Operation Market Garden - 80th Anniversary
2025 Naval Clash at the Spratly Islands: Live Wargame (Oriskany v. Rasmus)
Join us for another community wargame, this time imagining what a future naval “incident” might look like at the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Recent years have seen these islands become the focus of a sharpening international dispute, especially as China “enlarges” them with massive dredging projects and then builds naval and air bases on their newly-created land.
These bases threaten many South Pacific neighbors including American allies, and sit astride crucial shipping lanes leading to oil-thirsty economies of the Pacific Rim.
If you’re looking for a spot where future naval combat conceivably kick off, the Spratly Islands are a good place to start.
We hope to see some of you there!
7PM UK Time, 2PM US East Time
First, the general area of the engagement. These are the Spratly Islands, bitterly contested between China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
Of course, China's been making the situation far worse with gigantic dredging projects, dumping huge amounts of sand and sediment onto shallow reefs, literally creating man-made islands which of course become Chinese "sovereign" territory on which the immediately build naval and air bases. Some of these islands and bases are created literally from open ocean in as little as ten months. They are creating real estate from which they hope to control the South China Sea.
Here is the map board to today's game. These are 1-inch markers on this grid, making this table 9 feet by 6 feet. The scale is one nautical mile per inch, or 1 : 72000 scale. The scenario is an American "survey ship" (in fact a clandestine communications intercept ship) SS Latham has suffered an engine failure and is drifting towards these new Chinese bases. The Chinese know they're being spied upon, and demand the right to detain the ship and crew. The US 7th Fleet disagrees. It's 2025, and finally we're seeing a free-fire incident in the South China Sea. General Quarters!
Here are the forces for today's game. We start with just the three Chinese Type -054A Jiangkai class frigates and the two US "Arleigh Burke" class destroyers. Both sides roll to bring on aircraft, the Chinese from their nearby Fire Reef air base, the Americans from the flagship of the 7th Fleet, the "Nimitz" Class aircraft carrer USS Ronald Reagan. This one's gonna be small but nasty. The Americans win by sinking Chinese warships, shooting down Chinese fighters, or hitting Chinese bases. The Chinese get points for damaging or sinking US destroyers, shooting down US jets, or capturing / sinking the SS Latham. We hope some of you will check out out stream tomorrow and see how it goes!
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