Nick Moran:

I started off as commander of the Peninsular Malaysian forces, but only about
three days into the MBX, ended up the proud controller of a relatively modern
group of warships, including four Type-23 equivalents, four Grishas, four
Handalan FAC(M/T), 8 Perdana FAC(M)and four submarines. (Sjoormen class) The
FACs and Lekiu Frigates all had Exocet missiles, but lousy air defense, and
would rely on blind luck to make it through the US coverage. There were also a
good few LSTs and related transports to transfer 9th Brigade over. Due to the
dreaded 'GM Die Roll', one of the Sjoormens was deemed to have started the game
damaged and unfixable. Or, you could say we started with three.

From the start, I had advocated not antagonising the Americans, for I knew that
as soon as the shooting started, we would be in a little trouble. <G> This
makes me look perhaps a little hypocritical since I was the one who ordered the
shooting down of the MV-22 Osprey over the US embassy. I personally couldn't
really care if the Crown Prince legged it off the embassy grounds to the US or
not. Thinking more militarily than politically, I saw my primary mission as
getting the troops to Borneo, and killing Americans would be a good way of
ensuring that 9th Bde wouldn't get across. However, under orders from above, we
couldn't allow the CP to escape. We had a choice of preventing the Osprey from
landing in the first place, or allowing it to land, and then on the return leg,
force it down onto our territory where the CP could be arrested if aboard. The
catch was that we could (In my view, which I still hold) legally shoot down the
Osprey before it reached the embassy, but on the return leg, whilst we could
probabl
y still legally shoot it down, the possibility that there was diplomatic staff
aboard made it a politically unacceptable alternative. So, given that the Air
Commander wasn't around at the time, I had the two Fulcrums follow close behind
the two Ospreys, and that if an aircraft were to make a break for the embassy
grounds, that shots be fired into the engine to disable it. Unfortunately, due
to a miscommunication, the shots were actually fired by a ZSU-23 on the ground,
which couldn't get as clean a shot, and so destroyed the aircraft. (Probably
for the better, since there were SpecOps people aboard, it turned out!)
However, not too much damage done, as the US didn't come in shooting at that
point.
       Next came an interesting proposition.. Riki asked us which of three
pieces of information we might want out of the following: A radio intercept,
something about the clothing of the MV-22 pilot in our hospital, or photos of
gear that the US were carrying out of the wreckage. We went for the ELINT, and
got 'Helo, try again from astern, the package is anxious to leave'. We could
only find a single surface radar contact from the emission point, turned out to
be a Philippino freighter which we didn't have much reason to board. If it was
a sub, it was too far for ASW operations. I'm not actually sure what the clue
was. The item of clothing was apparently a bandage made from the Crown Prince's
head-dress, some extremely circumstancial evidence, IMO. I still don't know
what was in the box carried out of the wreckage, can anyone fill me in?
      We also had a choice as to how we could get 9th Bde across.. We could do
it in little itty pieces, shipping them as soon as they got loaded, or wait
'till everyone was loaded, and then ship them across in one convoy. We chose
the middle path, as soon as the first battalion was loaded, the Alligator set
sail, with the eight frigate escort, and in company with a supply ship. Four of
the frigates took up position in the convoy, the other four acted as escorts.
To a radar, they were to look like a six-ship convoy with four escorts, we were
hoping for some form of mild success in forcing the US to use up lots of
missiles, or two strikes. As it happens, they made it across without being
attacked, but back to that later.
      The Embassy Incident Mk2. Believe it or not, I firmly believe that what
we did, even shooting the Crown Prince, was legal, if not exactly ethical. The
distinguishment was between the phrase 'Sovereign Territory' (Not used) and
'Inviolate territory' (Used). Once we had been allowed in, I still think that
our forces and police have the exact same powers as they would have outside the
grounds. But anyway, we killed CP Omar (Two bloody 1-in-6 rolls.. One that the
Bruneian policeman was an Omar supporter, the other that the Malay chap was a go
od shot) and the shooting war started...
      Air Defense seemed to do a good job on the first attack on Kota Kinabula,
considering the odds against. Well done.
      Four FACs went to the SW corner of the map, more to act as pickets that
anything else, a single sub came with them. The other FACs were used to patrol
the Borneo coastlines. The two remaining submarines were off the coast of
Brunei. They were under strict instructions to stay in shallow waters, deep
water was US territory, and I wasn't about to contest it in old diesel boats. I
had planned on using a technique of using the two boats in a joint attack. In
order to guarantee a hit on an amphibious ship, the boat had to be within 5 and
a half miles of the targets, using two boats, one can 'spook' the targets
towards the other boat, thus effectively having a seven or eight mile range.
Alas, thus was not to be :-(
      At around this time, also, the Banana theme started running. I had given
an estimate of air defense capabilities, then sent out a revision since I had
made an error. One of me teammates (Scott, was it?) sent a chastising letter,
punishing me by reducing my banana ration. After that, if anything went right,
bananas were given all around, if something went wrong, banana rations were
cut. Then Riki got into the spirit of things giving reports like 'A freighter
has been sunk in Kota Kinabula, with Admiral Moran's entire Banana Supply'
(Thus occasioning a silly email to all players, the first that the US side had
heard of this phenomenon), or 'Kuching Naval base is out of commission, it will
be a long time before we unload any more bananas here' and so on.. I should
actually point out, at this point, that I <HATE> bananas!!! (Sorry)
      Once the US got into the swing of things, they quickly enough gained Air
Superiority. I should point out in retaliation to the US complaints that 'In
the Real World' they would have had lots and lots of airplanes to throw at us,
our thirty MiG-29s should have had Air-Air missiles with longer range and
higher PKs (Adder vs AMRAAM (AMRAAM is actually a little faster which evens it
out a bit) and Archer is vastly better than Sidewinder) but alas, due to the
vagaries of computer Harpoon, we only had the early model Alamo AAMs, hence we
weren't much of a problem.
      For the sake of trying to get the US to respond to us, and to try to
perhaps get one of the AWACS, we tried the 'Suicide Attack.' I think we were
singularly unfortunate in that both missiles missed, and I'm not sure if <all>
the airplanes should have made the run but I think possibly the big mistake was
to divert the use of the hornets to striking at USS Benson instead of using
their long-range AAMs to kill the F-16s and thus reduce our losses. Firing off
salvos of 16 Harpoons at an Aegis ship gave predictably useless results..
<Sigh>. Actually, I don't think any of our bright ideas worked out correctly in
the entire campaign! Talk about lousy luck! At that point, Steve, I think, came
up with Operation Monkey Mountain, sending the guys with SA-7s to the golf
course near the airbase. We sent in another couple by boat, what happened them?
      The frigate group started to head back towards Peninsular Malaysia, too
late I thought of using two of the ships as SAM traps, they were on their way
back to Borneo when the next strike went in. They then holed up in a cove on
the route to Kuching, to work as a SAM trap there. (They were later sunk in the
attempt) The other six ships were then given new orders...
      We were supposed to escort three ships from China to Malaysia, two
carried DF-21 IRBMs with HE warheads, the middle one carried nukes. The catch
was that it was obvious that we couldn't, militarily, do it. The only chance
was to distract the US away from them.. We knew that the operation had been
compromised, and that the US knew they were out there. We figured that they
would be a priority target.
The train of thought went somewhat like this.. :The US wants to sink the
nukes.. If they sink the nukes, they'll stop looking for them. So let's let
them sink some nukes. Hence I decided to escort some Neutrals sailing near the
danger zone and who happened to be heading in the right direction. The other
benefit was that the international community would probably object if the US
sank them. The US could act with impunity, we couldn't stop them from doing
whatever they wanted, but the UN might be able to enforce the geographical
limits which the US ignored from day one. (This is not Malay propoganda, this
is my simple belief. I also think that the US were lucky to get permission to
start shooting so quickly, but I think that might just be human nature coming
in there.. the Malays were the 'bad guys' and so the lurkers had to be biased
to some degree. It's unavoidable)
So, we escort the two vessels, with instructions to save the warships if at all
possible. Sure enough, along comes the US and sinks basically everything in
sight.

Here I think is where I made the worst mistake of the conflict. We should have
shut up. Instead, we gleefully announced to the world the US heavyhandedness,
and how it has now killed neutrals and so on and so forth, and it even turned
out that it was completely ineffective, for only then did we trouble ourselves
to find out that the UN was powerless to stop the US. What we should have done
was say nothing for the next day, allow our three ships to safely make port,
and <then> announce that the US had sunk the wrong ones. This would have given
us another 8 IRBMs to lob at Cubi, and would have actually done some damage.
(Did our single hit actually kill anything? We didn't know the President was
there when we launched) However, the US then knew that they had hit the wrong
ships, and commenced boarding ships on the open water to search them. The
international community said nothing about this, either, to our mild surprise.

However, the mission has to be considered a success there, as the nukes made it
across, and there was an international backlash. The problem was that our
escort for 9th brigade was now at the bottom of the sea. Unfortunately, I
suppose, the point may have been moot, as the nukes were never used... A weapon
unused is a useless weapon.

My next Great Idea (TM) was to have a couple of aircraft pose as Indonesians
over Great Natuna (Which we had made a trade for the rights to use, including
their radar) and hit the AWACS from <behind> their escort. Unfortunately, their
nationality was, erm, determined by the US. (Unrealistically, IMHO, there was
no way for them to know who's aircraft they were. I have a feeling what
happened was that Riki reported them there, but seeing as up until then no
neutral fighters had likely been reported, the mere fact that this time they
were would have been a giveaway. Something which I will note for my own
campaign: Report <everything!>)

SS-1 had the misfortune to be along the path of a US Submarine, they detected
each other within only a mile or so, the result was mutual destruction.
Financially to our benefit, but operationally, I wasn't overly happy. To cover,
I brought SS-3 up from the SW.

At this point, once the US had killed off the navy, and the air force we
figured that they would just go ahead and drive the ships in then and there. We
had to try to figure out a way of slowing them down, and we figured that mines
would do the job. So, working on the principle of 'How many mines does it take
to make a minefield? A: None, just issue a press release', we arranged to
'leak' an order to mine the area around Muara. Don't know if it worked or not..
the Alligator was heading back to the Peninsula to pick up some <real> mines.

For some reason of presumably complete stupidity, a US sub torpedoed one of our
merchantmen (This itself is something I have a problem with, the US seems to
have been exercising open warfare instead of a limited action, at least by
sinking civilian shipping without warning). Worse, the sub was in shallow
water, and in helo range of one of our airbases. I was finally pleased to have
something <confirmable> for the navy to hang on the mantlepiece. (All the kills
so far had been Air Force or Army).

This was of one benefit.. It was the sub presumably waiting for the troopships
to come out. (I had the troopships go West around Singapore the long way and so
avoided the location of the sub anyay). To my amazement, the troopships, which
had split up to avoid saying 'Convoy: Aim Here!' all made it to shore, and all
unloaded.

About half the FACs had been sunk by the US, the rest were hiding along the
coast, not patrolling, but at least camouflaged. They were initially to hide
near the Balabic straits, but I (Sadly) moved them in response to an estimated
position of the US fleet to the North of Brunei (Actually, I can't remember how
we estimated that one). In order to detect ships passing through the straits at
night, I had considered a kind of 'mini-SOSUS' using tethered sonobuoys, but we
went with a laser rangefinder.

SS-2 got hit, presumably by a MAD contact off an SV-22. At that point new SOPs
were issued to the remaining sub. One was a rather evil
anti-attack-by-ASW-aircraft-plan, sadly never to be brought into effect, the
other was to leave shallow water and go deep. The best chance of detecting the
sub was by MAD contact, and since we had killed off two of the estimated three
subs, and gotten a piece of the third, figured that deep water may not be such
a bad place at that time.

Eventually, the US fleet turned up, with an atrocious (sp?) anti ASW
formation.. Calculations were made, SOPs set, and I went to bed confident of an
LHA or LHD being sent to the bottom. Of course, keeping in with the luck of the
Malaysians, a bloody ASW helo dunked right on top of us, and it wasn't as if we
were directly in the path of the fleet. I would be curious to know what the ASW
SOP was for the US side.

Damn, thinks I as I get the email the next morning. Well, we have another thing
to try... The 28 Exocets on the FACs. Using information provided by a helo, the
FACs were to launch in Bearing-Only mode, for some reason the US fleet were
transitting in total emcon, they would have only had about 30 seconds of
warning, even Aegis couldn't stop it. Alas, due to GM error <Gnash, gnash> our
surveillance assets were removed.

The US sends in another massive airstrike, killing far more civilians than
troops. Not good for publicity. I would also be curious to know what the bill
is that the US taxpayer is going to have to fork out for all those missiles
that the US was slinging about... I doubt Saudi would pay up this time! USN
losses were on the order of 600 men, including 30 of which killed by their own
side. (Twice desert Storm number of KIAs) (Did our SS-3 torpedoes kill
anything), add in aircrews and Marines on top of that. Got to keep the voters
happy..

I have no information after this point. I would be curious to know what
happened the exocet strikes, if the Rooivalks with FLIR had picked up
targetting data or not, and so on. I'm also sure I forgot to add something in,
but doubtless someone will remind me.. Army and Air Force exploits that I
didn't have much of a hand in have also been left out....

Riki, thanks for the game.. I know I probably sent your ISP nuts with the
amount of mails, you got.. Just remember you'll have a chance to do the same to
me next month! Everybody else, pleasure losing with you!

DWH
Manic Admiral Malay Moran


Steven Sim:

Yes it was a good game - thanks to one and all for a fine time.

I was Air Commander and was faced with the choice of either getting my 
airbases slowly destroyed piecemeal or staking it all on one single effort.

After the initial success of the strike against the Fenwick, I thought 
the US CVG would be in the vicinity and thus sent out a strike package 
against both ships and the AWACS. We were under pressure to get some 
visible success, so even though I didn't rate the chance of success 
highly, decided to go for it.

I should have assigned some Hornets to go after that AWACS. 

After that, my Air Force evaporated.

Thanks guys, it was fun losing with you (to quote the Banana man) :)


Scott Mortimer

As the Malaysian Army Commander I submit my AAR

I started off being the commander of the forces in Brunei but after only a 
short time I managed to inherit the Army forces in a command shake up that 
made things much easier to control and also meant that those people who 
actually knew about boaty and birdy things could get on with the job.

My first task was to subdue the rebellion that has unlawfully broken out 
against the rightful ruler of Brunei after the unfortunate loss of the 
sultan and the disappearance of the Crown Prince who was accused of the 
murder of the sultan.  I dispatched one Bn to East Brunei, one bde to West 
Brunei, a coy to each of Muara and Tutong and the balance of a bde (-) to 
BSB.  In retrospect I would have used additional troops in BSB but I 
underestimated the size and the ferocity of the renegade Royal Guards 
forces.

The assault commenced at 7am and immediately ran into problems.  Extensive 
use was made of smoke, however the royal guard infantry and snipers caused 
large losses in the assaulting companies.  Many tanks and Stormers were 
disabled however the Royal Guard were pushed back to the vicinity of the US 
embassy which was being used as a stronghold.  At 9am a cease fire was 
called to negotiate surrender.  During the cease fire the US attempted to 
insert a special forces team by Osprey under the guise of attempting to 
send in medics and to evacuate their embassy staff.  Despite being warned 
to land elsewhere and allow the medics to be transported by road the 
aircraft attempted to land on the embassy grounds, probably because of what 
would be found if it had landed elsewhere.

