USSR and US ASM and missile defense effectiveness question.

[Magnus]

I was fiddling around with the editor. On one end, I pitted a USSR SAG against 8 B-52, each with 12 Harpoons, so 96 missiles.

The SAG was the Kirov, a Kiev, a Kara 2, a Slava, a Sovremenny and an Udaloy.

Get between 3-10 hits out of 96 missiles, depending on my attack tactic.
If the doctrine said 1 hit out 8 missiles fired I guess it's fairly reasonable to get the results I get. Especially given that I am not a trained naval officer :)

Now when I turn the tables and let the USSR attack a US CVBG (the stock one in the editor) with a flight of 12 TU-22s, each carrying 3 AS-4 (36 missiles), it's a massacre. Every single ship is hit and sunk, I tried it 6-7 times and it ends the same way.

I first added 2 more Ticonderogas to the CVBG, no change. Then added another 2, still mayhem.
I then proceeded to add a separate screening group of 4 Ticonderogas. End result is the same, wholesale slaughter.

Is this the norm or am I making some mistakes due to my own ignorance. I am not really trying to design a scenario. Just, like I said, fiddling around.

In the old Harpoon computer games and in the Command games you could and can use F-14s on CAP to help intercepting the Soviet missiles. In Sea Power the F-14s on CAP will not accept them as valid targets and will happily loiter around the TF letting the missiles speed past. This does give me a nice panoramic view of the ensuing mayhem below but does nothing to help prevent it :)

I am feeling that a mere 12 TU-22s should be something a US CVBG should have been equipped to handle as land airpower was a cornerstone is Soviet anti-CV doctrine.

Is it a matter of Early access or more a matter of me not knowing just what the heck I am doing?

incerely,
Magnus

[whatdoesthisbuttondo?]

Publicado originalmente por Julhelm:

We might be taking a more pessimistic view of SAM PK vs very fast targets. The Harpoons are sea skimmers and can only reliably be intercepted by RIM-7M and SA-N-9 in the game, but by virture of being slower and not moving across the LOS they make good targets for the AK-630 CIWS not to mention soft kill measures like jammers and chaff.

AK-630s doesn't really do a whole lot against the Harpoons, I've tested this extensively with multiple soviet battlegroup configurations and they don't even show in the event log in the majority of my test runs.

That said, the AK-xxx CIWS are generally considered less effective than the Phalanx CIWS, so I'd argue they are more or less in a good place nonetheless.

I think the real misconception here is people seem to assume pK=1 and don't really appreciate how quickly a missile like the AS-4 will cross the entire engagement envelope, not to mention the engagement sweet spot for the SM-1 against such a small and fast target.

[Thewood]

I just noticed the Soviet SA-N-6 on the Kirov has a minimum target altitude of 82 ft. In the 80s, it was built to go after the launching aircraft before missiles are away. That hobbles the Soviet fleet's AD capability against Harpoons and Exocets.

In CMO, for the 1980s, Harpoon capable SAMs are the SA-N-4s and SA-N-3s. Those are relatively poor anti-missile missiles. A Soviet SAG should be in great peril against 96 Harpoons, even from one direction.

It would be another generation or two before the SA-N-6 family was upgraded and gave the Soviet/Russian navy a solid fleet SAM.

[Julhelm]

Publicado originalmente por Thewood:

I just noticed the Soviet SA-N-6 on the Kirov has a minimum target altitude of 82 ft. In the 80s, it was built to go after the launching aircraft before missiles are away. That hobbles the Soviet fleet's AD capability against Harpoons and Exocets.

In CMO, for the 1980s, Harpoon capable SAMs are the SA-N-4s and SA-N-3s. Those are relatively poor anti-missile missiles. A Soviet SAG should be in great peril against 96 Harpoons, even from one direction.

It would be another generation or two before the SA-N-6 family was upgraded and gave the Soviet/Russian navy a solid fleet SAM.

The real Harpoon killer is SA-N-9. In all of my test scenarios, it deals very well with Harpoon attacks. The problem with really fast missiles like AS-4 and supersonic sea skimmers like Granit and Moskit is that you just don't get enough time to shoot at them. And as the previous poster said, PK is not =1, it's substantially less than that.

[whatdoesthisbuttondo?]

Publicado originalmente por Thewood:

In CMO, for the 1980s, Harpoon capable SAMs are the SA-N-4s and SA-N-3s. Those are relatively poor anti-missile missiles. A Soviet SAG should be in great peril against 96 Harpoons, even from one direction.

