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This scenario seemed fairly straightforward. The first lesson I learnt was that there is absolutely no point in relying on passive sensors if the enemy has located you. After taking a couple of hits from the Orion - very embarrassing - I had to re-boot and start again from square 1! There were no unpleasant surprises after that. Profiting from my experience of being on the receiving end of that Udaloy/Chopper combo in Tutorial 2, I kept my distance and sent my Neartip armed helicopter in to sort out the submarine, which it did in very short order. The land bombardments presented absolutely no problems at all. The Nanuchka caused a couple of problems - entirely of my own making - which ceased to be an issue once I had got the manual over-ride sussed out. Once this had been done, I started to have more success. The first tactic I attempted was to take it out with the Hellfire armed chopper. This succeeded, but usually cost me the chopper! To be told that my performance was 'a triumph' at the end, when one of my helicopters had been blown away didn't quite ring true... So it was back to the drawing-board again. Finding out how to re-arm the Neartip armed chopper with Hellfire was a real bonus, however more was needed, because the AAW capability of the enemy was too good. An ASuW missile or two would have been the ideal solution, but none were loaded, so I closed until I was able to use gunfire... THEN I sent the Hellfire armed choppers in to finish the job, which they did in very short order. Onwards and upwards then, but first would any of you naval types out there like to tell me what I did wrong and what I should have done?

Pongo.

Hi Pongo.

Just tried this and this is how I did it.

The Orion along with its missiles was easily taken care of with full emissions from radars and jammers. As you found out yourself, no reason in hiding when you have already been found[:)]

While I was shooting at the Orion I detected the sub and decided to dispatch it with a VL Asroc instead of the helo. I know this was the point of the tutorial, but I was already reloading it with hellfires.
Please note. In ANY other scen where I don´t know the exact asw threat, I would never reload the asw helo. I only did this because I already knew there was only one sub.

As soon as the air engagement was over, I went total emcon and shut down all emitting sensors to hide from the Nanuchka´s ESM sensors.

The ground attack was no problem.

I then launched the hellfire armed helo to search for the target. When I detected it and closed enough for ID, I descended to 18m altitude (The minimum launch altitude for the Hellfire).
This well below the minimum target altitude for the SA-N-4a Gecko arming the Nanuchka (Again. The DB viever is your friend. Study your enemy[:D])

Before approaching the Nanuchka, I disabled auto evasion for the helo to prevent it from dodging the missiles fired at it.
This is generally not a good idea, but knowing that the helo was below minimum altitude from the SA-N-4a this is pretty safe.

As soon as the helo was within range, I slowed to loiter speed to maintain maximum distance to target, and launched all four missiles.
While the Nanuchka fired four missiles at my helo, all missed with a PoH of 1%, because of the low altitude, and all four Hellfires hit their target severely damaging the Nanuchka.

Since the helo decided to stand down when it landed because it was dusk and the loadout was day only, I decided to finish the Nanuchka of with ESSM´s.
This was not really necessary as the Nanuchka would have sunk anyway but why not.

So I set the ASuW WRA "use SAM in ASuW mode" to yes, and closed the distance and finished off the Nanuchka with a pair of ESSM´s.


Basically I did it the same way as you, except for engaging the Nanuchka.
I suspect that you approached it with your helo from high altitude making it a lot easier for the Nanuchka to shoot it down.

Remember to study your enemy and expoit his weaknesses, in this case the minimum target altitude of his SAM´s.
Four hellfire hits should be enough to damage the Nanuchka so much that it will sink because of uncontrollable fires or flooding in short time, so you don´t really need a second hellfire strike.
Just because you don´t sink a target outright, it might very well sink later because of damage sustained in the attack. Just like in real life. This also simulated in this great game[8D]

About closing to gunrange. In an Arleighburke class DDG, this is pretty safe because of it´s SAM defence, but in a less well defended unit, I would be careful with doing that, as it carries six ASM that can really ruin your day. Use your longer range weapons in this case the ESSM.

Otherwise, you are doing great. You are learning from your mistakes and trying new tactics if the first didn´t work. The exact same reason why I´m playing playing this game (and have been playing similar games since the mid 90´s)[:D]. You can always learn something new.

Hope this was useful, and enjoy your next scen.

Søren

Thank you so much for this Soren. Your reply was incredibly helpful particularly as it covered a lot of stuff I didn't know about. Now, I have to run the scenario again!!!

Pongo.

One thing I've noticed is that ESM is not very helpful for surface combatants when dealing with other surface threats. I have nearly never seen a circumstance where a ship picked up another radiating ship via ESM where it wasn't already itself detected by the active emitter. Non-radiating EMCON is useful if you have an off-board aircraft or the like as it keeps your units from being located/typed by enemy ESM but that's about it.

Thanks Primarchx. Soren, where does the database viewer state the minimum target altitude of the Nanuchka's SAMS? As an aside, a single Nanuchka would not seem much of a threat to something like an Arleigh Burke, however I very much doubt they operate alone!

Pongo.

Pongo, in Database Viewer find Nanuchka's SAM (SA-N-4a Gecko). Then switch to Weapons -> find "SA-N-4a" and in "Targed altitute" are described SAM min and max height limits.

Got it! Many thanks.

Pongo