Assign Tomahawks to a mission?

[davedwmullins]

Can Tomahawks be assigned directly to a land strike mission?

[CCIP-subsim]

No, but the platforms carrying them can be - and then you can use the mission's WRA settings to specify which weapons you want to be used and how many per given types of target. That's where you select the Tomahawks and the units carrying them will then execute the strike, as long as they're within firing parameters.

[Dysta]

Forgive me for a wild guess: I think he meant to use Tomahawk with pre-planned flight routes, characteristics and objectives for the AI side. The default 'offset route' is way too simple.

[CCIP-subsim]

Ah, well if it's that, then that's not in yet. Right now the AI just plans a single offset dogleg per weapon. Which isn't too bad - it used to be all straight lines, even for player weapons, not that long ago!
But from what I've heard on good authority, much more advanced AI mission and weapon route planning capabilities going to be added in an update, eventually [:)]

[davedwmullins]

I wanted to assign them to a mission like I would an aircraft. Thank you

[Dan109]

I only have NI but I do plan on upgrading to Command. Surprised there no detailed options. Can the player define the exact course of the missile?

I was just reading a russian propaganda article talking about how the Syrian Cruise Missile strike was a "wealth of information" for them, describing how 2 tomahawks arrived evenly over the course of 7 minutes and they chose not to engage them. This post made me think of that article. I would think that the USN planned an alpha strike, programming the ones that launched first to take wider courses, so they would all arrive roughly at the same time. That would seem to be to only way to break through an advanced system, by swarming. These weapons are smart, so use that. Most other weapons platforms do require humans to individually try to coordinate such alpha strikes, which when approaching from different vectors, would be extremely difficult to do, even with good training.

Seems dumb to send weapons in 2 at a time, into coverage of the supposed best AD in the world.

[kevinkins]

Can you link us to the that Russian article? Thanks.

I believe the Tomahawks used were E's and can be controlled, to a degree, in flight. "The Block IV missile is capable of loitering over a target area in order to respond to emerging targets or, with its on-board camera, provide battle damage information to warfighting commanders."

I am confident the US developed more info on Russian capabilities than the other way around.

Kevin

[Dysta]

Hence, it doesn't have to destroy the AA, if tomahawks have their ways to weave and bypass a partially area of coverage to the target. Even if being locked and attempt to intercept, tomahawks can quickly reassign to the closest targets within the priorities.

[ExNusquam]

ORIGINAL: Dan109
Seems dumb to send weapons in 2 at a time, into coverage of the supposed best AD in the world.

If it's stupid, but it works, it's not stupid.

Although I too would like to see a source on the TLAM flight plans.

[CCIP-subsim]

ORIGINAL: Dan109

I only have NI but I do plan on upgrading to Command. Surprised there no detailed options. Can the player define the exact course of the missile?

Yes you can do that - any cruise missile with route-following capability can have up to 10 waypoints, and although it takes a bit of fiddling around, you can launch multiple missiles at roughly the same time while following totally different routes.

Further, for missiles that have a datalink capability (e.g. Harpoon IV TACTOM, SLAM-ER, etc.) - you can control them almost like an air unit, and give them new routes and targets while they're enroute. For really complex tasks, I'd take a TACTOM any day! (especially since their datalink is two-way, meaning they can even perform reconaissance to some extent while they're enroute).

The only thing that's lagging a bit behind at the moment is the AI's planning capability - but even that single offset is often enough to do the job.

[Rocksoldier]

Would be cool if we have the possibility to assign one or more pre-defined reference point that the AI will use when generating the path for cruise missiles. (at least one)

[AlexinCT]

It would also be nice if you could assign them secondary targets.