As long as you launch them properly, any half-way realistic soviet SAG is going to get burned hard by just 16 Harpoons, from the same vector and without ECM, I've done a whole series of tests with this.

The thing is, you have to time your launch to get proper saturation going, I guess that it isn't a thing in CMO?

[joetrusty2020]

We did it! . . . or at least, we killed the Soviet bombers before they launched most of their missiles and succeeded in killing the only four AS-4 Kitchens that were launched. Read along to discover the mission details.

My latest iteration Sunday afternoon included a sweep by 5 Tu-95s and 15 Tu-22s. Since E-2Cs lacked refueling and since I do not think aerial refueling is yet supported by the game, I had the E-2C operating about 200 nm from the CVBG and launched three elements of F-14s in the intercept role, a token SuCAP of A-6s, an EA-6B, and an S-3 to go look for the Oscar in the expected path of the CVBG. This time with the CVBG at EMCON, the E-2C was the only aircraft emitting, and we detected the hostiles at about 500 nm via ESM and later with the Hawkeye's radar. When the Tomcats were in Phoenix engagement range, I turned on their air search radars and engaged the bombers. This delay avoided the excessive afterburner and fuel usage of an earlier weapons free status by the AI, often forcing a bingo RTB before they fired all four Phoenixes. I launched a few more F-14 elements later in the scenario, but after my previous bad luck with the SM-1s/2s not intercepting the AS-4 Kitchens in smaller engagements (standalone Ticonderoga tests), the Ticonderoga killed the only four that were launched but also had help from launches by some of the other escorts. I had turned on the search radars of the CVBG after the missile launches and manually launched chaff rockets for the carrier and all the escorts. The scenario took about an hour.

I think that it will be awhile before I work up to the full triple-CVBG and MAU in a 30-nm-diameter task force and 10 Tu-95Ds, 80 Tu-16C/Gs, 70 Tu-22M, and 6 Tu-16J jammers from Clancy's "Dance of Vampires" chapter. (I have not tried other surface action group operations yet, but I may give it a try over the holiday weekend.)

Yes, I did have to micromanage flight operations and that has been my experience with tinkering with CVBG scenarios. It would be nice to plan carrier events (all launches, landings, and CAP assignments for a time window), establish various CAPs and standby helicopters, provide for aerial refueling, and manage the CAP waypoints (altitude, heading, etc.) in a pre-programmed fashion rather than micromanaging them as they launch.

Other open source information on the Ticonderoga dated from 1987 suggests that the weapon and guidance system can keep 18 SM-2 missiles in the air plus 4 more SM-2 in the terminal guidance phase (the four Mk99 illuminators). (Bonds, Ray, The Modern US War Machine, 1987, p.150-151)

[Mr.Gold]

Publicado originalmente por whatdoesthisbuttondo?:

Publicado originalmente por Julhelm:

We might be taking a more pessimistic view of SAM PK vs very fast targets. The Harpoons are sea skimmers and can only reliably be intercepted by RIM-7M and SA-N-9 in the game, but by virture of being slower and not moving across the LOS they make good targets for the AK-630 CIWS not to mention soft kill measures like jammers and chaff.

AK-630s doesn't really do a whole lot against the Harpoons, I've tested this extensively with multiple soviet battlegroup configurations and they don't even show in the event log in the majority of my test runs.

That said, the AK-xxx CIWS are generally considered less effective than the Phalanx CIWS, so I'd argue they are more or less in a good place nonetheless.

I think the real misconception here is people seem to assume pK=1 and don't really appreciate how quickly a missile like the AS-4 will cross the entire engagement envelope, not to mention the engagement sweet spot for the SM-1 against such a small and fast target.

Add to that that at supersonic speeds the aperture angle missiles have to do get extremely tight extremely fast. So the engagement area stops 5nm away. At 5nm away you have 15s to impact for something like a P700.

At 10km away the angulare velocity is 7 Deg/s (approximately) with an acceleration of about 1 Deg/S2. That means an interceptor has to do an 8G turn at 10km, a 16G turn at 5Km and about 32G at 2.5Km. the Sea sparrow in game RIM 7M can do 30G max and at those extreme angles interception chance will be terrible. That means that under 2.5Km you are dead in the water and in reality well before that.

Missiles like the Granit also do evasive manoeuvres so if we assume the missile does a10G manoeuvre you are looking at a minimum engagement range of 3.3Km. minimum and that will give the sparrow only 2.4s to react. So likely the engagement range is closer to 5-8Km. Or 3 to 5 nm. Anyway, got a bit lost in a rabbit hole. Still interesting stuff.


