SeaQueen
Posts: 1451
Joined: 4/14/2007
From: Washington D.C.
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MarechalJoffre
Is it me or are submarines a bit too underpowered in CMO? Or maybe ASW assets are too powerful?
Ugh... this is a really super complicated question. I'm going to try to answer it simply. The bottom-line up front is this:
It depends.
There are definitely things the CMO/CMANO gets wrong. I could enumerate them for you some time if you're interested, but it would get into a lot of engineering and oceanography. There are definitely things they could do things to improve the sonar model. The problem is that without corresponding improvements to the database information, I don't think that improved representation of sonar phenomenology would necessarily correspond to an improved ASW model overall. Almost all the database values are probably wonky. That's okay though, because there exists no opened-source data on any of these platforms. Actual sonar target strengths and passive source levels are classified, just like rcs data in the real world. You can sometimes guestimate it from basic physics, but these are likely to be very rough, and based on massive assumptions about everything from materials and internal structure to arguments by analogy (X is sort of like a Y, so we'll say they're equivalent and call it a day). They're quite rough.
The stories you hear in opened source about submarines being detected at whatever range are also completely useless for determining the sonar equation parameters necessary to actually model a given platform accurately. If they were useful for that purpose, they would be classified. Actually measuring those values requires a very detailed understanding of both the systems and oceanographic properties of the water column. Those are values to which the developers are not privy.
The other problem is that the ocean environment, and the sonar performance that goes with it, are highly variable. When you ask, "Can submarine X really be detected at range R?" the real answer is, that for all values of X and R, "Yes, sometimes." For the right conditions, you can probably get that detection range. Are those conditions modeled in CMO/CMANO? Sometimes... In the real world, every day sonar technicians on a ship or submarine will estimate the "range of the day," for that sonar against some target of interest. They usually do that based on a figure of merit (FOM). The problem with that is, the FOM gives you the median detection range. That means you've got even odds of detecting the target of interest both further away than the FOM suggests and closer, possibly much closer. Even then, that range of the day is a very very rough estimate. Because the ocean is a highly variable dynamic environment, by the time they arrive at that number it's probably already obsolete.
So are submarines underpowered? I don't have a cut and dry answer for that. It depends. Similarly, are ASW assets overpowered? There isn't really one answer for that either. I can say that historically, aircraft have been the absolute biggest killer of submarines. The issue has to do with what's called, "search rate." That they have a lot of sensors and can cover a lot of ground quickly. They can track and kill submarines and there's not a lot the submarines can do about it, besides either run or hide. Against aircraft, submarines are pretty decisively at a disadvantage.
There's another dimension to the ASW assets being overpowered. In commercial scenarios, people tend to pile everything on top of everything else in scenarios. This can be fun because everything happens very quickly, but in the case of ASW this screws everything up. A huge factor in ASW is space. A lot of what makes things stealthy is being a pinhead sized target in a relatively large space to hide in. It doesn't mean they CAN'T find you, but to do it they'll have to devote the effort. If the spatial extent of the scenario is too small, yeah, submarines are going to be found quickly and destroyed. The ocean is vast. There's a lot of space from which a submarine attack can originate. If you're only using a fraction of the space available, then you're not giving the submarines enough credit.
There's another problem. Scenario designers need to add in false targets, and they need to add in BELIEVABLE false targets that an experienced player isn't going to immediately recognize as a false target based on its behavior and immediately reallocate the ASW resource to the more credible threat. That means they have to move like a real target. They should also vastly outnumber the real targets. If I see 3 targets on my scope, I should know that most of them are probably false targets. If I spend time prosecuting them and drop my two torpedoes on them, I now need to send the helo back to be rearmed and refueled. That's time I can't use the helo to prosecute the real target that might be out there (possibly undetected).
Anyhow... I hope this helps answer your question.
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