Lies (about naval combat) DCS World told me

[maturin]

As usual, a videogame has introduced me to some aspect of modern warfare in the form of abstract, oversimplified gameplay, leaving me to try and find out how it really is in the real world.

 

Despite the infuriating lack of AI knowing how to use its own weapons, I have been throwing American and Russian naval vessels at each other in the sim, and looking up the various ship classes online.

 

And I have observed that the Russians have various launch platforms for multiple series of extremely powerful anti-ship missiles with supersonic speeds, sea-skimming capabilities and immense warheads. A single hit from some of these monsters can destroy the game's cruisers.

 

The Americans, on the other hand, have to make due with Harpoons, which do piddling amounts of damage to larger warships and are easily picked off by CIWS (the efficiency of anti-missile warfare in the sim is incredible, even against massed attacks). The Russians also have these sorts of missiles in air-launched variants, some of them ballistic and nuclear capable.

 

So my question is this: Does this disparity in the variety and firepower of anti-ship missiles exist in the real world as well? If so, how does the U.S.' differing doctrine and balance of forces respond to such devastating anti-ship capabilities? Is it all about the air war, with Russia's big missiles an attempt to claw back some advantage and deny areas of ocean to the superior enemy navy?

Edited May 27, 2013 by maturin

[Silver_Dragon]

different doctrines, approximations and weapons. DCS: World have limitation on some AAW / ASW and ASuW warfare limited or not modelled on them, but systems and weapons has real and no invented.

 

- Some issues... AEGIS and OTH (out the horizon) has not corrected modeled (Cooperative Engagemen Capability) and SM-2 missile guiadance.

 

- Some russian SAM system (kirov and others, Naval Sa-8 and Sa-15) has overmodelled.

 

- antiship missiles lack funtionality (no modeled or implemented)

Edited May 26, 2013 by Silver_Dragon

[wilky510]

RIM-162 ESSM is suppose to counter the threat of Supersonic maneuvering anti ship missiles for the US Navy, but they came out right after the original Lock on was released. So they're obviously not in the game.

[maturin]

But on a basic level, is it correct to say that the U.S. lacks supersonic anti-ship missiles with heavy warheads, and relies almost entirely on less-powerful Harpoons (and Tomahawks?), while the Russians have a wide variety of very lethal ASMs?

 

Even if the U.S. has superior defensive capabilities.

[wilky510]

But on a basic level, is it correct to say that the U.S. lacks supersonic anti-ship missiles with heavy warheads, and relies almost entirely on less-powerful Harpoons (and Tomahawks?), while the Russians have a wide variety of very lethal ASMs?

 

Even if the U.S. has superior defensive capabilities.

Yes. I would say so. Just like others here said it was down to doctrine. And i'm not really sure what that doctrine is exactly for both sides so i can't really comment. I would assume the US Navy would send hornets loaded with harpoons and do a mass launch to overload defenses. but again, i can't comment. I'm not sure exactly what doctrine they planned to use.

 

It is time for a replacement for the Harpoon. I personally think we should see one here in the near future.

 

edit: I would also assume the Russian missiles have higher warhead size, more speed and more variety of missiles was simply of the fact they had to counter much larger and heavily defended warships mostly being the aircraft carriers that the US always had. It's just that these missiles can be applied to any warship though and that makes them just that more deadly.

Edited May 27, 2013 by wilky510

[Silver_Dragon]

The Us Navy was some project for supersonic and Hypersonic anti ship missiles, all cancelled by US congress in the cold war, now Lockheed Martin work on a new subsonic stealth anti ship missile LRASM.

 

Russian ships has some limitations on the future, there are chances that these missiles remain a thing of the past for lack of funding. The units that carry no equivalent substitute future medium to long term. Russia may end up with a harpoon missile similar in size maintaining supersonic / hypersonic speed, but in a sharply declining number of units.

[Kaktus29]

@maturin )) lol..you can't blame ED for not "Inventing" US anti-ship missile the size and speed of the Russian ones..

 

Russian designers build such weapons since they were needed to overcome huge targets and sink them -like aircraft carriers and their defending ships" .. its a doctrine thing.. US probably doesn't need such missiles since they can deploy harpoon on F-18 in even larger numbers than the Russian AsM .. imagine, 60 F-18, each carrying 4 harpoons.. that is what?.. 240 missiles... if every missile is intercepted by the Russian anti-missile missiles they would drain all of Russian capacity and in second wave of attack there would be no ammunition to throw at the incoming harpoons..

 

and that is "best case scenario" for the Russian ships..

 

 

all in all, we are going into stealth mode again.. range will decrease again because of this.. radars have become too powerful, missiles have too much range.. it almost makes the aircraft carrier's obsolete-unless one fights a naval battle in the middle of the atlantic ocean-.. anywhere else (where CV are 1000-2000 km from the coast) CV has no 100% protection towards massive saturation missile attacks..which will sooner or later sink the carrier..

 

so i think it will go into stealth ..all doctrines, smaller radar signature ships, missiles who are stealthy, low IR signatures, reduced noise pollution, passive radars and LPI radars, and missiles with a range of 200-300 km which are stealthy and can go hypersonic after acquiring the target..

