. It brought the British and French into an alliance -- pretty amazing considering those two nations had spent the bulk of the last five or six centuries as rivals.

Germany was -- and is -- the dominant nation in continental Europe. As a continental  power it necessarily had to give primacy of place to the army.  Resources are always finite and a navy could never get more than the leftovers after the army was taken care of.

Britain, of course, was a naval power. Its army would necessarily take second place in the defense of the island nation. Indeed, it's a truism that an island can only be defended off shore. There are very few cases of a successful island defense if an enemy manages to land on it.

So when the Germans started their naval buildup in the early 1900s it ended up being worse than a waste of resources. Not only did all the treasure sunk into the navy come at the expense of land forces, but it antagonized Britain and drove it into alliance against Germany.

Geography made any attempt at naval superiority for Germany impossible. Britain controlled access to the sea approaches of Germany. British national interests precluded allowing Germany to ever achieve parity in naval power.

If the Germans had restricted themselves to a naval force sufficient to guard their coasts against French and Russian naval forces there's every reason to think the British would have stayed out of the war. With no naval blockade or just the limited blockade the French could have mounted, the widespread suffering inflicted on the German economy. No British entry in the war means no BEF and probably victory for the Germans in 1914 or 1915 at the latest.. And, of course, with no unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain, there would have been no reason for an American entry into the war,.

It seems to me that China's situation a century later resembles Germany's in some ways. Its a rising economic power that is also tempted to expand its clout in international affairs and boost its military. Like Germany, however, China is a continental power with rival major powers that share borders with it. The army always will come first.

Like Germany, as well, the naval geography works against China. All the sea approaches to China are controlled by other countries -- who all have historical beefs with China. And like Germany, a hundred years ago, China's main rival is the world's biggest Navy. Except, of course, China's situation is even more dire. While the British were forced to be satisfied with a Navy as large as the next two combined, the U.S. Navy is nearly larger than all the other navies in the world, combined.

Germany, at least in theory, could over strain the British by building a large enough navy that some other navy would be able to take advantage and strike. The British negated this strategy through diplomacy. It made allies of the other significant navies, including  some it had fought against like France and the United States. By the time war came, the Germans stood almost alone at sea.

In China's case the ground is even harder to make up. The US Navy is far stronger than the Royal Navy ever was --and nearly every other significant navy in the world is already an ally. Among the few that are not formal allies, namely India and Russia, there's little reason to think they'd be inclined to side against the US on China's behalf and every reason to expect the opposite.

The bottom line is that any money spent on a blue-water navy is a complete waste as far as China is concerned. The geography, politics and military technology are hopelessly against them. They can't possibly spend enough money to make their naval forces militarily relevant -- but they can easily spend enough to annoy, alarm and drive into alliance their neighbors. There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about China's new aircraft carrier, submarine construction and other naval improvements. While obviously bearing watching, anything China does in this sphere seems like a trip down the road of folly.

Interesting article on Harpoon and the novel Red Storm Rising

This is worth checking out.

The Battle of Goose Green -- 28 May, 1982

Battle of Goose Green from 2 Para Falklands by Maj. Gen. John Frost

The final act in the Falklands drama opened at Goose Green on May 28, 1982, as the British 2 Parachute Battalion, supported by fire support from the frigate HMS Arrow and half a battery of 105mm field artillery attacked the Argentine garrison at the settlement of Goose Green, which lies on the narrow isthmus connecting the northern and southern portions of East Falkland Island.

At first glance the two sides appear evenly matched. 2 Para was comprised of three para companies, a "patrol" company and a support company. This totaled about 450 men.

The Argentine garrison was largely comprised of the 12th Infantry "regiment" (actually battalion sized) with three infantry companies and support company. Attached in support were some air force personnel, some AA guns and half a battery of 105 mm howitzers. The fighting men in the Argentine garrison totaled about 600, with another 900 logistics, air force ground personnel and others present.

In land combat, however, numbers can be very deceiving and, in fact, the British force was far more powerful than the Argentinians. In Clash of Arms South Atlantic War Second Edition supplement there are rules for resolving ground combats based on the work of Col. Trevor N. Dupuy and his Quantified Judgment Model for predicting the outcome of ground battles.

Dupuy's work was -- and is -- controversial in its methodology, but the fact remains that Gulf War predictions based on the QJM method were far closer to the actual result than most other predictions that appeared in the media.

The Ground Combat Strengths of the supplement were calculated using a modified version of the QJM and those GCS figures show an enormous superiority for the British. In fact, the Base GCS of the British force of 15.95 is more than 2 and half times greater than the 6.30 of the Argentine defenders. This implies are fairly quick and decisive victory for the British with relatively light casualties and so it proved in the actual event.

