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Post by JagdFlanker on Aug 28, 2019 10:28:06 GMT -6
i havn't looked into verifying this statement, but since the super powers at the time were going 'nuke crazy' in the 50s and into the 60s and putting smaller and smaller nukes into everything, i have the impression that their idea of 'effectiveness' was detonating nuclear armed SAMs (and AAMs) in the area of the enemy aircraft to take them down rather than worry about accuracy
but again that's my impression of that era, i could be wrong
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Post by ulzgoroth on Aug 28, 2019 12:15:10 GMT -6
To make SAMs truly effective, the game should add picket destroyers and AEW aircraft to the Fleet Tactics and Aviation technology lists. Otherwise, SAMs would mostly be limited to visual range. Shouldn't air search radar be advanced enough by the time SAMs are around to allow BVR shots? Both those things would make SAMs more effective, but I'm pretty sure they would be more effective than AAA anyway. Early SAM systems tend to have not very many weapons and fire control that often can only engage one target at a time. Even with perfect performance you simply couldn't stop too many planes. Radar-directed heavy AA guns definitely still had a case, assuming the enemy was going to come close enough to let you use them. i havn't looked into verifying this statement, but since the super powers at the time were going 'nuke crazy' in the 50s and into the 60s and putting smaller and smaller nukes into everything, i have the impression that their idea of 'effectiveness' was detonating nuclear armed SAMs (and AAMs) in the area of the enemy aircraft to take them down rather than worry about accuracy but again that's my impression of that era, i could be wrong A definite overstatement. Of the 'three Ts' the smallest (Tartar) seems to have had no nuclear version, Terrier didn't get a nuclear version until the conventional types had been in service for 9 years, and while Talos had a nuclear option from pretty much the beginning it also had a bunch of terminal guidance tech built in exclusively for the conventional warhead model. Even the land-based Nike missile was first deployed in a conventional version (despite not being able to place the missile with a precision smaller than the lethal radius of the conventional warhead). It's important to remember that early nukes are not small. Fitting them into a missile posed a non-trivial added engineering problem. Nuclear anti-air seems to be more a 60s thing that got started in the late 50s than something running through the 50s overall.
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Post by sloanjh on Aug 28, 2019 21:20:32 GMT -6
Which reminds me of another thought about missile age: they'll probably have to move advanced radars to the same mechanic used by fire-control, since (i think) they have significant mass, cost, and topweight implications. I guess a different way to say it is that SAM fire control (and probably search) radars should be treated as fire control systems and require explicit count and mass, and not as the current search radars are treated.
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Post by zedfifty on Aug 29, 2019 3:18:41 GMT -6
To make SAMs truly effective, the game should add picket destroyers and AEW aircraft to the Fleet Tactics and Aviation technology lists. Otherwise, SAMs would mostly be limited to visual range. Shouldn't air search radar be advanced enough by the time SAMs are around to allow BVR shots? Both those things would make SAMs more effective, but I'm pretty sure they would be more effective than AAA anyway. Argh, bad thinking leads to bad posting. A lack of radar pickets and AEW leads to a lack of over-the-horizon targeting and reduced reaction time to incoming bandits. Even with SAMs, the British task force in the Falklands had to use picket vessels in lieu of AEW aircraft.
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Post by dorn on Aug 29, 2019 3:36:38 GMT -6
I am not expert and do not know this topic but I understand fuction of pickets.
However these pickets as operating alone are very vulnarable.
Why enemy should not deploy tactic destroying pickets which should be easy task and thus main task force will operate without them and weaker as ships used as pickets could not be used to protect main task force.
I can easily see that this would not work if time is crucial element however speed of ships is quite low relating to general distances.
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Post by sloanjh on Aug 29, 2019 8:07:25 GMT -6
I am not expert and do not know this topic but I understand fuction of pickets. However these pickets as operating alone are very vulnarable. Why enemy should not deploy tactic destroying pickets which should be easy task and thus main task force will operate without them and weaker as ships used as pickets could not be used to protect main task force. I can easily see that this would not work if time is crucial element however speed of ships is quite low relating to general distances. Yes they are very vulnerable, and yes the enemy can target them, which is how the British lost a couple of DD in the Falklands. But, as someone pointed out, without them you don't have over-the horizon detection of raids, so they felt they needed them to give themselves raid warning and early interdiction capabilities. They didn't have any CV-based fixed wing AEW, which put them in this crunch. My recollection is that they had an emergency project to strap an AEW radar to a helicopter to give them at least some AEW capability, but my impression is that it wasn't very effective. My recollection is that they tried to run pairs of of ships as pickets: one equipped with (long range) Sea Dart for detection and interdiction and the other equipped with (short range) Sea Wolf to protect the picket. One of the things that the Falklands really drove home to me is the difference in effectiveness of US heavy CV in comparison to the CVL that most other navies use. The British had a major struggle in the air battle due to the lack of AWACS and high-performance interceptors (as opposed to Harriers). Not only did this lead to them losing ships to bombing raids that got through to the TF, but it also put them in the position of having to expose pickets to get early warning information. IMO a US heavy carrier would have had much less of a struggle. PS - It's been decades since I read it, but my recollection is that Sandy Woodward's (the admiral in command) book is very good (including IIRC a description of an incident where the British came very close to shooting down a civilian airliner while transiting into theater because they thought it was a bomber). I think there's a discussion of the decision making around the pickets in there (and the concern when they lost them), but I may be remembering that from a different book.
