Some of you may find this a bit daunting but rest assured its not and it is indeed probably a fundamental tactic used in ASW today.
So i am currently driving the FFG now most of the time this platform is over looked as vulnerable and easy kill.....is it really?
So the exercise is set up in deep water in the bay of Biscay weather is good sea state calm perfect time to deploy a simple yet highly effective tactic called Datum Prosecution.
For this i require both helo's however i don't need the ship screaming about the place either so speed is set to just 4 knots, give me two things first lowers my own sound signature in the water and second makes it harder for a submarine to pick me up (yes it is modeled in DW)
so i let loose my helo's and take control via data link
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Once established select and area or areas you wish to search, now for ease i'm using two helo's to do the job one would normally do, if i didn't know where the submarine was i would likely send one helo south and one north creating a cocoon around my frigate, but i have a rough idea where i put it so for ease and speed i wont.
Above shows you my start point i have put the cursor over the map and hit enter it leaves a cross on the page, the next bit is crucial from that cross i will mark off like a clock 12 3 6 and 9 positions at exactly 9nm from that cross in the centre, always use the first cross as the middle of the "circle" so from there 9nm to point 3 point 6 so on. you end up with this
As this is deep water and there's a very deep thermocline beyond the depth of any normal submarine diving ability i have selected to use deep buoys
the selection is critical Dicass and Vlad are the two best buoys to use.
In the centre i place Dicass deep with the surrounding buoys being vlad deep
As you can see using the Helo i can control where they drop the buoy
Remove the crosses once the buoy is dropped as they will get in the way, but this is a liad out pattern with the next search area marked off, using buoy 5 i mark off 9nm and that gives me the centre for my next circle so i am using buoy 5 in two search fields thus saving resources i may need later on.
Buoy 10 gets a hit but its not enough to confirm a submarine it could be anything or an ambiguous contact maybe even yourself.
Buoy 8 & 10 now go live and form two tracks where the line crosses is where your submarine is likely to be but the best solution is to confirm with a 3rd, also bear in mind a submarine cannot hear these buoys as they make no active ping (yet & dicass only)
Buoys 8,9 & 10 all have a contact and all 3 lines intersect giving you a small area in which a likely submarine is and this is a confirmed submarine but we still need to be sure otherwise you could fire on a whale or a friendly.
As you can see auto crew have classified this as a french Amethyst class SSN (that's what i put in) normally i do not use auto crew here and have my settings switched to air only.
Marking a box with crosses this shows the area in which my sensors have tracked a submarine for this screen shot i turned on show truth and as you can see im not far off the mark and a helo standing by to drop a torpedo right on top of its head.
You can use this tactic in open waters or in shallow waters dont forget if you want absolute concrete proof a sub is there switch the dicass from passive to active mode and watch the waterfall for blips
Why 9nm ? well the maximum effective range of a buoy as modeled in DW is 10nm i select 8.5-9nm as the helo's are not accurate at dropping them so it allows a margin of error and overlapping you can also shorten it to 5nm spacing for a close datum prosecution in littoral waters, select the pattern wisely this one wont always guarantee you a submarine.