 

problem as i see it are CVs.. they are too huge.. hard to "hide" it on open ocean or ship naval yards.. these days its easy to track each CV in the world 24/7 by satellites and other passive sensors.. .. in case of conflagration if CV dares to come 1000km close to the beach of the enemy it risks potential surprise saturation attack that will bring it down..

 

CVs is too big and too expansive to be lost, its just too valuable..and in military you want to avoid such things ..since war is a business where things blow up and get destroyed on daily basis.. many people have argued what would happen if 1, one alone CV of USN would be lost? i mean, politically what would that mean? can you imagine the newspapers, headlines? USN carrier sunk to the bottom of the ocean, 5000 sailors dead, 70 planes destroyed?!?! ..US would retaliate with nukes.. so, how can a CV be such a awesome weapon that you can't afford loosing it without going completely berserk afterwards? ... ergo, its sucks as a real valuable war weapon.. its good for intimidating lesser victims,.. but in a war scenario a big wasteful needy of protection target..

Edited May 27, 2013 by Kaktus29

[RIPTIDE]

As usual, a videogame has introduced me to some aspect of modern warfare in the form of abstract, oversimplified gameplay, leaving me to try and find out how it really is in the real world.

 

Despite the infuriating lack of AI knowing how to use its own weapons, I have been throwing American and Russian naval vessels at each other in the sim, and looking up the various ship classes on youtube.

 

And I have observed that the Russians have various launch platforms for multiple series of extremely powerful anti-ship missiles with supersonic speeds, sea-skimming capabilities and immense warheads. A single hit from some of these monsters can destroy the game's cruisers.

 

The Americans, on the other hand, have to make due with Harpoons, which do piddling amounts of damage to larger warships and are easily picked off by CIWS (the efficiency of anti-missile warfare in the sim is incredible, even against massed attacks). The Russians also have these sorts of missiles in air-launched variants, some of them ballistic and nuclear capable.

 

So my question is this: Does this disparity in the variety and firepower of anti-ship missiles exist in the real world as well? If so, how does the U.S.' differing doctrine and balance of forces respond to such devastating anti-ship capabilities? Is it all about the air war, with Russia's big missiles an attempt to claw back some advantage and deny areas of ocean to the superior enemy navy?

Some of those anti ship missiles have been used in combat... well the export models. The Egyptians used them poorly as some sort of Coastal defence. They scored 1 kill which I read about before... the missile almost split an Israeli cruiser in two.

 

At least in the near past, they were formidable weapons when used correctly.

[RIPTIDE]

So my question is this: Does this disparity in the variety and firepower of anti-ship missiles exist in the real world as well? If so, how does the U.S.' differing doctrine and balance of forces respond to such devastating anti-ship capabilities? Is it all about the air war, with Russia's big missiles an attempt to claw back some advantage and deny areas of ocean to the superior enemy navy?

The 2 navies differed completely in purpose and size. The US Navy is about the ICBM's, ASW and above all, supporting shore operations. The US Capital Ships are Aircraft Carriers.

 

The Soviet Navy was all about ICBM's some ASW and harassing the Atlantic Corridor. You Harass the Atlantic Corridor by those big fat nuclear tipped missiles by hitting Super Tankers in the middle of supply convoys and Destroyers and Carriers. The Capital Ships of the Old Soviet navy were the big Boomers.

[GGTharos]

ON a basic level, comparing missile to missile, you might think that. Realistically, pretty much what RIPTIDE said.

 

The Russians needed to be able to salvo missiles and sink fleets - fleets the likes of which THEY did not have.

 

The US had the harpoon and tomahawk. The harpoon in particular is a small, low-RCS missile. Going slow also reduces its signature, so a well timed and executed anti-ship attack with a couple of harpoons coming from different directions is bad news for a single ship. The harpoon has been successfuly used in battle, and it is completely capable of sinking a ship, despite the 'small warhead'. At the least, it'll put a ship out of action.

 

The main threat to the US fleets was the soviet submarine force, not their surface fleet.

 

The supersonic anti-ship missiles would give less warning and time to defend those ships, however, with the advent of AEGIS and a combination of soft and hard-kill systems it makes things a bit more difficult for such missiles.

 

The basic idea is that your E-2 will have 'have eyes' on incoming missiles before they come over the horizon, and the AEGIS system, linked to the E-2, will have missiles in the air to intercept those as they appear over the horizon.

 

But it's all dependent heavily on who has what available at a given time, both in terms of equipment and intelligence.

 

But on a basic level, is it correct to say that the U.S. lacks supersonic anti-ship missiles with heavy warheads, and relies almost entirely on less-powerful Harpoons (and Tomahawks?), while the Russians have a wide variety of very lethal ASMs?

 

Even if the U.S. has superior defensive capabilities.

[Alfa]

So my question is this: Does this disparity in the variety and firepower of anti-ship missiles exist in the real world as well?

 

Of course :)

 

.. If so, how does the U.S.' differing doctrine and balance of forces respond to such devastating anti-ship capabilities?

