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Post by khorne8 on May 3, 2024 11:50:59 GMT -6
Fair point about the Falklands. As for ASMs - of course there were heavy, long ranged ASMs from the 1950s onwards, but these were carried by medium and heavy bombers, not carrier based aircraft. An A-6 obviously could not carry an AS-1 or AS-4 or AS-5. Were there any Soviet anti - ship missiles designed for use by small tactical aircraft? I can't think of any. It stands to reason that the USN did not put dedicated ASMs on CV based aircraft for anti - ship duties because they would have been less effective than iron bombs, which had a far higher hit rate and lethality, and an acceptable risk to the attacking aircraft. Also, I believe I read somewhere that LABS bombing was to be used against ships, although I'm somewhat skeptical, because nuclear magazines on CVAs were not very deep; and warships, unlike ground targets, are very susceptible to HE. Does anyone have any sources on this? And that's a fair point about the size of an AS-1 et cetera. I suppose the 'problem' here, if there even is one, is that RTW3 is allowing the player to do wildly ahistorical stuff. (Which to be clear is Good and Fun.) In game, in the 1960s, the player can make the choice to focus on big CVWs fielding lots of effective ASMs. This was not done in reality until Harpoon and Exocet came in the 70s. I think the question then is whether it could have been done if the USN had taken a different path (perhaps in the absence of the Vietnam cul-de-sac) or if the VMF had gotten into the CV game much earlier. Because, if it could have been done, I think it's great that RTW3 lets you do it. And I don't see any reason why it was impossible, especially in a situation of intense national focus on conventional surface naval warfare in the 1960s, which is the case in RTW3 and was not in reality.
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Post by generalvikus on May 3, 2024 13:59:34 GMT -6
And that's a fair point about the size of an AS-1 et cetera. I suppose the 'problem' here, if there even is one, is that RTW3 is allowing the player to do wildly ahistorical stuff. (Which to be clear is Good and Fun.) In game, in the 1960s, the player can make the choice to focus on big CVWs fielding lots of effective ASMs. This was not done in reality until Harpoon and Exocet came in the 70s. I think the question then is whether it could have been done if the USN had taken a different path (perhaps in the absence of the Vietnam cul-de-sac) or if the VMF had gotten into the CV game much earlier. Because, if it could have been done, I think it's great that RTW3 lets you do it. And I don't see any reason why it was impossible, especially in a situation of intense national focus on conventional surface naval warfare in the 1960s, which is the case in RTW3 and was not in reality. Obviously there were anti - ship missiles carried by tactical aircraft before the Harpoon, such as the Martel (1972) and Kormoran (1973.) However, I find it doubtful that these weapons could ever have been much more effective than contemporary retarded bombs such as the Mk82 Snakeye carried by advanced naval aircraft such as the A-6 and A-7E. Judging by the CMO database for want of a better source, loadouts with standoff weapons do not possess a great advantage in strike radius over loadouts with iron bombs. Direct comparisons are a bit tricky. In the case of the Kormoran, for instance, the Tornado's 5 x Mk82 loadout has a Lo - Lo - Lo profile whereas the Kormoran has a Hi - Lo - Hi profile (obviously you could test it, but that would be relying on a very imperfect simulation instead of figures presumably taken from a reference source.) One aircraft which does offer a direct comparison between ASMs and retarded bombs is the Buccaneer; with 4x Martels, the Hi - Lo - Hi radius is 850nm, as compared with 1000nm for 4 x 1000 lb RE bombs. The radius with only one Martel is 1,100 nm. There is, of course, the advantage of aircraft survivability, but this is a questionable benefit if reduced lethality means that you need more aircraft to do the job in the first place. So long as loss rates are relatively low - even as high as, say, 33% - lethality and not survivability is going to govern how many aircraft are needed to do the job. Naval combat of the era was characterised by the battle of the first salvo, in stark contrast to the present day, where defence is generally much more effective. So, what are we sacrificing in terms of lethality? The Martel has a 330 lb warhead, so we're talking about 1,320 lbs over 850 nm vs 1,780 over 1,000 nm for 4x Mk83 1000 lb bombs. Clearly, there's not too much to choose between these options. However, if you're looking at a shorter strike radius - which you almost always are, given that you need to actually detect the target - most aircraft can carry a much larger payload of iron bombs, whereas tactical aircraft never seem to carry more than 4 ASMs. For instance, the A-7E can carry 2x Walleye IIs out to 550nm, and at the same radius it can carry 4x Mk83s. But reduce the range to 450nm and you get 8x Mk83s or 12 x Mk82 Snakeyes; at 400nm you can get 18x Snakeyes, but you can still only carry 2 Walleye IIs. The A-6 can carry 4x Walleye IIs out to 525nm, or 10x Mk 83s