missile age combat

[Seeigel]

Hello,
so, first time hitting the missile age. (now around 1960)

I expected to have super CV fleets with escorts and you try to saturate the enemy air defense with your ASM, like in Tom Clancys Red Storm Rising, hoping to get 1 or 2 hits through.

Instead I am back at 1890s cruiser battles going full broadside but with missiles instead of guns.

Do the defenses get better (still many ships around without SAMs) or does it stay like that? Because then, spamming many cheap ships would be the way to go?

[Andrew Cree]

Early SAMs are not up to intercepting ASMs and SSMs. By late game I think HSAMs are capable of intercepting missiles, otherwise you're reliant on CIWS to destroy them before impact - but early CIWS don't have the computing ability/software to reliably do so.

As for Harpoon/Red Storm Rising, having gone back and looked at the Falklands Campaign plus the Third Gulf War, I very much think Clancy (and Bond?) overestimated the effectiveness of naval anti-missile defences at the time.

However, as happened IRL, the paradigm is shifting in favour of DDGs and FFGs.

[Propeel_skill]

Well, I do not quite get it. In the 1960s a normal CV strike group is something like 150nm+ from the enemy and all those missile CA/CLs are getting terribly pwnd with jet attack aircraft not even being able to find the carrier. Unless the weather is complete crap or the search orders are waaaaay off, there is just no significant chance to exchange ASMs for a CV group.

Also, even if it is a cruiser action, ships with 4+ radar-directed MAA and well-researched ECM are really hard to hit. And if you preserved some of well-armoured 1930-40s BBs, those are really hard to sink even with HSSMs.

[Pocheesy]

Nothing stopping you from living out your Tom Clancy dreams! I just fought a 1979 battle, four of my carriers versus four enemy. Enemy had plenty of SAM equipped CL and DD in their screen, and the carriers all had SAMs on them too. I knocked out all four with two waves of strikes for the loss of 24 jet attack aircraft. If you send large coordinated strikes escorted by fighters and supported by ECM special squadrons there is no AA defense that can keep you out. Trading cruise missiles is inevitable though, since late game they have like a 60 nautical mile range.

[Seeigel]

Looks like I try to focus even more on SSMs, forget about SAMs and use the deckspace for more MAA and see if that works. At least by budget will be happy about it.

From the previous wars (pre missile age) most aircraft kills where air to air combat, so I rather keep some CV(L)s around for air cover.