The Malaysian PM had ordered that the Crown Prince was not to escape, and 
fearing that he may be in the embassy and that he would escape in the 
aircraft, the aircraft was engaged and shoot down.  It was only intended 
that it would be disabled but it crashed and a number of people were killed 
and injured.

Later the fighting resumed and with the two coy from Muara and Tutong the 
Royal Guard were defeated.  A small number of prisoners were taken and 
others found in a house to house search.  All were treated as POW 
eventually!

The US again attempted to evacuate the Crown Prince under cover of the 
evacuation of the embassy staff and wounded, this time a search was made at 
an intermediate place and a Malaysian and a Bruneian taken on board to go 
to the embassy.  The Malaysian checked the identity of the wounded and 
detected the Crown Prince.  A gun battle then ensued in which the Crown 
Prince and the Malaysian were killed.

After that the army basically deployed its forces as follows:

Bn Group in Muara
Bn Group in Tutong
Bn Group in BSB
Coy in East Brunei
Bde in the Vic of Seria.  This Bde was very ably commanded by Scott Gainer, 
from whom I received most of the ideas for the defence of Brunei.  I invite 
him to write an AAR of his activities

The plan was to patrol widely to locate Spec forces and entrench in the 
towns were the US would be forced to target civilians.  We did not find too 
many Spec forces and the basic problem became that the forces were too 
spread out to stop a beachead being established.

Unanswered bombing of most forces then occurred up until the assault, and 
the accuracy was amazing particularly as we had a reaasonable level of air 
defence.  Oh well.  Movement of troops to avoid satellites was a partial 
answer as we had Spec forces all over us, although we did get most of two 
teams in the end.

9 Bde despite all predictions and reason managed to reach Brunei unscathed, 
one Bn was deployed in Seria were it was carpet bombed repeatedly the 
others only arrived just prior to the assault and were making there way 
north when the CPX started.

I was also the missile commander, however my desire to nuke Cubi Point till 
it glowed was overruled and only a conventional attack occurred, my 
justification was if the Malaysian people had not won the war they did not 
deserve to live!  An added bonus would have been nuking the President, as 
that would have made it difficult for the US to fulfill the victory 
conditions as he would have been toast.

Unfortunately I was away weekend warrioring when the CPX occurred so I am 
looking forward to other AARs of that stage.

Overall the army managed the following:

Destruction of the Royal Guard of 2 Bn
Killed the Crown Prince
Killed or captured 2 Spec war teams

Scott M


Jorge Arraya

First of all, let me congratulate RT and all the other for what was my first
CPX - I look forward to many more.

I joined the US forces late in the conflict, shortly after the Malays made a
run for our AWACS and while the hunt for the ship containing the missles was
going on.  Basically, as I took over I learned what this was all about.
My job was actually quite simple.  The AF already had air superiority, and it
consisted mainly of assigning A/C to targets with their appropriate loadouts.
I did help RT figure a couple calculations on what refuelers and the AF
capabilities are, which perhaps if done earlier in the game would have made a
difference.  Unfortunately my access to email was limited, so my involvement
didn't go as well as I would have liked.
I joined the ground war at the beginning, being asigned Bravo Coy of the 31
MEU, but ended up commanding almost all of 31 MEU after Steve was unable to
connect and get things going.
The ground war seemed, at first, very one sided.  As the Marines hit the beach,
Commander Sterret and the rest of the people on our side (Barry, Steve)
commented that we were all very unsure how the Malays had been able to
reposition so many forces on the correct beach, at Muara.  We sustained some
losses under my command that were unavoidable.
Unfortuately I lost my internet connection (which has been very unreliable
lately after the hurricane) and was unable to get back on.
All in all, I am looking forward to other CPXs.
Commander Arraya


Barry Summers:

I was commander of the mission to get the Crown Prince out.  Our idea was to
fly in get the Prince and get out.  Our other mission was to leave a SF team
in BSB to act as advisors to the RG.
I split my SF team into 2 team one city and one country.  The city team was to
fight with RG and country team was to raise hell in the country and try to
link up with RG.
Well, the Maylay Air Force stayed right on our butts and I could not insert my
country team.  My city team got shot down over the embassy.
I tried everything to get the Maylays to let us land on the embassy.  I told
one of the maylay Air Force boys that I was Douglas MacAurther the IV to see
if it would impress them.
My plan which was over rode by higher was to land on one of the brigdes in
BSB.  March over to the embassy and march out with the US Flag flying and the
Marines in full battle gear and the let the Maylay gun us down in the streets
but I was told to land so I did. BOOM!!!

I was also commander of the RG.  RT did most of the fighting because I was
slow but he fought them good.  He set up OP as the first line then he had a
stronger 2nd line.  That was what I was going to do.
The US command was very high on getting the RG to die in place.  That is what
we did.  There was talk of getting the RG out into the country but we would
not leave the Prince.

After the downing of half of our SF team we began look for ways to use the
other half.  Part of our commanders plan was to fake the Maylays into thinking
we were going to invade at Serria.  So we HALOed inserted the 6 member team
South of Serria.  They move up to Serrria and scout around.  Called in some
air strikes then we moved down south to were found an HQ.  We called in Air
strikes and we moved to Bekia Swart or something like that. It was a river
town.  We found another HQ and called in an AIr strike and we also got re-
supplied.   We moved north and came into the Serria area and that where we
stepped on a mine and we died

Higher command had some idea that SF could get the people of Brunei to raise
up against the Maylays.  I did not think they would based on our intel so I
never in my heart plan on our mission to be more than a recon.

Force Recon about 2 to 3 days before invasion of Mura HALOed into Mura.  Our
mission was to recon the beach and to look for HQ's and arty.  We also had the
mission of getting the sinpers to cover the port.  We did not get any sinpers
to cover the port.  The SEALS did.  
I put my FR into 2 teams.  One to look at the beaches and the other to recon
behind the beaches.  I had already sent a guy to look at the bridge and port
for demo before the Maylays and RT started trying to lose by telling us
everything about their plans.
The FR found some units that gave us a pretty good idea of what we faced.
Most of the FR movement was slow and I did not take many chances.

Lessons learned:  Never let the person in charge of a Recon unit that has
another mission that may have nothing to do with what Force Recon is to do.  I
commanded the Rangers in the CPX and our mission was to capture the bridge.  I
wanted to find out all I could about that area but is that what Force Recon is
todo.

I would grade myself at a B- on how I handle the SF and Force Recon.  
Barry


Riki Tikki's AAR for the final CPX in the MBX:

I sent this out to the TacOps list a couple of days ago but somehow it
never showed up. :-•  I don't know what's going on with that listserver
these days but in the meantime I will just send this out to the MBX list
directly.

******************************


June 18, 2008

AFTER ACTION REPORT

BATTLE:  Landing at Muara
MAP:     Map 502
FORCES:  USMC vs. Royal Malaysian Army

The following is a recap of Saturday's CPX which featured the (very <g>)
long-awaited US Marine assault on Brunei on the island of Borneo.  The
master AAR for the entire MBX will follow in the next week or so.  This
report will be in 5 parts:

1) Situation
2) Game setup
3) The Battle
4) Results
5) Observations

*************************************

I.  SITUATION

The Royal Malaysian Army's 4th Division, made up of two brigades of
troops, had invaded the small kingdom of Brunei was preparing a defense
against an expected amphibious or heliborne assault by U.S. Marines. 
The 1st Brigade (commanded by Brig. Gen. Gainer) occupied the western
half of the country while the 2nd Brigade (commanded during the MBX by
Gen. Mortimer) occupied the northeast (the capital region) as well as
eastern Brunei.

The U.S., with UN authorization, was sending troops to the region to
evict Malaysian troops from Brunei.  A U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit
(MEU) was tasked with establishing a beachhead somewhere along the
Brunei coast allowing the main assault to arrive safely and commence its
drive on the capital. This Marine landing was the battle represented by
the CPX, and was ruled to be key to the entire "war."  If it went
smoothly, the U.S. would be able to build up its assault forces quickly
and safely, in which case the liberation of Bandar Seri Begawan, the
Brunei capital (BSB) was a virtual certainty.  If it failed, the
invasion might have to be put off or abandoned which would be a huge
military and political setback for the U.S.

Attached to the MEU were three companies of Ranger paratroopers, a
detachment of SEALs and a special ops recon unit.  The MEU was also
supported by naval gunfire, 1 battery of 155mm Howitzers (once it
arrived on shore) and 6 AV-8 Harriers.  Carrier and land-based aircraft
would provide
CAP, as well as perform ground strike interdiction in other sectors.
(While the latter strikes occurred "off-map," they were actually
factored into the
CPX in real time.  See next section on game setup).

Fairly early on, the U.S. had committed to the town of Muara (Sector
502-S) as the site of their landing. Right off the bat there were two
strategic benefits of capturing this town:  1) it was a port, which
would facilitate the unloading of the main invasion force, and 2) it was
relatively close to the capital.  As it turned out, there were critical
tactical reasons for choosing Muara as well which became very apparent
shortly before the battle, as you will see.  (My guess is that the U.S.
chose Muara for these tactical reasons, and any strategic benefits were
probably considered icing on the cake.)

The Malaysians, on the other hand, had not comitted (or gambled) on
defending any one area, and instead dispersed its two brigades fairly
uniformly throughout the country with strongpoints of resistance in the
five major ports, particularly in Seria.  (Seria actually had almost
three times the defenses of any other locality, so if OPFOR was gambling
on any one landing site Seria was it).  This left a shoreline garrison
in Muara of about 2 mech companies, a tank platoon and an anti-tank
battery, supported by a single battery of 122mm arty.

A couple of days before the battle, however, U.S. air strikes, under
General Arraya's command and under Gen. Sterrett's supervision had wiped
out a couple of platoons of infantry and all of the 122mm arty (thanks
in part to the tireless satellite and photorecon efforts - supplied by
ME!<g>)  Much of the remaining defenses were spotted by Force Recon
units, commanded by Col. Barry Summers, and Ned Keneeder's SEALs had a
hand in getting snipers to "scope out" the defenses in the town (sorry,
couldn't resist the pun<g>) as well as disarm many of the mines
offshore.

About the mines.  Two rows of sea mines had been laid at Muara, one in
the shallow waters along the beach, the other just east of 000 easting. 
Most of these mines were dummy mines, though a fair number of real ones
were included in them.  U.S. satellite recon had spotted the laying of
these suspected mines, and planned to dismantle them by sending in a
SEAL team to disarm/detonate them before the landing.  Somehow these
orders got lost and they missed their intended insertion on the 15th and
instead inserted on the 16th, leaving the SEALs one less day to do their
dirty work.  The upshot was that some of the mines were still not
cleared by the time the landing began.

While the shore defenses were not terrifyingly large, the real threat
would be the large number of reserve forces around BSB and at Patrol
Base 4 (located between Muara and Tutong).  BSB was only about 10 km
away, or 15 min. travel time, and Patrol Base 4 was only 20 min. away.
(Not including friction/inertia response time).

In the final hours before battle, the following events took place which
affected Saturdays' CPX:

- At around 10:00 of the 17th, a patrolling Osprey managed to dip an
active sonar within 2 miles of a Malaysian mini-sub (it was running a
very tight search pattern, but still beat the odds) detecting and
killing it before it could do any harm to the troop ships.  The sub,
hearing the approaching torpedos and realizing it was about to be sunk,
did manage to do two things: 1) reported the position, composition (sort
of) and heading (partially) of the U.S. fleet, representing the first
confirmed contact of the amphibious vessels, and 2) fired two torpedos,
sinking the only ship that was in range at that moment, an O.H. Perry
frigate.  (This, along with the Fletcher that was sunk some 10 days
earlier, reduced the amount of naval gunfire available somewhat.)

- At about 12:30 and 13:30, June 17, two single helos blundered into the
U.S. fleet (due to a completely brainless GM error) and promptly got
shot down, but not without first giving more information on the U.S.
fleet and its heading.  It was soon after this that the U.S. task force
(PHIBRON 11) turned on all radars.

- At about 16:00 hours, a Malaysian torpedo missile boat attack was
launched and even though their impressive speed got them well within
striking range of the troopships, their salvo of Exocet missiles failed
to penetrate the AEGIS defense system of the U.S. task force.  Once the
missiles were fired the FACs were dead meat, and in the next few minutes
the U.S. task force destroyed the last of the Malay navy and ensured a
clear seaward passage to the Brunei coast (Er, well, except for the
mines).

- Also during the night, U.S. airstrikes destroyed several key command
posts, including 4th Division Headquarters in the capital, adding a 30
minute delay for artillery, helos, and all other attached units.  (I now
realize I should have added 30 minutes delay to the response time of
*all* 2nd Brigade units, which would have had a dramatic effect on our
starting positions for the CPX, but later I felt this mistake was
cancelled out by a number of other mistakes that hurt the OPFOR side --
such as the scanty briefing on the OPFOR situation prior to battle, and
forgetting to use the IR-equipped Rooivalk helos to sight the U.S. task
force and/or landing force during the MBX phase).  1st BN HQ, also in
the capital, was also hit, so both companies of this Bn were delayed by
30 min. as well.

- At 06:00 hours of the 18th, submarine and ship-launched TLAM Tomahawk
missiles hit various telecommunications links and head-end radio towers
that connected Malaysian Borneo with High Command and the Prime Minister
on the Maylay Peninsula.  While the effect of this was not felt right
away, it had a dramatic impact on the way the battle ended, or at least
on how the final phase of the war would have ended.

- Also at 06:00, air force units from Cubi Point commenced broad-band
radio jamming.  This was not very effective, however, as the Malays
prepared for this by setting up separate, secure landlines shortly after
the conflict began.

- Perhaps the most important successes of the pre-landing operations,
however, were the air strikes on the bridges crossing the Sungai Tutong
River near Kuala Abang and the one between Sectors K and L (see Sector
Map).  Destroying these bridges effectively delayed all of Malaysia's
western forces from reaching the northwest (Muara area) for a period of
at least an hour for mech forces (they were amphibious), and 8 hours for
tanks... long enough that none of them would likely take part in the
day's battle.  This immediately made it clear [to me, at least] why
Muara had been selected: with just a few targeted strikes on these
inland bridges, it became completely unreachable by half of the
Malaysian forces.

- At about 06:15, 45 minutes before the landing, Malaysian shore
patrols, equipped with thermal goggles, were able to spot the
approaching LCACs and AAV7s some 30-45 minutes before the landing.  It
should be pointed out that Gen. Mortimer repeatedly forfeited many other
types of supplies and equipment -- some of it considerably deadly -- so
that he could equip as many patrols as posible with a few thermal
goggles.  It turns out this paid big dividends.  The early detection
helped compensate for the delays that so many Malaysian rear units
suffered.

- At 6:50, all mines not already disarmed were ordered to be detonated
by the SEAL teams.

- At 7:00 came dawn (well, in Tacops Land, anyway <g>) and the first of
the U.S. MEU hit the beaches in the far southern edge of the map.  It
was at this point that we began our CPX.

