😛
Oho… squadron commander in South Korea … talking about something here lol … don’t ya worry, it’s all virtual. In my virtual world and mind, a Belgian detachement of 6 F-16’s has been deployed to South Korea. We are here to help the South Korean give their northern neighbour a big reality check.
The North has been fooling around for some time now, and somehow it got out of hands … and unable to recognize it got too far they just kept pushing … time to show them how the game is played. Our mission is to defend Seoul from any air or ground threat, with 6 airplanes we are more here to support that effort than actually leading it.
Our Rules of engagement are restrictive. We are not allowed to cross the border in any case, we are not allowed to go after a target on the other side of the border. The trick is that, since the hostilities started … the border was pushed a bit North 😁 … so we actually are flying into North Korea, but just enough so that we can get artillery units who with the former border were immune to us but able to hit SEOUL.
Air to Air is something we will be confronted with, a lot ! W expect a wall of Mig’s … but due to our ROE …we can not shoot at something beyond the border and that goes for air to air threats as well. By the time they cross the border we can engage, defensive or offensive. But we understand that we will be defensive a lot. This really changes the way we will fight … and how we will react to air to air threats.
We are deployed to Kimahe International Airport, in the southern part of the country. This is good for us, the F-16 AM is still a F-16 A performance wise, and the engien is not as powerfull as on the Block 30, 40 or 50. We do not have the same climb perofrmances, especially with bombs unde the wings, and most of the time we will fly with an ALQ-131 under the belly, which puts quiet some drag. In a typical air to ground configuration we would climb at 350 KTS and to be effective once getting to Mach 0.75 … well in the A model it takes more time to get there. In regards to that, deploying to Kunsan or Osan was a bit non-sense … we would have to make a flight plan that allows us to climb to our Flight Level and then give us enough time to accelerate and …by the time that happens we are at the DMZ and probably already comitting for some Mig’s. Kimahe INTL gives us some straight line distance to be comfortable. On the other side we suck less fuel at high altitude and we perform a bit less than a Block 50 or 40 …and 30 of course up high. In MIL power we can count on something around 4500 LBS/Hour at FL300.
Our first mission is a Pre-planned Cas, we are tasked to strike an artillery unit that is along the DMZ, in the zone were we are allowed to operate. The South Koreans and Americans have recon airplanes at disposition. The USAF has U-2’s flying out of Osan, and they provided some good pictures for a variety of targets along the DMZ. We also have coordinates, and this is very useful for us today. We have GBU-38’s available and the weather is supposed to be foggy anyway. Those data date from before the war errupted, but there has been recon flights made since then to update the infos. I immagine the effect of a GBU-38 on an artillery piece …lodaded … double bang.
We for sure will need the ALQ-131, the threat is real, old but still a threat. If it was for the SAM’s only it would be okay, but AAA and air threats in the middle of that … it’s going to be hard to focus on everything at once. As we study the map, we look at the estimated positions of the strategic SAM’s. Well … if you look at it, you will realize that by flying parallel to the DMZ you are actually beaming a lot of them … so we look at having an attack axis that makes us fly westward. We will take-off, climb, refuel, fly on a northern heading, then fly on a eastern heading and then come west, egress south. Most of the ennemy fighter have to fly on a southern heading …so we beam them too. Okay .i agree that we do not take advantage of the ALQ-131 that way … but a simple 90 degree turn to the left to avoid a threat from the north is better flown at high altitude in full combat load than a 180 … you can question my reasonning …but at high altitude …it counts.
Why do i want to stay high like that ? Well … in case (and it will happen) some party poopers cross the border to get us … we will have AIM-120’s go down on them instead of climbing to get them. I think about the MIG-23 … that weirdo lihts the burner and outruns your AIM-120 … we will see if from 30 000 feet he can beat the kinetic of the 120.
will write more later …
