outmaneuvering SAMs

[VictorInThePacific]

I am going to propose a tactic that I have not seen discussed in any of these forums.

I came across it by accident and think that it can be one more tool in the attacker's arsenal.

It is always true that the side that brings more stuff to the party has an advantage. It is also true that the side that puts their stuff in better locations has an advantage. In other words, while firepower is important, maneuver is also important and is often neglected.

Crewed units in Harpoon pursue enemy units in such a way that they head to where the enemy units are going to be, but missiles head to where the enemy units are right now. This is known as "pure pursuit" (ref. http://www.flightsimbooks.com/f19stealt ... Curves.php). See Fig. 1.



Suppose that you (BLUE) are attacking a RED surface group composed of multiple ships with airplanes. Due to the high speed of the airplanes, you will be able to position them anywhere you want prior to launching missiles. This tactic applies to those cases where the target ship is defended by area defense SAMs from a different ship. It is most useful when your anti-ship missiles are faster than the SAMs, but would also be applicable to cases when they have comparable speeds. It would not be relevant if the SAMs are significantly faster than your missiles.

If you attack from a direction such that the SAMs will approach your missiles directly from the front or nearly so, they will always get a "shot", although the hit probability may be less than one. But if you attack from a direction such that the SAMs will approach your missiles from the flank (90 degrees or thereabouts), then the SAMs may never get to where your missiles are, so they never even get to attempt a "shot", which is to say that you have defeated the SAMs by maneuver. (By "shot" here I am referring to what SAMs do in the last moments of an intercept, whether it be a direct impact, or an explosion within a certain distance of the target.)

I have seen this work occasionally in Harpoon, but it isn't very easy to set up, and if it is, there is probably a different tactical weakness in the surface group that is easier to exploit. Nevertheless, people may want to try it. It may also be applicable to other types of situations, such as airplanes outmaneuvering SAMs. See for example, my 11/11/08 comment in Stalintc's AAR ("air attack on 7 ship SAG" from 11/28/07).

[mack2]

I'm not 100% sure this is similar to what's described above, but I find that in certain scenarios, Mig-25R Foxbat are a good way to attrite missile defences, by flying tangentally to the enemy group, at high speed and high altitudes. It's sometimes one of the few ways the lower tech nations (especially in the med and mid east oobs) can disrupt air or cap defence. It seems a little "gamey" to me, but when your air fleets consist of mostly Fishbed and Floggers, you need to do whatever you can to help.

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: mack2
I'm not 100% sure this is similar to what's described above, but I find that in certain scenarios, Mig-25R Foxbat are a good way to attrite missile defences, by flying tangentally to the enemy group, at high speed and high altitudes. It's sometimes one of the few ways the lower tech nations (especially in the med and mid east oobs) can disrupt air or cap defence. It seems a little "gamey" to me, but when your air fleets consist of mostly Fishbed and Floggers, you need to do whatever you can to help.

Yes, you always could 'trick' the AI into wasting its missile supply by shooting at you from outside the "no escape" zone. Also, modeling the true kinematics of missiles is not something that HCE does terribly well, i.e. varying missile ranges in tail chase, head on, crossing target, and so on.

VitP, you should be applying your math skills to something useful (not that your discussion of outmaneuvering SAMs wasn't interesting), such as: What exact combination of anti-ship missiles, ARMs, jamming, and/or decoys is needed to defeat a modern day Aegis protected naval group? When do you need to shoot each weapon type? At what range? IMHO, of course. [;)]

[VictorInThePacific]

ORIGINAL: mack2

I'm not 100% sure this is similar to what's described above, but I find that in certain scenarios, Mig-25R Foxbat are a good way to attrit missile defences, by flying tangentially to the enemy group, at high speed and high altitudes. It's sometimes one of the few ways the lower tech nations (especially in the med and mid east oobs) can disrupt air or cap defence. It seems a little "gamey" to me, but when your air fleets consist of mostly Fishbed and Floggers, you need to do whatever you can to help.

Shades of the Little Bighorn!

Actually, I would not have thought of doing this with a fighter, but earlier I have definitely proposed doing this with an attack aircraft carrying missiles having somewhat shorter range than the SAMs. As the attack aircraft flies the chord of the circle, it is really seeking to get to a "safe" launch position rather than trying to get the ship to waste SAMs. If the ship shoots, the aircraft turns away. If the ship doesn't shoot, the aircraft turns in and launches missiles. So instead of flying straight in (a one-dimensional maneuver), which results in lost aircraft, you use a 2-dimensional maneuver to convert your short-range missiles into stand-off weapons.