The Argentine garrison was defeated in a day's fighting and the entire lot captured. The British lost 17 killed and 33 wounded while 55 Argentinians were killed and 86 wounded with the balance of the force -- more than 1,000 -- captured.

A notable casualty was the 2 Para commander, Lt. Col. "H" Jones. In fact, the ratio of leader casualties to private soldiers lost between the two forces is very suggestive as to the difference in quality between these elite British troops and their regular Argentine opponents.

Out of the 17 British killed in action, no fewer than a dozen were leaders ( 5 officers and 7 NCOs). In contrast the vast majority of the Argentinian soldiers killed were lower ranking enlisted soldiers -- 43 of them. Coincidentally the Argentinians also had 12 leaders killed -- three officers and nine NCOs.

This quality difference would manifests itself again during the final climactic battle at Port Stanley in a little more than two weeks time.

Argentina strikes back -- The Sheffield hit 30 years ago

HMS Sheffield hit, May 4, 1982

Any illusions that the war would be entirely one-sided for the British were shattered on May 4 when word came that the HMS Sheffield had been hit by an Exocet missile. While the ship remained afloat, it had to be abandoned ad a fire raged out of control and it would eventually sink under tow. Twenty crew were killed and another two dozen wounded.

The loss came as the Sheffield was on radar picket duty west of the British task force. Radar picket duty is a necessary, but very dangerous, duty, as the US Navy discovered during the closing months of World War II when dozens of escorts were damaged and destroyed by Kamizake attacks.

Fortunately for the British , the Argentinians didn't have dozens  of Exocets. Indeed, they had just five of the air-launched versions and just five Super Etendard attack planes to carry them. This was another negative consequence of the Argentinian decision to rush the start of the war. Had they waited until September they would have had a total of at least 10 Exocets and 14 planes to carry them.

In  a very well-planned and executed mission the Argentinian Navy aviators in two Super Etendard, supported by a Neptune recon plane, were able to fire two missiles and escape without being engaged. One missile apparently failed to find a target but the second w=one hit the Sheffeild, which wasn't prepared properly for defending against a missile attack. It's shipboard radars and air defenses never spotted the threat and the only warning it got was from voice shouts after Mark 1 eyeballs spotted the incoming missile just seconds before it hit. 

It seems evident that the missile did not explode, but rocket fuel and other combustibles combined to fuel a fire that burned out the ship.

It's interesting to go back and read the accounts from the time of the incident. I have the Osprey special editions on the Falklands War (Men-At-Arms No. 133-135) and the Sunday Times of London's "War in the Falklands -- The Full Story," all published in 1982 shortly after the close of the war. While not bad, considering how quickly they were done, they do make a number of claims that turned out to not be true -- and suffer from minimal input form the Argentinian side.

The Harpoon4 supplement South Atlantic War 2nd Ed., which is my main source, was published in 2002 and had the advantage of much better information and much more information from the Argentinian side. One difference, for example, is the supposed role of the Argentinian submarine sin the incident.  At the time, the British ships reported "torpedo wakes" near the stricken Sheffield. The Osprey book asserts that "It seems probable that both of the Argentine Type 209 submarines were in the vicinity. Some reason exists to believe that one of them may have been hit, and perhaps sunk, by a Stingray torpedo released from a Sea King helicopter.

We now know that there were in fact no Argentinian subs present that day and, in fact, only one of the Type 209 submarines was even operational. A nice illustration of the news truism that the first reports are always wrong.

More losses for Argentina in the Falklands War 30 years ago

The damage to the Alferez Sobral bridge area

 The first few days of serious fighting were costly for the Argentinian military, especially the Navy. Besides losing more than 300 men when the ARA general Belgrano went down on May 2, a small Argentinian warship called the Alferez Sobral suffered disproportionate casualties from some non-fatal hits from Sea Skua air-to0surface missiles fired by Btitsh helicopters when it was spotted while searching for downed aircrew from earlier fighting.

A total of four Sea Skua were fired and it appears three of the hit. One did not serious damage, as it hit the Sobral's lifeboat and blew it to bits. But two of the missiles hit near the bridge and killed 8 men, including the captain, and wounded at least 8 more -- for a loss rate of nearly 20%.

One thing this episode points out is the limitations of a wargame, even a very detailed one such as Harpoon4. According to the Harpoon4 rules, each Sea Skua should do 6 damage points so three hits should have left the 24-damage point Sobral nearly crippled with 75% damage before considering the effects of any critical hits.