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Post by dohboy on Aug 29, 2019 8:22:43 GMT -6
I don't really see guided anti-aircraft missiles being an effective weapon in the time period this game is set in. The technology is supposed to go to 1955, the first operational AAM kill in history was in 1958, the first SAM kill in 1959. It wasn't until around the Vietnam War era that they were truly effective weapons. Certainly BVR is out.
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Post by williammiller on Aug 29, 2019 9:22:53 GMT -6
Please keep in mind that missile tech will be limited to very early 1950s at best, since that is the cutoff for the game timeline...
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Post by abclark on Aug 29, 2019 10:23:08 GMT -6
Shouldn't air search radar be advanced enough by the time SAMs are around to allow BVR shots? Both those things would make SAMs more effective, but I'm pretty sure they would be more effective than AAA anyway. Early SAM systems tend to have not very many weapons and fire control that often can only engage one target at a time. Even with perfect performance you simply couldn't stop too many planes. Radar-directed heavy AA guns definitely still had a case, assuming the enemy was going to come close enough to let you use them. They definitely have limitations, but the ability to engage from significantly longer ranges should partly make up for that. The RIM-8 Talos is a little beyond the era of the game, but only by a few years. It has a 50nm range, allowing it to engage aircraft well before they can deliver their payloads. The 5"/38 had a slant range of only 6nm. Compare that to relatively early guided bombs like the ASM-N-2 Bat or the LBD-1 Gargoyle, the second of which had a slant range of 5nm. While other heavy AA guns had longer ranges, their engagement windows would still be relatively short against high speed aircraft launching glide bombs.
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Post by abclark on Aug 29, 2019 11:00:21 GMT -6
Shouldn't air search radar be advanced enough by the time SAMs are around to allow BVR shots? Both those things would make SAMs more effective, but I'm pretty sure they would be more effective than AAA anyway. Argh, bad thinking leads to bad posting. A lack of radar pickets and AEW leads to a lack of over-the-horizon targeting and reduced reaction time to incoming bandits. Even with SAMs, the British task force in the Falklands had to use picket vessels in lieu of AEW aircraft. The British in the Falklands were engaging upgraded A-4s and modified Mirage Vs armed with Exocet missiles with a range of over 30 miles. That is in no way equal to 1950s jet attackers (even early A-4 models) armed with glide bombs or dumb bombs. BVR =/= over the horizon targeting. Beyond visual range is generally considered to be over 20nm. Considering that USS Lexington detected a Japanese strike at 68 miles in May 1942, I would expect even better from 1950s sets. It's also important to remember that 1950s strike aircraft are not flying at sea level. Glide bombs especially must be delivered from tens of thousands of feet to reach their maximum range. That significantly increases the range at which a radar has line of sight.
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Post by dohboy on Aug 29, 2019 11:54:17 GMT -6
Let's remember that even in the late 60's missiles were so unreliable that the F4's lack of a cannon was considered a major disadvantage. Not that I totally agree with that, the F4 wasn't built for a dogfight with a Mig. It's like those 8" guns they make us put on the first carriers, if you're ever in a situation where you use it you're doing it wrong.
Missiles in this game should be a costly and unreliable novelty, something to entertain yourself with in late game if you are playing the US and have a huge budget to waste.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 29, 2019 12:22:23 GMT -6
Let's remember that even in the late 60's missiles were so unreliable that the F4's lack of a cannon was considered a major disadvantage. Not that I totally agree with that, the F4 wasn't built for a dogfight with a Mig. It's like those 8" guns they make us put on the first carriers, if you're ever in a situation where you use it you're doing it wrong. Missiles in this game should be a costly and unreliable novelty, something to entertain yourself with in late game if you are playing the US and have a huge budget to waste. The problem with the missiles was two-fold. One, the missile was tested in the desert at Yuma and Nellis, not in a jungle, high humidity environment. They were not coated with moisture prevention so that caused problems until we began to coat them. The problem was primarily with the AIM-7B missile. The second problem was the lanyard in the LAU-7A missile launcher. When you launch a missile, the plungers push the missile down, the lanyard pulls out of the missile, igniting the rocket motor. This was how an AIM-7B was launched. However, the lanyards were too short, so as the plunger pushed the missile away, the lanyard would come out of the LAU-7A launcher, but the rocket motor would not fire. So, in Nam, you had to ripple fire the AIM-7's to get one to fire. The Navy did not have that much of a problem because they used the AIM-9 Sidewinder more than the AIM-7B Sparrow missile. The F-4B/N did not have a gun but a Gatling was placed in gun pod, A SUU-16/A and it fired well because it shook and spread the 200mm cannon shells out at different angles. The USAF F-4E did have a integrated gun. Lack of a gun on board was a mistake but quickly remedied. The problem with not having a gun was accentuated by the ROE which meant that you have identify the on-coming aircraft before you could fire. By that time, it was a little too late because you were in min range of the missiles. Later we installed the APX-76 which had an interrogator and if this device did not register a proper code, you let the aircraft have it.