I repeat, shades of the Little Bighorn! Different era, same (or at least similar) tactical concept.

But is this exploiting weaknesses in the game, or is it legitimate?

Harpoon clearly is not designed to function on this scale, and we can certainly find odd or wrong behaviour in places where the simulation cannot go. Some of it we call bugs. But exploiting some of these things should be considered sleazy tactics.

Personally, I think the commander should have better control over SAMs. I could list numerous examples of where the SAM shooting routines do things that I consider unacceptable, and harmful to my situation. It would not be unfair of me to then use my sleazy tactics as compensation, but I probably won't. In this particular case, the SAM should probably not be shooting at something that presents little risk to the ship (the fighter, but does the ship really know what the plane is carrying ?). But in real life, we know that SAMs do tend to shoot down things they oughtn't to. So is the simulation wrong?

Finally, there is clear precedent of airplanes dueling with SAMs. Read, for example, Stephen Coonts' account of the Iron Hand missions in "Flight of the Intruder". I am sure that people reading this are aware of many other accounts of the process.

[hermanhum]

ORIGINAL: VictorInThePacific

Finally, there is clear precedent of airplanes dueling with SAMs. Read, for example, Stephen Coonts' account of the Iron Hand missions in "Flight of the Intruder". I am sure that people reading this are aware of many other accounts of the process.

Yup. That's a great book. "On Yankee Station", by Barrett Tillman, is another. Both talk about the guts of the original SAM hunters / Iron Hands who had to coax the enemy into firing first. I think it's a legitimate tactic to use your speed to try and get the enemy to waste his missiles.

[VictorInThePacific]

ORIGINAL: CV32

VitP, you should be applying your math skills to something useful

Actually, I have a secret agenda, which is to promote the concept of players seeking out, investigating, and refining more detailed small-scale tactical procedures than appear to be currently in use. I also recommend that players put more effort into ensuring that ALL their aircraft get home, even if it's not directly a part of the victory conditions. I am sure that the real pilots et al spend considerable amounts of time trying to find ways of pushing the envelopes of their aircraft so that they can destroy the target while maximizing their chance of returning home.

(not that your discussion of outmaneuvering SAMs wasn't interesting), such as: What exact combination of anti-ship missiles, ARMs, jamming, and/or decoys is needed to defeat a modern day Aegis protected naval group? When do you need to shoot each weapon type? At what range? IMHO, of course. [;)]

Now that is a very interesting and, I agree, useful, problem to work on. I have already made some posts along this line. Unfortunately, most of them apply to a rules set and unit characteristics that are no longer current.

Here is the general approach which would be specific to an 80's Soviet SAG.

1) The Grumble is so capable that you cannot outmaneuver it. Bring enough cheap weapons to the party that you can absorb them all. Cheap because none of your weapons will get through. About one for every 2 Grumbles is needed. My guess is that decoys are the weapon of choice in this phase. I have little data about decoys. They may even be more expensive than "real" missiles.

2) Rock, paper, scissors. Figure out what the target has and what is the best available weapon to defeat that target. In particular, can it shoot at sea-skimmers? If not, DO NOT shoot a lot of missiles at such a ship. You will be able to kill this ship (and all the SAMs it carries), with, on a good day, as little as one Harpoon. If a ship is good against slow sea-skimmers, use ARMs. That sort of thing.

I have no data on electronics and am unable to make any sort of meaningful statements about this beyond that I am aware of the fact that it is significant in Harpoon.

By "modern day" do you mean 2010? or 1980?

Most likely I would already have done something like what you are suggesting, except that, as mentioned above, I need data that I just don't have.

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: VictorInThePacific
Actually, I have a secret agenda, which is to promote the concept of players seeking out, investigating, and refining more detailed small-scale tactical procedures than appear to be currently in use.

I'm sorry if I touched a nerve, it wasn't my intention. Your "agenda" isn't very secret, btw. [:'(] You obviously enjoy analyzing the krap out of game mechanics, and I can appreciate that. [:)] I do wonder, though, how you determined what tactics are "currently in use"?

Btw, as several people have noted in this thread (yourself included), enticing SAMs to shoot at you has been a tactic since about the same time as SAMs. [8D] Another point, SAM guidance techniques attempted to overcome the pursuit problem with a thing called "proportional navigation".