In fact, though, one of the "hits" destroyed an accessory of the ship, its lifeboat, and did no structural damage at all. The effect of the two hits on the bridge also seems to be less than expected, as well. This reminds me of a discussion in a Harpoon Sitrep a few years back where Larry Bond discussed the surface-to-surface missile hit by Palestinian militants on the Israeli patrol boat INS Hanit in 2006. According to the Harpoon4 models the ship should have been devastated by a hit from the powerful missile used. While four crew were killed and there was a fire, the ship seemed to have escaped serious  structural damage.  Bond's analysis of open source photos led him to believe that the missile struck an exposed crane on the deck, which was missing in post-attack photos. He admitted that this sort of fluke hit  was hard to model in Harpoon4 and said that he basically just ignored that sort of thing in the game -- a not entirely satisfactory answer.

When I've run Harpoon4 scenarios I've experimented with various random reductions in effectiveness (While a better-than-expected result is also possible, I assume that is generally accounted for by the critical hit rules and in my opinion most weapons perform worse than expected and that's the bias I introduce into the game.)

Based on the photographic evidence and the lack of any apparent reduction in the ship;s speed, it appears that the actual damage done to the Sobral was less than 6 damage points in Harpoon4 terms. This implies that the Sea Skua's did less than half the expected amount of damage, even discounting entirely the lifeboat "hit" which might have been a "miss" in game terms.

In any case, a lesson worth bearing in mind when considering the likely effectiveness of any new weapons is that the most likely outcome is disappointment.

Midway cruiser action at Havoc XXVIII

The defenses of Midway

I've been wanting to do this particular scenario for a long time -- years as a matter of fact.

It was inspired by scenario article from the Naval SITREP in 2002, which postulated that admiral Kurita's cruiser task force (the four Mogami-class cruisers familiar to any player of Avalon Hill's Midway) was NOT recalled at the last minute but pressed on to bombard Midway at dawn on June 5th.

I gathered the necessary miniatures over the years, has a custom map prepared and got some LITKO plane markers. The rules, naturally, were the Fourth Edition of Command at Sea, Larry Bond's World War II entry in his Admiralty Trilogy of 20th-century naval wargaming rules -- which in turn is descended from his Harpoon rules set. The Admiralty trilogy is very detailed and backed by voluminous research. Indeed, the data annexes alone are worth getting for the information alone.


In this case I made mostly minor changes from the published scenario and had three players take part. Two players commanded the Japanese force, which was comprised of the four Mogami-class heavy cruisers of Cruiser Division 7.

A single player commanded the American forces, which were comprised of a mixed squadron of Vindicator and Dauntless dive bombers with 12 planes; an 8-strong PT-boat squadron; the shore batteries of Midway, comprised of two 7-inch batteries, three 5-inch batteries and a pair of 3-inch batteries, each of two guns; and an anti-aircraft group of 8 batteries.

The Japanese force entered the playing area from the southwest in darkness, while the PT boats cruised back towards Midway from the northwest.

The Americans decided to launch a dawn search pattern with four 3-plane flights of bombers searching from southwest to southeast. Meanwhile, the Japanese launched a pair of float planes to search to the north. Two more float planes were launched to form a close-in anti-submarine patrol.

Within a few minutes one of the float planes discovered the PT squadron and shadowed it from above AA range. Knowing they had been discovered the PT boats adjusted their course more towards the south in the direction the Japanese plane had approached.

A few minutes later the cruisers were spotted by one of the three-plane bomber elements, which proceeded to shadow them and call for reinforcements.

As so often happens, things started to happen quickly at this point. While the first element of dive bombers waited over head, the PT boats spotted the cruisers and were soon spotted themselves. As they closed the range a hit from one of the cruiser secondaries took out one boat, causing the rest to shy away and begin evasive maneuvers. The Japanese pressed on towards Midway.

A second element of bombers showed up and the Americans decided not to wait any longer. The two elements of Vindicators targeted the lead two ships in the Japanese column. Faced with the airborne threat, the Japanese secondary batteries moved to AA mode while their main batteries blasted way at the elusive PT boats.

The first two elements of attacking planes were Vindicators, whose pilots were not trained in dive-bombing techniques and therefore made a glide-bombing attack. The Japanese AA fire was reasonably effective, bringing down three planes, but the Marine pilots were also accurate and landed a couple of hits, causing damage to both Japanese cruisers, including the flagship Kumano.

Another element, this time of Dauntlesses, now arrived overhead and also picked on the Kumano. Trained in dive-bombing tactics they planted several more nits on the leading cruiser, while losing one of their own. These hits caused severe damage, including a critical engineering casualty, that slowed the cruiser and forced it to haul out of line. The Japanese ship, interestingly, chose to turn port, towards the PT boats, instead of the safer starboard.