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Post by sloanjh on Aug 29, 2019 20:58:13 GMT -6
Please keep in mind that missile tech will be limited to very early 1950s at best, since that is the cutoff for the game timeline... Agree 100% - apologies if I implied otherwise. I think your team picked a good break point at 1955 for RtW2, since this conversation has made me realize that the missile age really is something that would probably need another iteration of the game to do well. Besides the complexity of missile systems, there's the issue that someone else brought up that 100 planes in 1930 have very different mass etc requirements from 100 planes in 1980.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 29, 2019 22:12:17 GMT -6
Let's remember that even in the late 60's missiles were so unreliable that the F4's lack of a cannon was considered a major disadvantage. Not that I totally agree with that, the F4 wasn't built for a dogfight with a Mig. It's like those 8" guns they make us put on the first carriers, if you're ever in a situation where you use it you're doing it wrong. Missiles in this game should be a costly and unreliable novelty, something to entertain yourself with in late game if you are playing the US and have a huge budget to waste. The real problem in the late 1960's was combat tactics, not necessarily the missiles. Yes, there were missile problems as my other post has illuminated but in the early 1960's our combat tactics were training pilots to shoot down bombers, not fighters. It makes a big difference. When we went to Vietnam in 1965, we faced the cannon armed MIG-15 and 17. Both short ranged, cannon equipped fighters (30 mm DEFA) with good maneuverability. The NV pilots were never taught to engage our fighters but attack and continue on and turn and return to base. Our issue was the ROE's that we were expected to fight under. So, if you are flying an F-4, multi-missioned aircraft what do you do? Well, you definitely don't dogfight with them. You duck their grapefruit size cannon shells( that what pilots called them), pass by the MIGs, then perform a high-speed yo-yo now, you are on their tail. The AIM-9 missile was a heat-seeker and at that time, could not fire down the throat. It had to be fired at the tail. The low kill ratios were due almost entirely to poor combat tactics and that is why we developed TOPGUN and RED FLAG; to teach air combat tactics. Did our pilots miss the guns? They thought they did until the missile issues were overcome, then rarely did they shoot down a MIG with a gun. If you are that close, you are in trouble. The guns were more for air to ground operations, not air to air actions.
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Post by zedfifty on Aug 30, 2019 1:51:04 GMT -6
Argh, bad thinking leads to bad posting. A lack of radar pickets and AEW leads to a lack of over-the-horizon targeting and reduced reaction time to incoming bandits. Even with SAMs, the British task force in the Falklands had to use picket vessels in lieu of AEW aircraft. The British in the Falklands were engaging upgraded A-4s and modified Mirage Vs armed with Exocet missiles with a range of over 30 miles. That is in no way equal to 1950s jet attackers (even early A-4 models) armed with glide bombs or dumb bombs. BVR =/= over the horizon targeting. Beyond visual range is generally considered to be over 20nm. Considering that USS Lexington detected a Japanese strike at 68 miles in May 1942, I would expect even better from 1950s sets. It's also important to remember that 1950s strike aircraft are not flying at sea level. Glide bombs especially must be delivered from tens of thousands of feet to reach their maximum range. That significantly increases the range at which a radar has line of sight. That "argh, bad thinking" was directed at myself, not you.
Anyways, RTW2 still has torpedo bombers in the 50s, so yes, they could be flying low.
Also, I believe the Argentines only had five Exocets. Most attacks dropped iron bombs at very low altitude. These attacks sank four ships, compared to two for the Exocets. I bring up the Falklands, because it reenacted the experience of Okinawa -- large warship formations must have radar early warning, regardless of cost. Thus, I view the many complaints about overpowered AI land-based air (and over-powered submarines and stubborn fascist opponents) as features, not bugs. It seems the game does a good job of recreating the anxiety and frustration amongst Western naval planners circa 1945-55, where the gruelling, attritional end of the Central Pacific campaign, followed by the renewed submarine threat presented by the Soviets, led to race for unprecedented technological solutions, like SAMs and ASROC.
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