MAD Question

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

ORI
Now about non-magnetic subs. There have been such beasts , but they are very expensive , both to build and maintain. The Soviet Navy had their Alfa and Mike class subs made of titanium. The soviets referred to the Alfa's as "golden fish" as one boat used up almost their entire years production to build just one boat (and a great deal of that years Naval budget).

Thanksfor the info, seems some of my info was wrong.

However the Alfa class sub awakes bad memories from some Harpoon scenarios I played It was impossible to kill. Would outrun any torp I fired at it [:D] This was a hypothetic pacific scenario...guess you know the Harpoon stuff yourself if you are into this technology etc. The Alfa was the fasted sub ever built iirc. Yes noisy but even if detected it can harm you because if the torpedos you fire are slower than the target lol. Guess good old fashioned weaponry would work better to sink such a beast (eg. Hedgehog)

The Alfa , Mike, Oscar and Typhoon all caused NATO nightmares. TOO fast , or TOO big. or TOO powerful. As in most of the Cold war the NATO countries assumed that the Soviets were as competent as they were. The Alfa was never intended to be used as a general "Fast Attack boat" , but was seen as a "Seagoing interceptor plane". The Red fleet intended them to be based on the coast , waiting for the call to "scramble" and rush out and intercept NATO boats as ships. It really couldn't be used any other way , as its maintenance and endurance (small crews , entirely made of officers) and tremendous noise generation propensities. (Buy the way , it was theorized that you could kill it by getting it to rush into the torpedo you dropped in front of it, but it was not very likely that MPA or helicopters could survive that close to the Soviet shore.) As a result it actually wasn't seen at sea that much , especially after the 1st one melted down.

The Mike was a one-off boat more prototype that anything else and it happily (for NATO) sank it's titanium self. (My crew was doing a patrol not all that far away when she sank. Upon return an intelligence officer greeted us with "What on earth have you done?!". That would have been some trick armed with nothing more deadly that Navy issued box lunches!).

The Oscar would have been a problem due to it's toughness , but seldom came south as it was seen as a CV killer , once again waiting off the motherland. It was figured it would take several heavy weight torpedoes to kill , and a whole bunch of LWT by aircraft. (P-3's and Nimrods only carried 8 and one plane was seen as "insufficient" [X(]).

And of course the mighty Typhoon was the scariest of all. It was two big sub hulls welded together and felt that a bunch of heavyweight sub torpedoes would be required to kill one , after one got by escort subs and large portion of the Red Fleet assigned to guard it. And that's when it wasn't in harbor (most of the time) or under the ice (the rest of time). Tactics evolved doing all kinds of things to kill it (some of which I'm sure are still secret) but in short it was of great concern , guaranteed to be described in every other issue of the USNI's proceedings with discussions of bringing back Nuke torpedoes , nuke depth charges (the B-57) , creating new "mini-nuke" torpedoes , "ice asw drift stations" , and my favorite , roving packs of snow mobiles with ice augers and portable hydrophones ![X(] [X(][X(][8|]

All of the Soviet subs were found to have a "bark worse than their bite". But they did achieve one very effective result against the west. They caused a heck of a lot of people to lose sleep. [:D]

[Alpha77]

Steve what I found out in Harpoon is that eg.the British and German ships were too light armed as to have much chance of survival vs. Sov AS missiles. Backfires & Co. can easily overhelm these. I wondered that Nato seemed to be so sure to have total air superiority to prevent such overhelming by swarms of ASMs.... When you consider that the best German AA ships was the ex. US Charles Adams class (in German service called Lütjens class) but even these only had 1 standard missile launcher iirc. Problem with the rest of German and also Brits ships was they had some more AA missiles but short range and not enough reloads....but Falklands seems to confirm this weakness. What would have happened in WW3 to these 2 fleets, glorious sinking (in any area without heavy own air cover and the SOV LR ASMs can be fired from 200km or so away....you need fighters way out there to catch these bombers).