out to 500nm. At 450nm it can carry 28 x Mk 82s. One thing to remember about survivability is that if one aircraft can carry more ordinance than it needs to take out a single ship, it can make several passes and cross - target. In other words, having twice the bomb load you need to kill a single ship effectively means you’ve got two planes instead of one, which further reduces the benefit of aircraft survivability offered by ASMs. But probably the most important problem of early ASMs is going to be the hit rate. The 1973 war graphically demonstrated the effectiveness of contemporary ECM against radar homing missiles. Anti - radiation missiles can be easily avoided by ships. TV seekers of the era had all sorts of problems and were fair weather weapons. By contrast, a low flying, advanced aircraft like the A-6 or A-7E rippling a dozen - plus bombs probably isn't going to miss. So, I don’t buy the popular argument that the USN missed the bus when it came to ASMs. I think it’s a case of hindsight: we know that ASMs eventually became the primary weapon, and therefore they seem more ‘advanced’ or ‘modern’ to us, but whether or not they were actually better in the early 1970s is quite another matter. Don't get me wrong, put me in the pilot's seat and I'd take a Kormoran any day - but that's not how you win wars.
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Post by khorne8 on May 3, 2024 14:33:48 GMT -6
Great stuff. Never meant to argue that the IRL USN missed any bus, though. The situation it faced and the situations the player navy faces in RTW are quite different. A couple of questions on survivability in that context. And here I'm interested mostly in getting to the target; as you say, getting out again is secondary when you're trying to put in a big first strike in carrier warfare. So: would your A-6 or A-7E really survive to bomb release against RTW3-level defense? In my current campaign, even my small CA(G) battlegroups can put up 4+ HSAMs, 8+ MSAMs and 10+ LSAMs, in addition to fifty-plus radar MAA. I understand that 1960s air defense was not good at handling sea skimming ASMs. Would a subsonic JA loaded with iron bombs and flying low even get to the target against that many SAMs? And second, so far as I know A-6s and A-7Es generally had the luxury of not worrying about AAM armed CAP over ship targets. In my experience a big advantage of ASMs over bombs in RTW3 is that in RTW3 the enemy almost always has at least some CAP, and it seems that ASM carrying JAs suffer far less against CAP than bomb carrying JAs do, because they can launch from much farther out. And CAP is even better than SAMs at shooting down bombing JAs before release. Wouldn't the USN have gone to ASMs earlier, if they'd had to expect that Soviet surface groups would typically have effective CAP coverage? EDIT: They only produced 350 Kormoran Is? Ha, Germany definitely chose the cheap missile stocks option in the doctrine screen.
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Post by generalvikus on May 3, 2024 23:15:21 GMT -6
Looking to a DCS tutorial because it's an easier thing to find than a historical source, the release altitude for a Mk82 Snakeye at about 450 knots is about 350 ft. According to the CMO DB, the minimum altitude of the SA-N-1B as seen on a 1976 vintage Kashin class DDG is 160 feet, so it can theoretically engage. However, given that the popup from 0 ft to 350 ft at 450 knots takes the better part of a second, there is no time to shoot the aircraft before it reaches its target. As for CAP, it very much depends. In CMO, a 1970s vintage E-2C or Tu-126 will detect minimum altitude enemy aircraft over land or water at nearly their maximum detection range - over 200nm. I think this is probably inaccurate at least in the case of the Tu-126. Wiki specifically states that the Tu-126 had 'no lookdown capability,' although it also says it was effective over water but not over land. Thus, the fact that the "1965" CMO version detects low altitude targets over land at 200nm suggests that Command is, (as usual when it comes to the earlier time period) just plain wrong, but I do not know enough about the issue to judge. Anyway, if we assume that a given AEW aircraft could detect the attacker over water at 200nm, (as I believe the E-1 and E-2, at least, could,) a 30nm ASM makes only a marginal difference to attacker survivability versus CAP. If, on the other hand, the defending task force did not have AEW cover and had to rely on surface-based radars, the detection range would be under 30nm. In that case, of course, the ASM would make a big difference, which I should have considered. Kiev class CVs did not carry AEW aircraft of any type, whereas by contrast, US E-1s and E-2s were essentially equivalent to contemporary land-based types. However, in this case, geometry is not on the side of the defender, even if the attacker is using iron bombs. Unlike in the Falklands, the attacker will usually not be operating at extreme range and will thus have the luxury of approaching from any direction, or several at once. The Yak-38 is a subsonic fighter, and therefore the CAP of a Kiev class would have very little time to engage attackers. A test in DCS using the Harrier as a stand in would probably be the best way to examine this scenario.
