what exactly do the special actions in "Salvo" do?

[Tool3333]

The THAAD, AEW return, and find CV ones are self-explanatory, but I don't know what exactly happens with the two special actions related to disrupting the US ship communications and satellites? Does it completely make the US forces- including the Carrier- blind to Chinese attacks for a period of time? Any explanations on how these special actions work would be appreciated.

[Nikel]

Drop US and Japanese surface combatants from battle network.

The units affected become out of comms, extracted from the manual:

The most obvious effect is that the unit is no longer under your positive control. You no longer know where it is currently located (you only know where it was when it last checked-in, and if any of your other still-connected
assets manages to make contact with it, this “last datum” is updated). You don’t know what it is doing, what its fuel, weapons or damage status is. You don’t know if it is peacefully loitering with not a care in the world or if it
is fighting for its life. You will know its fate with certainty only when it comes back to its base – or is destroyed first.

For its part, the cut-off unit loses all the benefits of the common side-wide operational picture; its situational awareness now reaches out just to the limit of its own sensors and no further. It has no idea what is going on
“out there”. It can still detect, investigate and prosecute contacts on its own and proceed with its assigned mission if it has one, but all the benefits of mutual support are gone. Cooperatively patrolling a large area to
split up areas? Nope. Efficient fire coordination? (“You shoot bandit #1 and I’ll take #2”) Forget about it. Even worse, it now has to be really careful with anything that shows up on the scope. Is that new contact a friendly
or an enemy? You’d better hope its RoE and doctrine settings take such a situation into account – or prepare for blue-on-blues!

Units that lose their comms connectivity retain local copies of the contacts that were available to them before they went offline; essentially, they inherit a snapshot of their parent side’s theater picture at the moment of their
breakaway. However, without the benefit of information exchange with their parent network, this snapshot immediately starts to lose its currency and most of the contacts will soon vanish unless refreshed by the unit’s
own sensors. (It’s like walking down a busy street, taking a last look around and closing your eyes. The longer you remain blind, the less relevant & useful your last memory will become.)

Units that manage to get through their “isolation” and re-join their side comms network share their contact information. You can use this to model things like film-return satellites (the Russians still use them!), a
submarine sharing its intelligence take after rejoining its battlegroup etc. If the parent side already has these contacts, the updated information (including BDA – very handy!) is merged and used to refine the contact
information.

As mentioned, the player has no control over his “disconnected” units. However, playing out a scenario in ScenEdit mode (which is essentially “cheating” but also very useful for analysis) affords an additional ability: To
literally jump into the cockpit/CIC of the isolated unit and experience its “loneliness” first -hand (Editor –> Isolated POV view). This is an excellent way to understand how a comms-isolated unit perceives its
environment and reacts to it (which is usually quite different from when it operates as part of an integrated network). Quickly switching between “side-wide common picture” and “isolated POV view” can be a real eye-opener
as to the value of a well-connected battle force and the hazards and challenges of “comms off”. It is simple enough to say “we’ll not transmit so the bad guys cannot sniff us out”. But how well can you really fight in the dark?

Disruptive attack on communications between US and it's satellites for an unknown period of time

The sats affected change side to neutral.

Neutral: Sides will not fire on each other and do not share sensor information.

[fitzpatv]

What I don't like about this feature is that it makes no allowance for initiative on the part of the isolated unit, which proceeds to behave stupidly or even suicidally in most cases. Granted, some players would role-play this honestly if allowed to continue controlling the unit, while others wouldn't.

It also makes isolated units remarkably hard for their own side to spot, whether with the Mk 1 Eyeball or even radar. Who needs stealth technology? - only it works in reverse in this case.

Frankly, I wish the feature had never been introduced.