II.  SET-UP

In translating the above situation to a TacOps CPX, I pondered how to
game things like sea lift operations, Malay artillery/ATGMs aimed out to
sea at the landing craft and air interdictions in nearby sectors --
things that would be happening simultaneously with the main battle but
would be happening "off-map."

The solution I came up with was to game everything out a day or so
beforehand -- all of the landing ops, off-map air strikes, even
out-of-sector recon reports (the U.S. had a great many sorties looking
for targets along the major roads in northern Brunei), using the map and
various timetables to determine which units would find and kill which
other units.  I compiled lists all of these events and the time they
occurred on separate slips of paper which I taped next to my monitor. 
THen, during the CPX, I would keep an eye on these crib notes from time
to time and at the appropriate time report these events as if they were
happening afresh.  Hopefully this translated to an added richness of
information surrounding the battle without losing any time gaming these
events during the CPX itself.  (I have not heard any comments about this
so I cannot say whether it worked or not, but from a game mechanics
point of view I can say it worked fine.)

Timetable for reinforcements:

As most of you know, there was a timetable that was put together and
available on the MBX website (with help and approval from Jerry Hall)
that attempted to reflect the lag time between the issuing of movement
orders and the time they begin to be executed.  As the table indicates,
the lag time increases with the acceleration, direction, and size of the
unit.  So while a tank platoon might only take two minutes to change to
a new speed or direction, a mech battalion might take fifteen minutes. 
This time interval is multiplied times the number of speed/formation
changes requested, so that a dug-in (defilade) mech battalion ordered to
proceed to a new location at 30 kph (4 speed shifts) would take 1 hour
to begin moving at that speed (15 min. x 4).  This formula was used to
represent the various amounts of planning, preparation, radio traffic,
logistics concerns, traffic snarl-ups, and other assorted friction that
may come up in military maneuvers (actually, according to Leonard who
authored a book on this subject, these figures are probably extremely
optimistic <g>).

The result was a list of each separate company and recon unit in the
Malaysian 2nd Brigade (the easternmost force) and the time at which they
could arrive on Map 502 once ordered to go there (Delay of orders was
added on top of this).  I sent this list to Gary shortly before game
time, seeing as a good S3 would have figured out all these things
themselves at some point (right?).  I actually meant to send them the
night before, but could not because the calculations took me much longer
to get through than expected.

As far as setup, I weighed the advantage of keeping these units off the
map and adding them as they arrived or having them already on the map
but having them show up in the player's sitrep reports and possibly in
the U.S. spotreps.  I decided to go with the latter approach, opting for
speed of game play over surprise.  As it turned out, the U.S. should
have been able to see a great many of those off-map units anyway due to
their having a fair number of troops both on and off-map in the southern
region of Map 502-S, and northern 502-R.  

Once the list of entry times was compiled, I lined up all these units
along the southwestern portion of the map -- and had them crawl along
that edge until their appointed time to enter, at which point they would
enter the map at the highway going north at the appropriate time.  Both
teams were informed that units touching the south edge of the map were
all actually "off-map" and not yet in the sector, which I admit may have
been a confusing concept to spring on people.  (Being pressed for time I
did not have the chance to explain my modelling procedure in detail.). 
People seemed to ride with it, though. :->

The time of OPFOR's first confirmed sighting of the landing was
calculated to be 30 minutes before the first U.S. units hit the shore,
or 06:30, based on the fact that the shore patrol was equipped with IR
goggles and that there were no other seaborne landings of any
consequence happening anywhere else to act as a decoy.  The narrow sea
lane and nighttime navigation to the beach slowed the U.S. approach down
somewhat during the last 3 kms or so, giving the Malays another 15
minutes lead time on top of that.  This equalled a 45 minute early
warning, which partly cancelled out the friction/inertia time as
described above (generally 45 min.- 1 hour for most units).  The
remaining delay was thus mostly attributed to simple speed and distance
from the sector, which was around 15 minutes for BSB units, and 25
minutes for Patrol Base 4 units. This resulted in several companies of
reinforcements arriving at about 07:17 from the south and arriving in 5
to 10 minute intervals thereafter.

Timetable for airstrikes:

Using a rough table I had worked out with Jorge Arraya (US Air
Commander) to figure out how much time U.S. aircraft could remain over
Brunei airspace without running out of fuel, I guestimated which of
these aircraft would be in which part of Brunei at what time, and for
how long.  I drew these out on an acetate overlay on my computer screen
showing the GroundOp4 map (large map of Brunei showing Malaysian
deployments).  Then, using the time-of-entry list for the Malaysian
ground units that I just created, I figured out which ground units these
aircraft might have a chance of spotting, factoring in terrain, roads
and basic "gut" guessing.  I then rolled the dice to see if the pilots
spotted them or not (33% if 2 pltns or less, 50% if a coy or so, and 67%
if more than 2 coys.)  Out of about 20 ground targets enroute to Sector
S (mostly company sized), the U.S. spotted about 6 of them from 7:40 to
1:05.  

I then played out these six air strikes in a separate TacOps simulation
(factoring in any casualties already incurred during the MBX) and
learned how many units suffered losses, and the nature of the losses.  I
then entered these findings to my timetable of arriving reinforcements,
so that everything off-map was compiled onto one master list, which I
referred to frequently during the game. For the most part this worked
pretty smoothly and was easy to follow, once it was compiled.

I had a similar system worked out for the landing procedure.  However,
the MEU's landing orders arrived much later than originally requested
and were not as complete as I had hoped (my fault for not being more
specific).  There were also a few discrepancies between them and the
overall Invasion Plans as laid down by James, which took me a long time
to sort out.  The result is that I stayed up all night trying to piece
together a landing schedule that was faithful to the situation at hand
but I finally just chucked the whole thing and "winged" the entire
landing operation by nudging units forward across the water every now
and then.  This led to much of the MEU arriving late or simply being
unattended to at times, another umpiring gaff, but I felt it was the
best I could do given the amount of "homework" that I did not expect to
be doing during the CPX.

In order to have some way of modelling durability of the ships (An LCAC
might be toast with a single ATGM, but an LCU might take several such
hits) I created a fairly arbitrary system but one that might work very
accurately in the future with a little research.  For landing craft, I
used a large stack of M113s to represent LCUs, the logic being that it
would take a fair number of hits to sink the whole thing, and pairs of
Blackhawks to represent the faster LCACs (since in TacOps I needed units
that could travel over water more quickly than the average vehicle and
could be quickly identified from the land units they were carrying.) 
Their cargo was placed up at the top of the map, in a safe sector out of
sight of OPFOR during the approach to the beach.  As the LCACs and M113s
arrived at the beach, I would magic move the ferried units in the safe
sector to the beach.

These are just a couple of examples of the ideas I was forced to come up
with to make the ampbibious transition work.  As it turned out, the game
involved a *great deal* of improvisation, which I tried to explain here
and there as I went along but for the most part could not until this
moment. :-<  About all I could do was simply warn the players
(especially the U.S., who were no doubt extremely curious about what the
hell was going on with their landing) that I was improvising as I went,
and to please just go with the flow on this.  (In other words, "trust
me.")  I have a feeling that this was a source of much frustration for
the control freaks on the U.S. side, but if they were they were nice
enough not to complain too much. :->

III.  THE BATTLE

U.S. Plan:

I expect James and Steve will be able to explain their choice of
maneuvers with some detail, but the basic plan, from my POV, appeared to
be:

1) Insert two blocking force detachments off-map, one just east of the
map and one just to the south, to intercept approaching reinforcements.

2) Land Ranger paratroopers in the rear areas to hold key strongpoints
like the river town, the town where the main roads intersect, and the
southern flank where the highway entered the map.  (Another advantage of
assaulting Muara: no need to cover the northern flank).

3) Have SEALS detonate any mines at H - :10.

4) Zero Hour.  Three companies of AAV7s (A, B, C) would hit the
southernmost point along the beach, and fan out in three directions to
the northeast and east. Each company consisted of 9 AAV7s loaded with 9
13-man inf. units, 6 SMAW, 6 MGs and 6 ATGMs.

5) 4 LCACS would follow, bringing the Marine's tank platoon.  2 more
LCACs would follow after that, dropping off Hummers (HMG, LMG, AT,
etc.). This was the HQ Company.

6) 4 CH-53 helos would ferry in a platoon of LAVs, to the same beachhead
in the south. 

7) 2 LCUs would arrive and land a large portion of the remianing LAVs,
LAV-ATs, and mortars.

8) Naval gunfire of 2 batteries of 60 HE (reduced somewhat because the
U.S. lost two ships en route) would hit shoreline defenses.

9) 6 AV-8 Harriers were on call, 4 min. away providing CAS.

10) During this battle, all U.S. air assets based in the Philippines
were assigned to ground force interdiction in the western and interior
portions of the country.

11) The naval task force, with the far-reaching umbrella of its AEGIS
ships, would provide AD for the ground troops. This I somehow missed in
the initial orders which caused a huge argument during the later stages
of the battle.  More on that later. (!)

The Malaysian Plan:

No formal plans were submitted for the OPFOR side of the CPX, only
general plans of intent.  Which makes sense, since they did not know
where the battle was going to take place.  For the most part the
standing orders sufficed.

During the MBX, the OPFOR team was clear about what they needed to do to
defeat the U.S.: Since they could not commit troops to any beach in any
great numbers without knowing the landing site beforehand (which they
never did learn), it was up to the shoreline garrison to contain the
landing and delay its advance long enough for the rest of their forces
to converge and amass firepower, hopefully  overwhelming the Marine
units more quickly than the U.S. could land them.

During the early weeks of the MBX, General Mortimer gave a general
intent for the main forces in Muara and Tutong to be stationed in and
around the port towns, with a few platoons of infantry along the
beaches.  Tanks were to be in overwatch/support positions behind the
infantry, and anti-tank batteries were to be positioned along the exit
routes from the port to the east (TacOps east).  Artillery was supposed
to be even further to the east, but the arty in Muara was destroyed
several days before the landing. 

Free to interpret these orders as I saw fit (no grid coordinates were
sent to me), the shoreline garrison at Muara consisted of the following: 

- 2 mech companies (-) with two platoons in the port area, two
thinned-out platoons at 030048 overlooking the high ground in the north
(they had been carpet bombed by iron bombs two days earlier), and two or
three other platoons in the mangroves near the beaches with LOS out to
sea.

- A tank platoon entrenched in overwatch position near the east-west
road at 04 easting.  (A good location, as it turned out).

- An anti-tank battery (125mm) spread out in entrenched positions along
the north side of the road from 04 easting to the "crossroads town."

- A battery of 122mm artillery in the patch of jungle at 08 easting. 

07:00 - The Landing Begins:

The battle began with AAV7s hitting the beach in a long single file at
029000, as Alpha then Bravo  companies arrived safely on the beach.  The
entire landing procedure was spotted the whole time by an infantry
platoon at 031011, just 500 meters north, but they did not ambush any of
the AAV7s.  Rather, they laid in wait and reported all of the landing
activity throughout much of the game and only ambushed some Hummers
later on.  (GM error - I had the firing rnges set to zero.  As it turned
out it may not have been a bad thing, as an early ambush would have most
likely led to an early death from combined fire and naval gunfire
support and the two other AAV7 companies, imho, but who knows?)

While this was going on, SEAL snipers were picking off infantry in Muara
(which took awhile, as they were near the end of their range)... and
directing naval gunfire to the various infantry positions spotted up
near the town.

Barry's Rangers were succeeding in all of their initial assignments, as
A company had taken over the west side of the river town and was in the
process of shooting and killing the AT team on the east side... C
company was assaulting   the crossroads town... and B company was in the
south getting ready to ambush any forces that broke through the blocking
force in the adjoining Sector R.

Fighting in Sector R: 

At about 7:15, the first of the reinforcements showed up in sector R,
about 3 km south of the 502-S map edge (which corresponded to the town
at 075040 on an identicle map 502 <g>).  This was a recon patrol (from
Patrol Base 4) and an AD platoon.  The recon patrol was immediately
despatched by Blocking Force South and the AD unit ran and hid, waiting
until mech company 2BDE/2/B) and a tank platoon close behind it
(2BDE/C/2) moved in.  While the blocking force managed to get in another
couple of kills on the Malay mech company, the tank platoon kept most of
the force suppressed, allowing the mech units to regain the initiative
and consolidate their fire.  The mech company and the tank company could
have waited to finish them off, but I received no orders to do so so
they continued northward and into Map 502-S.  Five minutes later, two
tank companies arrived in Sector R from BSB just behind the other
units.  The blocking force was heavily attritted by these tanks, but the
remnants would make for more of a nuisance later.  (This fighting was
all pre-gamed on Friday night)

Reinforcements arrive:

As soon as C company set foot in 502-S, it was attacked by javelins from
Barry's B company Rangers.  They missed in their first volley, actually,
and once again the 2 companies (+) of tanks which were arriving helped
suppress and partially kill them as both they and the mech coy drove
north along the main road.  At this point Malay casualties were light to
moderate, with more than half of each of these units still intact.

That changed by the time these units reached the two towns to the north,
where Barry's Rangers were continuing to work over the AT battery at the
river town and had now taken over the crossroads town.  A bloody
close-range battle ensued at both locations which killed off most of the
mech coy and a good half of the tanks.  Gary ordered a pair of APCs
stationed with the AT units at 042045 to return eastward and crush the
snipers in the river town, which they began to do obediently, but were
later lost to either LAAW fire fomr nearby infantry, or sniper fire
(believe it or not).  The two towns were steadfastly held by the U.S
paras, a thorn in the side of OPFOR that never went away.

The Marines Claw their way inland:

Safely circumventing the shore ambush points (which they managed to
avoid out of sheer luck, or perhaps they knew about them from reports
sent to them days before during the Force Recon maneuvers) the three
AAV7 companies fanned out east and north.  

The ill-fated Charlie Company moved north to take the "military
compound" at 044035, but got hit in the face with AT fire from the north
side of the east-west road and by tank fire from the tiny patch of
jungle at 042042, also near the east-west road.  The troops quickly
dismounted, but had difficulty getting out of the line of fire from
those two units.  A few minutes later, around 7:30 or so, Malaysian
122mm artillery arrived and was ordered to pummel the dismounts at the
compound.

Alpha company didn't fare a whole lot better: At about 7:33 a pair of
Rooivalk helos (Havocs) arrived and cuaght their AAV7s emerging from the
mangroves near the north side of the swamp, killing all of their
vehicles.  The helos were pounced on by Harrier AV-8s a minute or two
later in an airstrike intended to hit the 122mm arty.  Anyway, one helo
was shot down while the other miraculously got away.  A ZSU battery
staved off another two Harriers from hitting the artillery, and somehow
the artillery battery survived that strike.  (Here there may have been
some confusion on my end - I may have been given standing orders to keep
hitting the arty but I think I only sent in that one strike.  I'm not
sure).  The surviving Rooivalk was sent north to survey the extent of
the U.S. advance, but once it reached the northern edge of the map it
seem it was completely forgotten about (I forgot about it, too) and was
never used again during the battle.

Bravo Company, which lagged behind the other two and moved more
cautiously, was still intact and was taking up positions on the eastern
side of the swamp.  (NOTE: I'm not sure whether or not the movement was
truly "cautious" on the U.S. part or "forgetful" on mine.  I may have
simply forgotten where it was supposed to be going and neglected to move
it. :-/).