As an extra, considering the SPY on a ticnderonga is about 20m ASL, the engagement window Vs supersonic telephone pole is as low as 17seconds. And that is assuming they know it is coming. How many missiles can a Tick put in the air?

[Thewood]

"How many missiles can a Tick put in the air?"

I just posted that above and it depends on Mk 26 or Mk 41.

[whatdoesthisbuttondo?]

Publicado originalmente por Mr.Gold:

How many missiles can a Tick put in the air?

Not nearly enough, even considering a ludicrous pK=1 per missile.

Remember, people expect to intercept 36 AS-4s with a single Tico...

[Thewood]

My test was not with a single Tico. Did anyone say that? I actually pointed out specifically if the Leahy was removed, the USN fleet got crushed. Again, CMO.

A single 80s era Tico dies quickly by itself. A modern DDG/CG with SM-6s that can engage the AS-4s with more missiles at long range SM-6 SAMs is the only single ship that can defend itself. Even then the last missile was killed at 1 nm from the ship.

[whatdoesthisbuttondo?]

Guess CMO does have insanely optimistic pK values against the AS-4 then?

Must be close to pK=1 even for the reported test results to make any sense, and that isn't just a bit optimistic, that is sci-fi.

Edit: Seriously, how is the freaking SM-6 in any way relevant here?

[Thewood]

Thats a typical shoot look shoot engagement. I just tested a modern CG as a comparison because its easy to do. As I stated.

CMO details out each weapon engagement so its all there in the log file and message window. It's far from 100%.

btw, you might know Sea Power well, but you should really take a look at what CMO does. You don;t seem to know a lot about it. Its a good comparison to Sea Power and fairly good way to benchmark it.

[Julhelm]

Publicado originalmente por Thewood:

Thats a typical shoot look shoot engagement. I just tested a modern CG as a comparison because its easy to do. As I stated.

CMO details out each weapon engagement so its all there in the log file and message window. It's far from 100%.

btw, you might know Sea Power well, but you should really take a look at what CMO does. You don;t seem to know a lot about it. Its a good comparison to Sea Power and fairly good way to benchmark it.

Sea Power also logs the results of every single weapon engagement. For now you can find it under the dev tools menu (F10) - > Event Log.

[Thewood]

I have actually never looked under dev tools.

Here is the SM-X expenditure of a modern Bunker Hill/Tico with upgraded Aegis CG to defend against 36 AS-4s from CMO:

32x RIM-174A ERAM SM-6 Dual I
24x RIM-66M-2 SM-2MR Blk IIIA
2x RIM-66M-5 SM-2MR Blk IIIB

So you can easliy see its not close to 100% pk. A couple leakers made it to ESSM range. Its not the pk that matters as much as the start of the engagement range being so far out compared to the mid-80s represented in Sea Power.

Getting back to the original point. Two Mk 26 Ticos and a few DDGs should be able to defend itself against 36 AS-4s. But just one Tico and a few DDGs? Good chance someone will get hurt. But the Soviet SAG should be hammered by 96 Harpoons in the mid-80s.

[Julhelm]

Publicado originalmente por Thewood:

I have actually never looked under dev tools.

Here is the SM-X expenditure of a modern Bunker Hill/Tico with upgraded Aegis CG to defend against 36 AS-4s from CMO:

32x RIM-174A ERAM SM-6 Dual I
24x RIM-66M-2 SM-2MR Blk IIIA
2x RIM-66M-5 SM-2MR Blk IIIB

So you can easliy see its not close to 100% pk. A couple leakers made it to ESSM range. Its not the pk that matters as much as the start of the engagement range being so far out compared to the mid-80s represented in Sea Power.

Getting back to the original point. Two Mk 26 Ticos and a few DDGs should be able to defend itself against 36 AS-4s. But just one Tico and a few DDGs? Good chance someone will get hurt. But the Soviet SAG should be hammered by 96 Harpoons in the mid-80s.

As I posted, I managed to completely wreck the Soviet SAG with only 48 Harpoons, taking out the Kirov, Slava, Kiev and Kara. And this was on a broadside intercept which would maximize the # of launchers and CIWS they could bring to bear.

[V.A.L. Commorby]

Publicado originalmente por Andy:

Moskva incident, and Ukraine war in general seem to indicate Russias equipment isn't as effective or reliable as was made out.

dawg we cant compare current russian standard and discipline to soviet standard and discipline that had ukraine's naval institutions in its technical expertise belt..