Su-25T in a littoral environment

[tflash]

I just flew some missions which again convinced me that, at least in Lockon, the Su-25T with its complement of Phantasmagoria, Kh-58, Kh-29, Kh-25 and Vikhr is a tremendous littoral defense / brown water ops aircraft against shipping and small-to-medium surface combatant vessels.

 

In Lo:FC, you can sink any frigate you like with it.

 

I wonder whether this is realistic? I tend to believe it does. The Su-25TM should be even more deadly with the Krypton missile.

 

I gues it's the ideal aircraft to defend your shores, no? Operating from bases close to the sea, as you have in the Black sea environment? Is it used that way or does the RuAF only see it as a tank-killer?

[S77th-konkussion]

I'm sure certain weapons would, in fact sink a frigate. However- I'm not convinced that a volley of 4 Vihkrs (like in LOMAC) would actually be able to pull that off.

[RedTiger]

Can it even get close enough to fire a Vihkr? There's all sorts of dangerous things that should have been launched at it long before it gets within that range. I guess it could fly low.

[S77th-konkussion]

It is also possible that the definition of a frigate will vary from country to country. In the US a frigate is pretty damn small. Vicious little Anti-sub bastages. Some smaller guns, a couple of CIWS. I don't remember them sporting anything like a Sea Sparrow..

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

Yeah, I was rather surprised to read that the Perry's have now had their Mk-13 missile launcher removed since the SM1-MR Standard missiles are now at the end of their service life. That leaves them with just the 76mm gun and the CIWS and the helo.

[GGTharos]

The vikhr has a rather small warhead. It isn't likely to sink a frigate, certianly not an OHP. IIRC, the 76mm is also capable of anti-aircraft fire, so after you're launched that Vikhr, you're in the land of computer-guided fuzed munitions. LOFC also seems to give the false impression that you can launch a score of Vikhrs on target ... you can't. You might eb able to salvo two, but unlikely to be able to launch more before those impact their target.

 

 

The KH-29's and Kh-25's would be a much better choice, but they're still not one-hit-one-kill missiles against something like an OHP in most cases, and you're likely to be engaged while running in anyway.

[Mugatu]

A modern Frigates's gun will have you seeing stars before you get that little Vikhrs off :) Let alone a salvo of Evolved Sea Sparrows and the sub 10m flying shouldn't help you either.

 

Going against war ships in lockon is far too easy! There are very very few ASMs that would trouble a modern ship when they aren't fired in a coordinated fashion to saturate their air defences.

[Weta43]

Going against war ships in lockon is far too easy! There are very very few ASMs that would trouble a modern ship when they aren't fired in a coordinated fashion to saturate their air defences.

LO is "somewhere in the 90's" ???

 

In 1982, during the Falklands War, Exocets became famous worldwide when Argentine Navy Super Etendard warplanes used one to sink the British Royal Navy's destroyer HMS Sheffield on 4 May, and 2 to sink the 15,000 tonne merchant ship ship Atlantic Conveyor on 25 May. An MM38 Exocet transferred from the Argentine destroyer ARA Guerrico to a land-based truck [1] damaged HMS Glamorgan on June 12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet#Falklands_Conflict

 

(Or - nearer the 90's - & a note in the crew's favour: this incident was while Sadam was still "one of the good guys", so defenses were probably a bit slow, but they failed miserably..)

 

On May 17, 1987, the pilot of an Iraqi Mirage F-1 allegedly mistook the U.S. Navy Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate USS Stark for an Iranian tanker and fired two Exocets at the warship. Both hit, but only one exploded. The first penetrated the port-side hull; it failed to detonate, but spewed flaming rocket fuel in its path. The second entered at almost the same point, and left a 3-by-4-metre gash then exploded in crew quarters. Thirty-seven sailors were killed and twenty-one were injured. Stark was heavily damaged, but saved by the crew and sent back for repairs. The errant pilot was reportedly executed for his error, which of course made him unavailable for an inquiry into the attack.

 

A more detailed account:

 

At 8:00 PM on 17 March 1987, a Mirage F-1 fighter jet took off from Iraq's Shaibah military airport and headed south into the Persian Gulf, flying along the Saudi Arabian coast. An Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) plane, in the air over Saudi Arabia and manned by a joint American-Saudi crew, detected the aircraft. Aboard the USS Stark, a Perry-class frigate on duty in the gulf, radar operators picked up the Mirage when it was some 200 miles away; it was flying at 5,000 feet and traveling at 550 mph. Captain Glenn Brindel, 43, commander of the Stark, was not particularly alarmed. He knew it was fairly common for Iraqi and Iranian warplanes to fly over the gulf. Earlier in the day, Iraqi jets had fired missiles into a Cypriot tanker, disabling the vessel. But no American vessel had been attacked.

 

In keeping with standard procedure, Captain Brindel ordered a radio message flashed at 10:09 PM: "Unknown aircraft, this is U.S. Navy warship on your 078 for twelve miles. Request you identify yourself." There was no reply. A second request was sent. Still no answer. Brindel noted that the aircraft's pilot had not locked his targeting radar on the Stark, so he expected it to veer away.

