Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

I keep seeing questionable weapon platforms coming into service. Does nobody know their history in the Pentagon anymore?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

quote:

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

quote:

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

The Wikipedia article says the operational altitude of the P-8 is too high for MAD. Even though the P-8 is Navy, I should think the CVNs should have some ASW aircraft of their own.

Yes , we'll never need MAD again. Just like in the 1960's it was decided that we'll never need to dogfight again. Yes, after ww1 we'll never need the bayonet again. Cruisers don't need torpedoes , we'll only fight long range daylight gun battles in the future. Escort fighters? What for? You know the bomber will always get through! Funny how those who say "the military doesn't need" are never the same people who have to go out and fight wars!. Yes I've prosecuted submarines from 20k feet. And if you are going against nuclear submarines in blue waters sometimes it even works. But did anyone notice that the majority of submarines in the world today are not big , fat nuclear steam kettels? But quite , small , diesel or AIP submarines? That's the problem with saying , "we'll never need"...the opposition looks at your strategy and says "HEY!" , "guess how you beat them? Do what they say they'll never need".

I'm not saying that MAD is absolutely "mission essential" , but I am saying is the more tools you steal from the carpenter's tool box, the lousier job the carpenter can do , as he can't do various jobs or deal with diverse problem. Soon all the carpenter's box will have in it is a hammer, and he'd damned well better pray that every adversary is a nail.

They are supposedly developing MAD-equipped UAV to work with P-8 to address the lack of MAD.

http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2015/01/bae-subhunting-drone.html

quote:

ORIGINAL: Skyland

quote:

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
But "when they say" never again will we need this or that , they are usually trying to sell something. In this case , a converted 737 that's low level performance exceeds dismal. When your plane sucks at low level , you tell everybody "you don't need low level any more".

I fully agree.
I am afraid that situation is similar for KC-46 tanker. A330 MRTT is much better but the choice had to be Boeing in any case.

quote:

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

Especially since BOTH share exactly the same flaws.

Fair or not. Please note..this isn't MY judgement , but merely an attempt to provide a perspective.

quote:

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).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

quote:

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 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)

quote:

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.

quote:

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.

quote:

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.

quote:

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...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

quote:

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 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)

quote:

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.