By "modern day" do you mean 2010? or 1980?

Well, Aegis entered service with the first Ticonderoga guided missile cruisers in the early 1980s. The basic concept hasn't changed much since then.

... I need data that I just don't have.

Bummer. [:(]

[VictorInThePacific]

ORIGINAL: CV32

I'm sorry if I touched a nerve, it wasn't my intention.

No, no. I have no nerves.

I do wonder, though, how you determined what tactics are "currently in use"?

Probably I am being unfair with this statement. But, for example with the AARs, the descriptions tend to be of the nature "I brought these forces to the location of the enemy and pasted them" rather than "I brought these forces to the location of the enemy, then I moved them around at that particular location in these particular ways and pasted the enemy". That could very be just me not reading very carefully, or it could be just people not providing all the details of what they actually did.

... I need data that I just don't have.

Bummer. [:(]

Well, it may not be as bad as all that.

With the electronics, the information as to what exactly the game does may simply not be available. But I am guessing that the main effect of ECM, once you actually have the target on screen, is to reduce the hit probability of the incoming weapon. Since this would occur fairly late in the calculation process, approximate answers might be available.

There are also things that look like weapons that some ships carry (chaff, flare, etc.), which I have never had the opportunity to use. I guess that when AS missiles approach your ship, you can fire these things at the missiles in order to get a soft kill, and that would need to be taken into account as well. Or perhaps these things are treated as SAMs, i.e. the human can never control them. Now in principle, I would be able to investigate how these things work using the game, or perhaps someone can explain it.

Some data is available on weapons systems directly from the game. In particular, ranges can be obtained fairly easily. Speeds can be obtained by launching the weapons, although it would be nice if there was documentation. Rate of fire is needed as well. In principle, this could be obtained from the game, but there are enough anomalies that I don't have confidence in this information. For example, in USNI 1, "No Man's Land", as RED, I fired some missiles past an Oslo FF. This ship can engage one target with its Sea Sparrows (is that related to the fire rate ?), but it pumped out 8 of them in one instant. Perhaps what is meant is that the Sea Sparrows can be fired at only one group of missiles per SAM launch cycle. Altitudes at which missiles function are also important, and that could be obtained with some difficulty from the game, but documentation such as existed for Harpoon Classic would make it a lot easier. Finally, hit probabilities are available from the game, but I suspect that there are % modifiers, although I don't know what they are.

If anyone could point me to existing documentation that covers some of the holes mentioned, I would appreciate it.

[TonyE]

Logging the effects of Escort and Direct jamming (not the reduction in PH, the affect on radar systems). VitP, sorry it doesn't apply to you until you can run HCE but maybe others will find it useful (this only works in the betas but will work in the next patch).

http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.ph ... st&p=11213

Example log snippet

Code: Select all

 102521 search.c:1304 - ECM Emitter=Shirane, Target=A-50U Mainstay, ECM=Tu-16P Badger J
 102521 search.c:961 - 	Unit Tu-16P Badger J, lngECMRange = 600
 102521 search.c:1244 - 	ECM Escort ECM=0, ECMTmp=0, ECMTmpE=56, RadRng=240, JamRng=60, JamRadRng=188, TarRadRng=188, JamTarRng=0
 102521 search.c:1291 - ECM ECMRadRng=188, ECMTarRng=0, ECMTarRngTmp=0, RadTarRng=188, ECMRng=60, RadRng=240, Rng50=28, ECM=46, ECMTmp=0, ECMTmpE=56
 

The first line says Shirane is the radar to Jam, A-50U is what the Shirane is trying to detect, and Tu-16P is the jammer in play.

The second line tells us about the jammer lngECMRange is saying the range as listed in the DB of the jammer is 60.0nm. We use that more as a power number than an exact range.

Third line... ECMTmp=0 means we aren't in a position to do direct jamming (reducing the Shirane's radar range against every target). ECMTmpE=56 means we can do escort jamming (reduce the Shirane's radar range against the A-50) and that it can reduce radar range by 56%. RadRng is the Shirane's radar range, JamRng again is the Tu-16 jammer power, JamRadRng is the range from Tu-16 to Shirane, TarRadRng is the range from A-50 to Shirane, JamTarRng is the range from Tu-16 to A-50.