More landings:

By 7:30 the LCACs had arrived, leaving a platoon of M1 tanks and the
Hummer-AT and -mortar carriers on the beach.  One LCAC hit a mine,
sinking a platoon  of HUmmer mortar carriers and Hummer-ATs).  4 CH-53s
had also just dropped off a platoon of LAV-25s, the first of several
platoons to come.  All these units were sitting there for quite some
time (again, due to umpire forgetfulness) before finally being
re-ordered to move them to various destinations inland.  Here is when
the first beach ambushes occurred, as the infantry at 031011 finally
opened fire and started killing off some of the Hummers.  By 7:30 the
LCUs were reported nearing the shore (they were stuffed with 8 LAV-ATs
and 8 LAV-Mortar carriers).

The SEALs, meanwhile, after killing off the only targets it could see
began to get bold and move closer to the town of Muara along the
northern docks.  It promptly ran into a firefight with a pair of mech
units there, but the mech units were ultimately suppressed then killed
by naval gunfire.  The port was far from taken, but it was a start.

Off-map death:

Perhaps the biggest factor in the game wasn't really gamed.  It was the
off-map airstrikes that were worked out the night before.  Four
sightings were made between 7:35 and 8:00, all of them significant, all
of them leading to massive carnage.  2nd BDE/1 BN B coy was completely
eliminated. 9th Bde/A and B tank companies, 2nd Bde/2BN/A and 3BN/A mech
companies all took heavy losses, leaving them at about half strength
when they entered the Muara sector.

The back-breaker was when the U.S. ordered a pair of Cobras forward to
strike an approaching tank company that had just been reported by the
southern blocking force in sector R.  The cobras took up a perfect
position at 072012 at the foot of the hill, enabling it to hit units
proceeding down the road with almost no risk of return fire and out of
sight of the SAM units that had arrived on the high ground.  From that
position it was a non-stop turkey shoot, with a massive slaughter of
OPFOR's companies as they moved onto the map.

These losses were a key factor, imo, because they cut down enough
critical mass to prevent them from overcoming the heckling Ranger
infantry/sniper fire that they encountered when they entered the two
towns in the north.  These sniper units decimated the survivors of these
companies to the point of reducing the entire flow of reinforcements to
merely a trickle.

Psych-Ops:

All the while, the U.S. was getting reports from its Blocking Force and
its Rangers (B Company) in the south about all these "companies" of apcs
and tanks arriving on the main highway, headed northward, about one new
company or battery of some sort every five minutes.  I learned later
that this information was very unnerving, as one could well imagine, but
what was not reported was that these "companies" had been greatly
attritted in most cases, either due to previous fighting in BSB against
the Royal Guards, U.S. air attacks (BSB air base, Patrol Base 4, etc.),
or the current air interdiction strikes which were turning out to be
quite devastating.  This little bit of "friction" (not reporting
attrition) was not intentional, I just didn't have the time to add this
detail, and "company" was more accurate than "platoon," but in manay
cases it would have been a close call between those two words. <g> Yet
the friction seemed real to me, in a way. (Why wouldn't radio operators
make the same hasty ommision?)

Gary's "Right Hook":

It was midway through the battle that Gary made it clear what his
intentions were: to drive his forces along the fastest routes possible
(the roads) punching through the towns to the north then west into
Muara, which they still held, then turn south and hit the beach landing
from the north.  Had the flow of reinforcements not been so delayed or
thinned out during the battle, this plan might very well have been
pulled off.

One tank company almost succeeded in acomplishing that plan
single-handedly.  The tanks - Scorpions from the 9th Bde, I believe -
slipped by the Rangers while they were engaging other units. They were
seen by the Marine's Charlie Compnay heading toward Muara but they
couldn't do much about it because they had problems of their own --
tanks and AT fire and arty landing on their heads. The Scorpion tanks
meandered through Muara, survived the naval gunfire which was targetting
it, then proceeded south through the mangroves and were about 1 km. away
from a perfect firing position that would have devastated the remainder
of the landing but for the fact that they were unluckily spotted by the
M1 platoon which had passed by it on the opposite side of a mangrove (to
the east).  The M1s opened fire first, into its rear, killing half the
tanks.  The Scorpions fired back, and killed 2 M1s (which even these
T-55s could do since they were firing into the M1's rear) but the next
two rounds of return fire from the M1s finished them off.  A potentially
bloody moment on the shores just barely averted!  It was at this point
that I could see Gary's plan possibly working very well, if only he were
able to muster enough forces to reach that location.

The Later Phases:

At around 7:35 the 155mm arty became available to OPFOR (after having
their orders lost in the confusion of the destroyed Division HQ <g>) and
began hammering the shore area where the Marines had been landing.  By
this time, however, most of the amphibious units were ashore and already
fanning out along the beach.  It was difficult to target these types of
units.  A couple of more ambushes or two occurred along the shoreline as
the fanning out of the Hummers and LAVS uncovered more of the hidden
Malay infantry.  At 7:45 an LCU struck a mine and was damaged, though I
never did complete my calculations as to how many units were destroyed. 
Probably not too many - they were LAVs, which can swim on their own.

At around 7:50 an incident happened which I am sorry to say was a total
screwup on my part.

Shortly before the battle, the Malays had begun to deploy the last of
their secret weapons acquisitions from China... a squadron of 7 MiG-21
(F7) Shenyang fighters.  Against all odds, this squadron had survived
the war and had just fueled up at the (abandoned) civilian airport in
Seria, and was en route to the battle scene.  The only munitions they
had were air-to-ground ordnances (cluster bombs) so they were completely
defenseless against air attacks, and hence lost 3 more aircraft from two
F-18s that just happened to be within intercepting range with enough
fuel to pursue them.  This left four planes remaining to hit the Marines
on the beaches (or wherever).  But... when I reported their arrival near
the sector the U.S. went bullsh*t!  and promptly reminded me that their
AEGIS defense system from the ships was to take care of such threats.  I
did not recall that in their orders so I probably just didn't read them
or read them and forgot about this, but apparently this was a key point
of their defense plans so I couldn't rule against it.  My only dismay is
that the whole Shenyang saga was an incredible bother, all for nothing,
and would be just one more heartbreak to a team felt it did not have
much of a chance of inflicting much damage, let alone winning the war. 
Had I been aware of this ahead of time, I would have come up with some
other idea to make the playing field seem a little more level, but it
was too late by that point to do anytning about it.

By 8:00, the situation looked bleak indeed for OPFOR.  Nearly every
company-size unit had been pummeled almost as soon as it entered the map
(thanks to the spotting by the Blocking force South and the infantry of
Ranger B company) and was unable to muster anything that could be
considered a line of defense that might ultimately contain a Marine
breakout.  The U.S. had most of  B coy AAV7s still intact which was on
its way to linkup with the B Rangers across the swamp, thus putting a
solid clamp on the faucet of reinforcements that might well have lasted
for hours.  Most of D Company (LAVs) was intact, as was the headquarters
company (Hummers) which were sweeping through the Mangroves now in a
sweep-and-search effort to root out any last spotters and firmly secure
the vital beachhead area.  C Company was almost completely shattered,
but were finally getting their SMAW teams into the action and getting
the upper hand on the tanks to the north.   The M1s were now all dead,
having taken AT shells in the side as they emerged from the mangroves.

Cease-fire!

At 8:07 Gary called for a cease-fire and asked to meet with the senior
U.S. commander.  Perhaps he did this in hopes of bluffing his way to
some kind of draw in which he could regroup for a battle at some point
later on (just conjecture on my part, I don't know).  In any case, he
was not surrendering.  I think it was a chance for him to feel out the
other side's resolve. (again, conjecture).  When the U.S.  Commander
responded with the modern-day version of MacAuliff's "Nuts!" Gary
huddled once again in his headquarters in conference with his staff and
then commanded that the missiles -- YES, the NUCLEAR ONES! -  be
launched on command at Cubi Point!  This order I had to deny, as only
the Prime Minister could authorize this and he was cut off from Army
command due to the massive C3 strikes earlier.   (Gary would ordinarily
have been allowed to play the PM role in addition to his Army Commander
role, but being cut off made this a moot issue).

NOTE:  What Gary may have suspected but did not know was that the U.S.
had an SOP to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against *any*
Malaysian missile launch automatically.  Gary's order would therefore
have won a Malaysian victory -- at the cost of Malaysia!<g>  Thus, the
C3 strikes by the U.S., in a way, was an act that ended up saving a
significant portion of the planet from glowing in the dark for the next
2000 years!

With this option denied, Gary gave a single order: "withdraw to BSB." 
There was much discussion over the meaning of this word "withdraw",
versus the word "retreat," and I myself wondered about it.  (My favorite
definition was Rocky's: The other guy retreats... *we* withdraw! <g>)

In any case, the battle was over.  And so, in effect, was the war.

IV.  RESULTS

With the Malays on the retreat - er, I mean *withdrawing*, the securing
of all of the U.S. CPX victory objectives were a certainty -- except for
the most difficult one: the ability to push on and pursue OPFOR.  I did
not feel the U.S. had quite the horsepower to muster this safely.  A and
C companiese were in a shambles, and there was still some weeding out to
do in the mangroves and in Muara and along the northern road before the
beachhead could be termed 'secure.'  There were also SAMs to ferret out
in the north jungle near the rocky shore.  These operations, while not a
problem for the U.S,  would have been somewhat time-consuming with the
forces they had left.

However, given that the U.S. not only cleared the map (by forcing a
retrea- harumph - withdrawal) but captured a port, one of the two ports
closest to the capital... and did so with less than 1/3 losses (32% I
believe was the tally.  I think Malaysian casualties were around 45%)...
this battle has to be considered an unqualified Major Victory, with
strong promotion-worthy commendations (er, pending the outcome of the
War Crimes Trial! <g>).

The overall MBX results are slightly less clear, and I will need some
time to ruminate on them.  That will be the final chapter of the MBX
AAR, which is my next and final chore. <Reaches for another shot of
caffeinated beverage>.

V. OBSERVATIONS

While we certainly had more than enough people to conduct an MBX, the 
players who couldn't make it were missed -- if only because of their
presence being felt so strongly during the MBX playing.  I would have
liked to see what cockamamie ideas Nick would have come up with, or how
Scott Mortimer would have done, or what kind of trouble Deven would have
gotten into <g>.  It's like if you were to coach a team all through the
season, you kind of miss people if they're not there for the
championship game. :-< This may not have changed the results, but I
would have liked the added comeraderie of having more of the MBX players
participating in this little gala.

I understand from James that the pace of this CPX was once again
excrutiatingly slow compared to most CPXs.  (I meant to run another
training game on Friday night but ran out of time).  While I continue to
be painfully frustrated by my lack of abilities in this regard, I was
encouraged by Steve Althouse's remark that this CPX sought to accomplish
a lot more than the usual CPX, or certainly more than the ones I have
run in the past. There were quite a number of simultaneous events to
keep track of, both on and off-map, and the improvisational aspect
(sh*t! An LCU just hit a mine -- how do I calculate the results of
that?) was something that should be factored in as well, I think.  Also,
there were a couple of times where unfamiliar rules or situations
inititated very long discussions which stopped the game mid-stride. 
With this in mind, I feel less ashamed at my pace and actually rather
proud I pulled it off at all. :->  At any rate, I was encouraged enough
not to give up on CPX umpiring, which I have come close to doing many
times.

>From what little I've heard so far, it appears the players, or at least
the two C.O.s, were not happy with the way this CPX was run.  On the
U.S. side the reports were not informative enough, and on the OPFOR side
Gary felt ill-informed about the events leading up to the CPX.  I have
to agree with both of them.  The latter problem was merely one of time
-- I ran out of it.  So I couldn't get Gary the detailed reports he
wanted. That is a problem of time-management, not a disagreement,
really. Hopefully I will plan my time better in the future.

The other problem -- not supplying useful information in my reports --
is something I am having a difficulty getting a handle on.  I think I
may have to play in a few more of James' CPXs and see how the master
does it. <g>  It's a left-brain, right-brain thing, maybe, I don't
know.  Even James had difficulty describing what was lacking for him. 
Anyone else want to take a shot at it?  Go ahead, I'm tough - I can take
it! (NO I'M NOT REALLY -- PLEASE BE EXTREMELY GENTLE AND 
CONDESCENDING!
<G>)

Stay tuned for the El Monstero AAR, as Nick calls it, for the entire
MBX.  I look forward to hearing from those of you who participated who
have not yet offered comments on the game.  It will be a great help to
me and to other MBX umpires in the future to know what went right and
what went wrong with this one.

Riki


James Sterrett's AAR:


I took over as US CO after our first major airstrike.  I was the third person be be US CO.  
At the point I took over the active players were myself, Deven Combs as intel officer, 
Barry Summers in Special Ops, and Steve Althouse as President.  I commanded the bulk 
of land, air, and naval forces for most of the game in theory.  In practice, this was far too 
much work.  While the Phibron was moving towards Brunei I ignored it, and Jimmy 
Gager took over the Navy before it got there.  Similarly, I ignored the land forces, other 
than the Special Forces (which were under Barry's command), until we got near Brunei; 
by which time Jorge Arraya had already arrived and taken over the Air Force.  I'd like to 
thank everybody who stuck with the side the whole way through; it was a bit of a 
marathon.  If anybody else had dropped out, or if Jimmy and Jorge had not arrived when 
they did, it would probably have been all over for me, from administrative overload.


Before the first airstrike I had been in and out as an advisor, during the flight of the V-22 
the Malays shot down (with an SF team intended to link up with the Brunei RG and lead 
them in a guerilla war), and the second flight, intended to extract our casulaties during the 
fighting the the capital, our embassy staff, and the Prince.  This of course ended with the 
Malays murdering the Prince.  (Regarding their claim that they had the right to go onto 
the Embassy "as policemen" - this explains the freedom of the KGB to explore the US 
Embassy in Moscow and rifle through the cabinets of the CIA Chief of Station?  Their 
blowing away our first Osprey was a clear act of war.)

Anyway, we gave a set of orders that was far to complex for the first air strike, and it 
exploded in our faces with a total loss of coordination.  We reformed our orders style to 
be clear, simple, and easy for RT to understand intent and contingencies, which served us 
well thereafter.

Our overall mission was to land, take a port, and secure the landing map up to the N-S 
road, to allow the heavy division loaded on the transports in the Carrier battlegroup to 
land and crush the Malays.

It was obvious that our operations had to proceed in a series of stages:

1) Gain air superiority - complete if possible

2) Gain naval superiority - complete if possible

3) Prepare the battlefield - mislead the enemy as to our landing site if possible

4) Assault the beach

1 and 2 became necessarily somewhat intermingled and the last bits of 2 lingered until 
the landing itself.

My biggest fear was that the Malay Air Force, SAMs, and Navy would hide, en masse, in 
Brunei/Borneo, waiting for an opportunity to launch an immense, massed strike against 
our troop transports.  Fortunately for us, they did not do this, and chose to lose their Air 
Force and Navy piecemeal (and overall to very little effect, although  we were rather 
afraid of continuing the loss rate of the first strike - which would have ensured our 
defeat.)