Try my WW3 scenario for Harpoon Gold (called Red Lighting2) [;)]


Re submarine warfare in stock Harpoon is a nice mission I believe it was called gatekeeper. Your USN and RN subs will infiltrate the Murmansk area and try to catch the severall SSBNs there. For me the Typhoon wasn´t the problem (will be detected early probably because of its size), but the smaller diesel subs on guard were.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

Steve what I found out in Harpoon is that eg.the British and German ships were too light armed as to have much chance of survival vs. Sov AS missiles. Backfires & Co. can easily overhelm these. I wondered that Nato seemed to be so sure to have total air superiority to prevent such overhelming by swarms of ASMs.... When you consider that the best German AA ships was the ex. US Charles Adams class (in German service called Lütjens class) but even these only had 1 standard missile launcher iirc. Problem with the rest of German and also Brits ships was they had some more AA missiles but short range and not enough reloads....but Falklands seems to confirm this weakness. What would have happened in WW3 to these 2 fleets, glorious sinking (in any area without heavy own air cover and the SOV LR ASMs can be fired from 200km or so away....you need fighters way out there to catch these bombers).

Try my WW3 scenario for Harpoon Gold (called Red Lighting2) [;)]


Re submarine warfare in stock Harpoon is a nice mission I believe it was called gatekeeper. Your USN and RN subs will infiltrate the Murmansk area and try to catch the severall SSBNs there. For me the Typhoon wasn´t the problem (will be detected early probably because of its size), but the smaller diesel subs on guard were.

I remember that a lot of the crews deployed to Keflavik would "game" missions they'd flown using the Harpoon series. Most found them to be amazingly accurate. Both Tom Clancy and Larry Bond (huge gaming buffs) used them to game out some of their books before publication.

The problem with most NATO warships is that they were inadequate from the Anti-air point of view. Even the USN didn't have enough anti-air capability till the late 80's. It's hard to imagine ANY single warship being able to survive when the Soviets were going to throw dozens of regiments of medium and heavy bombers carrying 2-4 anti surface missiles each. Only the CV BG's stood any real chance against them. Frigates were pretty much considered expendable by pretty much all the players. The only way to deal with the Sov Air was layer upon layers of defenses tweaked up by "force multipliers" like ASWAC and Aegis.

The "boomer bastions" became a real problem late in the cold war. Soviet boomers would be defended by fast attack subs , diesel subs , surface ASW and Surface action groups , Kiev class CVG's and LOTS of land based air. And in the case of the Typhoon , ICE. I have no doubt that such a conflict would have been VERY,VERY bloody. [:(]

[Alpha77]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

The problem with most NATO warships is that they were inadequate from the Anti-air point of view. Even the USN didn't have enough anti-air capability till the late 80's. It's hard to imagine ANY single warship being able to survive when the Soviets were going to throw dozens of regiments of medium and heavy bombers carrying 2-4 anti surface missiles each. Only the CV BG's stood any real chance against them. Frigates were pretty much considered expendable by pretty much all the players. The only way to deal with the Sov Air was layer upon layers of defenses tweaked up by "force multipliers" like ASWAC and Aegis.

The "boomer bastions" became a real problem late in the cold war. Soviet boomers would be defended by fast attack subs , diesel subs , surface ASW and Surface action groups , Kiev class CVG's and LOTS of land based air. And in the case of the Typhoon , ICE. I have no doubt that such a conflict would have been VERY,VERY bloody. [:(]

Totally accurate description imho. This is why you need (even in the game vs. AI,much more in reality probably) lots of assets and careful planning to prevail. Make sure you weaker ships are not thrown to the frontline, leave them behind the better AA ships. The problem here is that the AA ships do not have as good ASW. The ASW on most Nato ships was good (these with helis even better). But handling both sub and air threads posed a bit of a problem even without a single red surface ship involved [;)]

Without 2-3 US CVs which have F14s (!) this task on the offensive is impossible imo. Also 1-2 AEGIS ships are needed. I believe only the CG had Aegis in the 80ties. DDs with it came much later (Arleigh Burke). The US DDs and FFs are good - but only some of them could stand contrentrated air attack. The OH Perry class was also very fragile and lightly build, also only one propeller. But it had at least 1 medium range AA missile launcher. Neiter the British nor the German ships had this. Or the older Knox class. I found out however that the Dutch and/or French and/or Italians had some more useful ships for AA then the Brits and Germans [:D] The Brits had what I believe was called country class DD, which had a LR missile system (Sea Cat?).. but there were not many of these iirc.