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Post by khorne8 on May 4, 2024 1:35:55 GMT -6
Looking to a DCS tutorial because it's an easier thing to find than a historical source, the release altitude for a Mk82 Snakeye at about 450 knots is about 350 ft. According to the CMO DB, the minimum altitude of the SA-N-1B as seen on a 1976 vintage Kashin class DDG is 160 feet, so it can theoretically engage. However, given that the popup from 0 ft to 350 ft at 450 knots takes the better part of a second, there is no time to shoot the aircraft before it reaches its target. As for CAP, it very much depends. In CMO, a 1970s vintage E-2C or Tu-126 will detect minimum altitude enemy aircraft over land or water at nearly their maximum detection range - over 200nm. I think this is probably inaccurate at least in the case of the Tu-126. Wiki specifically states that the Tu-126 had 'no lookdown capability,' although it also says it was effective over water but not over land. Thus, the fact that the "1965" CMO version detects low altitude targets over land at 200nm suggests that Command is, (as usual when it comes to the earlier time period) just plain wrong, but I do not know enough about the issue to judge. Anyway, if we assume that a given AEW aircraft could detect the attacker over water at 200nm, (as I believe the E-1 and E-2, at least, could,) a 30nm ASM makes only a marginal difference to attacker survivability versus CAP. If, on the other hand, the defending task force did not have AEW cover and had to rely on surface-based radars, the detection range would be under 30nm. In that case, of course, the ASM would make a big difference, which I should have considered. Kiev class CVs did not carry AEW aircraft of any type, whereas by contrast, US E-1s and E-2s were essentially equivalent to contemporary land-based types. However, in this case, geometry is not on the side of the defender, even if the attacker is using iron bombs. Unlike in the Falklands, the attacker will usually not be operating at extreme range and will thus have the luxury of approaching from any direction, or several at once. The Yak-38 is a subsonic fighter, and therefore the CAP of a Kiev class would have very little time to engage attackers. A test in DCS using the Harrier as a stand in would probably be the best way to examine this scenario. Unfortunately for the attackers, RTW3 seems to be simulating something of a worst case here. AEWs are in game as a 1950 tech, which "increases radar range and CAP engagement range (with special squadron aboard)," fair enough. And unlike the Yak-38s the USN might have faced IRL, in RTW3 the defenders will have HJFs and LJFs, which in the 60s I would suppose are meant to be similar to F-4s and F-8s respectively?
Or in other words, engagements in RTW3 tend to be symmetric, unlike a hypothetical asymmetric fight between a USN CVW and a few Yak-38s. If one was trying to simulate RTW3 rather than real life, I'd suggest a better match for what we see in game might be a USN CVW versus... another USN CVW. How would a CVW worth of A-6s and A-7Es have fared, if tasked with attacking an alert and prepared 1960s USN carrier group with iron bombs?
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Post by generalvikus on May 4, 2024 2:51:16 GMT -6
Unfortunately for the attackers, RTW3 seems to be simulating something of a worst case here. AEWs are in game as a 1950 tech, which "increases radar range and CAP engagement range (with special squadron aboard)," fair enough. And unlike the Yak-38s the USN might have faced IRL, in RTW3 the defenders will have HJFs and LJFs, which in the 60s I would suppose are meant to be similar to F-4s and F-8s respectively?