As the fourth, and final, element of Dauntless dive bombers appeared and made their attack runs the PT boats made a sudden dash at the Japanese line. With the Japanese secondaries fully engaged with the dive bombers the main batteries were not enough to hit any of the nimble torpedo boats, which launched a full 28-torpedo salvo at the Japanese cruiser line.

The dive bombers were able to get another hit on one of the cruisers still in line, but at the cost of two planes. The retiring PT boats also lost a boat to an 8-inch shell as they departed. During this portion of the action the Japanese launched two more float planes, with the intention of using them to spot for cruiser fire against Midway.

One torpedo hit the already heavily damaged Kumano, leaving it dead in the water, while the Japanese cruiser line turned away from the torpedo spreads and began firing on the airfield.

The first hapless Japanese float plane was blasted from the sky by an intense barrage from the island's AA batteries -- and the second plane decided against trying its luck. Unspotted and at long-range, the Japanese shells did minimal damage to the airfield or facilities, while suffering occasional hits form the 7-inch shore guns in return. Around this time one of the PT boat torpedoes hit one of the undamaged cruisers. While having little immediate effect on the Japanese ship's fighting ability, it seemed to be one of the last straws for Japanese morale.

After a few more minutes of exchanging fire with the 7-inch battery the surviving Japanese ships turned away. An attack by the three hastily re-armed Vindicators came to a bad end as all three planes were shot down, but this success did not hearten the Japanese enough as they continued to head away at full speed.

The re-armed Dauntless element tried to finish off the crippled Japanese cruiser, but lost two planes to its desperate defensive fire. Still, dead in the water and within range of a 7-inch shore battery, the ultimate fate of the cruiser was not in doubt.

So a resounding American victory. For the loss of 11 planes and 2 PT boats the Americans sunk one heavy cruiser and damaged two of the remaining three cruisers. Damage to the airfield was minimal -- a couple of cuts and some buildings damaged.

Overall an interesting an instructive scenario. Despite the powerful cruise force, the Japanese appear to have a tough job, as it takes considerable nerve to bring the cruisers in close enough to be able to engage the camouflaged shore batteries. The American commander was quick to take advantage of the fortuitous accidental arrival of the dive bombers to make a coordinated attack by PT boats and bombers.

Some thoughts on war with Iran illuminated by Persian Incursion

War talk is in the air again, in the wake of a New York Times article this weekend suggesting that Israel may have already decided on making a strike by April.

There's a lot of speculation in the article and on the Internet about whether Israel could pull it off, and the headline of the article even suggests it might be difficult to do.

"Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets"

It says.

Right.

As it turns out, of course, this question has been exhaustively examined in the Clash of Arms wargame Persian Incursion. I had hoped to write up a detailed review and session report based on an online game I had been playing, but real-life interruptions broke up the pace and its unclear whether it will get finished soon or ever. But I did play enough of it to get a good appreciation of the game's ability to address the question: Can Israel do it?

Let me address right off the protest: "But it's only a game!" True, but many experts familiar with both classified military wargames and civilian wargames have said that the military games have little or no advantages in accuracy over thoroughly researched open-source commercial games.

First off, it's important to note that Persian Incursion is really two games in one. The first is a political-diplomatic card game that can be played concurrently or prior to the military game and examines the complex interplay of politics, diplomacy, media, public opinion and other "soft" factors tat are critically important but hard to quantify. This portion of the game is highly subjective and not coincidentally provides the Iranian player with his best chance for successes. This is defensible from areal-world standpoint and, just as importantly, allows the game designer to create a competitive game experience for the Iranian side.

And the hard-data driven military game, which is basically a streamlined version of Larry Bond's super-detailed Harpoon4 game system, shows how necessary this card game option is because the Iranians, plainly have absolutely no chance militarily. Oh, sure, a lucky shot here or there may shoot down an Israeli jet or two or land an occasional missile in a Tel Aviv city block, with the consequent propaganda 'victory' for Iran, but the Iranians have no ability to impede the Israeli raiders in any significant military sense. Whatever the Israelis decide to destroy will be destroyed. The Israeli challenge is almost purely a technical and logistic one caused by the extreme distance and some limited resources. As such, however, it's also one that thorough planning by a highly professional military such as Israel's can be expected to overcome.

What the Israelis won't have to deal with is much of the way of unpredictably effective defensive action by the Iranian military. Their available aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles are several generations behind the Israeli attackers and, for the most part, will likely be completely neutralized. As I said, one can't completely discount a lucky shot, so there's some small risk for an unpleasant (for the Israeli side) incident or two, but losses will be minimal and damage extensive.