We steadily rolled the Malay AF back through Borneo and nearly launched an immediate 
followup onto the Malay Peninsula (the TLAM strike was meant to be part of a larger, 
aborted, raid, IIRC.)  The other major strike on the Malay peninsula that almost occured 
at least twice, but didn't through comms foulups, was to use F-117s to blow away the 
various transports at Johor Barahu.

Most of the Malay Navy got fried in the initial stages of the battle, despite drafting 
neutral shipping in as shields.  The rest hid; we kept looking.

I chose Muara as a landing site early on for these reasons:

1) Muara had a port

2) Muara looked to be a site we could easily isolate from the rest of Brunei through a 
solid airpower campaign, which would hopefully allow us to land facing only the local 
defence and not reinforcements (though, just as the Malays assumed RT might not let 
them sink our transports, I assumed RT wouldn't let the isolation/deception campaign 
actually work, to ensure opposition....  <grin>)

3) Seria was the other really obvious target; it was far from Muara, and would make a 
good deception effort

Thus our preparatory bombing tried to concentrate on Malay positions around Seria, and 
actions intended to isolate Seria.

In and around this we had the strange interlude of hunting for the Malay/Chinese nuclear 
missiles, which went about as well as we could have hoped on the basis of the info 
provided I suppose.  Towards the end, as the result of a lot of effort on Deven's part, he 
had teams closing in on the nukes.

As we got ready to land, I wanted the Air Force and TLAMs to hit the following:

- every telecommunications link in northern Borneo

- every Malay HQ in eastern Brunei

- all the bridges between Seria and Muara

- and then interdict the roads leading to Muara, during the landing

The Rangers were to drop in and secure the river bridge and the N-S road.

The Marines would land on the beach and move to secure the beach area, and then link 
up with the Rangers.

Sniper teams from the SEALs and the Force Recon elements operating on the landing 
map were to assemble and kill the Muara city garrison with sniping.

Two blocking forces were deployed, one off the east edge of the landing map, one off the 
south edge, with a number of MGs and Javelins, to ambush and slow approaching enemy 
forces.

Shortly before we landed (all the above already planned), the Malays tried what looked 
like a decapitation strike against the President, launching a salvo of IRBMs at the airport 
where he had just given a press conference.  We eventually did not fry all of Malaysia for 
this, but did leave nuclear forces on Launch on Warning, so that the next missile launch 
by Malaysia would result in their complete and utter destruction.

In addition, I did a bit of planning for the nuclear support of the landing.  This would 
have entailed:

1) a large (10MT+) spaceburst for EMP over Borneo 1.5 hours before we landed, with 
our forces finishing taking appropriate protection measures 10 minutes before the burst.  
This would have rather ensured the Malays had no communications at all (their landlines 
would have been wonderful antennae for the EMP....  8)  )

2) low-airburst tactical nuclear weapons (10kT or less) for use in the interdiction strikes

3) possibly a small tactical nuke (1-10kT) to support the Ranger airdrop, well off the 
ground to minimize residual radiation

In the event of nuclear release Malaysia would have ceased to exist, which would ease 
the task of follow-on forces.

The SF activites had gone reasonably well; the SF team near Seria providing support to 
our deception (though a bit more terminally than intended!), and the Force Recon and 
SEALs worked on scouting and preparing the landing area.  Good work, Barry.

The landing itself proved to be a minor nightmare, since the Malays got earlier warning 
than we had expected and their HQ deception worked.  Thus we had to face a lot more on 
the map than we had hoped; fortunately our interdiction did a lot of work, and then we 
were saved by the Ranger's sniper rifles (!!)

I thought we were in pretty desperate straits, but when Gary asked for a cease-fire, I 
figured the Malays must actually be worse off - and he made the mistake of asking 
Rangers, who are a bit nutso anyway.  <grin>

Thus, in the end, we cleared and secured our map having done plenty of damage to the 
Malay force in eastern Brunei.  The heavy division is free to land and we can wave as 
their hordes of M-1s, Bradleys, and Apaches head off to teach the Malays a further lesson 
in pain.  MBX mission accomplished, and most of Malaysia's carefully built-up military 
already so much wasted money and scrap metal.


========

Lessons:

1) KISS:  When our planning got complex or off-the-wall, it almost always blew up in 
our faces.  Simple, intent-based orders worked best.  This did not preclude some 
moderately sophisticated operations, but they had to be simple in concept and execution 
so that RT could keep track of them and implement their intent intelligently.

2) All-arms integration in pursuit of a single goal.  Our forces generally all fought with 
the same goals in mind, and the bulk of the steps we took were all oriented towards the 
same goal.  This did not appear to be the case on the Malay side, where the Army, Air 
Force, and Navy seemed to each fight a separate war.

3) Keep a sense of humor.  This was often an immensely frustrating game, and I 
apologize to RT for my periodic Sense of Humor Failures.

4) Keep more players in the game....  one of the major reasons much of this MBX became 
a chore for me was burnout from overload.

5) Scott Gainer's comments regarding the need to keep the MBX contained and better 
defined from the outset were quite dead on target.  


Jimmy Gager's AAR:

Here is my perspective of the MBX/CPX game:

I joined late as the Commander of Naval Forces, Bruinei Theater of 
Operations. When I came aboard, the Malays had altready sunk a DDG and 
an SSN. Of course I was itching for revenge, to strike back immediately. 
However, after getting a ton of mail from RT, to try and get me up to 
speed, I realized there were bigger fish to fry than simple revenge. My 
first order of business was to sort out the ASW screen for Phibron 11, 
the amphibious assault battle group. As I read the web site, there was 
also a complete CVBG involved. I could not wait to get these assets into 
action. I was soon to learn that these forces were not mine to command. 
A little background here. I have played computer Harpoon since the game 
came out. I was also involved with Kesmai's beta test of Harpoon On Line 
(HOL) so I have played against computer AI as well as human opponents. I 
had learned that the best laid plans of mice and men..well, you get my 
drift. In my experience, a large powerful  force, with a mission of 
power projection can be decimated by a single sub, if you are not 
prepared to deal with a sub-surface threat. They tend to show up when 
you least expect it. So my first order was to implement the maximum 
effort in ASW. This meant every ASW asset available would be on station, 
as much as was possible. In addition, once again through my Harpoon 
experience, I knew that emmiting radar or sonar would announce our 
presence to the world. Standing orders were to remain on an inactive 
sensor staus until further notice, or if attacked. I knew if we were 
actually attacked, our location was probably known, so active emmisions 
would not matter. My philosoph is, its a big ocean out there, and they 
would have to come and find me. I felt it was an acceptable risk. I also 
was relying on AWACS coverage from Clark Air Force base, in the 
Phillipines. Later in the game, I was able to get EC2 Hawkeyes from the 
CVBG to provide coverage.

As to the sub sunk in the area S of Singapore, that was an act of 
frustration. This sub had been tasked with either the Nuke transports or 
the troop transports, depending on the outcome of several ops in 
progress. In retrospect, for me to think the troop transports were going 
to transit the area the sub patrolled was wishful thinking at best. 
However, I did issue the order to sink merchant shipping, mostly because 
I was frustrated at our losses, with no way to strike back. I know good 
things come to those who wait, and I failed in this respect. This sub 
would have been much more effective had it exited the area, gone to deep 
water and hunted from there. 

I must point out how difficult it is for a person with experience in 
games that provide you with real time info to get used to the delay and 
unclear picture of the situation provided by this game. If I had one 
improvement to suggest, I think visual updates on a daily basis would be 
the one thing that would provide me with what I needed to function more 
effectively. I realize how difficult this would be (daily map updates). 
My grasp of the MBX/CPX is greatly enhanced by this experince. I would 
readily play another.

It was asked (as I recall) what the ASW setup for the amphibious 
TF(Phibron 11) was. I set standard operating procedures which included 
the following:

4 ASW helos to the front along the axis of transit, 30-60 nm ahead and 
seperated by 10-15 nm.

1 helo each on each flank 20-30 miles.

Maximum ASW effort with all assets.

Ships placed in such a way as to sacrifice the ASW picket ships for the 
high value targets in the center of the convoy.

This has always given me good results in Harpoon. A few notes to RT. The 
S-3 Vikings from the CVBG (10) were not as effective as I thought they 
would be. This may have been from you overwhelming workload or your 
misunderstanding of the intent of the directives given. I had mentioned 
and have followed in practice in Harpoon, using the formation editor, to 
place the ASW warships from 20-30 nm in front, with adequate seperation, 
much like what was done with the helos. Then the helos are placed 
further out from the surface ASW screen. Then, the S-3's are set to 
patrolling in a random pattern along the path of movement and along the 
path of any sub threat axis. This is an excellent ASW formation and has 
yet to be penetrated in my experience.

In my experience in Harpoon, the only real threat from the Malay AF came 
from the Hornets. It would be my intent to kill the Hornets as a top 
priority. Remember, I thought I also had command of all Naval air 
assets, including the CVBG. As stated earlier, I was soon to discover 
that was not the case. The mission to kill the AWACS was one I could 
relate to. However, the CVBG had 5 Hawkeyes, and while not having the 
same range and capabilities of the E-3, are nevertheless a very capable 
AWACS paltform. I have used them very sucessfully in  CVBG only 
scenarios. My point being, the killing of an E-3 would not have gained 
the Malays much in the way of elimination of AWACS.

During the scenario, it seemed there was too much piecemeal commitment 
of forces. If I had control, I would have marshalled the air assets 
differently, in an effort to make a strike that included the CVBG air 
assets. This would maximize (mass) the air assets into a strike force 
that would decapitate the Malay AF and the C and C structure of the 
Malays. I recognize the situational aspects of the scenario required 
some forces (air) to be tasked to priority targets, but as a whole, 
massing of U.S air assets in a mass pre-emptive strike may have worked 
to the benefit of the U.S. 

After the arrival of Phibron 11 to the staging area, my job was over.

Great gaming, good fun, thanks for allowing me to participate.


Regards,
Jimmy Gager


Scott Gainer's AAR:

