Quote:
Originally Posted by speed150mph
I'm spitballing here but I'm going to guess that it's because you can't aim it. There are only two basic types of SAM, radar guided and heat seaking.
Radar guided would be nearly suicide as you'd be asking for death to sit at periscope with a radar mast up long enough to send off your missile. So that's a bust.
Heat seekers are a more feasible solution except for one problem. The seekers are very short range and have to be heading straight towards the target pretty well to lock on. In a submarine it is very hard to pin down a helos position to get a firing bearing. Also they are very easily distracted, the sun makes a very good target for a heat seeker.
There's also the fact that helos in perticular are usually pretty close to the surface, so your missile would have a very narrow window of time to lock on to the target and would in all likelyhood not detect the target, or find it too late to turn into it before it passes
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thx for answer, these are good points,
i didnt think of that...
could we imagine some kind of floatting buoys (like helos drop, but from subs), as they exist for sonar detection, but able to transmit datas from incoming helos to guide sams from subs ?
that could prevent risks for subs, and in that case, radar-guidance could be a good solution... and may even buoys dont need to be physicaly linked with subs by wire (perhaps, not totally sure under-water if there could be an efficient way beside wires ?).
or even by wire, we could imagine a 5to15kyd wire or so...
enough, in case of close range combat with an helos, to extend the tracking area to something already significant, and give sub enough delay to openfire and kill it...
but agree with issues about the mast-option, its too risky (and limited about efficency for heat seaking), it can not work.
and an other detail,
some of modern-subs already can deploy sonar buoys to participate in researchs or tracking ennemies, then create a variant of these buoys specialized in SAM-guidance could work and procure a way to use SAMs onboard, etc.
could it be a reliable option then ?