For the purposes of making the game competitive and challenging for the players, the game demands that the Israelis completely destroy their targets in order to get full credit towards winning the war. But in reality, all the Israelis have to do is destroy certain critical components of the targeted facilities -- whether nuclear or oil -- to accomplish their aim of delaying Iran's supposed nuclear ambitions. It's clear that they should have little trouble doing that.

In the final analysis, Bond's game suggests strongly that the military success of an Israeli strike is about as sure thing as you're likely to see in the annals of warfare. What the game does not -- and cannot -- answer is whether such a strike would be a political and diplomatic success or a disaster. The card game, however, does imply that's where the biggest danger for the Israelis and, by extension, the US lies.

Persian Incursion arrives

Well, it was the first of the November rush of pre-orders to be charged but the last of the bunch to actually arrive. Unlike the other November pre-orders, expansions for Memoir '44 and Small World, the new Commands & Colors: Napoleonics and Battle Cry, which are all primarily entertainment, Persian Incursion is about as Serious a wargame as one could ask for.

Just perusing the components and starting to read it this product is clearly the most comprehensive treatment of one of today's biggest geopolitical and military issues -- could Israel attack Iran to eliminate its nuclear program? It addresses the technical and tactical aspects of a potential strike in excruciating detail (using the Harpoon 4 game engine) and the "game" portion (it's a standalone game, NOT a Harpoon module) provides a framework for examining the potential political and diplomatic consequences.

This is going to take a couple of days to digest, but I expect to say more about it later.

Persian Incursion on the way?

CoA Web page on the game

It appears from my bank account that Clash of Arms has started charging for Persian Incursion, a Harpoon4-series game that looks in detail at the war that neo-cons dearly want to see -- a US and/or Israeli strike on Iran.

This is the sort of speculative wargame that used to be done all the time but seems to have fallen on hard times lately. I'm looking for ward to seeing it.

Thinking about the unthinkable -- Persian Incursion

Clash of Arms has announced palns for a Harpoon 4 based module called Persian Incursion which will explore the military, political and other aspects of a potental Israeli strike on Iran to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons program.

An overview of the project was presented at Historicon.

This sort of "what-if" was pretty popular duringt he Cold War era but there haven't been too many since then, despite the fact the U.S. has been involved in quite a few conflictssince 1989. This product promises to be a provocative look at the issue and may even get some mainstream media attention once it appears.

Warfare the old-fashioned way -- The Falklands, 1982

It was 28 years ago today that Argentinian troops landed on and captured the Falkland Islands, launching the 74-day Falklands War.

The Falklands War was unusual in many ways. It was relatively quick, for one thing, and was largely a naval-air campaign, which is always uncommon but has been especially so since 1945.

In many ways it's kind of a throwback to an earlier sort of war, the conventional state vs. state war that wargamers are comfortable with, but that has been rather uncommon since World War II. Sure, the have been a few major state vs. state wars since 1945 involving Israel and its neighbors, three between India and Pakistan, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait and Iraq-Iran come to mind. But most of the combat that the world has seen since WW2 has been much messier insurgencies, terrorism and genocides. Even many of the state vs. state wars have involved a lot of irregular warfare such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. Ideology and ethnic tensions have featured prominently in most of those wars, and those passions have added an ugly element to most of them.

The 1982 Falklands War was much more old-fashioned. It was a contest between states, over national interests, and conducted largely in accordance with the recognized rules of war. Both countries involved were "western" in culture, although the Argentine regime was not democratic. As mentioned, the war was largely decided by the naval-air campaign, although there was some serious ground fighting.

It was an odd war for the era, because it was largely outside the Cold War framework. While the United Kingdom was part of NATO, the Argentinian aggression fell outside of the NATO treaty as understood at the time. Argentina was unfriendly to the Soviets and an ally to the United States, which put the US in the awkward position of watching two allies fight. The Ar gentians, badly misjudging their situation, apparently thought the US would come down on their side, a monumental delusion of the sort that closed regimes seem especially prone to. While the US kept officially neutral, there was little doubt where American sympathies lie, and Washington apparently provided discreet aid to the British.

The fact that the war could occur at all was only due to the sufferance of the U.S., which had naval supremacy in the Atlantic.

There were a lot of lessons derived from the conflict. not the least of which is that there is a huge gap in actual military capability between a First World power such as the U.K. and a Second World military power such as Argentina. While Argentina's air force and naval pilots showed exceptional valor and skill and gave the British a run for their money, there was no contest at sea or on land. Argentina's navy, while impressive on paper, had critical weaknesses compared to Britain's Royal Navy, especially in the skill and daring of its higher leadership. One wonders if any Argentinian admiral had ever given serious thought to how me might actually use his fleet in battle.