Or in other words, engagements in RTW3 tend to be symmetric, unlike a hypothetical asymmetric fight between a USN CVW and a few Yak-38s. If one was trying to simulate RTW3 rather than real life, I'd suggest a better match for what we see in game might be a USN CVW versus... another USN CVW. How would a CVW worth of A-6s and A-7Es have fared, if tasked with attacking an alert and prepared 1960s USN carrier group with iron bombs?
In this case I would be hesitant to draw conclusions from CMO, because things like the low altitude limitations of period air to air weapons are the sort of thing that Command tends to simply...miss. I have also had some disappointment trying to set up Cold War era AI vs AI tests in DCS; since the AI, for example, seems to have a 0m CEP with iron bombs (even if you use a WW2 plane with no bombsight, level bombing, with a single unguided weapon,) which is disappointing. Still, as far as I know, a Sidewinder is a Sidewinder, and I think that at very low altitude we can essentially discount 1970s Sparrows as an effective weapon, (though someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that,) in which case the F-4's radar capabilities aren't all that relevant. I don't have room for DCS right now, but I'd say a simple test - either AI vs AI using the F-4 mod, or with the player flying the F-4 - would be the best bet for answering this question.
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Post by christian on May 4, 2024 4:27:23 GMT -6
On the IRL topic i think its important to remember that missiles like bullpups can effectively be fired during a pop up, at longer range, and fly to the target while the pilot descends to low altitude, combined with giving enough stand off range to effectively launch outside of Sam range at altitude. Its worth keeping in mind before the schtorm missile in 1969, the S-125 was the soviets only SAM system in widespread use, and it has rather limited range and capability. Its worth noting that the bullpups can glide quite far, and go quite far under rocket power on their own. It is also rail launched, which means when launched at high speed at low altitude the missile will loose very little altitude when being fired, so can effectively be used at low altitude. A good way of thinking about it is that its a stick guided rocket powered bomb, essentially what you can do is pitch up slightly, launch, descend and level off, then guide the missile onto the target. More experienced pilots who were experienced enough could also initiate a left/right bank to "turn away" from the target at a long range, while they guided the missile in, though this was exceedingly difficult as the plane had to be kept in the bank at low altitude without crashing, and while the pilot guided the missile on target and kept visual, if this was done it was usually at high altitude. but it is true that low level "dumb" strikes remained very effective, as seen in the Falkland's war, although the argentines experienced a high rate of duds due to improperly fused bombs, and lacking high drag bombs. Very interesting. Do you have a source on the use of these and other novel tactics for anti - ship attacks? I'd love to read about it. The "bank away" tactics was something born out of the Vietnam war, i read a pilots account a while ago where he described using it in the manner above, where he launched the missile under AA fire, and banked to one side to make his aircraft harder to hit while attempting to guide the missile, account in question wasn't exactly a fan of this method as he found it was very difficult to guide it without crashing, il see if i can dig it up. I mostly assume the same would be done against a ship dispensing anti aircraft fire, rather than fly straight at it, and ships are a larger target generally speaking. You can see a P-3 orion on patrol in vietnam during the vietnam war, carrying 2 missiles here. in one of the declassed docs outlining specifications for OS-133 (bullpup program) its use against ships is outlined as a requirement. Attachments:
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Post by christian on May 4, 2024 4:37:17 GMT -6
The recent beta changes help this alot, i just finished a save to 1970 and the new production numbers + being able to mount double missiles makes them much more viable still playing through a new save, it seems that alot of others changes are also coming so il be able to see then. Overall very quick changes from the devs which improved the feel of carriers alot, atleast in my experience. On the IRL topic i think its important to remember that missiles like bullpups can effectively be fired during a pop up, at longer range, and fly to the target while the pilot descends to low altitude, combined with giving enough stand off range to effectively launch outside of Sam range at altitude. Its worth keeping in mind before the schtorm missile in 1969, the S-125 was the soviets only SAM system in widespread use, and it has rather limited range and capability. Its worth noting that the bullpups can glide quite far, and go quite far under rocket power on their own. It is also rail launched, which means when launched at high speed at low altitude the missile will loose very little