Warhorse64

Just make sure to use somebody ELSE'S torpedo - remember the Cheonan ...

Brad covered the 5 minute cycle (true) and also true on the layer (50% reduction in range right there). Thanks, Tony and Brad.

Look at it from the flip side, though --- suppose you have a sub that has only the torps with 13 nm range. That means an effective range of 10 nm or less, to allow for the target fleeing. If your sub and an OHP are heading directly toward each other at creep, you will have to pass through at least 5 nm of his sonar range. 5 nm @ 10 kts = 30 minutes. If the sonar was integrated every 30 seconds at 50% detection chance, what are the odds that your sub WON'T be getting a surprise visit from an SH-70?

IF the aircraft have their radars OFF, neither of them should be detected by any means, because they are not emitting and they are far beyond visual range. HOWEVER, if an aircraft is part of the same formation as a base, the default state for its radar is the same as that of the base's organic radar - ALWAYS ON. Therefore, in that case the aircraft radar may in fact be active, even if you haven't told it to do so. The Hawkeye has ESM, so if the MiG IS radar-active, there's a decent chance the Hawkeye will see it, because 400 nm at High is within the horizon. Some versions of the MiG-21 also have ESM, so they would probably see the Hawkeye if it was radar-active, as well. AFAIK, with the exception of the 'secret base' facility in the latest DBs, all fixed bases are always detected. (They don't move, and they can't hide ... ) The AI tends to have patrolling aircraft use their radars if they've got them, so that will have obvious effects on detectability. I'm honestly not sure whether you can force it NOT to use its radar. If the groups get close enough, visual detection should eventually occur. In Real Life , the MiGs would probably spot the Phantoms first, because the Phantoms are much bigger and have smoky engines. OTOH, some variants of the Phantom have TCS (Television Camera Sensor), which could give them the advantage instead. Pilot quality would also be relevant. However, in-game, I think only the TCS would make a difference in an otherwise equal situation. I don't think any of the other issues you raise matter for visual detection by eyeball, though the TCS is probably restricted to the same field of view as fighter radars (45 degrees to either side of your course). As noted previously, the AI tends to use its radar if it has it, which obviously will change the equation somewhat. Same as 2a, except no TCS. Same as 2a, except no radar and no TCS.

Yeah, but you can fund several flag-rank staff billets for the same $$, and $$ are getting scarce ... [/sarc]

Hmmm ... I though sonar was integrated on a 5 minute cycle vice 30 seconds? Also, the 15 nm sonar circle will be for the towed array on the OHP. However, it is most likely hanging underneath the layer, while the torp should be running above the layer, which IIRC means you've only got half the range in that case. *If* I've got all of that right, then you don't have 40 tries for a trillion to one against, you have *two* tries, for a rather more reasonable one in four chance of not hearing the torp ... Tony, what do you say?

My guess would be that the OHP fell victim to an undetected Type 65 torpedo from the Victor II. 16 nm is easily within their range.

The AD units in question are cycling their radars on and off. When you have a solid lock red icon, the radar is on and your HARMs can track. When the icon goes yellow and your lock goes fuzzy, it's usually because you were only holding the lock by ESM, not hard detection, and the AD unit has just shut off its radar, leaving nothing for your HARMs to track. Only launching with the exact fix is the right thing to do, because that's probably the only time your chosen target is actually radiating. Your understanding of how HARMs work is correct, I think where you are having trouble is your assumption that the AD units are continuously radiating. They aren't. The nearby search radars are generally always on, but the AD units themselves only radiate intermittently, to make SEAD harder. Since the AD units themselves are so small, they are virtually impossible to detect directly at more than 5 or 6 miles. Almost all detections at more than that range will be by ESM ONLY. So, no, your understanding of HARMs is correct, and as long as they have a radiating target they do fairly well, but unless you've got that solid red icon with no uncertainty, you don't have a radiating target, which is why your HARMs miss.

Absolutely. Slow moving and hovering helicopters are notoriously difficult radar targets. (The bane of the ill fated Sgt York DIVADS comes to mind). That's what I was thinking - it seems to me that it would be almost impossible to counteract slow and low flying helos, especially those taking off close to the target and flying just a few minutes. If ever this option would be undertaken. Francesco It shouldn't really be that bad. Flying low and slow doesn't make them invisible, it just makes it hard to decide that they are aircraft in the first place. Once they reveal themselves by making a strike, they may still be able to RTB before you can shoot them down, but there's nothing to stop you from bombing them on the ground afterwards. So they may get a strike or two in, but it's a losing game for them in the end, regardless.

Yes, AWACS can detect and track small, low flying aircraft and helicopters, but they are among the toughest targets and there are a lot of variables at play (e.g. clutter, weather, terrain, etc, etc). The RSIP upgrade has tried to improve this capability (among other things). And just to make it even more fun, a helo doing 50 knots over a road, at NOE, looks remarkably like a truck on radar. Guess that's why we have FLIR ...

I pretty much always launch the tankers separately from the strikers, both because of the different speed characteristics and because this makes for smaller groups, which in turn means less fuel wasted loitering about waiting for a large group to launch. From what I've read, military SOP varies according to the situation. Tactical aircraft usually seem to fly to a rendezvous point to meet their tankers, which are usually housed at a separate base anyway. However, in the case of a long-range deployment, say from Alaska to Okinawa, where the fighters will need multiple refuelings en route, sometimes the tanker flies with the fighters. Strategic bombers and large transport aircraft take quite a while to refuel, so the tankers wind up traveling with them for a fair distance regardless. Carrier ops are another special case; either technique may be used, depending on circumstances.