Fourth line... In this case we're seeing more information about the direct jamming case. The Tu-16 would have to be within Rng50 (28nm) of the Shirane to do direct jamming that would reduce the Shirane's radar range by 50%. We see that the Tu-16 however is 188nm from Shirane so there is no need to even bother.

The key in the example is the ECMTarRng, the two aircraft are in the same group allowing the Tu-16 to shield the A-50 quite well. It doesn't have to be in the same group to work but the closer the better in the escort jamming situation.

[VictorInThePacific]

What exact combination of anti-ship missiles, ARMs, jamming, and/or decoys is needed to defeat a modern day Aegis protected naval group?

Brad, is this a semi-serious request or a serious one? In other words, are you saying that this would be nice to know, or that you really want to see a detailed analysis? In the second case, I will start a new thread with this topic and do the calculations.

[FransKoenz]

semi-serious?[:D]

First the HARM, then at least a dozen ASM, perhaps you are lucky [of course within Harpoon environment]. A torpedo would work better. Anyway......

I'm looking forward to your analyse and new thread.

Cheers,
Taitennek

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: VictorInThePacific

What exact combination of anti-ship missiles, ARMs, jamming, and/or decoys is needed to defeat a modern day Aegis protected naval group?

Brad, is this a semi-serious request or a serious one? In other words, are you saying that this would be nice to know, or that you really want to see a detailed analysis? In the second case, I will start a new thread with this topic and do the calculations.

Totally serious. [:)]

[TonyE]

ORIGINAL: VictorInThePacific

What exact combination of anti-ship missiles, ARMs, jamming, and/or decoys is needed to defeat a modern day Aegis protected naval group?

Brad, is this a semi-serious request or a serious one? In other words, are you saying that this would be nice to know, or that you really want to see a detailed analysis? In the second case, I will start a new thread with this topic and do the calculations.

I must admit I'd like to see the development and analysis of the most efficient attack in the game to accomplish that goal of defeating the Aegis protected naval group.

[erichswafford]

Modern AAMs, ASMs and SAMs do not use pure pursuit unless they're homing passively.

Maj. Erich Swafford USAF 82TRW

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: kondor999
Modern AAMs, ASMs and SAMs do not use pure pursuit unless they're homing passively.

Yes, and even some modern passive IR homing missiles no longer rely on pure pursuit.

[erichswafford]

ORIGINAL: CV32

ORIGINAL: kondor999
Modern AAMs, ASMs and SAMs do not use pure pursuit unless they're homing passively.

Yes, and even some modern passive IR homing missiles no longer rely on pure pursuit.

You ain't supposed to know that

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: kondor999
You ain't supposed to know that

Oops. (Sound of black helicopters approaching). [:D]

[erichswafford]

Heh...actually the public domain stuff often has better analysis.

OT alert - does anyone else wonder if the 80's Soviet ASM's would have hit anything?  I'm talking Kh-22m and KSR-5 here (aka AS-4 and AS-6).  Just wondering, since they seem hellishly accurate, and it seems like Russian hardware looks great right up until someone tries to use it .  What little data we've got about the combat performace of their systems isn't all that great.  Seems like they did well at first, but eventually their lack of good computer hardware really handicapped them.

Case in point - their newest chopper (KA-50) uses an off-the-shelf 486DX2 processor.  And this is 2009.  Can you imagine what they had in an AS-6?!

Anyway, just curious.  This is Naval stuff about which I know diddly-squat...

[CV32]

ORIGINAL: kondor999
OT alert - does anyone else wonder if the 80's Soviet ASM's would have hit anything?  I'm talking Kh-22m and KSR-5 here (aka AS-4 and AS-6).  Just wondering, since they seem hellishly accurate, and it seems like Russian hardware looks great right up until someone tries to use it .  What little data we've got about the combat performace of their systems isn't all that great.  Seems like they did well at first, but eventually their lack of good computer hardware really handicapped them.

Who knows? The open source data and Harpoon do assign some pretty impressive (i.e. scary) performance figures to weapons like the AS-4 and AS-6. Of course, the same could be said about Western weaponry at times. The example comes to mind of the AGM-88 HARM, broadly considered a pretty impressive piece of kit, but the USAF (reportedly) launched some 100 or more of them at a single emitter during the 1999 Kosovo conflict without knocking it out.

[erichswafford]

Check out my new posting on ASM effectiveness.  I'll post more as I read thru the book.  I understand the Kh-22m and KSR-5 were significantly more advanced than what I've described in the posting.