altitude when being fired, so can effectively be used at low altitude. A good way of thinking about it is that its a stick guided rocket powered bomb, essentially what you can do is pitch up slightly, launch, descend and level off, then guide the missile onto the target. More experienced pilots who were experienced enough could also initiate a left/right bank to "turn away" from the target at a long range, while they guided the missile in, though this was exceedingly difficult as the plane had to be kept in the bank at low altitude without crashing, and while the pilot guided the missile on target and kept visual, if this was done it was usually at high altitude. but it is true that low level "dumb" strikes remained very effective, as seen in the Falkland's war, although the argentines experienced a high rate of duds due to improperly fused bombs, and lacking high drag bombs. Straying too far from the line of sight of a visually guided bomb will lower the hit percentage dramatically. Some maneuvering to be less vulnerable to AAA is one thing, but launching a Bullpup from high altitude and then descending to low altitude means the pilot isn't going to provide any effective guidance. Especially when launching from long range, hit rates will be abysmally low. yes, i outlined this earlier, the effective range was about 10nm due to the flare at the end being hard to see beyond that range even in calm cloudless weather., hence the "high altitude" is not very effective against sam equipped ships besides it doesn't have battery to reach much further than about 15-20 nm iirc. i dont believe i mentioned "high altitude" when doing a popup attack, these would happen below 3000 ft asl, assuming they were done. the hitrate while not going to be fantastic but it is not going to be abysmal, especially not if launching at 5 nm or less, its not a "30k feet glide bomb"
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Post by christian on May 4, 2024 4:40:12 GMT -6
Straying too far from the line of sight of a visually guided bomb will lower the hit percentage dramatically. Some maneuvering to be less vulnerable to AAA is one thing, but launching a Bullpup from high altitude and then descending to low altitude means the pilot isn't going to provide any effective guidance. Especially when launching from long range, hit rates will be abysmally low. That is how I understood Bullpup usage as well. I thought it was a high altitude only weapon. i assume you mean low altitude here ? the bullpup is not very effective from high altitude.
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Post by christian on May 4, 2024 4:44:57 GMT -6
And that's a fair point about the size of an AS-1 et cetera. I suppose the 'problem' here, if there even is one, is that RTW3 is allowing the player to do wildly ahistorical stuff. (Which to be clear is Good and Fun.) In game, in the 1960s, the player can make the choice to focus on big CVWs fielding lots of effective ASMs. This was not done in reality until Harpoon and Exocet came in the 70s. I think the question then is whether it could have been done if the USN had taken a different path (perhaps in the absence of the Vietnam cul-de-sac) or if the VMF had gotten into the CV game much earlier. Because, if it could have been done, I think it's great that RTW3 lets you do it. And I don't see any reason why it was impossible, especially in a situation of intense national focus on conventional surface naval warfare in the 1960s, which is the case in RTW3 and was not in reality. Obviously there were anti - ship missiles carried by tactical aircraft before the Harpoon, such as the Martel (1972) and Kormoran (1973.) However, I find it doubtful that these weapons could ever have been much more effective than contemporary retarded bombs such as the Mk82 Snakeye carried by advanced naval aircraft such as the A-6 and A-7E. Judging by the CMO database for want of a better source, loadouts with standoff weapons do not possess a great advantage in strike radius over loadouts with iron bombs. Direct comparisons are a bit tricky. In the case of the Kormoran, for instance, the Tornado's 5 x Mk82 loadout has a Lo - Lo - Lo profile whereas the Kormoran has a Hi - Lo - Hi profile (obviously you could test it, but that would be relying on a very imperfect simulation instead of figures presumably taken from a reference source.) One aircraft which does offer a direct comparison between ASMs and retarded bombs is the Buccaneer; with 4x Martels, the Hi - Lo - Hi radius is 850nm, as compared with 1000nm for 4 x 1000 lb RE bombs. The radius with only one Martel is 1,100 nm. There is, of course, the advantage of aircraft survivability, but this is a questionable benefit if reduced lethality means that you need more aircraft to do the job in the first place. So long as loss rates are relatively low - even as high as, say, 33% - lethality and not survivability is going to govern how many aircraft are needed to do the job. Naval combat of the era was characterised by the battle of the first salvo, in stark contrast to the present day, where defence is generally much more effective. So, what are we sacrificing in terms of lethality? The Martel has a 330 lb warhead, so we're