DCS REFORGER

[Rick Mave]

Hi everybody,
My name is Rohrkrepierer or Alex and I am the host of DCS REFORGER.
DCS REFORGER is a series of events that focuses on bringing together different cold war milsim squadron in a collaborative effort to put together a believeable and immersive exercise scenario every couple months or so.
So far, we have held 3 events. Each with an increasing amount of participating squadrons and pilots.
Starting out, we set the event in a fictional range facility in the mountains of southern Georgia. We then moved on to a low level navigation focused exercise set on the Kola map.
With the release of the CW Germany map, we moved the event series home to where it should take place. In the future we will for sure still host the occasional exercise on Kola for the extreme low level navigation possibilities the Kola map is particularly suited for.

I am always looking for enthusiastic milsim squadrons that would like to participate, so please reach out if this event series is of interest to you!
In the following posts I will present the events that we have held so far. Please use this forum to reach out to me with any questions!

What is DCS REFORGER?
Inspired by a relative lack of cooperative events for milsim communities focusing on the cold war environment, DCS REFORGER aims to provide a space for the exchange of experiences and know how in the context of a Large Force Exercise using both AI and Player Opposition to maximise experience gained per evolution of the event.

Who can participate in DCS REFORGER?
Anyone who has been invited and is active in one of the many DCS squadron communities.

What are the prerequisites to participating in DCS REFORGER?
The following are the absolute necessities that you should be capable of in order to take part in DCS REFORGER: 
- Must be mission qualified in your squadron community
- Must have SRS installed and working
- Must be able to perform all radiotelephony aspects typically used in military air traffic to procedure

When do DCS REFORGER Events happen?
The typical planning cycle and workload allows us to put together one event about every three months.

What map will DCS REFORGER Events take place on?
The CW Germany map is where REFORGER will host the bulk of its events, however we are also utilising the Kola map as it offers ample opportunity to put large scale training scenarios into the vast flatlands of the arctic circle regions in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

What mods will DCS REFORGER Events feature?
Some select mods will be used here and there to maximise the entertainment and learning factor that REFORGER LFEs can provide. There will also be a livery pack provided for each LFE which can easily be installed using a mod manager and which is required to have installed to participate.

Why REFORGER specifically?
REFORGER in its entirety was an amalgamation of many different exercises by NATO member states with a focus on delivering NATO ground forces from the US to Germany within a timespan of 24 hours in the event of an armed conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact at the time.
Considering that many exercises were conducted at the time, we have determined that the REFORGER environment is one of the most interesting ones to choose to give the context to our LFEs. As the training missions are fleshed out, we will be adding more to the environment that serves to immerse us in this unique scenario.
That said, we are not able, or looking to accurately depict a REFORGER exercise in all its aspects specifically, but to utilise the timespan during which REFORGER exercises happened (1969-1993) which allows us to cover almost every possible use case of the modules available to us in DCS all the way from the Tiger to the Phantom and even the Viper.

What will a REFORGER Event look like in practice?
Ideally, REFORGER will be an environment for know how and experience exchange, where multiple squadrons of the same airframe will come together to work a specific topic during any event.
For example, a squadron with B-Course material on AGM-65 delivery off the F-4 Phantom will cover the topic in a presentation to all of the Phantom pilots attending the event. Then all Phantom pilots will fly the training mission provided to the event hosts by way of a static template made ahead of the event and conduct the training in DCS.
After completion, there will be a debrief utilizing TacView and a round of feedback by other squadron participants in order to point out issues in training material, exchange best practices and know how and so on.
Another regular event type will be one off missions planned out by the participating squadrons based on provided information material such as a mission file with information, commander's intent, objectives and intelligence material.
These missions will be briefed by the event hosts, flown and then debriefed together in order to address points of improvement for all participants.