1 BDE After Action Report, Battle for Brunei

Introduction
	This was my first MBX/CPX, I would like to extend my thanks to Riki, the 
Malaysian team (including the lurkers) and James Sterrett for their help and advice 
during the course of the game.
	I initially signed on as a lurker, working from the theory that it was best to 
observe one of these before participating, however an opening appeared on the Malaysian 
side and provided me with an opportunity to play for most of the game.
Naval and air forces, Kuching
	My initial assignment was as naval and air commander for Kuching, commanding 
a mixed force of PGMs, 1 submarine, a freighter, 1 hawk squadron, 1 hornet squadron 
and several AEW and ASW helicopters.
	The Hawks were tasked with conducting patrols over the South China Sea (SCS) 
using a fan pattern radiating out from the base, with 4 a/c aloft at any given time, each 
covering a sector 10 - 15 degrees wide and extending out to a distance as to provide 
bingo +30min (reserve in ase they spotted something). During the time that I commanded 
this force these a/c obtained no contacts.
	The F-18s were tasked with BARCAP and TARCAP over BSB as well as long 
range patrols over the Java Sea, skirting Indonesian territory in the process. The Java Sea 
patrols and a lone a/c sent over the Indian Ocean obtained no contacts. The 
BARCAP/TARCAP planes were involved in the intercept of the SV-22 inbound to BSB 
later in the game.
	Since Kuala Kinabalu had units covering eastern Borneo the submarine, freighter, 
AEW helo and two of the ASW helos were directed to patrol the choke points where the 
Java Sea joins the SCS. A third helicopter was placed on barrier duty off the coast of 
Brunei with the intention of interdicting SPECWAR insertions and submarines. None of 
these units obtained contact during my tenure.
	In order to provide increased station time for the helicopters two actions were 
taken: 1. the freighter was outfitted with fuel bladders, a supply of sonobouys and asw 
ordnance in order that it might act as a mini-cve; 2. an FARP was established just inside 
the Malaysian border from Balait Provence. The FARP was not completed and the 
freighter did not arrive on station while I commanded these forces.
	The four PGMs were placed in indivdual, overlapping racetrack patrol pattterns 
inshore along the northern coast of Borneo, with the intent of closing the coast to hostiles, 
particularly SEAL/Force Recon, while staying close to cover in the event that hostile air 
units or heavy surface units appeared.. No contacts developed.
	About the time these measures were completed we reorganised our command 
structure and I transferred to the army.(I still don't know which decorations to wear)
Battle for BSB
	The 2nd BDE forces occuppied an area around the US Embassy in the form of a 
lopsided U, open to the West, towards Macarthur Park, and with the northern leg 
extending to the river while the southern leg stopped even with the western end of the 
embassy grounds. We had suffered heavy attrition to our armored and mechanised units 
due to an unexpectidly heavy ATGM presence While it was known that the Royal Guard 
had taken losses their situation was unclear due to smoke screens we had deployed. The 
Guard continued to engage 2 BDE forces until  the cease-fire.
	Roughly three-quarters of the way through the battle for the capitol Scott 
Mortimer was called away for a week-end with the real Army and I received temporary 
command of 2 BDE after an excellent pass-down from Scott.
	I had four objectives in the capitol:
		1. Reduce the Guard
		2. Capture the Prince
		3. Secure the rest of BSB
		4. Isolate the US Embassy
reducing the Guard and isolating the Embassy could be abetted by the same manuver. 
Infantry dismounts were directed to extend the southern leg of the U to Macarthur Park 
and then join with the northern leg, encircling the Embassy, and closing the routes to the 
southern bridges across the river. The armor and apcs were then to follow once the 
ATGM threat was neutralised and provide overwatch for the dismounts. The infantry had 
largely accomplished this task when the cease-fire was called, the armor and mech units 
had not yet made their move, and so remained South of the Embassy..
	Simultaneously, a depleted company was assigned to search the palace then 
sweep South towards the US Embassy, to join in the encirclement. Just prior to the cease-
fire this COY reported that the palace was empty and the prince clearly gone.
	During the cease-fire the smoke screen was allowed to dissipate and a better 
picture of the Guard's situation began to emerge. The Guard had clearly taken appreciable 
losses and had fallen back in a cordon around the US Embassy, which had taken hits 
from stray rounds, and was thought to be attempting to pass the prince to the US.. Some 
discussion followed regarding the use of artillery fire to reduce the Guard but their 
proximity to the Embassy rendered this measure impractical. Meanwhile 2 BDE units 
occupied the Park and cut-off the escape route across the bridge near there. Since gaming 
possibilities were looking more and more open-ended the potential for the prince serving 
as a rallying point for a guerilla force seemed like a reasonable outcome it was deemed 
important to contain him within the city for later detention prompting the encirclement of 
the embassy and overwatch of the possible routes out. Misinterpetation of a map supplied 
by the GM of our forces lead to me assigning units that had been long-gone from the 
BSB area to a variety of tasks in the capitol. Riki was very gracious in correcting the 
gaffes of a neophyte.
	Towards the end of the cease fire the SV-22 entered the area and thrust us into the 
realms of diplomacy and international relations. When this happened hostilities with the 
US had not yet begun and our naval forces were steaming in peacetime conditions. There 
had been discussion of erecting a minefield but this was ruled out as long as hostilities 
with the US had not begun. Our airforce, while patrolling, had not been ordered to engage 
but to track and report any US units. The BARCAP were ordered to intercept, but not to 
engage, and went out to meet the inbound aircraft. I haven't got my notes with me, just 
now, but I recall the US making two tries at entering BSB. The first involved the SV-22 
being warned off and leaving, the second it's return with a hastily applied MEDEVAC 
paint job coupled with a protest, from the US, that there were injured diplomats to 
evacuate. Discussions on our side now beagan as to the true nature of the flight and three 
possibilities emerged:
	1. The prince was in the Embassy and the US wanted to get him out.
	2. The US wanted to insert a SPECWAR, FO or COLT team.
	3. Both 1 and 2
Since BSB airport was still open the possibility of a legitimate rescue flight was 
discounted. Various proposals were forwarded to deal with these contingencies including 
storming the embassy, this one was discarded on the grounds that while we technically 
could, it would be bad PR with the international community. The proposal finally agreed 
to was to make a divert LZ in Macarthur Park and have the SV-22 land there, then 
convoy the staff from the Embassy to the park. The reasoning was that an inspection, 
within the legitimate rights of the couuntry since Brunei had elected to become a 
provence of Malaysia, crooked vote or no, would reveal any special warfare types lurking 
in the plane, permit capture of the prince, should he be hidden amongst the staff, and to 
prevent any specwar from getting to the embassy. Strangely enough the specwar scenario 
was a componant of the short story, which I had not yet read, upon which the game story 
line was based.. To enforce the diversion of the SV-22, ZSU-23-4s were moved to an 
area between the divert field and the Embassy, and along the aircraft's line of approach. 
The US tried to bluster through to the Embassy and the SV-22 was shot down.There had 
been something of a consensus that if they made it to just let the prince leave on the plane 
since the diplomatic problems would have been greater than the prince was worth. 
Shortly after this the prince was killed, the Guard capitulated and Scott came back from 
week-end duty..
1 BDE and the defense of Belait Provence.
	Due to the confusion surrounding who was available to play my command of 1 
BDE was predated to the point at which it left the BSB area. I issued the first of what 
were many mind numbingly verbose orders in the form of a probably over detailed march 
plan. 1 BDE advanced along the coast road in column of battalions, preceded and flanked 
by screens of recon troops, the supporting units at the rear with the SAM and AAA 
placed between individual BN and COY along the column. These measures were taken 
with a view to the possibility of US airstrikes and hostile local forces, neither of these 
materialised, and the column proceeded to it's destinations.
	Passing Lumut the last Battalion in the column peeled off to establish a patrol 
base outside town and patrol the area between there and 1 BDE's boundry up the coast. 
The theory behind the patrol bases was to permit units to come off the line, recover and 
resupply, the offline units providing a reaction force should the patrolling units encounter 
the enemy. The patrols were designed to limit the ability of the US to insert recon 
elements and warn of any landings. A further intention regarding the forces around 
Lumut was to provide reinforcements to any area where a landing might occur. This base 
was later badly hit by heavy bombers.
	The remainder of the column proceeded to Badas, which I thought was some sort 
of rail yard, and Seria. The towns, oilfields, airport and surrounding areas were searched 
and secured without incident and another BN, less 1 COY, was sent to an area 5 km NE 
of Seria to establish another patrol base.
	The detached company and a tank company proceeded, via traveling overwatch, 
to Kuala Belait to garrison the town. Later one of the few civil affairs incidents of the war 
happened there, rioters attacked troops and vehicles in town after the Navy had 
comandeered a fishing boat at the port, the troops were withdrawn to covering positions 
outside town and the situation handed over to the (abstracted) police.
	The recon company, after searching and seizing the airport, was tasked with 
patrolling the interior of Belait Provence. They continued at this for the remainder of the 
campaign with a notable lack of contact with the transitting SF teams. The airport was 
promptly forgotten, by both sides, until nearly the end of the game.
	Headquarters, supply and artillery emplaced themselves in and around  Badas and 
remained in that area, with occaissional movements to try and dodge airstrikes, 
throughout the game.
	The 100 and 125mm anti-tank guns were dispersed as individual guns along the 
coast with the intention of destroying as many landing craft and minesweepers as 
possible. These saw no action since the landings were at the other end of Brunei.
	The SAMS and AAA were dispersed, with overlapping fields of fire, throughout 
the Seria map. Coverage of Lzs and employment against mine-sweeping helicopters was 
their principle mission.
	Mechanised and armored units were placed in defensive lines back from, but 
covering the landable beaches around Seria, and in positions to respond strongly to 
airborne or airmobile assaults.
	All units within the Brigade were instructed to develop defensive positions and 
make maximum use of camouflage, cover and conceilment. Positions were improved 
throughout the game. These were the tasks that largely occupied the bde until the overt 
start of US hostilies. Concrete for fortifications was not ordered on the theory that such 
structures would be short work for US guided weapons so logistic items that were 
appraised with a higher tactical value, such as nvg and mortars, were requested instead.
Additional defensive measures were provided by mining the area behind landable 
beaches and the liberal use of expedient weapons, such as flame fougazi and booby traps, 
particularly in potential Lzs and along egress routes from the beaches. These proved 
valuable, later, when when a special forces team that had been spotting for air strikes 
found one of the mined areas and was subsequently destroyed by a reaction force. Other 
than this the only action that the forces in Belait saw was on the receiving end of 
numereous air and missile attacks.
	During the last couple of days (game) of the MBX a BN of 9 BDE was airlifted 
into Seria airport to augment 1 BDE. These troops were employed in the search for the sf 
team, suffering several bombings in the process, and were the units making the kill after 
the team ran into the traps. Subsequently this bn was moved to an area NE of Badas to act 
as a brigade reserve and help disperse the brigade to reduce the effectiveness of US 
bombing.
	The onset of the bombing campaign marked a change in operations for 1 BDE, 
which seemed to bear the brunt of the campaign, initially. I later learned, during the post-
CPX discussion session, that this had been part of an operational deception plan. The 
impression I had, until after the CPX, was that these were random attacks most likely 
centered on Seria due to the fact that this was the only large scale game map that we had 
a first and tended to garner the most attention. The accuracy of these strikes, obviously 
heavy bombers from the weight of ordnance and lack of aircraft sightings, suggested that 
these had to be observed strikes. Past experience with  heavy bombers has left me with 
the belief that they are great for taking out large, fixed targets, such as cities, but less than 
effective for mobile point targets. Nick and I made a case for less of the nordanesque 
pickle barrel accuaracy and a more lifelike scattering of bombs about the landscape and 
less concentration. Thereafter these attacks were more attrition and less obliteration, 
colateral damage increased in nearby towns, although casualties still were received by 
our forces
. Three activities ensued as direct results of the bombing campaign:
	1. Frequent displacement of units to invalidate targeting data for the heavy 
	bombers, this caused complete misses by them and the sea launched cruise 
	missiles
	on several occaissions. These displacements were normally performed at
	nautical twilight to reduce the infrared and visible light contrast of the troops
	and equipment with their background and reduce the effectiveness of spotters and
	sensors,
	2. Employement of troops in search and destroy missions for the presumed
	observation teams, culminating in the destruction of one by the attached Guards
	bn.
	3. Dispersal of troops over large areas to reduce the single strike damage incurred
	by any one unit. 
The continued abnormally high accuaracy of the heavy bombers, even after the 
destruction of the sf team, convinced me that there were either more sf wandering around, 
or that a recce drone of some sort was in the area (by this time I had read the short story 
in Marine, having made a foray to the used book store) and thus continued the search and 
destroy missions. Naturally, after the game was over, I found that the actual culprits were 
F-117s used for recce. Other than springing a SAM trap and bagging a pair of F-18s 
while enroute to the invasion site this largely concluded 1 BDE's relevent activites in the 
game.

CPX
	I got home from a field trip in time to catch the last 30 minutes of the cpx. James 
Sterrett had been kind enough to orgnaise a preCPX CPX the previous weekend that 
featured a pretty clever meeting engagement, so I had some idea what was going on and 
which controls did what on the mirc when the final act of Brunei played out. By the time 
I got there, to paraphrase Puller, the Marines had landed and we were in trouble. Good 
use of air, by the US, had isolated elements of  2 BDE on what was effectively an island 
near Muara where the invasion had taken place. Sniper teams were wreaking havoc on 
our IFV/APC to such a degree that jokes about radium rifles, ala' Edgar Rice Burroughs, 
were being exchanged. My role was pretty much confined to trying to figure out a way to 
call Malaysia and bring the nukes onto the beachead. None of the ideas I came up with 
panned out and Gary finally decided, after discussion with the rest of the team, to call for 
a cease-fire. After a few more minutes of  sparring the game wrapped up and we shifted 
over to the Tacops channel for a post op discussion. We were surprised to discover that 
the US thought we had far more troops in the area, and entering, than was actually the 
case. There was appaerently some concern that the landing might even be repulsed, for 
awhile, sadly we hadn't the forces to achieve that goal. Aside battlefield isolation the US 
also made effective use of air by eviscerating the Malaysian long-range communications 
systems, which prevented reinforcements from arriving, artillery tasking and the call for 
strategic weapons from going through. Decapitation strikes against 4 DIV further 
complicated command and control and were also factors in the game ending, with a 
Malaysian loss, earlier than had been anticipated.

Deception, innovation and various Weird Harolds.

	The most refreshing aspect of playing a refereed game, as oppossed to an AI 
moderated or managed game, is the opportunity for innovation. Having the ability to 
formulate an idea, method, tactic or weapon that isn't in the original design leads to a lot 
of creativity on the part of the players. When I first entered into the MBX  the feel for the 
scope for initiative and innovation was not clear. However, once the construction of the 
FARP had been accepted it was clear that operations and equipment within the realistic 
capabilities of the existing technology were acceptable. Everyone kept things within 
reason, not suggesting calling upon Sorhed's Ring of Power or building the Starship 
Enterprise, and came up with some interesting ideas.

	One of my first acts was to call for the remoting of transmitter antennas from the 
radios, themselves, and to establish autonomous relay facilities in the 1 BDE area. One of 
the US players, after we closed down shop, remarked that this deception worked well 
until we revealed it, ourselves, hopefully they will amplify on this in their own AAR. 
This was done in response to the assumption that the US would make use of an extensive 
ELINT capability and target active radio sites for destruction (as they did), most active 
comms were via landline.

	The Monkey Mountain operation came about through frustration with what 
seemed to be a US ability to operate with impunity. At the time we were not aware of the 
degree of loss the US had incurred in the initial air strikes and it seemed we were facing 
an inexhaustible supply of hostile aircraft. The site for the raid developed from several 
visits to Subic Bay and Cubi Point in the past. Contrary to an opinion expressed by one of 
the US players, the AWACS was a secondary, not a primary target. The goal of the action 
was the destruction of the tankers with a view to limiting the range of the US fighters and 
tactical air, if the tankers were taken down an AWACs would be icing on the cake. Since 
the airforce a/c can't buddy tank (different system) they would be unavailable to CAP the 
AWAC in it's regular patrol area. It would have to stay farther East, within range of the 
land-based fighters, or expose itself to our fighters. Had this worked it would have not 
only threatened the AWAC but limited the scope of the F-117s and F-16s to strike 
Borneo. Unfortunately the dice were against us on this project.

	The merchant ship gambit arose from an opinion that the US was throwing an 
awful lot of ordnance around one of the world's most congested seaways without hitting 
anything but Malaysian warships. Consulting the International Rules  to Prevent 
Collisions at Sea we determined that there was nothing to prevent our warships from 
sailing in proximity toforeign merchants.. Combining this information with the tendency 
of cruise missiles to attack the center of mass of the largest target that they detect 
"escorting" foreign merchants seemed a natural approach to absorb US missiles intended 
for our ships and the Chinese missile transports, as well as invoking an international 
reaction if they did hit a neutral vessel. This one worked pretty well in that the US did 
sink a pair of foreign merchants but we still lost our ships due to the large number of 
missiles involved. It also seemed to force them into visual identification of all targets, as 
had been hoped, but the number of mrchants presented did not force the desired task 
loading problems.

	Deception aimed at the US satellite recce centered around avoiding movement 
during satellite overhead times, construction of dummy vehicles and emplacements, and 
demonstrations by troops. This was hoped, coupled with the electronic eception plan 
mentioned earlier, to confuse the US as to the actual location of Malaysian units and 
induce strikes against empty real estate. Several of the US air raids and cruise missile 
strikes appeared to validate this tactic. Unfortunately the recon capabilities of the F-117s 
were forgotten.

	The fougasi and booby traps were relics, as was the Malay Fan search ploy, of an 
early 1970's ranger course during my mis-spent youth. I needed a force multiplier to 
counter the US supriority in weapons that could easily be produced by troops in the field. 
The fate of the sf team is a testiment to these weapons and I am left wondering how well 
they would've worked at the invasion site.

	The sea mines were based n actual Iranian and Iraqi devices recovered during the 
Gulf war and could be manufacured in the sorts of machine shops one finds in oil fields. I 
was initially dismayed by the destruction of one field by bombers and was on the edge of 
sending off a "if this worked why would navies invest in ships to do this really dangerous 
work" message and then decided this is a GM call and home-made weapons could 
conceivably be more sensative than commercially manufacured designs, besides the deep 
water fields were intact. (it really does take a pretty direct hit to neutralize a naval mine, 
the water tamps the explosion and directs the force up which tends to preserve the mine)
The idea was to dump as many US troops, and their equipment, in deep water as possible. 
The charges were big enough to damage an LST, cripple an LCT, sink an LCM and 
vaporize an LAV or AAV. Hopefully this would reduce the troops and tanks making it 
ashore to a manageable number. An added bonus existed in reducing the US ability to 
reinforce and resupply the beachead through attrition of their tactical lift assets. It 
occured to me that if Seria were to be the landing site, which seemed increasingly less 
likely as additional maps appeared, that SEAL and EOD activity against the minefield 
would follow soon. Since we lacked any credible means of dealing with divers I decided 
to have some fun with it and directed that the fields be chummed to encourage sharks. 
Extensive use was made of dummy mines to complicate the US neutralization efforts.

	The idea to get the Chinese, or some other friendly power, to station ferrets along 
the paths between Cubi Pt. and Borneo never came to fruition. This could've provided 
early warning of land-based air activityand the ferrets would have been protected, as 
those during Vietnam were, by right of innocent passage (reporting the positions and 
courses of aircraft does not constitue a warlike act).
	Likewise a scheme to employ commercial aircraft to watch for US activity from 
the commercial air-routes in the area never came about

Applause, gripes, whines and general comments.

	First off, Distinguished Service Medal to Rikki for running the thing, this entailed 
an ungodly workload beyond normal requirements. A full recovery is anticipated and 
reliable sources state that he has stopped coming up to people on the street and telling 
them that the last report was meant for OPFOR, only, and not both sides. Fortunately he 
lives in New York City where such behavior is accepted if not expected.

	One aspect of the MBX/CPX system that my exposure, so far, has found 
encouraging is the fog of war. A persistant problem with many wargames is that the 
players are omniscient regarding the location of their units and those of the enemy, 
especially during movement or combat, which is certainly not the case in the field. ( I 
suspect that many veterans read books about the actions they were in as much to find out 
where they really were and what really happened as for any other reason) I find the fog of 
war aspect vital for creating a relistic feel for operational command. Although this can 
lead to paranoia as well. There was a period where, due to a string of unfortunate die 
rolls, a suspicion arose that the game was being rigged to insure an amphibious landing 
took place. Afterwards it developed that the US team had the same feelings of  being 
conspired against over other aspects of the game. The lack of complete intelligence on 
each situation produces a mental climate of uncertainty that is not often present in 
simulations. Again this is closer to actual command than a constant input of both sides' 
condition permits.

