I was curious, how realistic is harpoon? I know its probably one of the most realistic war game out there but just how close is it to real life? I'm guessing the ASW techniques and formations are pretty dead on, but what about the actual combat?

 

Like for example;

Is it realistic to fire 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles all at the same time at one target because you know some will be shot down? Or in real life do they fire one or two per target then if they are shot down then fire more? (I understand SEAD operations would be carried out prior)

 

Are SAM defenses really so effective? In HCE, they seem to do a pretty good job, but in real life it seems like they never work as well as the military claims

 

Are air to air missiles really as effective? In HCE, it seems to hit their targets about 75% of the time no matter the angle of attack. Is this similar to real life results? I thought plane were able to sometimes out maneuver some missiles and also have countermeasures. Also in real life you have alot of mechanical failures the missiles will run into like failing to arm or even just loosing track. Because I feel like once I get inside the range of the enemies range, it's inevitable that at least one plane will go down.

 

And let me know any other aspects you guys think that are different then real life combat.

 

Thank you so much for your help, this site has been a gold mine for me!

I think as basis Harpoon is realistic, about probability of hit/kill of missiles an ECM values, you can, as I do, research about historical values and to modify with it your personal platform database, and testing, a lot of testing and informed guesses, to obtain historical outcomes ..

I was curious, how realistic is harpoon?

As you can well imagine, many of the real life wrinkles are "ironed out" in Harpoon for the sake of game play.

 

HCE does not account for missiles that fail to leave their tube or drop like rocks off the hardpoint. Neither does it account for missiles that suffer an engine failure in flight or some glitch in their guidance system that makes them veer off target into oblivion.

 

It is quite normal to build a margin of error into your weaponeering efforts. In other words, to assign more than the bare minimum of platforms and weapons into the calculation, in order to account for scrubbed missions, malfunctions, shootdowns, misses, etc, etc. (Or, at least, it used to be .. perhaps less so in the age of armed drones and single target engagements).

 

We know, for example, that more than a few Tomahawks were either shot down or missed their target altogether during Desert Storm. We also know that they piled on the T-hawks when engaging Libya more recently. In both cases, T-hawks were employed in the SEAD role as well as other missions.

 

SAMs are notoriously poor performers in real life. But, again, there are exceptions. Witness the performance of Iron Dome last month - something like 85% hit rate if the numbers are to be believed.

 

AAMs are much the same. The AIM-7 Sparrow was a pitiful performer in Vietnam and though better, not especially impressive, in Desert Storm. Some of this is attributable to improved variants, of course, but there are other factors in play. Better trained pilots, for example. Different calibers of opponents too.

 

We need to recognize that the hit probability of a given weapon in HCE is across the board, and does not account for many variables that would come into play in real life.