Falklands Naval Assets

[rkk01]

I thought it might be useful to have all of the shipboard stuff in one place…

Anyway, to kick off:

Leander Class Frigates - are they all unconverted Batch 3s with twin 4.5 guns / GWS-22 Seacat missile launchers?

I placed HMS Andromeda in San Carlos Water and flew a low level approach, but got hit by what DCS said was a Seacat (Andromeda carried Exocet / Seawolf during the conflict)

If it was a Seacat, has anyone tested the missiles in-game characteristics?  Guidance, flight dynamics, critically - the manual reload of the four missile launcher…?

OTOH, if the DCS Andromeda has Seawolf then I would have expected to get hit

 

[whiteladder]

At the moment I think the only difference between HMS Andromeda and all the other Leanders in game is the hull number, so it will have been Seacat and not Seawolf, so I would say you were extremely unlucky given how abysmal Seacat was in real life.

Would be interesting to see how GWS-22 Seacat is modelled in game, because guidance wise it could use a Type 904 radar for 2 radar guided modes and 2 manual modes, so you may or may not get a launch indication.

[rkk01]

3 hours ago, whiteladder said:

At the moment I think the only difference between HMS Andromeda and all the other Leanders in game is the hull number, so it will have been Seacat and not Seawolf, so I would say you were extremely unlucky given how abysmal Seacat was in real life.

Would be interesting to see how GWS-22 Seacat is modelled in game, because guidance wise it could use a Type 904 radar for 2 radar guided modes and 2 manual modes, so you may or may not get a launch indication.

That was my line of thinking… was I unlucky (felt like it…!)

or is the Seacat a more up to date weapon model masquerading as a Seacat

[Northstar98]

On 11/8/2022 at 2:32 PM, rkk01 said:

I thought it might be useful to have all of the shipboard stuff in one place…

Anyway, to kick off:

Leander Class Frigates - are they all unconverted Batch 3s with twin 4.5 guns / GWS-22 Seacat missile launchers?

Achilles and Ariadne are both Batch 3B broad-beamed Leanders.

Andromeda in DCS is a regular Batch 3 (Andromeda was converted to Batch 3A in 1977, drastically modernising the sensors, weapons and EW equipment among others).

Achilles and Andromeda in these configurations should be identical, with Ariadne having a different HF/DF antenna. At the moment all 3 are completely identical apart from hull number and nameplates.

On 11/8/2022 at 2:32 PM, rkk01 said:

If it was a Seacat, has anyone tested the missiles in-game characteristics?  Guidance, flight dynamics, critically - the manual reload of the four missile launcher…?

Right now it seems to have the correct guidance scheme for its radar guided ACLOS mode (i.e 3-point guidance), but no other modes are present.

The MRS-3 (Type 904) director is treated as a Mk 95 tracker in the .lua file and it's no different than any other AI radar aside from scan volume and detection ranges (IRL it's a short-ranged, pulse-only, conically scanning radar, that has no LDSD capability, should be absolutely useless in clutter and susceptible to chaff and all of the ECM systems we have in DCS should wipe the floor with it). Right now (as with all ship radars) it's immune to clutter, chaff and has identical EW behaviour.

Only a track warning is provided to RWRs, with no launch - hypothetically RWRs could pick up the uplink (as they do with other ACLOS missile systems like the SA-2 and 3).

Flight dynamics and general performance seems as expected (it's pretty easy to evade).

The reloading time right now is far too fast, reloading a missile once every 10 seconds regardless of how the launcher is trained. It should be closer to a couple of minutes, per missile and it should (like every other trainable launcher) have to be in a reloading position. According to my Dad (who served on Ariadne during the early 90s) common practice were to fire all missiles or otherwise complete the engagement before missiles were reloaded, right now (like every other launcher), it fires a missile and then immediately starts reloading it. 

[rkk01]

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Andromeda in DCS is a regular Batch 3 (Andromeda was converted to Batch 3A in 1977, drastically modernising the sensors, weapons and EW equipment among others).

Agreed - she was a Seawolf conversion by the time of the Falklands.  My father worked on the conversions of Charybdis and Hermione - possibly Andromeda as well

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Only a track warning is provided to RWRs, with no launch - hypothetically RWRs could pick up the uplink (as they do with other ACLOS missile systems like the SA-2 and 3).

Flight dynamics and general performance seems as expected (it's pretty easy to evade).

Flying without RWR… but was trying to use the terrain

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The reloading time right now is far too fast, reloading a missile once every 10 seconds regardless of how the launcher is trained. It should be closer to a couple of minutes, per missile and it should (like every other trainable launcher) have to be in a reloading position. According to my Dad (who served on Ariadne during the early 90s) common practice were to fire all missiles or otherwise complete the engagement before missiles were reloaded, right now (like every other launcher), it fires a missile and then immediately starts reloading it. 

As a manual reload, I can see the sense of firing all 4… but then having a bunch of matelots manhandling the reloads onto the launcher should probably be minutes, not seconds???

[Northstar98]

32 minutes ago, rkk01 said:

Agreed - she was a Seawolf conversion by the time of the Falklands.  My father worked on the conversions of Charybdis and Hermione - possibly Andromeda as well

Flying without RWR… but was trying to use the terrain

As a manual reload, I can see the sense of firing all 4… but then having a bunch of matelots manhandling the reloads onto the launcher should probably be minutes, not seconds???

My Dad reckons ~10 minutes to reload the entire launcher.