	The greatest failing that we exhibited, as a team, was lack of organisation. This 
was due, at least in part, to member's real-world comittments and responsabilities. We 
could have managed this much better by having a more formalised chain of command 
that would have provided for someone to take charge pretty much all of the time. There 
were a couple of instances where developing tactical situations were not dealt with and 
proposals that were not acted on simply because the right person was not available for a 
day or several. By designating deputy commanders and deputies to the deputies we could 
have responded better to situations and had someone available almost all the time. This 
was especially apparent when members, including myself, had equipment failures and 
couldn't respond. A designated deputy could've covered for the absent player and insured 
that action was taken as situations arose. I would encourage future teams to develop a 
formal chain of command and lists of alternates to maintain operations at a steady pace. It 
is also imperative that the primary and deputy/alternate talk to one another, aso that the 
stand-in knows what's going on if something sudden, such as a computer crash, calls him 
in without a pass-down.

	Pass-down. Attaboy to Scott Mortimer for a great pass-down. When he had to go 
to reserve duty he gave me a detailed appreciation of the situation, the locations of our 
units, what he knew of the enemy and a brief on what needed to be done. Taking over 
was a piece of cake. Recommended procedure for all.
	Hornets and Hawks and Bears, oh my!, or OB/TOE and MANNA  from Heaven. 
One aspect I found interesting was the periodic appearance of new equipment for one 
side or another. I liked this approach in that neither side was entirely sure about the 
other's equipment and forces. This was a nice middle of the road between having a rigid 
TOE/OB that can't be deviated from and thus presents few surprises and the purchase by 
points system which was a hallmark of Napoleonic miniatures games in the 1970s. I find 
the former system a bit too constraining and the latter too chaotic. One suggestion I'd like 
to make is to see if the Tacops community can't start developing an archive of national 
ground and air force Obs and TOEs to aid in building future MBX/CPX. There are a 
couple of sites that already have naval Obs (TOE is less applicable with ships) that serve 
the Harpoon, and other, communities. It would be nice if we could establish a website or 
ring of sites to maintain this information. Of course we'd also have to ask the Maj. to 
publish more units to cover the wider array of weapons that this would cover (possibly a 
deal such as send $10-20.00 and then have the expanded unit list ftp'd to the player?)
An alternative is to use fictional countries. One problem that did crop up was that as the 
player's researched their sides real-world forces negotiations were undertaken to obtain 
more equipment than was started out with, in our case it was patrol craft, used by the 
coast guard, and army helicopters that did not originally appear in our lists of units. I 
understand that the US also bargained for more of a ground-based air presence than they 
originally had. This is a difficult problem to deal with when the commander in chief of 
each side is represented by a player, they can't be simply told that the forces have been 
directed elswhere, since the they would have directed the nation's force placement. Aside 
from creating completely fictional countries or taking the c in c out of the picture, which 
would impair the development of the diplomatic side of this soret of game, there are 
several possibilities that present themselves.

	1. Present each side with it's complete OB and TOE and
		A. Have, as victory condition the maintenance of a minimal force level 	
		offboard, thus requiring a restriction on the forces available in the MBX
		theater.
		B. Game other powers whose ambitions must be kept in check by the
		player's forces, it's then up to the team to allocate forces to keep this
		additional side in check, this could be especially interesting if the force
		level needed to maintain the status quo is only known to the GM. This
		would be very applicable to games involving the US since this
		situation is reflective of the nature of US commitments on a world-wide
		scale (something many of our politicians have not yet grasped). In other
		word's: send everything to Malaysia and you might lose Korea or the
		Middle East.
		C. Invoke some other crisis to restrict the power of the larger country, by 	
		demanding forces to contain it, Gulf War II crops up in the middle of the 	
		Brunei conflict, Panama invades Florida, the Saints win the Superbowl, 	
		that sort of thing.
		D. Nearly all of these would require some sort of penalty for using nukes
		to solve the dilema presented. I would recommend that if the larger power
		resorts to nukes it loses the game.
	2. Fictional country approach: present each side with a TOE/OB that is somewhat 
	fixed, although I would still make provision for small surprises such as more
	ships and planes of a certain type, improved sensors for some units, some have
	better warheads etc., and use fictional countries: Ruritania vs Flatland etc.

	3. Semi-fixed TOE/OB which cannot be much modified, under the guise of
	the results of future defense reductions. I like this one the least.

Including the UN provided  interesting dimension of the game. Again perception was 
different for both sides: from our side the UN seemed pretty apathetic to such US acts as 
the sinking of the merchants and attacks outside the declared theater of operations, while 
the US felt like hey were getting slammed every time they turned around. Nick's back 
channel sources of diplomatic lore made this portion of the game different from anything 
I had dealt with in the past. I would recommend it's inclusion in future large scale games 
although I would give the UN members individual victory conditions for their respective 
coutry, not to be shared with anyone else, to achieve the appropriate partisan feel to the 
votes.

	The naval game was a dimension that I thoroughly enjoyed. My main gripe (more 
of a whine, actually) is that we needed more ships and better subs. Altogether I think this 
part was fun. My chief recommendation here is to use the Harpoon 4 rules to simulate 
naval operations and battles, since all the extant computer Harpoon (which is probably 
still the best simulation for naval actions out there) have serious flaws when ASW and 
littoral warfare have to be dealt with. If you check Nick's website he has an AAR for a 
naval battle we had after Jame's CPX (I was the Egyptian). He seems to have the system 
down pretty well and by combining Riki's and Nick's approaches I think that you would 
have a pretty good system. Use computer Harpoon for the general book-keeping and 
course maintenance and H4 for the actual combat. Hopefully computer H4 will be out 
soon giving us a really good tool for combined ops games.

	Logistics is one of those things that is a pain in the neck but is a vital study for a 
major campaign. While we were able to model this factor, to a degree, for the land units 
there was a dimension lacking in the air and naval phases. Air bases do not have 
unlimited supplies of weapons, especially guided weapons, and should have required 
logistics lift, sea, land or air to replenish their stocks Carriers have a finite number of air 
ordnance items (usually between 2,000 and 5,000 tons, depending on whose ship it is) 
which get expended at an alarming rate in combat. Non-nuclear vessels require refueling 
and all ships will require replenishment of food, spare parts and miscellaneous supplies. 
(one study suggests that the fleet train was as much a factor as the fleet carrier in victory 
in the Pacific). All these require the allocation of resources to defend  and escort, as well 
as scheduling to maintain continuity of supply, not to mention delays on the approach to 
the target for unrep (Underway REPlinishment). One thought I had early on was to attack 
the fleet train (oilers, AEs, AOR/AOEs etc.) since their loss would severly limit the scope 
of the US battle and amphib groups. Unfortunately they weren't gamed. 
	Vietnam lends an example of how critical these support units are when one 
considers that the US carriers on Yankee station were reloading their air ordnance 
magazines daily. Interfering with the smooth flow of supply can cause real problems to a 
naval force whether through loss of the fleet train or bases. A serious command decision 
involves how many escorts to devote to the support ships, which don't travel with the 
battle group since they are much slower, and how much to hold with the BG. (Actually 
this isn't the whole story: the USN has an additional system of vessels, the USNS, that 
restock the fleet train. These USNS vessels are the link between shore depots and the 
fleet, they sail from land bases, replenish the train and the train then meets the battle 
groups) This is one of the reasons that the entire cruiser/destroyer force doesn't appear 
with the battle group when it sails. Our game did not have a  theater large enough for 
merchant ships outside the immediate area to be a factor nor did Malaysia have the assets 
to conduct commerce warfare so convoying was not a factor for the US even though 
protection of the fleet supply lines would have been. This is a somewhat esoteric topic, 
like mine warfare, that few people outside the navy have much knowledge of and tends to 
be neglected by most gamers. The fact that neither it nor mine warfare is real exciting to 
watch is also a factor in it's obscurity.
	In future combined operations  campaign games I'd like to see logistics modeled 
as I think their inclusion lends a better understanding of the decisions that commanders 
must make and insight into why forces are structured and deployed the way that they are.
	Maintenance down time for aircraft is another area that I'd like to see included, 
they should be inoperable for a day after every 100 hours of mission time (book-keeping 
nightmare, I know) to reflect normal maintenance. Aircraft could be flown without  
stopping for this down but a chance of loss through mechanical failure should be factored 
in for each additional hour that they fly beyond that threshold. 
	
	One tactic that I wanted to employ for the navy was to merge into merchant 
traffic, especially for the junks and trawler/agi vessels. The traffic for the SCS was 
remarkably sparce, especially in the various straights and around islands. While operating 
in this area (and other dense traffic zones: English Channel, Straights of Messina, 
Straights of Marmara, Bungo Suido, Straights of Gibralter, Persian Gulf) it is not 
uncommon for traffic to be so dense that radar watches designate groups of contacts 
traveling in the same direction rather than individual ships (the normal practise). The task 
loading for positively identifying potential targets is immense in such areas and should 
have absorbed most of the US air assets just trying to identify the vessels in the area let 
alone making OTH attacks. Add in the fishing fleet and just sorting Malaysian Navy and 
auxiallary units from everyone else would have absorbed almost their entire effort up to 
the invasion itself. Decleration of a Falklands style exclusion zone would have caused 
serious delays in merchant traffic and should have been unnacceptable to many nations. 
Such a decelration should have been followed by our own decelration closing the 
Straights of Malacca and the approaches to the Java Sea forcing international commerce 
to reroute around Australia. (besides fishing fleets rarely pay attention to this sort of thing 
and enforcing the exclusion zone on the fisherman would have drained US resources).

	The overall experience was a good one and I regret missing most of the CPX, this 
was a good experiment and gave us a lot of ideas to pursue for future games. I hope we 
can do this again a couple of times a year in the future.


Gary's Commentary:

Subject: Re: US MBX AAR

This amazes me still.  I had to order my missile commander three times to get
that mission launched.  I did not - repeat DID NOT - know about the President
being there.  (Maybe I would have used a nuke if I had known <g>.)

> .Shortly before we landed (all the above already planned), the Malays tried
> what looked like a decapitation strike against the President, launching a
> salvo of IRBMs at the airport where he had just given a press conference.

This was frustrating.  Everything was piecemeal and not working.  No matter what
I did it meet a force which could not be overcome.  The one thing that did work
was pushing our tanks to the dock, where they got intercepted by some just
landed M1s.  Just one more minute and they would have passed each other and
never fired at each other.

> The landing itself proved to be a minor nightmare, since the Malays got
> earlier warning

We did?

> we had to face a lot more on the map than we had hoped

all that was there was troops who had been there since the occupation.

> interdiction did a lot of work, and then we were saved by the Ranger's sniper
> rifles (!!)

darn snipers.

> I thought we were in pretty desperate straits, but when Gary asked for a
> cease-fire, I figured the Malays must actually be worse off - and he made the
> mistake of asking Rangers, who are a bit nutso anyway.  <grin>

The troops were throwing stones.  I had to do something in order to reposition
the rest of the Brigade, now that you were landing.  It was a political ploy.

Now can I delete the 2MB+ of messages in my mail box?


>>James Sterrett's comments in the AAR
> Nick Moran's replies
and James' replies to Nick's replies

(confused yet?)

>>(Regarding their claim that they had the right to go onto the Embassy "as
>policemen" - >this explains the freedom of the KGB to explore the US Embassy in
>Moscow and rifle through >the cabinets of the CIA Chief of Station?
>
>They would indeed, if, as was the case for us, they had been invited onto the
>premesis.

I wouldn't use the term "invited", more liked "forced at gunpoint", but your case seems to 
weaken with every iteration.

>>(Their blowing away our first Osprey was a clear act of war.)
>
>Explain this... If in international airspace, yes. If over US airspace, yes.
>But under air traffic direction and after due warnings etc? I think that's
>pushing it.

The accepted response to refusal to follow air traffic directions is removal of license and 
a hefty fine.

>>My biggest fear was that the Malay Air Force, SAMs, and Navy would hide, en
>>masse, in Brunei/Borneo, waiting for an opportunity to launch an immense,
>>massed strike against our troop transports.
>
>How the devil do you hide eight frigates and an air force? We would have
>launched a good sized strike if we could find you.. We couldn't, so we went on
>to other uses.

1) Hide the frigates as you hid your other ships: along the shore, in coves, under IR 
wraps, with decoys.

2) Hide the aircraft either in western peninsular Malaysia - making noise from the AF 
about staying out of it.    Then bring them back just before the main strike, or make the 
final strike a one-way deal, as it likely would be.  Worth it - for the cxhance of sinking 
our transports.

3)  Or hide the aircraft along roads in Borneo, awaiting the call as above.

>>Fortunately for us, they did
>>not do this, and chose to lose their Air Force and Navy piecemeal (and
>>overall to very little effect,
>
>You have to say we tried... We were, however, suffering from a definite
>material disadvantage. Any gambles we took (Some fair enough) failed. We got
>unlucky more times than we got lucky, I think.

No, I say you took counsel of despair and assumptions of losing, and threw them away on 
largely pointless, flashy missions.  Killing 1 AWACS is not useful, however good it 
might make you feel.  

>>We steadily rolled the Malay AF back through Borneo and nearly launched an
>>immediate followup onto the Malay Peninsula (the TLAM strike was meant to
>>be part of a larger, aborted, raid, IIRC.)
>
>Where would have been the legality of such a raid? You knew that you hadn't
>permission to do it. (I accept that this couldn't have stopped you), but I am
>trying to figure out how you attempted to factor in the political situation:
>You guys seem to have been hammering away with the same (lack of) compunction
>and political savvy as McArthur.

Basically, we no longer gave a damn about world opinion.

>We were considering lobbing another missile at you (Removing the warhead
>first), in order to get you to react. We figured that you would only target
>military facilities, and had
>them as close to evacauated as possible. I have no idea as to how you your
>proposed course of action could conceivably be accepted by the outside world
>until we blew one nuke up on you.

Because we planned to nuke anyone who complained, too.  8)

>>This did not appear to be the case on the Malay side, where the Army, Air
>Force, and Navy >seemed to each fight a separate war.
>
>I'm not entirely sure that such is the case... We did have three differing
>goals (Navy: To get the forces and supplies across, Army to dig in and defend
>in the CPX, Air Force to detect and attrit the attacking forces), wheras the
>USN and USAF had fairly similar goals: Defense elimination, really. There was,
>on occasion some co-ordination between the branches, eg when the Air Force went
>out on their drinking session, I sent two frigates in as a missile trap (They
>didn't get there quick enough though) but by and large, the differing missions
>didn't permit incredible co-ordination.

You had one goal:  prevent our landing from succeeding.

Forces and supplies you got across best by stealth.

The Army did well in digging in and defending.

The AF and Navy could best serve by preventing the landing.  As you note they had not 
the power to stand up to us in a toe-to-toe fight.  They did have the power to get missiles 
through our TF defenses in an all-out strike.  You failed to attempt this.