Back when there was a multi-player beta for HC, I played an original GIUK scenario where Red was trying to break a whole herd of subs out through the gap. Due to the demands of the other players, we were running at fairly high time compression, something like 1 minute per second. I was controlling a dozen or so NATO MPAs, and I got this incredible string of something like 20 one-shot kills of Red subs in the space of half an hour. I've always wondered if the time compression had something to do with it ...

Okay, I just tried Backyard II again, with the new db, and got almost immediate contact with a group of four Red subs - 2 Charlies, a Victor I and a Victor 2. I sent 3 SH-60J and 3 Vikings out to play with them, with a total of 15 ASW torps carried. After expending all 15 torps, acquisition still seems to be something of an issue - more than half of the torps failed to acquire, even though none were dropped from more than a mile away, and most were dropped with the a/c icon literally on top of the sub icon at *64 magnification on the unit map, and in every case with a solid lock on the target sub. However, with that said, I have to report a significant improvement in results. In the game for which I posted the AAR recently, I expended something like 20 torps to kill one sub. This time, 15 torps got me 3 of the 4. This is still a rather small sample size, IMO, but it certainly looks like an improvement! B)

Is SEAD a tricky business? Absolutely. Is it an impossible business? Nope, not at all. If you have assets with ESM and a good surface radar, put em up high near the enemy SAMs but not so close as to be in danger. Better yet, put two or more up, and at different bearings. ESM will only give you a bearing and a zone of uncertainty unless you are very close. Combine triangulation with a decent surface search radar set and you will be able to find, fix and destroy enemy SAM sites. Providing, of course, you have the assets and the weapons to do so. I'll add that decoys and, especially, jammers can really earn their keep in SEAD. CV32 is giving you good advice here, I have beaten this situation in this scenario using pretty much these tactics. I find that the SLAM is a great weapon for SAM-plinking, but the most important weapon of all is PATIENCE! If you haven't got a hard lock, don't shoot, circle around and try again. Eventually you'll get there ...

You can say that again. I dunno ... you always like to see your opponents poorly equipped, of course, but the people using the gear are a lot more important. Having MiG-29s didn't do anything for the Iraqis, after all.

Googling the question "do jet engines require warmup?" gives a number of sites and fora to look at, the consensus seems to be that it's a good idea to let the engine idle for 3-5 minutes to get everything up to operating temps and stabilized. Failure to allow this warmup time can apparently cause engine failures, sometimes of the 'bits falling off the airplane' variety. OTOH, this is about the amount of time it takes to run through the post-start checklists, so you aren't actually losing any extra time or burning any extra fuel to do it.

Libyan uprising - live updates: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/...ests-middleeast

The UN is surely one of the world's greatest sources of unintentional irony ...

I think you need some kind of a fudge, for sure. As to how big it needs to be, I've noticed at high magnifications that the maps seem to get rather granular - one can tell a unit to go to point A, or to point B, but one cannot tell the unit to go to point C, which is located somewhere along the straight line connecting points A and B. I'm wondering if the size of these 'map granules' might influence the size of the fudge that is necessary to make torpedoes work properly? That is, if points A and B are always going to be at least 1500 yards apart due to map granularity, it might be that the minimum seeker range needs to be 1500 yards, otherwise the torp needs to be literally in the same place as the sub to acquire?

The Malta Star is saying there are reports of another pair of Libyan helos landing in Malta now, too.

What was your Surface SAM Fire Rate (under Staff Options)? Surface SAM RoF was set to 'Normal'. There isn't a glitch as such, but a limitation in the game that will probably need some adjustment in the DB to accommodate. Many lightweight torpedoes have an acquisition range of 1,000 yd or less (roughly half a nautical mile). And we know the game has difficulty with the geometries of short range engagements (witness the ATA gunnery issues), so getting an aircraft to drop a torpedo under a mile or less is very tough. Even at 1 nm you are twice the distance of the seeker acquisition range of many torpedoes, as earlier mentioned. Myself and Tony have discussed this previously, and what I am probably going to do is reintroduce an artificial boost to the torpedo acquisition range (probably a floor of 1,000 yd or some such). I will probably post in the Beta section to get folks' thoughts on it. Okay, that sounds good. Thanks!

Are you perhaps looking at the problem in too much detail, here? I mean, as far as the player is concerned, it doesn't matter if the runway is unusable because it has mines on it or because it has holes in it, all he cares about is that the runway is going to be unusable for a while. So couldn't you get around the problem by just treating these weapons as another form of anti-runway munition?

The principal problem is that we have no way to simulate the delayed effect of time fuzed submunitions or area denial mines. Everything in the Weapons annex of the DB explodes on impact. You could simulate the effect, perhaps, by putting these kind of delayed action weapons into the 'anti-runway' category but again the effect is immediate (acting like any other anti-runway munition). I'm not sure that I understand what you're getting at, here. Are you saying that these weapons (in Real Life) can be dropped at time x, but they have no effect until time x + n, and the game has no way of simulating that?

Or worse, S-300 (SA-10) SAMs. That would certainly not be good, but I do wonder whether they could arrive and be operational before Iran becomes a nuclear power. After that, it doesn't really matter all that much ...

Well, submunitions and mines will add a sweep-up time to the repair time, and they will increase the amount of the runway that cannot safely be used. You should be able to simulate both those effects just by increasing the amount of damage they do against runways, no? Is there a 'submunition' flag or category in the DB?