Thank you for your attention and see you around,
Rohrkrepierer o7

Edited Friday at 09:43 PM by Rick Mave

[Rick Mave]

DCS REFORGER 24-11 Live Exercise 'Lead Rain' was a cooperative PvE event in which BLUFOR assembled a strike package to take out targets along a simulated port facility, a SAM system covering it and cover it all with some CAP. Flying out of Senaki we were able to achieve all mission objectives and gain valuable experience with time on target low level navigation, cold war specific A2A tactics and effective employment of weapons against suppressed GBAD threats.

The following are some impressions from that flight.

Some images of the range facility. The entire range and all subsections were equipped with IP Towers aiding navigation. These were used extensively to update INS navigation and as visual references for dead reckoning navigation.

Of course a large airlifting exercise would not be complete with some airlifting happening at the time of our air live exercise component. Here we can see a B-1 Lancer as well as a C-17 Globemaster touching down at Batumi airfield.

MILLER and BARON flights lined up at holding point Foxtrot RWY 09er. MILLER flight of 480th TFS was tasked with SEAD against an SA-2 site which was subsequently struck by BARON flight of 1./JG71 Richthofen.

BARON flight on its attack run against the SA-2 site utilising the BL-755 cluster munition in a divetoss delivery. They met their ToT by a margin of 10 seconds.

 

KNIGHT flight of TDCS on their pop up to strike their targets at the port facility.

And the result...

REFORGER 24-11 Live Ex 'LEAD RAIN' Patch Wall

 

I hope you enjoyed this small report on the DCS REFORGER 24-11 Live Exercise 'LEAD RAIN'
See you next time!null

Edited Friday at 09:57 PM by Rick Mave
Formatting

[Rick Mave]

DCS REFORGER 2501 Live Exercise 'VANGUARD SPEAR' took place in January of 2025. It marked our second event and also a milestone in the event series history, scoring an increase in participating squadrons, pilots and controllers compared to the first event.

The task was difficult, consisting of two main objectives: Halting a train of arms supplies and destroying its destination railway station, as well as intercepting an armored convoy with the help of our JSTARS controller in the role of the BAI/SCAR Commander with callsign 'SABRE'.
All in all this was a much more complex mission with an increased amount of red air due to feedback gathered in the first exercise. This resulted in the convoy interception objective unable to be completed. The BAI procedure flow was interrupted by red air and subsequently aborted due to time constraints and an overwhelming amount of red air being present.

Here are some impressions of what you can expect when participating in a REFORGER LFE.

The fictional range facility and for the exercise reserved airspace in bright blue. Both REDFOR and BLUFOR have specific corridors to follow in and from the exercise airspace.

The armored convoy target on its way to their target location.

MILLER flight made a return in the Wild Weasel role, they were tasked with suppressing and eliminating an SA-2 site.

FLASH flight on their recovery. Sustaining two losses during their sortie, the pilots of 1./JG71 sure were happy to get home.

A pilot of SPARTAN flight of vVF-103 Jolly Rogers on final with DONGO flight of 59th TFW HuAF overhead.

Photo taken my myself on the taxi back to the shelter, capturing DONGÓ flight in their overhead break.

And the patch wall again.

For REFORGER 2501 we decided to disable external views and map markers. This resulted in a relative lack of screenshots and footage to show off, which is why we decided it best to leave these vanity options enabled in the future.
Still, even though we faced overwhelming odds we were able to achieve some of the mission objectives and had a good time.