The only way you can live without the CV support, if you have LR land based interceptor air. For this the Brits only had a single aircraft - Tornado F3. Germans had only F4s. All others the very good but short ranged F16s and/or Mirages.

[Alpha77]

Without F14s in short you can be toast easily.... The A6 or A7 are more for bombing not interceptors. This leaves the F18s. These are really good, but I would prefer 1 F14 over 3 F18 depending on the threat level. The F14 was the ultimate LR interceptor I to this day not know a single aircraft that comes close. Eurofighter, SU30-33-35, Rafale are all super planes, but also they miss the range and endurance to stay on station for long duration. Ok, you have tanker planes for this, but these also must be protected and pose an operational risk on themselves.

I guess the F22 (although no carrier plane, right?) must come close or better but havent researched the newer US planes, only heard about many probs with the F35...

But maybe as their was no follow up class of planes to the F14 my view is wrong?

Edit: When I write F18 was really good, it had some drawback. Only 2 MR sparrow missiles, plus 4 sidewinders. The F18 4 Sparrow and 4 Sidewinder. Or 6 Phoenix and 2 Sidewinder. Sidewinder are useless to catch TU22 bombers, they will fire their missiles and fly back asap on Afterburner to base, let the missiles do the rest. Only careless T22 pilots will come into range of a sidewinder (or suicidal ones lol). The older TU95 and TU16 are slow so they would a much easier prey. But as long they have fired their missiles they have full filled a part of their mission. The other part is survive- But as for their slowness they surely can be caught even by F18s...

F18 was slower, lower range and had only a one class lower radar system then the F14. Also less missiles. No comparison really - 2 different classes imho. You learn the hard way of the F18 speed and low fuel tanks... if you wanna escape AA missiles shot at you you better fire up the afterburner asap and get the hell out of there. Oftentimes you would escape the missile(s) but have burned so much jet fuel due to excessive AB use that you cannot get back to carrier. But lets hope the commanders knew of this and send enough tankers to the general area...

[Alpha77]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

All of the Soviet subs were found to have a "bark worse than their bite". But they did achieve one very effective result against the west. They caused a heck of a lot of people to lose sleep. [:D]

I was at the Luftwaffe land based in radar and also later for a short time in an AA unit (Imp. Hawk missiles - also some 20mm Rheinmetalls for close defense vs. paratroopers and helis). We mostly trained to get the missiles set up at any place asap. And in case position is known to enemy and might become a target leave and go to another place (which were apparently pre-planned and scouted beforehand)...Which means lots of loading, building up and down, connecting wires, setting up close defense positions, and measuring time, get faster next time etc. Their was a Nato contest for units in Europe who would be most proficient, which the fasted to get the system in action. IIRC we achieved a 3rd place once [:D] It was also called "tac eval" and together with "Nato alarm" were the top events to plan for. Otherwise it was quite easy going after basic training which sucked as for boredom and much to early getting up in the morning....when in the middle of the night they blew the Nato Alarm whistle you had to pack all your stuff in darkness and in a certain amount of time the company stands outside the block with all their stuff packed and ready to go (it was never told where we would go at all, as our Radar stuff wasnt mobile, it was one of the Nato chain stations called "crc" (command reaction center I believe).. but just for fun lol. Or this was the doomsday plan, as for the red side had already overrun the forward positions and we just needed to flee back west..

The weapons we had were a lesser variant of the standard BW stuff. Older G3s, MG3, Uzis etc. But only the old and light Panzerfaust, the better and newer ones ofc Panzergrenadiere would get. Guess if we really had to fight tanks at this place the war would have been in a quite bad state anyway. But there is always the danger if the front line breaks that such units like ours might be send as fire brigade to the front as cannonfodder.. we certainly lacked the training and weapons (no mortars, no newer AT weapons) to fight as heavy infantry vs. tanks or vs. a very determined infantry foe. But defending our position vs. lighter troops from eg. air landings and such that would have been possible I believe. It might be possible that the Belgians would send help, as their garrison was only 20km or so away. They had Leo1, lots of M113 and M109 howitzers, so a quite decent force. But guess in case of war they would be in their prepared defensive line for the Belgian corps and far away.
Here is info about that unit also with their barracks locations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Corps_%28Belgium%29

And you actually flew in patrol planes ?