talking about 1,320 lbs over 850 nm vs 1,780 over 1,000 nm for 4x Mk83 1000 lb bombs. Clearly, there's not too much to choose between these options. However, if you're looking at a shorter strike radius - which you almost always are, given that you need to actually detect the target - most aircraft can carry a much larger payload of iron bombs, whereas tactical aircraft never seem to carry more than 4 ASMs. For instance, the A-7E can carry 2x Walleye IIs out to 550nm, and at the same radius it can carry 4x Mk83s. But reduce the range to 450nm and you get 8x Mk83s or 12 x Mk82 Snakeyes; at 400nm you can get 18x Snakeyes, but you can still only carry 2 Walleye IIs. The A-6 can carry 4x Walleye IIs out to 525nm, or 10x Mk 83s out to 500nm. At 450nm it can carry 28 x Mk 82s. One thing to remember about survivability is that if one aircraft can carry more ordinance than it needs to take out a single ship, it can make several passes and cross - target. In other words, having twice the bomb load you need to kill a single ship effectively means you’ve got two planes instead of one, which further reduces the benefit of aircraft survivability offered by ASMs. But probably the most important problem of early ASMs is going to be the hit rate. The 1973 war graphically demonstrated the effectiveness of contemporary ECM against radar homing missiles. Anti - radiation missiles can be easily avoided by ships. TV seekers of the era had all sorts of problems and were fair weather weapons. By contrast, a low flying, advanced aircraft like the A-6 or A-7E rippling a dozen - plus bombs probably isn't going to miss. So, I don’t buy the popular argument that the USN missed the bus when it came to ASMs. I think it’s a case of hindsight: we know that ASMs eventually became the primary weapon, and therefore they seem more ‘advanced’ or ‘modern’ to us, but whether or not they were actually better in the early 1970s is quite another matter. Don't get me wrong, put me in the pilot's seat and I'd take a Kormoran any day - but that's not how you win wars. Id make it a point to watch out for using games as a standpoint for "effectiveness" argentine had success with low level bombing because of the comparative weak gun based anti aircraft of british ships, and the inability of their sams to engage the threat with no optical backup, additionally ship smoke significantly reduces the accuracy of low altitude bombs. Additionally iron bombs, while accurate, bring you very close to the target, which good RMAA/CIWS will take very good advantage of, and down the approaching aircraft before it gets to release its bombs. Additionally, much like ww2, tracer fire will deter the pilot and reduce accuracy, even if its not lethal. ww2 gearing is in all aspects probably going to be significantly more likely to survive an attack than a british vessel with seacat at falklands. you can see this as most navies focused heavily on SAMs and missile defence, rather than plastering ships in RMAA/CIWS to defend against low flying iron bomb planes like was done in ww2, the low and fast method for ship strike against gun based AA was extremely dangerous, this is showcased with ww2 torpedo bombers in the pacific having by far the highest loss rate.
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Post by wlbjork on May 4, 2024 14:01:29 GMT -6
That is how I understood Bullpup usage as well. I thought it was a high altitude only weapon. i assume you mean low altitude here ? the bullpup is not very effective from high altitude. That's what made it a great weapon for the Buccaneer. The standing joke is that pilots of the Bucc get nosebleeds when taxiing because they're too high up. Legend has it that in the first exercise in which the type was used, the USN was manning all their radar to catch this new British plane and show that it's nothing to boast about only to receive a report that the aircraft had performed a flypast below the flight deck.
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Post by khorne8 on May 4, 2024 23:04:28 GMT -6
In this case I would be hesitant to draw conclusions from CMO, because things like the low altitude limitations of period air to air weapons are the sort of thing that Command tends to simply...miss. I have also had some disappointment trying to set up Cold War era AI vs AI tests in DCS; since the AI, for example, seems to have a 0m CEP with iron bombs (even if you use a WW2 plane with no bombsight, level bombing, with a single unguided weapon,) which is disappointing. Still, as far as I know, a Sidewinder is a Sidewinder, and I think that at very low altitude we can essentially discount 1970s Sparrows as an effective weapon, (though someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that,) in which case the F-4's radar capabilities aren't all that relevant. I don't have room for DCS right now, but I'd say a simple test - either AI vs AI using the F-4 mod, or with the player flying the F-4 - would be the best bet for answering this question. I thought of DCS as well. It would be very interesting to set up a strike package of A-6s and A-7s with F-4 escorts, and see how well they could get Snakeyes through a CAP of F-4s and F-8s with E-2 support. But that's beyond me as well.