The land fighting showed an even bigger gap in capability. While Argentina's air and naval forces showed considerable professionalism, the land elements were completely outmatched. The British have centuries of tradition and experience in expeditionary campaigns of this sort and committed most of its most elite units (commandos, paras, Gurkhas, guards, etc.) to the affair. In contrast the Argentinian command withdrew its best units, which were used in the initial landings and replaced them with raw conscripts.

There haven't been an awful lot of games published on the episode, but among those that have been published is the South Atlantic War campaign book for Harpoon published by Clash of Arms Games in 2002 (2d edition) and earlier in 1990 by Game Designer's Workshop. The South Atlantic War is a very comprehensive treatment of the war, including sources from both sides, that depicts every significant incident of the war from the initial landings at Port Stanley on April 2 to the final battle, also at Port Stanley, on June 14.

Natanz strike a scenario in latest Naval Sitrep

A Satellite view of the Natanz facility

There's a lot of media speculation about a potential Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz, but very little hard data-based analysis is available from open sources. (We can only hope that our Intel community has done that sort of analysis already.

The latest issue of the Naval Sitrep, No. 37 (Oct. 2009), has a very extensive scenario for the Harpoon4 system and analysis of a potential Israeli strike on the Natanz nuclear site that looks extremely interesting.

The Natanz site is famous as the place where Iran has installed thousands of centrifuges to process uranium. It's an attractive target for the Israelis because it's a fairly vulnerable part of the Iranian nuclear program.

I'm going to look it over in more detail over the next few weeks, but at first glance the strike looks surprisingly doable from an operational standpoint. Its wisdom from a strategic point of view is outside the scope of the scenario, although it's the biggest question of all.

Still, it's interesting that the only deep analysis of the issue I have seen anywhere is in a wargame-related publication.

Atlantic Navies, an Admiralty series game

Wargames should provide entertainment and can be educational, but only a select few are so detailed that they can be used as analytical tools. Larry Bond's Admiralty series of naval wargames are among he elite of that group.

This is not too denigrate their playability, because they can be played, but they are simulations first and foremost. Little care is devoted to considerations such as play balance, clever design techniques or splashy graphics. Most procedures are straightforward and literal. Nearly every random element is reduced to some percentile dice chance of occurring and the presentation of information is functional, not pretty.

What it lacks in attractiveness, however, a Bond game more than makes up for in comprehensiveness. While pricey, with a MSRP of $125, Atlantic Navies is better compared to one of those naval data tomes you find in big city library than a typical game. The game's box art claim that it contains "the most complete and accurate information on the World War II navies of Germany, Great Britain and France to be found anywhere." I see no reason to doubt this.

One advantage of Bond's prosaic approach is that his ship data is usable with any other set of rules so long as those rules provide conversion factors.

The box contains the latest, 4th edition of the Command at Sea and four counter sheets making it completely playable even if it's your initial purchase int he game system. The counter sheets contain enough ships to depict nearly the entire OB of the French, Commonwealth and German navies in game form. In addition there's the US Navy fleet that invaded Casablanca and the Italian fleet that fought at Sparviento, as well as a couple of Norwegian gunboats, so there are ship counters provided to play nearly every scenario provided, with the odd oversight of a handful of Siamese naval vessels. Besides the large ship counters there are aircraft counters provided for the French and British, with a few American and Germans planes as well. These are necessarily not a comprehensive selection but seemed designed to allow enough aircraft to play most of the provided scenarios.

The British have appeared several times before in the series (this is Vol. VII). so the 110-page "Home Fleet" book is mostly a chance to consolidate all the British data in one place and update it with the latest research. Except for a one-page sidebar summary of the Royal Navy in World War II, the whole book is made up of data annexes.

The second book in the set is called "Gruppe Nord" and it's an excellent 124-page single reference for the German Navy in World War II. It includes, of course, the expected data annexes, but the small German Navy isn't even close to filling the book so there's all sorts of other good stuff in there. There are four informative sidebars, but the majority of the book is made up of scenarios. The scenarios include all the well-know battles, such as the River Plate, the Bismarck saga, the Norwegian campaign and the Battle of North Cape. But it also includes a number of lesser-know battles including raiders vs. armed merchant cruisers and a night action of light forces.

The final book, La Guerre Navale, covers the ill-starred French Navy. While large and capable, the French Navy could do little to stave off national defeat in the mostly land war against Germany and the fleet's main use was to win better surrender terms than France's utter defeat would have otherwise warranted. The Germans had an incentive to keep the French navy out of British hands, which unduly harsh peace terms might have provoked.