So all I know about maritime stuff is only what I read or play ([:D]). However a game like Harpoon seems to model eg. radar capabilities quite well. Also ECM or ESM to a decree. There is newer game from Matrix for modern navy and air battles tho which seems to gather a huge fanbase.

About subs, I found that all Russian ones werent that bad boys, except for the mentioned Alfa, but the most dangerous one the Akula. It is said it was as good as the 688 class (the normal one, not the improved one probably). Guess their training wasnt as good as in the west tho. Not to forget Diesel ones (Kilo was the best one irrc)..

[Alpha77]

I am in writing mood it seems, so here is the MAIN problem I found in Harpoon with subs.... I mentioned above the class 206 Diesel subs. Which can be used very good in the Ostsee or near other coastal areas (eg. Denmark, Norway, West-Germany).. but as soon you fire torpedoes I was not able to escape detection. As the subs are slow you can not make a run for it. You only can dive as deep as possible and use the slowest speed to sneak away (the slower your speed the less noise). It rarely worked, the red side would send masses of helis and IL38 May planes after you. But they can not know in every case where the torpedo noise came from, ie the exact area where it was fired from. Depending on the sonar quality of the ships that pick the torpedo(s) up they may NOT know where it came from, they only can guess oftentimes. Also these ships may be concerned with their survival from the torp salvo then to find the exact position from where the torps came from. In the first place ! In the 2nd place if you survived the torps you can now think of finding and hunting down the sub. This seems not really good modelled in Harpoon - they can do all these tasks at once and seem to know the position where the torp(s) came from.-..

Not sure if this is realistic and maybe a flaw in the Harpoon engine. It makes such small quiet Diesel subs almost useless as offensive assets. Only for recon and detecting the enemy but not for fighting it, as it mostly means your own death. They should have more chances to sneak away and avoid the counter attack (which mostly comes by air). [:-]

Also with nuclear attack subs your chances seem to be more slim to survive than I would guess in reality. But you have one more option in nuclear subs - speed. You can try to run. I mostly used a combination of sneaking (run silent, run deep) to listen and faster runs to put distance between my sub and point where I fired torps or was detected... rarely worked. Only vs. bad opponents eg. vs. India or Iran/Iraq this would not be much a problem. But vs. the reds in the 80ties....mh.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

Without F14s in short you can be toast easily.... The A6 or A7 are more for bombing not interceptors. This leaves the F18s. These are really good, but I would prefer 1 F14 over 3 F18 depending on the threat level. The F14 was the ultimate LR interceptor I to this day not know a single aircraft that comes close. Eurofighter, SU30-33-35, Rafale are all super planes, but also they miss the range and endurance to stay on station for long duration. Ok, you have tanker planes for this, but these also must be protected and pose an operational risk on themselves.

I guess the F22 (although no carrier plane, right?) must come close or better but havent researched the newer US planes, only heard about many probs with the F35...

But maybe as their was no follow up class of planes to the F14 my view is wrong?

Edit: When I write F18 was really good, it had some drawback. Only 2 MR sparrow missiles, plus 4 sidewinders. The F18 4 Sparrow and 4 Sidewinder. Or 6 Phoenix and 2 Sidewinder. Sidewinder are useless to catch TU22 bombers, they will fire their missiles and fly back asap on Afterburner to base, let the missiles do the rest. Only careless T22 pilots will come into range of a sidewinder (or suicidal ones lol). The older TU95 and TU16 are slow so they would a much easier prey. But as long they have fired their missiles they have full filled a part of their mission. The other part is survive- But as for their slowness they surely can be caught even by F18s...

F18 was slower, lower range and had only a one class lower radar system then the F14. Also less missiles. No comparison really - 2 different classes imho. You learn the hard way of the F18 speed and low fuel tanks... if you wanna escape AA missiles shot at you you better fire up the afterburner asap and get the hell out of there. Oftentimes you would escape the missile(s) but have burned so much jet fuel due to excessive AB use that you cannot get back to carrier. But lets hope the commanders knew of this and send enough tankers to the general area...

