New scenario: Polish Navy vs Baltic Fleet 2013

[kbosak]

"boats are indeed Tarantul I not III. Also added 2000 version with Quad Grom mount."

I have screwed up. It turns out that polish navy is using grom as pure manpads, either from submarine kiosk or side galleries of the of ship's bridge,
but all quad mounts are retained for original strela-2M only. They should be interchangeable in theory, but apparently ther is some minor detail like voltage, rails width, whatever.

OHP:
"- Removed CWIS and Mk13 mount, as they have no ammo"
I have spotted that on the photos physically CIWS is still there, but ammo is not and infact the system is not operational as repeated many times on navy enthusiasts forums. I have edited on my scenario by making null ammo count for this, but on the other hand, most probably search radar is never enabled as well so erasing the mount is closer to reality.
-Remember Polish Navy has no single standard arm nor harpoon and is not planning to have. So MK13 mount is physically there on OHP, but similar situation as with phalanx. Those ships are simply manpower-intensive huge boat chasers with good sensors keeping headcount for better times, which may never arrive. Witt updated MU-90 torpedos, also for their seasprite, with practically no reloads (20pcs or so for the whole navy)

"- Is the Grom system made up of MANPADS or Quad launcher systems?"
looks like in teh navy there are only strela-2M on quad launchers, grom as pure manpads (single tube).
apparently there are two wrobel mounts available on polish ships
ZU-23-2MR Wróbel (http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZU-23-2M_Wr%C3%B3bel)
and
ZU-23-2MR Wróbel II (http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZU-23-2MR_Wr%C3%B3bel_II)
the second one has reportedly handling issues when swithing between guns and rocket (assume a few good seconds ofdelay), this is why all mounts with wrobel (v1) stay on ships where they are.
So also Wrobel II uses Strela-2M and not Grom

Kaszub:
This is an ASW corvette since always and wake-homing torpedo on it... was a TOTAL surprise.
What I know for sure is that polish navy is using TEST-71 ASW torpedo on ORP Orzeł (877E Kilo), Kaszub being build during the fall of commmunism, so the only reasonnable guess for 533mm ASW torpedo is TEST-71.

660 Grom:
about toadfish VDS:
http://fotoforum.gazeta.pl/photo/2/c...WS6Zr5uGdX.jpg there is NOTHING between AK630M and the tail. No lift, no place for a reel. And it would make no sense at all to put a sonar on them. Those are not Pauk-style boats, those are fast and noisy, small surface cobatants Tarantul-style, without a single armament agains submarines. This toadfish idea is rumor copypasted from swedish sub hunters, I think. Swedes wre obsessed about sub-chasing, and grom 660 basically uses their command&control, but not with all its possible flavours.


Kobben:
"- Only 4 of the eight torpedo tubes are used? Did I get that right?"
In my scenario I have empied half of them by default since I suppose total stocks of those ammo is not more than 16-20pcs for all Kobbens. Buying of MU-90 was cut from 32 to somehting like 20 for financial reasons alone, and type 612 was simply haded over Danish Navy with Kobbens. This means if they wer shipped with full salvo plus a few more, there is no more than a few left per ship after several naval exercices, possibly add bad maintenance etc...
"- Does Poland carry MANPADS on these operationally? Are you sure it is practically possible to fire these SAMs from the subs?"
This is not sure if those are streal-2m or grom but is quite possible given it was mentioned as practiced in Kilo to have one maybe two manpads which years ago coudl be only strela-2m. Of course it is fired only when completely surfaced. Basically as mean of self-defense in K-19 widowmaker scenario .

Kilo:
"- When was TEST-71ME installed? Some sources claim these subs were used in the anti-ship role only."
Read this several times on polish naval forums.

Kobben & Kilo,
"- When was Grom installed?"
Only supposed. Only after mobilisation. For sure that igla launcher mast mentioned in your original database for Kilo is not there, probably never was. Grom is VERY popular in polish armed forces (500-800 pcs? locally built and is supplementing several hundreds of strela-2M) so no wonder one or two will be handled to navy for the most precious units like submarines.

Kobben:
This page suggests that:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobben
they have the following sensor suite after upgrades:
sonar changed
CSU-83 (DBQS-21) sonar suystem composed of: CSU 3-4 medium/high freq avtive/passive sonar
FAS 3-1 passive hull array
PRS 3-15 passive rangefinder sonar array
radar changed to Kelvin Hughes Typ 1007 navigation radar

Tarantul:
"Misc corrections: - Removed one AK-630 on Polish Tarantul I"
NONONO! Tarantuls all have two, Pauk on the same hull has one.
Both have only one fire control radar.
Pauk is ASW or KGB/boirderguard and no ASuW, Tarantuls are pure ASuW.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okr%C4%99ty_projektu_1241
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QUYTiYwMQ6.../s1600/OS3.jpg

Tarantul:
"The Garpun is credited with a 70nm+ OTH range against large targets, and 24nm against small targets. The OTH capability was needed to fire the SS-N-2D out to its maximum range, apparently."
And this is a kludge.
Ther reality is, most missile boats CANNOT fire their missiles OTH because their mast is too low for radar horison. I have read about this Garpun on FAS site. It is OTH ONLY if one of the boats acting as emitter is closer, then the reciever boats can be further away and those are OTH. Emitter is not OTH so effectively from tactial point of view for simple scenarios as we have it is NON-OTH radar for all practical purposes, if we make if miraculous OTH it starts working better than high-positioned surface search on a missile destroyer or even OHP what is a nonsense. radar horison (mount altitude and target altitude) is what dictates max range except a few very special radars, more power on large radars only makes sure that you can detect even the smallest object up to the max radar horison and this is where big destroyer radar winds: by height and power, but only a dozen miles or so.
This is a problem for Polish Navy: how to direct all those RBS-15, even STYX MOD C, and NSM of course, havin a few stupid M-28 Bryza that are easy to be shot down and even them have some 120km radar range... but for a frigate like OHP or Sovremenny. So this is reality and I think we should not provide a kludge to make 'hero boats' appear on the map in order to feel better.

I am afraid of a few radar simulation issues, it seem to me after playing several games that:
-In the game, enabling any radar is counted as enabling practically all radars, from the point of view of ESM. In reality ships use sectorized low power navigation radars, and only one enables all radars. In the game, if yo enably any radar, you can detect and classify it quite easily.
-RBS-15 III (not II) has land strike capability like tomahawk (but it is GPS+inertial thing). Yet in the game it searches for surface radar-detectable target, therefore orbiting around let's say enemy airfield until out of fuel.
-in reality IR STYX missiles were able to strike heated, metal oil tanks during iran-iraq war, just to let you know.
-radar sites have no limit on number of traced targets, the with neva alone you can basically survey large part of airspace
-generic surface radars and others as well show optimistic range at low altitudes, something like 30% more than official polish navy publications/coverage maps even if we include the fact that those shore-mounted towers are taller than a big cruiser mast. This leads me to thinking, that as basic equation, you use ranges, instead of using radar horison range equation which is roughly:
http://www.radary.az.pl/zasieg.php
dist[km]=3.57*(sqrt(h1)+sqrt(h2)), h1 and h2 in meters are emitter and target altitude. This implementation of the lowest possible detection altitude would solve Falkland scenario mystery and add a lot of intersting effects to the simulation.
-First contact scenarios are IMO badly designed, it should not start with all ships withing range of each other otherwise it becomes a random lottery based on ESM. (who blinks first). This is not reality since the ships do not appear from vacuum, and detection ranges for surface radars seem to be vastly overestimated.