So the French Navy spent most of the war on the sidelines. Indeed, its three biggest naval battles involved fighting against its former Allies and its own countrymen.

There was the tragic Operation Catapult, where the British fleet attacked the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir with heavy loss of French life and the equally tragic battle of Dakar where the Vichy French fought off a landing by Free French troops and their British support. Somewhat less tragic, but still unfortunate was the Vichy resistance at Casablanca against he US Navy, which also resulted in significant casualties to both sides. All three are scenarios here.

Happier scenarios consider several what-if options involving the French fighting on in the Allied service and making an appearance at North Cape or Sparviento instead of the British as well as several other what-ifs. One truly obscure scenario depicts the French navy's most unambiguous victory of World War II as a small French squadron wiped out the Siamese navy at Koh-Chang.

Still, coming up with plausible scenarios for the French navy in World War II isn't easy and the balance of the book is made of no less than 8 sidebars about various aspects of the French navy's war, including it's sad end at Toulon with most of the fleet scuttled.

Harpoon Naval Review 2009

There's a lot of worthwhile material in this 2009 edition of the Harpoon Naval Review.

The lead article is a 16-page comprehensive accounting of the Spanish Navy as of mid-2008, something you won't find a lot of information about anywhere else. Given its very long naval tradition, it's nice to see that the Spanish Navy is enjoying something of a resurgence. The article ends with a small-scale scenario depicting a potential conflict between Spain and a Jihadist Morocco. Like many more recent Harpoon scenarios this is suitable for play between two players or a small group, useful given how hard it can be to gather a large group these days.

The second piece looks at a possible fighting between Venezuela and Columbia back in 1987 with two scenarios, again suitable for two or three players.

Venezuela is featured again in the third article, where a Venezuelan sub duels with US Navy forces in another small-scale engagement.

The fourth article is a scenario based on Larry Bond's book Cauldron and pits US forces against "EurCom" (mostly French/German) in a series of engagements in the Baltic and Atlantic. Most of these are bets for a team.

The fifth piece is, perhaps, the most ambitious to actually try to play, as it examines massive air attacks against a US carrier battle group at various times from the 60s right through 2010. In each case the CVBG is based around the USS Enterprise with the escorts and air groups changing through time as well as the attacking Soviet (later Chinese) bomber force. Very interesting but definitely needing several players to pull off.

The sixth article is very topical, as Western naval forces try to run ships past Somali pirates in a small scenario.

The last article is a Sub vs. Convoy scenario generator.

The balance of the book is made of of ship forms and aircraft forms for most of the ships and planes involved in all the scenarios except the convoy generator. Everything is brought up to Harpoon 4 standards.

A good buy.

Harpoon Naval Review 2009

Got the 2009 Harpoon Naval Review today in the mail.

It's filled with a lot of good stuff, including an 11-page article on the current Spanish Navy, scenarios involving fighting between Venezuela and Columbia, an attack on a US Carrier battle group and even one on Somali pirates! Quite topical.

Unfortunately I don't have any local naval miniatures opponents at the moment, so I'm not sure when I'll get to try out any of the battles. On the other hand, Harpoon and indeed all the Admiralty trilogy games are so chock full of information that they are worth having even if never played.

Indeed, they are really more like reference books in game form than games.

As I digest the book over the week I'll try to give capsule reviews of the contents.

Harpoon4 -- review

There's usually a tension in wargames between the demands of a successful "game" (an entertaining and competitive contest) and a "simulation" (an authentic reflection of real life). The art of wargames design largely revolves around striking a balance between these demands.

Every so often, however, a designer boldly abandons any pretense of striking such a balance and pushes his design to the edges of the possible. Commonly the decision lands on the "game" side, and there's no shortage of war-themed games that pay little attention to real-life constraints. Harpoon4 is the rare design that goes the other way, unabashedly seeking to be the most realistic possible treatment of a very complex subject, modern naval warfare. What concessions it makes to playability are almost always framed in the practical limitations of manual procedures, not in any notions of fairness or competitiveness.

The games has been this way since its very first edition back in 1981 and has remained true to that mission consistently, even has the design has been refined over the years based on more research, years of playing experience and the growing experience of the design team.

Abstractions are kept to a minimum. With the exception of damage points, which are computed by a formula to come up with a game-specific value, nearly every other measurement and number is based on a real unit of measure such as kilometers or nautical miles, minutes and hours, knots and rates of fire, and percent-based chances of occurrence. Players can -- and are encouraged to -- do their own research to plug in the numbers needed to create a scenario, very much in the tradition of naval miniatures games since their origins with Fletcher Pratt's rules in the 1930s.