Usually CV air defense worked something like this 1st line was the Tomcats , they did long range defense , then Aegis did long range to medium missile defense , then the F-18's took over to just outside of the CVBG's organic air defense , using seasparrows, CWIS and any attached defense (like British Sea Dart , Sea Wolf , RAM , or what ever the attached NATO warships were carrying. Between the E-2 flying as AWACs and the Aegis ships (which could control pretty much everybody's missile) , it was hard for even a leaker to get through. ASW was handled at long range by MPA aircraft like P-3's , Nimrods , or Atlantics. Also present were FFG's on outlying picket duty. And of course their Sea Sprite and later Seahawk helos' Medium range ASW was covered by S-3's . And close it ASW was handled by escorts (CG's, DD's and FF's ) as well as ASW aircraft off both the CV (HS squadrons) and the escorts (HSL detactments). Then of course their were generally SSN's that would operate where ever they were need (or wanted).

The F-14 was built as a "Fleet defender". The F/A-18 was originally the F-17 which lost to the F-16 as the USAF's light weight fighter. The USMC , which was to receive the F-14 , was unhappy as the Tomcat was "too-much" plane for the job they wanted. The wanted a simpler , cheaper "mud mover" that could give a fair account of it'self in a dog fight. Hence the F/A 18. Short legs have always been that aircraft's bane , even the Super Hornets don't have the Tomcat's endurance , let alone it's RADAR or the Phoenix long range missile.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

ORI
Now about non-magnetic subs. There have been such beasts , but they are very expensive , both to build and maintain. The Soviet Navy had their Alfa and Mike class subs made of titanium. The soviets referred to the Alfa's as "golden fish" as one boat used up almost their entire years production to build just one boat (and a great deal of that years Naval budget).

Thanksfor the info, seems some of my info was wrong.

However the Alfa class sub awakes bad memories from some Harpoon scenarios I played It was impossible to kill. Would outrun any torp I fired at it [:D] This was a hypothetic pacific scenario...guess you know the Harpoon stuff yourself if you are into this technology etc. The Alfa was the fasted sub ever built iirc. Yes noisy but even if detected it can harm you because if the torpedos you fire are slower than the target lol. Guess good old fashioned weaponry would work better to sink such a beast (eg. Hedgehog)

The Alfa had the noisiest submarine signature that I've ever seen. And that includes WW2 Gato boats used by south American navies.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

I am in writing mood it seems, so here is the MAIN problem I found in Harpoon with subs.... I mentioned above the class 206 Diesel subs. Which can be used very good in the Ostsee or near other coastal areas (eg. Denmark, Norway, West-Germany).. but as soon you fire torpedoes I was not able to escape detection. As the subs are slow you can not make a run for it. You only can dive as deep as possible and use the slowest speed to sneak away (the slower your speed the less noise). It rarely worked, the red side would send masses of helis and IL38 May planes after you. But they can not know in every case where the torpedo noise came from, ie the exact area where it was fired from. Depending on the sonar quality of the ships that pick the torpedo(s) up they may NOT know where it came from, they only can guess oftentimes. Also these ships may be concerned with their survival from the torp salvo then to find the exact position from where the torps came from. In the first place ! In the 2nd place if you survived the torps you can now think of finding and hunting down the sub. This seems not really good modelled in Harpoon - they can do all these tasks at once and seem to know the position where the torp(s) came from.-..

Not sure if this is realistic and maybe a flaw in the Harpoon engine. It makes such small quiet Diesel subs almost useless as offensive assets. Only for recon and detecting the enemy but not for fighting it, as it mostly means your own death. They should have more chances to sneak away and avoid the counter attack (which mostly comes by air). [:-]

Also with nuclear attack subs your chances seem to be more slim to survive than I would guess in reality. But you have one more option in nuclear subs - speed. You can try to run. I mostly used a combination of sneaking (run silent, run deep) to listen and faster runs to put distance between my sub and point where I fired torps or was detected... rarely worked. Only vs. bad opponents eg. vs. India or Iran/Iraq this would not be much a problem. But vs. the reds in the 80ties....mh.

The 206 , and later 209 , are amazing little boats. They have a very small passive signature. But that doesn't matter in coastal waters , against surface ships , or with Helo's or even MPA aircraft IF they are using active SONAR. Even a poor SONAR in a small space pretty much makes the water transparent. And Soviet surface ASW usually used a tactic called "mobbing". It consists of putting everything you have into a small area , pinging the hell out of it, then bombarding it with pretty much everything you've got. Not very economical . very little finesse , but extremely effective. [:)]