 

At 10:10 PM, the AWACS crew noticed that the Mirage had banked suddenly and then turned northward, as though heading for home. What they failed to detect was the launching by the Iraqi pilot of two Exocet AM39 air-to-surface missiles. The Exocets had a range of 40 miles and each carried a 352 lb. warhead. For some reason, the sea-skimming missiles were not detected by the Stark's sophisticated monitoring equipment. A lookout spotted the first Exocet just seconds before the missile struck, tearing a ten-by-fifteen-foot hole in the warship's steel hull on the port side before ripping through the crew's quarters. The resulting fire rushed upward into the vessel's combat information center, disabling the electrical systems. The second missile plowed into the frigate's superstructure.

 

A crewman sent a distress signal with a handheld radio that was picked up by the USS Waddell, a destroyer on patrol nearby. Meanwhile, the AWACS crew requested that two airborne Saudi F-15s pursue the Iraqi Mirage. But ground controllers at Dhahran airbase said they lacked the authority to embark on such a mission, and the Mirage was safely back in Iraqi airspace before approval could be obtained.

 

As fires raged aboard the Stark, Brindel ordered the starboard side flooded to keep the gaping hole on the port side above the waterline. All through the night the fate of the stricken frigate was in doubt. Once the inferno was finally under control, the Stark limped back to port. The Navy immediately launched an investigation into an incident that had cost 37 American seamen their lives. The Stark was endowed with an impressive array of defenses -- an MK92 fire control system that could intercept incoming aircraft at a range of 90 miles; an OTO gun that could fire three-inch anti-aircraft shells at a rate of 90 per minute; electronic defenses that could produce bogus radar images to deceive attackers; and the Phalanx, a six-barreled gun that could fire 3,000 uranium rounds a minute at incoming missiles. Brindel insisted that his ship's combat system was fully operational, but Navy technicians in Bahrain said the Stark's Phalanx system had not been working properly when the frigate put out to sea. (Brindel was relieved of duty and later forced to retire.)

 

Mind you - US warships seemed to have some major bugs in their weapons control systems over the late 80's:

 

Iran Air Flight 655, also known as IR655, was a civilian airliner shot down by US missiles on Sunday July 3, 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War.

 

Operated by Iran Air from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Dubai, UAE, the aircraft flying as IR655 was destroyed by the U.S. Navy's guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes between Bandar Abbas and Dubai, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 66 children[1] , ranking it seventh among the deadliest airliner fatalities.[2] Vincennes was traversing the Straits of Hormuz, inside Iranian territorial waters, at the time of the attack and IR655 was within Iranian airspace.

 

According to the US government, an inexperienced crew mistakenly identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter.

 

The Fogarty report stated, "The data from USS Vincennes tapes, information from USS Sides and reliable intelligence information, corroborate the fact that [iran Air Flight 655] was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile, in the assigned airway, squawking Mode III 6760, on a continuous ascent in altitude from take-off at Bandar Abbas to shoot-down."

 

[nscode]

The Mirage incident sounds like a micro Perl Harbor

[eurofor]

LO is "somewhere in the 90's" ???

(...)

The flag of Georgia in the game (current patch) was adopted in 2004 so I'd think they're trying to keep things up-to-date.

[Weta43]

I think it's unoficially officially a 'non specific time' somewhere in the 90's

[GGTharos]

The Vincennes incident had nothing to do with bugs. It had everything to do with psychology.

[tflash]

I was indeed referring Oliver Perry-class Frigates and smaller, or Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships or Patrol Coastal ships like USS Cyclone. I also wouldn't think of Vikhr in the first place but rather Krypton, Karen/Kegler, Kilter and Kedge missiles to be launched from Su-25T/TM

 

 

[besides the mentioned performance of the dedicated Exocet missile in past conflicts, one has also to mention the success of AGM-65A Mavericks fired from Iranian Phantoms in the Iran-Iraq war against Iraqi OSA vessels in the Gulf.]

[Mugatu]

That's true for the part about identification and the decision to shoot it down, but in the BBC documentary (filmed on board by the navy) if I remember correctly you can clearly see how many times they failed to get an SM2 airborne from much further out than the final launch range.

 

"In fact, when he was finally given the green light to fire upon the incoming aircraft, he pressed the wrong keys 23 times, until a veteran petty officer leaned over and hit the right ones. Nerves were shattered, and the training seemed nonexistent.

"

 

The Vincennes incident had nothing to do with bugs. It had everything to do with psychology.

[GGTharos]

That sounds like an interface issue coupled with psychology, but I'm probably just being pedantic - thanks though, I had forgotten that part :)

[Mugatu]

Yep there's a reference to the Aegis HMI in a software development book, not only the training but the track number handling wasn't that great back then.

[Avimimus]

The flag of Georgia in the game (current patch) was adopted in 2004 so I'd think they're trying to keep things up-to-date.

 

My assumption is that the cold war escalated at the end of the 1980s (leading to mass production of some types) and then ended abruptly in the mid-1990s (leading to those types not getting replaced).

[Weta43]

The Vincennes incident had nothing to do with bugs. It had everything to do with psychology.

 

If by this you mean that the captain was an overly aggressive lunatic, then yes, psychology.

That was pretty much what I took from the accounts I read.