And Nick's further reply:

>>>(Regarding their claim that they had the right to go onto the Embassy 
"as
>>policemen" - >this explains the freedom of the KGB to explore the US
>Embassy in
>>Moscow and rifle through >the cabinets of the CIA Chief of Station?
>>
>>They would indeed, if, as was the case for us, they had been invited 
onto the
>>premesis.
>
>I wouldn't use the term "invited", more liked "forced at gunpoint", but
>your case seems to weaken with every iteration.
>

I can't see how it does, as I have never changed my stance. Maybe, like 
any issue, it is a mere matter of semantics, and the difference between 
the spirit and letter of the laws, but I base my arguments on the 
differences between the words 'inviolate' and 'sovereign', and 
British/Irish laws wherein police, without a warrant, (precluded from 
the embassy situation by the 'inviolate' clause), may not enter and 
arrest a man or search his house, unless he lets them in the door 
willingly, at which point all powers that they have <outside> the man's 
door come back to them. As for 'forced at gunpoint' we didn't say 'you 
must do this' as much as 'you can do this under this condition or you 
can do that, or you can do the other' Again, we can argue this out for 
days!

>>>(Their blowing away our first Osprey was a clear act of war.)
>>
>>Explain this... If in international airspace, yes. If over US 
airspace, yes.
>>But under air traffic direction and after due warnings etc? I think 
that's
>>pushing it.
>
>The accepted response to refusal to follow air traffic directions is
>removal of license and a hefty fine.
>

Since neither would be a realistic possibility... (How do we enforce 
removal of the license? We forbid you to take off again, in which case 
we shoot you down?)...Besides, in a state under martial law, different 
rules probably apply.
>
>1) Hide the frigates as you hid your other ships: along the shore, in
>coves, under IR wraps, with decoys.

I didn't even consider such a possibility, as I feel that disguising an 
FAC is one thing, but if I were running the game, I wouldn't permit such 
procedures with full-blown frigates.

>
>2) Hide the aircraft either in western peninsular Malaysia - making 
noise
>from the AF about staying out of it.    Then bring them back just 
before
>the main strike, or make the final strike a one-way deal, as it likely
>would be.  Worth it - for the cxhance of sinking our transports.
>
>3)  Or hide the aircraft along roads in Borneo, awaiting the call as 
above.
>

Possible.. But then while you were destroying our air and naval forces, 
we were buying time for our troop transports. We figured that the branch 
with the best chance of defeating you was the army, and the navy would 
have been the first thing we would sacrifice, followed by the air force, 
the army last.

>
>No, I say you took counsel of despair and assumptions of losing, and 
threw
>them away on largely pointless, flashy missions.  Killing 1 AWACS is 
not
>useful, however good it might make you feel.  

I beg to differ. Past experience has shown that an AWACS is worth losing 
quite a few aircraft over. The tanker would have been even better, but 
it wasn't so likely an opportunity. A) You would have reacted to us, 
even if only by placing the remaining aircraft further back and maybe 
giving it another escort. B) Your ability for surveilance would be much 
curtailed.. Instead of having 18+ hour coverage, you would be down to 
half that, giving us extra flexibility.  Further, if the one remaining 
AWACS was up, it would give us warning that something was likely afoot.

>The AF and Navy could best serve by preventing the landing. 

I felt the surface navy's best function was the supply and reinforcement 
of the land troops.

 As you note
>they had not the power to stand up to us in a toe-to-toe fight.  They 
did
>have the power to get missiles through our TF defenses in an all-out
>strike.  You failed to attempt this.

We would have loved to, if we could find your ships before we ran out of 
aircraft!!!

DWH
Manic Moran


Carlton Hommel (one of the UN lurkers):

>>[Moran]You guys seem to have been hammering away with the same (lack of)
>>compunction and political savvy as McArthur.
>
>[Sterrett]Basically, we no longer gave a damn about world opinion.

Which was one of the problems with the MBX victory conditions.  The US 
military was not influenced by political ramifications, not even as much as 
they were in Desert Shield/Storm.  The US President had world opinion 
factored into his personal victory, but only a small (about 10-20) 
percentage.

So yes, if the US won the CPX, they could tell "world opinion" to go to 
hell.  In our 1998 world, I shudder to think what would happen if the US 
conducted a similar campaign.
C. Hommel 


And again:

Nicholas Moran wrote:
>
>>We eventually did not fry all of Malaysia for this, but did leave nuclear
>>>forces on Launch on Warning, so that the next missile launch by Malaysia
>>would result in their complete and utter destruction.
>
>We were considering lobbing another missile at you (Removing the warhead
>first), in order to get you to react. We figured that you would only target
>military facilities, and had
>them as close to evacauated as possible. I have no idea as to how you your
>proposed course of action could conceivably be accepted by the outside world
>until we blew one nuke up on you.

I think Tom Clancy covered this pretty well in _The Sum of All Fears_.  The 
US President felt personally threatened by your missile attack on Cubi 
Point, and went (heh) ballistic.  You attacked him, and he took it 
personally.  At which point, niceties such as international law went out 
the window.

Now, why was the President there?  He made arrangements as soon as the 
SEALs took over the second missile transport; he wanted to meet them and 
hold a big press conference with the results.  So his being there wasn't 
spur-of-the-moment.


Speaking as the UN Ambassador to Ghana, Ghana would have fully supported a 
US nuclear strike on Malaysia if Malaysia detonated a nuke on a military 
target.  We would have somewhat reluctantly gone along with a nuke strike 
if Malaysia detonated one in the middle of the ocean.  (Which was talked 
about in Malaysian circles for a while.)  We would not have been happy with 
a US "launch on warning", especially if the Malaysian missle was a dud.


>True, we had a whale of a time over on the Malaysian side, be it with the
>bananas or weird and wonderful plans.

This lurker had fun, too.
C. Hommel   


Steve Althouse's AAR:


I was originally given the job of air and spec ops staff officer.  Not to
long after that I volunteered to add President to my plate as well.  I did
it because I thought it would be a few news conference type postings and
answer some political questions that the marine force commander was being
called upon to answer that were far above his level and not his direct
concern.  Had I known how much work it was going to turn out to be I may not
have done it.

Since I have switched computers this month I do not have any of the postings
to refer to for factual points so I will just give you my ideas and thoughts
on what occured.

I showed some of my friends and co-workers the ENN site to get their initial
reactions to the shooting down of the V-22.  Nearly everyone of them
indicated that the Malysians should be hit back in a big way.  These people
ran the spectrum of political inclinations.  It formed the basis of my
character of President Baldwin.

I pictured him as a savy backroom politics type.  Not very educated in the
ways of the international politics and military operations.  He has good
advisors and is constantly aware of the voter's perception of things.  This
perception, 5 minutes of Network news a day or a headline read on the way to
the sports page is how many Americans form their opinions on world events.
The attitude the American people would have was they were nearly as angry as
attack on Pearl Harbor.  I am sure there will be people that disagree with
me.  But it was a deliberate attack on a American plane flying on what
looked like a humanitarian flight.  The shooting of the Prince on embassey
grounds, no matter what the legalities might be, would further anger people
(which it did in my second enn poll).  The fact a small country like
Malaysia would deliberately provoke the US in such a manner is akin to a
local bully picking a fight with a heavyweight prizefighter that just wants
to be left alone.  I was determined that the lesson of not picking a fight
with the US would be a unmistakable one.  Kinda like the old "speak softly
and carry a big stick", except this time we had to use the stick.

The UN resolutions were incorrectly done.  I asked for a resolution to use
military force to remove the Malaysians.  I didn't ask the UN to tell us to
go force the Malaysians out.  Nor did I approve any changes to the
resolution...Despite that the resolution was changed to have restrictions of
area and type of force that could be used.  You can  not fight the armed
forces of an entire nation effectively if you tell them you won't attack
over half their country.  Some of these restrictions came from countries
that should have been allies.

At this point I decided that the american voters would support me if I had
to widen the war and to carry on the conflict if the UN disapproved.  When
it came down to brass tacks what was the UN going to do if I ignored them?
Much of the blame for the situation should have been focused on the Malays.
They were the ones that started the conflict in the region and likely
effected the merchant traffic.  When that world attitude did not appear I
realized that the political angle of the MBX was out of kilter.

My primary concern was to save American lives in the coming invasion.  A
disaster would be politically unacceptable and morally wrong.  Some comments
have been made about some of the "illegal" actions we took.  The sinking of
Malay naval and merchant shipping was ordered by the president.  The naval
vessels initially struck were not near any other merchant vessels according
to RT...so slinging missiles around was not what happened.  The second
strike on the naval vessels also hit neutral shipping we acted quickly to
contact the owning countries (RT) and begin talks on reparations.  The Malay
Merchant vessels became targets after we discovered they were transporting
military cargo.  It was hoped that sinking one would cause the others to
stay in port as well as divert other neutral shipping out of the area.
Other merchants were sunk in ports after they had been warned not to transit
the area.

The entire nuclear missile affair took too much time up.  The fact there was
an embargo on shipping into malaysia and Brunei gave us as much right to
search vessels at sea as it did in the gulf when vessels were stopped and
searched before being allowed to continue on.  I am not a sea lawyer so i
just based my actions on what I had seen in the gulf.  The missile strike on
Cubi Point allowed me to make a point about nuclear politics.  Just because
the Malays didn't shoot a nuke doesn't mean that we will believe they
haven't.  As far as we knew all the remaining missiles could have been
nukes.  Since the President, the man with the button was at ground zero.  He
had to make a decision within 15 minutes.  Waiting to see if one was a nuke
was not a very appealing situation.  He chose a plan with a failsafe in it
that allowed the stand down if the attack was non-nuclear.  He could have
just as easily chosen to fire...all the statements on non-first use don't
mean a thing when the man decides to push the button.

The high altitude level bombing by B-1s was meant as a terror weapon.  After
the first attack we never checked the co-ordinates to see if there were
urban areas.  It was an oversight on our part not a deliberate attempt to
hit civilians...often times there was only James doing all the work and he
didn't have time to check everything.

In the end Malaysia has a ruined military, a blasted infrastructure and most
likely a economic nightmare.  The US has a more tarnished international
reputation, a few billion dollars in lost hardware and 30 or so combat
experienced pilots.

I'm sure I have forgotten something.  If anyone has a question about an
event let me know and I will respond.


To which Scott mortimer replied:

I think you will find that the losses were much more substantial than that, 
I recall the USS Fletcher with all hands at least 30 aircraft, 2 possibly 3 
submarines and a lot of marines, rangers and attached army.  I would think 
that your personnel losses were at least 600 and probably many more, plus 
the billions of dollars in armaments used.

I think that your straw poll on the V22 incident also does not reflect 
reality when the real reaction to the shoting down of US planes and helos 
in Bosnia and Somalia respectively is considered, if you recall in both 
instances the reaction was to get the US forces out.

In relation to the use of the nuclear weapons I think that their use would 
have meant instant loss of the Presidential election when it was shown that 
no nuclear weapons were used against the US.

One matter about the result of the MBX intrigues me and that is what would 
happen now in Brunei as the nearest heir is the Malaysian puppet!

Scott M


Gary Wollbach's AAR:

MBX AAR - Prime Minister Malaysia
by Gary Wollbach

Hats off, three cheers, etc etc etc,  to Riki for putting us all through
this MBX.   I had over 2MB of e-mail files, and that was just my team,
and I trashed numerous messages.  Riki must have a huge 10 GB hard drive
and a masochistic personality.

When the exercise began, many elements of the MBX had not been worked
out.  Over the first week many of the operational elements were filled
in.  I think it is safe to say that this MBX grew and assumed a life of
it's own.  Frankenstein was alive and well.

The original precept for the control of the operation led some to
believe that the MBX would be a TacOps style exercise.  The truth was
far from that.  In reality the MBX had three game engines (that I know
of) being used to determine the outcome of events.  TacOps, Harpoon, and
the dreaded Game Master's dice.  Our Team initially set up using a
TacOps style command structure which caused a lot of problems very
early.  The Malaysian Team had to reorganization, which caused the MBX
to halt till the restructuring was completed.  When we were finished, we
had a Prime Minister and a Chief of Staff for each of the military
branches (Army, Navy, Air Force).  Our thinking had to adapt and adjust
from tactical to strategic and political.

I attempted to give broad instructions to the military chiefs and they
established priorities and conducted joint operations.  Once in a while,
the Prime Minister would intervene, but it was not frequent.  I would
scan over the military reports and file them.  I was given a choice of a
Chinese shipment and, as some thought, I choose nuclear weapons.   There
were a few times when I did step in and actually order an operation but
as the exercise progressed, the Malaysian Team found that our real enemy
was not the United States but the Game Master's dice.

There was the strike at the AWACs.  Not a very smart thing to do in
retrospect but we were desperate to strike back at the US.  I approved
the operation but the shadow of that failure lingered over most
operations for the remainder of the exercise.  I did not approve the
hide and seek operations of the Navy which caused the US such
embarrassment, but that operation caused the United Nations to begin to
assume a role which was never foresaw when the exercise began.   I also
had a deal with Indonesia and we exchanged intelligence on US movements.

The missile attack on Cubic Bay was one I insisted on.  In retrospect I
should have ordered the attack to be conducted a little differently, but
at the time I wanted to hurt the US and Cubic Bay was the only target
within reach (too bad we did not have a good fix on the fleet).  I did
not know that the President was there but it was kind of interesting
watching the reaction when people began to realize what had happened and
almost had happened.  For those that like to play the what if game here
is a question for you - what if the US President had been killed by that
conventional missile strike?  Or even better - what if the US had
launched a retaliatory nuclear missile strike thinking that the in bound
missiles were nuclear, even though they we not?  "How about a nice game
of chess?"

The invasion came closer and we knew that it would happen and no matter
what we did, short of nuclear war, would stop it.  Our air force was
gone, our navy was gone, our troops were engaging  special operations
teams and being bombed daily.  Luckily the morale of the troops was
high, or maybe it was that the GM never made a role to see what it was?
If he had we might have had a mutiny.

Several times during this AAR I have mentioned the dice roles.  Next
time we play a MBX, I want a neutral third party to certify that the
dice are not loaded.  Now I am not accusing Riki of anything, I trust
him, but those dice need to be purified with fire.  We lost numerous
contacts because of those dice.  Those dice are what ultimately caused
the Malay army to seek out a US officer (the Ranger's as it turned out)
to request a cease fire (it had nothing to do with all the overwhelming
military hardware thrown at us).

Assuming the role of a leader of a nation, making life and death
decisions, and having to live with the consequences of the results is
not easy.   As my country was being destroyed, and our military
eliminated, I made the comment to the King that would take my life as an
offering for the disgrace I had wrought on my country.  Luckily the game
was called before he accepted my offer.  At least creating the little
speeches and news releases got me to thinking that maybe I could switch
careers and become a political speech writer.

Overall this MBX set a milestone which will be hard to beat.  The web
pages, ENN, the news releases, the UN, were all elements that are hard
to bring together and even harder to keep going.  Riki you must be
single or have a very understanding wife (or did you do all this when
she was asleep or at her mother's?).

See you on the battlefield.

gary 



And that's all I have in my mailbox - aren't you glad?  <grin>