Thank you for your attention yet again, and see you on the next post!
Rohrkrepierer o7

[Rick Mave]

Title Banner for DCS REFORGER 2502 Live Ex 'STEADFAST ARCHER'

STEADFAST ARCHER was our attempt at refining what I had learnt from the previous two LFE events on Caucasus, and move the whole event into a new setting. Loosely inspired by the GAFTIC exercises flown in Canada's Goose Bay in the Labrador region, I set out to elevate the REFORGER exercise events to a new level.
This time featuring player opposition, a proprietary air combat simulation script ensuring that no participant's sortie was ended prematurely by an aerial defeat and extensive documentation, I was in for a whole lot of work. Luckily, I was supported by my good friend @dutchie_031 who went through the trouble of fitting all of my deluded ideas for the script into a neat and tidy package of lua code that ended up working just brilliantly.
This allowed us to do several things, not least of all: Simulate air combat like it would be on an exercise like this in real life, while retaining the visual effects that come with actually firing a missile at an enemy. The script called hits and misses, and turned off anyone's weapons from being fired in the case they were hit while still allowing them to jettison their ordnance if needed.
This struck the perfect balance between immersion and realism, while preventing anyone from having to call the night well ahead of its intended conclusion. Featuring some "dead man procedures", anyone who was hit before the action truly apexed was still able to occupy themselves with following the dead man ops until their flight regrouped with them.

Also a first was the REFORGER 2502 Live Ex 'STEADFAST ARCHER' inflight guide. Featuring over 15 pages sans airfield charts of the most important information in a neatly wrapped package ready for kneeboard use, my intention was to provide as much information as possible in order to enable flight leaders to create their kneeboards with the information they needed with minimal effort.
You can view it here: DCS REFORGER Live Ex 'STEADFAST ARCHER' Inflight Guide

STEADFAST ARCHER also had a record number of 48 attendants, which is an absolute milestone for me as this came very close to maxing out our server capacity of 50 players. Despite this however, the server sponsored by our lovely friends from the Tactical DCS community held up just perfectly with us experiencing zero lag and excellent performance.

The following images should give you an impression of what to expect if you decide to get involved in the DCS REFORGER LFE events.

Title page of Live Ex 'STEADFAST ARCHER' In-Flight Guide

Overview of the target area located in the extensive fictional range facility in the arctic circle regions of Norway

Taking off in the early morning hours, BLUFOR and the REDFOR Aggressors took off from Bodo Air Base and made their way into the AO

Making one mandatory AAR rendezvous with the four tankers dispatched to Naval Range 51B (NR51B), every airframe capable took on at least 6 000 lbs of fuel and then moved on into the BERLIN hold to await the push to their target.

REDFOR Aggressors meanwhile transferred from Bodo to Banak and awaited their intercept orders by their GCI, callsign ZENIT

TIGER flight hitting their target, a pontoon bridge enabling armored vehicle crossings over a river.

FRITZ flight of JG1 firing a FOX2 at a pilot from TIGER flight.

COTON flight on their recovery at Bodo after a very long 4 hour sortie

892nd Naval Air Squadron of JSW on their recovery at Bodo

On a long sortie such as this one, fuel management was a critical factor to success. This pilot ended up diverting to Bardufoss to recover.

SPARTAN and BOGAN flights recovered successfully on the boat, they made short work of these Case 1 recoveries.

DCS REFORGER 2502 Live Ex 'STEADFAST ARCHER' Patchwall

Concluding, I can say that DCS REFORGER 2502 Live Ex 'STEADFAST ARCHER' was a complete success and without a doubt the absolute coolest thing I have ever done on DCS. This will 100% be the absolute benchmark to hit in any of my future events.
A huge thank you to everyone who participated and helped put this together. Without you none of this would be possible and I hope to be able to host many many more of these in the future!

Many thanks for reading and see you next time,
Rohrkrepierer o7

PS: Particularly proud of this. It is the Tacview footage of the Ingress and ToT of FLASH flight which I led for my SQN CO @Volator. We managed to hit our ToT pretty much dead on, or within 10 seconds despite a significant delay on our way to the AO.

Edited Sunday at 06:13 PM by Rick Mave
Formatting

[dutchie_031]

An absolutely awesome event that was well worth all the effort!


(To be edited later: Will insert the link to the RedFlag Script as it's open sourced and will be released officially once cleaned up and adjusted for general use as well as improved with the feedback provided.)