Tags
Arab Israeli Wars, CMO, Command: Modern Operations, Egypt, IL-2, IL-2 Sturmovik, Israel, Peter Gabriel
As I got back into Armored Brigade after my PC-replacement-driven break, I was forced to consider why that game doesn’t quite have the magic I think it should. Part of the problem is its focus. It models hypothetical Cold War engagements, which is exactly what I want it to do… and yet, here also lies its problem. In that prior post, I talk about my difficulties when trying to immerse myself in a hypothetical Cold War scenario, especially one taking place in a region with which I am entirely unfamiliar.
Mercifully, the United States has seen no major international armed conflict in our lower 48 states since 1865. Obviously, any Red Dawn -like setting for a World War III in North America must be entirely hypothetical. That means I’m never1 going to find a modern war, historical scenario over terrain with which I am intimately familiar.
What does work is to travel (virtually) to a battlefield on the other side of the globe to find battles that actually took place. The appeal of Vietnam, and why I’ve written so durned many posts about it, that it actually happened. When one maps out a battlefield in the Vietnam War and populates it with an order of battle, one is recreating a situation that actually took place. Vietnam has the added advantage that the U.S. military meticulously documented everything2 about the war. Best of all, the source documentation3 (the after-action reports of the commanders in the field) are largely available to the public. Analyses of those reports – by the military, by academic historians, and by combat veterans – are even more abundant and readily available. The construction of gaming scenarios falls back on this wealth of source material and as a result we have decades of detailed scenarios providing for our wargaming pleasure. These scenarios, in turn, can be played while referencing the maps and battle descriptions that are just a few mouse clicks away.
At this same time, of course, there was another war. The Arab-Israeli wars that occurred simultaneously with Vietnam have several disadvantages, some of which I’ve noted before. The nations in those conflicts have been reluctant to make available details from even long-ago battles. Similarly, it lacks the visceral connection that I have with my own nation’s conflicts. Still, these are real battles over real terrain that is readily visible both through the likes of Google Earth and historical maps.
Unfortunately, there is another connection that makes these 55-year-old battles more urgent. As I write this, I (along with all of you, I should think) are wondering how far the current events in the Middle East are likely to go. Are we seeing something roughly in line with the brief and readily-contained Arab-Israeli wars of the past or could we be stumbling into a global conflict?
Frightening implications aside, I found myself nonetheless ready to employ a mix of CMO and IL-2 to take to the skies and virtually-visit a particularly intense stretch of the War of Attrition. Through the spring and into the summer of 1969, fighting along the Suez canal intensified. The Egyptian army clearly outnumbered Israeli forces and even as Egypt was scaling up for offensive operations, Israel was constrained by the citizen/soldier makeup of their IDF. To deter an Egyptian attack, Israel launched Operation Boxer.
The scenario Sledgehammer, part of the Shifting Sands DLC for Command: Modern Operations, puts the player in control of Operation Boxer. More specifically, I should say, in control of “Boxer 1”, the attack that took place on July 20th, 1969. At one’s disposal is virtually the entirety of the Israeli Air Force, tasked with conducting a rolling strike from Port Said south along the Suez Canal.
For the first time in my playing of CMO, I decided to make use of the mission planning interface for the game (see previous screenshot). Up until this point, I’ve managed my assets RTS style; commanding each ship, aircraft, or group-thereof individually – in reaction to events on the screen. I’ve noted before that this does not seem like an effective way to play; it was always just easier to jump right in to the action than to put in hours of preparation.
I have to admit that I am still learning. During my initial preparations, I set up my attack missions but I did not configure any kind of timing or triggering mechanism. That initial strike went well enough but I was left with some stragglers. The AI appears to be smart enough to hold back its own assets until witnessing the bulk of mine headed for home.
Worse yet was the lack of organization surrounding my second strike. My aircraft return to base and are able to quickly rearm for another go. What happens then? Some remain assigned to their original mission and launch themselves before the rest of my force is ready to support them. Others seem to get a bit stuck, awaiting my active retasking. The problem is that the interface (or, perhaps, the way I am using it) doesn’t seem to easily support what I want to do with it, which is to integrate the individual missions into an overarching big picture.
I ended up clearing out and repopulating all of the first-round missions as well as creating a handful new ones but wave two remained considerably less pretty than the first.
As much as I focus on the negative, Sledgehammer was a good scenario that was fun to play. Preconfiguring the missions is an absolute necessity for something of this complexity. Although I don’t expect to keep at this particular through replays, the value of proficiency with the mission editor is something to remember for my next CMO excursion.
Before I leave the Sinai, though, I’ll want to take a look at the same operation from the pilot’s seat.
It shouldn’t surprise us that IL-2 covers Operation Boxer, given the size and scope of the strikes. IL-2‘s scenarios, in fact, stretch out for more than a week, with five battles in total. There are two for “Boxer 1” with sample missions continued up through “Boxer 6” (War of Attrition by vern, scenarios 11 through 15 if you want to look them up).
Each scenario has you flying the French-made Mirage IIICJ. The first has you leading the initial airstrike tasked with knocking out a SAM battery, clearing the way for the larger attack. The second scenario has you scramble to respond to that counter strike – what Egypt launched when the Israeli force returned to base. Beyond the first two, you are flying Boxer missions encompassing a variety of parameters and taking after the first day of the operation (and so outside the scope of Sledgehammer). The real appeal, for me, isn’t the nature of the fight but the fact that it reproduces what happened historically.
Best of all, I’m tickled when I can look at the same situation from multiple levels through the lens of multiple games. That is obviously going on here. The mixing and matching of games can also be something of a case study in where one game’s bailiwick ends and the other starts. While IL-2 can handle a few flights of aircraft, trying to make the entirety of “Boxer 1” happen would be utterly impossible. Likewise, CMO doesn’t fully capture the drama of an high-altitude fighter duel.
One last random observation… for both of these games, the losses quickly outpace that of the historical fight. Within CMO, I blame myself. I’d like to think that, with better planning, I could strive to reproduce the historical outcome that saw almost no losses. In IL-2, I’m not sure it is possible. In that first scenario, my side already saw more than the two aircraft losses that Israel suffered within a few minutes of ground attack. I think its just the nature of this simulator that you should expect to see a lot of carnage.
- I probably shouldn’t say things like this. The world can change on a dime. ↩︎
- Well, not quite everything – one must imagine. ↩︎
- To a lesser extent, the archives of North Vietnam have recently become accessible. Although, I do believe that the American records are, on the whole, more accurate and reliable, more data is a plus. ↩︎