Because it's in the naval miniatures wargame tradition, Harpoon 4 is less of a board game than a system for modeling battles. While it's possible to play it solitaire or two-player in very limited ways, enjoying the full panoply of possibilities presented by the rules requires one of the players to act as the game organizer or referee. That player creates the scenario and the success of the game depends in large measure on how much work and care the referee puts into it. The more prep work the better the game experience. Indeed, the referee is really the only person who needs to know the rules.

The key thing in modern naval warfare is the detection of the opposing force and the importance of getting in the first effective blow. Unlike early 20th-century battleships, modern warships have little ability to accept damage and keep fighting and modern weapons are far more powerful than earlier weapons.

After the referee has set the initial situation it's up the opposing players to organize their forces, plan strategy, give them standing orders and their courses. Often these decisions, made before the battle begins, will determine how it turns out.

Once the game starts the referee will generally track the movements and activities of all the moving parts until one side or the other detects something. Unlike traditional wargames, which usually have turns of set length, the referee will usually "telescope" the time in order to speed play. Many hours of game time may be resolved in a few minutes of real time if little is happening or the opposing forces are out of range. By the same token, the high-speed action of actual combat, broken down into 30-second increments, may take considerably more time than that to actually play out.

There's hardly any real-life situation that the rules don't handle, although some types of operations such as amphibious landings, underway replenishment, land combat or mine warfare are usually handled "off-map" by the ref. In fact, there are often far more elements in the game being handled by the ref than the players such as neutral shipping, other services and perhaps other task forces. For example, in a scenario where the players are controlling surface ships it may be better to let the ref handle any subs present because the poor sub player will otherwise never have anyone to talk to (if you're being realistic).

While Harpoon4 has structure and plenty of rules, most of that structure can be and should be invisible to the players. Ideally the player feels like he's truly in command of his ship, getting the sort of information from sensors and intel that his real counterpart would get and issuing the kinds of orders the actual commander would without the distraction of dealing with artificiality's of "factors" "phases" or "CRTs".

Under the direction of a skilled gamemaster, Harpoon4 can create a truly immersive game narrative that is hard to match.

The game itself, really has the field all to itself. When it first came out, back in 1981, there was similarly detailed modern naval rules set called Warship Commander or something along those lines, that was weighed down with abstract, yet complicated, subsystems. Harpoon quickly established itself as the No.1 modern naval wargame rules has never been seriously challenged. It achieved a certain amount of fame because of its association with Tom Clancy and The Hunt for Red October. Clancy used the game to help his novel achieve its authenticity. Harpoon design Larry Bond and Clancy then collaborated in Red Storm Rising, a hugely ambitious and very successful novelization of a potential World War III. Most of the combat action in the novel had been wargamed out using Harpoon. Bond later went on to a successful career on his own as a techno-thriller novelist. Clancy's later novels featured more cloak-and-dagger action than combat, but Harpoon/Bond was still reportedly consulted on occasion.

Bond and Harpoon also had an influence in the naval community. I doubt many naval officers serving over the last three decades were unfamiliar with the game, even if they're not gamers. Former Reagan-era Secretary of the Navy John Lehmen even wrote the foreword to the High Tide expansion and British Adm. Sir John "Sandy" Woodward, the naval commander in the Falklands War, wrote the foreword to the Harpoon4 rules. That's pretty high-speed for a civilian wargame.

The various editions of Harpoon have always had serviceable, if not spectacular graphics. The most recent, Clash of Arms edition, comes in a bookcase-style box, looseleaf-style rules, some die-cut counters for some ships, aircraft, missiles and markers and a data annex. Players may want to use miniature warship models for the visual effect, but frankly, so much of the action happens in the ephemeral realm of electronic warfare and across such enormous distances that maps and die-cut counters serve just as well most of the time.

Gamers primarily interested in competitive tests of skill will find little to interest them in Harpoon4. Needless to say there's even less of interest here for euro-style gamers. Harpoon4 is intensely detailed, treats nearly every possible facet of naval warfare exhaustively and requires mastery of more than 100 pages of rules in small type.

But for anyone interested in modern naval warfare and gaming out what might really happen if naval and air forces find themselves in battle, there is no unclassified substitute. I rather doubt that any classified wargame would provide better overall insight, although classified information might sometimes fill-in some unknown detail. But even classified naval wargames are limited by the knowledge intel provides and there's a good chance that some significant information is simply unknowable. The Soviet spy ring led by Walker would have had an impact if there had been a war in the 1980s, for one example. The Soviets had a super-high speed (200 knots!) nuclear-armed defensive torpedo aboard their subs that we had no idea existed. Think about how that changes things.