However, on the off chance someone ever does manage to simulate this on a higher fidelity level than RTW3, I will hazard an advance prediction. I'll phrase the question presented by the RTW3 late game as, "assuming ~1970 technology, what weapon should JAs use to attack a supercarrier battle group protected by SAMs, lots of RMAA, and a CAP featuring AEWs, HJFs, and LJFs?" And I'll predict that the answer will be ASMs, so that the poor bloody JAs can launch and turn away as far away as possible. So, I think RTW3 seems about right, in that bomber JAs and missile JAs both seem viable, with the bombers doing more damage but suffering worse losses than the missileers, and with the balance tipping towards the ASMs as the game year advances.
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Post by attemptingsuccess on May 8, 2024 20:42:19 GMT -6
My carrier doctrine goes thusly (2*96 aircraft CV, 16 SS, 50 HJF, 30 JA each):
First strike against an enemy has my JA carry HASM for better survivability, HJF carry rockets or escort
Second strike has my JA carry bombs and my HJF carry bombs or rockets (occasionally I bring some missiles too, but only if a squadron is low on planes)
Repeat until the enemy stops moving
This generally works really well in my experience, Losses aren't all that bad, and the 3000 lb bombs are effective at sinking enemy ships, especially aircraft carriers.
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Post by giuliodouhet on May 9, 2024 10:30:01 GMT -6
What was the actual doctrine in this era? I know the Soviet Union developed guided missiles (but these were dropped from larger land-based aircraft). The Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm was working on guided weapons but switched to toss-bombing nuclear weapons from jet fighters. I gather that the U.S. lacked dedicated anti-ship missiles prior to the harpoon? I'm just wondering how inaccurate the current depiction is? Cold War doctrine expected that there was really not going to be a big clash of surface forces. It was going to be much more asymmetric. Soviet surface forces existed to find and kill nuclear armed subs, and protect itself from hunter/killer subs, while long-range bombers served as long-range missile carrying MPAs to threaten US surface forces. US surface forces served to project power against targets ashore while defending themselves against Soviet MPAs. Carrier-based strike against surface fleets dwindled as a result, and in reality even the ability to engage surface-to-surface dwindled in favor of US subs killing Soviet surface forces as a byproduct of protecting US boomers. If anything, in RTW3, MPAs should get buffed with HASMs becoming more effective in range, accuracy, and damage. That being said, there are some exceptions. UK doctrine into the 60s included penetration anti-ship strike capabilities like the Blackburn Buccaneer, and the French Etendard family was to an extent an anti-shipping strike fighter, so much so that the Super Etendard was designed to maximize the use of the Exocet.
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Post by khorne8 on May 9, 2024 12:59:44 GMT -6
My carrier doctrine goes thusly (2*96 aircraft CV, 16 SS, 50 HJF, 30 JA each): I've tried this doctrine. There are two serious problems with it in my experience. - Since HJFs have a single quasi-fixed replacement stream, the total replenishment capacity of this two-airframe CVW is lower than if it used a single squadron of LJFs as well, which would allow it to pull from 3 airframes' worth of replenishment. This is less of a concern that it used to be before the devs (happily) bumped up the replenishment, but IMHO it is still a concern for big CV play.
- Once LJFs actually get into an air to air fight, they still seem to beat the pants off HJFs. Of course LJFs can't do this at long range or at night, so you definitely need HJFs. But the asymmetry is bad enough that I try to avoid HJF vs. LJF fights whenever I can, and I expect to suffer badly when I can't. On that CVW, I would take a full squadron of 20 LJFs, and preferentially use them to escort short range daytime strike packages.
Certainly open to being shown to be wrong however, especially since there have been such good changes to CVWs recently.
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