 

The US has a dozen aircraft carriers in operation and the airpower they bring provides the main offensive capability - defensively the AEGIS/SM2 missiles were developed exactly to counter the threat of saturation attack by surface and air launched supersonic anti-ship missiles.

 

Is it all about the air war, with Russia's big missiles an attempt to claw back some advantage and deny areas of ocean to the superior enemy navy?

 

Yes pretty much. The US came out of WWII with a large carrier fleet and experience in operating it. The Soviet navy had no such capability/experience and its doctrine didn't envision the use of aircraft carriers as "force projectors", but instead placed its main emphasis on the submarine fleet for both offensive and defensive capabilities. The Soviet "blue water" surface fleet was mainly tasked with support of the submarine fleet on the oceans and since it couldn't rely on airpower to the same extend as the US ditto, large long range supersonic missiles was seen as the way to go and Soviet ships typically carry alot more SSMs than their US counterparts - e.g. the Slava class, which almost seems like an exercise in seeing how many monster sized missiles you can fit on to a ship before it capsizes :D .

[maturin]

The harpoon has been successfuly used in battle, and it is completely capable of sinking a ship, despite the 'small warhead'. At the least, it'll put a ship out of action.

Whereas in the game, it takes half a dozen Harpoons to even set a little corvette on fire temporarily.

 

I wish they would teach the ships (like the Rezky) to actually fire at each other, and implement some basic randomized damage tables for radar and FCS damage.

[Alfa]

But on a basic level, is it correct to say that the U.S. lacks supersonic anti-ship missiles with heavy warheads, and relies almost entirely on less-powerful Harpoons (and Tomahawks?), while the Russians have a wide variety of very lethal ASMs?

 

Yes but the US navy has a lot more aircraft to deliver those small ASMs and their short range has to be seen in that light as well - i.e. the aircraft provide the range.

 

Even if the U.S. has superior defensive capabilities.

 

I think thats a misconcenption - Russian ships are bristling with capable airdefence systems. They are mostly short range ones, but then you have to consider what types of missiles they are meant to counter - no sense in going for long range radar/SAM systems if the missiles you are defending against are small sea-skimming weapons that cannot be detected at range anyway - the few exceptions like the naval version of the S-300 is mostly for countering the launch platforms(aircraft) rather than the missiles themselves.

[pepin1234]

So my question is this: Does this disparity in the variety and firepower of anti-ship missiles exist in the real world as well?

 

 

This disparity was real and now could be real too. It is a different doctrine but this does not mean the aircrafts carries can represent a super power against a doctrine like the russian naval fleet doctrine. At the 80s Years the Russian Naval Forces was the stronger naval fleet have ever exist in the planet. They are not the same right now, and still they can do a devastating damage to the US Naval fleet.

[Alfa]

Whereas in the game, it takes half a dozen Harpoons to even set a little corvette on fire temporarily.

 

Its a flight sim :) .

 

Warships are cramped entities stuffed with electronics and stuff that can blow up, so a hit by even a small sized missile can have catastrofic consequences and at the very least seriously affect their fighting abilities. However, in order for that to be replicated, you would need an altogether more sophisticated damage model for ships.

 

I wish they would teach the ships (like the Rezky) to actually fire at each other, and implement some basic randomized damage tables for radar and FCS damage.

 

Hmm "the Rezky" - this is a Pr. 1135M(Krivak II) class ship and the missiles it carry(Metel system - SS-N-14 "Silex") is primarily an ASW system - it can be used as SSM, but it is quite short ranged and arguably not particulary effective in this role(large subsonic) against modern airdefences.

 

Anyway its not active in the game at all....so :)

Edited May 27, 2013 by Alfa

[GGTharos]

Maybe when they get the time for it at some point, but I think they'll be focused on other things for a long time. Or perhaps a 3rd party will see it fit to take up something along the lines of a naval expansion module.

 

Whereas in the game, it takes half a dozen Harpoons to even set a little corvette on fire temporarily.

 

I wish they would teach the ships (like the Rezky) to actually fire at each other, and implement some basic randomized damage tables for radar and FCS damage.

[RIPTIDE]

DCS: Armed Speedboat. I need that.

[maturin]

Or perhaps a 3rd party will see it fit to take up something along the lines of a naval expansion module.

And hopefully not charge for it.

 

It's not the vehicle gameplay that DCS needs from ArmA: It's the modding community.

[basset]

Maybe when they get the time for it at some point, but I think they'll be focused on other things for a long time. Or perhaps a 3rd party will see it fit to take up something along the lines of a naval expansion module.

 

:thumbup:

[Eihort]

Although expensive, the information in this 'game' (more accurately called a simulation) was derived from real world sources and is widely regarded as a very reasonable simulation of an extremely complicated topic. In the scenario book is a good analysis of the doctrines of both the US Navy and the Soviet Navy of the era.

 

http://www.clashofarms.com/high-tide.html

[311Gryphon]

And hopefully not charge for it.

 

It's not the vehicle gameplay that DCS needs from ArmA: It's the modding community.

 

NO DOUBT!!!!!