Strategy for cruise missile launch

[GoldenRivet]

Obviously the purpose of the exercise is to sneak your sub around in extremely shallow water and fire off the most obvious position revealing weapon in your inventory - without revealing your position... oh yeah, and you can only shoot 4 of these weapons at a time, so, without the advantage of a VLS system... you have to cheat death not once, but twice.

i have tried the "shoot and scoot" method, wherein i fire my salvo of 4 TLAMs and as expediently as possible try to change my position, but, with 2 helicopters and a 4 engine turboprop bomber searching the area, doing anything in a submarine expediently is a bad idea. I have tweaked this attack by firing off the TLAMS and then loading a MOSS and firing it. about 30-50% of the time the moss will be repeatedly bombed or torpedoed by the aircraft but their interest in it is short lived and they almost always find me.

i have tried the "point blank" method, wherein i sneak to within just a couple of miles of the target area and fire all 4 TLAMS, reload for the second attempt... but within minutes i have 3 escorts depth charging me and its over.

the only method i have had any success with is...

the "sunken shield method" - i wait until a vessel, usually a cargo ship is reasonably close, then i sink it with one ADCAP. then i load all 4 tubes with TLAMS and park right next to the sunken freighter. when the tubes are ready i ascend to launch depth, fire the TLAMS and then head back down snuggled next to the wreck of that cargo ship. when the aircraft start sending torpedoes my way, they generally home in on the wreck. when the next group of TLAMs are ready i pop up and launch my second attack. i hand out by the wreck, firing ADCAPS at all approaching escorts until i am convinced nobody else has any weapons left and i hurry out of there.

very unrealistic approach.

I also notice that this mission is almost always done in the daytime. which also seems a little unrealistic as it would make more sense to me to send the 200 foot tall plumes of "aim here to sink me" signal smoke into the air after dark

what is your success strategy for cruise missile attacks?

[The Bandit]

Can argue a bit about the realism of it but, I've had very great success with "off-angle" Mk 48 attacks. For whatever reason the majority of the early warning capability rests with the surface ships in the area (usually a Grisha and or a Krivack) so the main objective is to get them out of the picture, after they detect your launch they see to call in the air assets.

Shoot a Mk 48, keep it in pre-enable/transit mode and arc it out so that it comes in from a different bearing. Say your target is at 300 relative to you, if you shot directly at the target even if he gets destroyed he's going to send air searching down your LOB which would probably be about 120 or so relative to him. If you arc the fish's path so it comes in from his NE instead of SE (so say maybe 50 or 60) he's going to send air on a goose chase running down that LOB where he will find precisely nothing. Do this right and once the surface threats are gone there's a decent chance that you'll be able to fire off your missiles without stuff getting dropped on your head as those threats have been drawn off.

[GoldenRivet]

the briefing instructions say to avoid detection.

wouldn't sinking several surface vessels be the opposite of that goal?

[XenonSurf]

In reality your TLAMs and TSAMs have an effective range of almost 600k yards. So there's no need to be close to a port and say hello to the patrols there
There is in fact NO reason to risk your sub on mine fields etc. and getting so close to an enemy port, the only reason I could imagine is all your recon satellites being put out of action, so you must do espionage missions on your own, but that's hair-stretched already...An allied plane flying at 30.000 feet over the port, or bombing the port would be the better military option in that theoric case.


[EDIT]
Oooops, sorry, I meant VLF has 600k yard range, not the TLAMs... So good skippers: back to work...

[GoldenRivet]

so then the thing to do would be able to head as far away as possible from all contacts and let er rip i suppose?

[Barleyman]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

so then the thing to do would be able to head as far away as possible from all contacts and let er rip i suppose?

And go have a coffee/beer/bring a book. You should kill the patrol boats with ASW missiles at least, I'm not sure if those Rigas are important but Grisha / Krivak are dangerous at least. Hard to say if the planes actually pick up the launch i.e. If you'd have a free pass after sinking the last frigate

After your initial strike against patrol ships head north at 10 knots. If you're not dead within an hour or so st time compression you're getting to a more reasonable firing position

[Barleyman]

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

In reality your TLAMs and TSAMs have an effective range of almost 600k yards. So there's no need to be close to a port and say hello to the patrols there
There is in fact NO reason to risk your sub on mine fields etc. and getting so close to an enemy port, the only reason I could imagine is all your recon satellites being put out of action, so you must do espionage missions on your own, but that's hair-stretched already...An allied plane flying at 30.000 feet over the port, or bombing the port would be the better military option in that theoric case.


[EDIT]
Oooops, sorry, I meant VLF has 600k yard range, not the TLAMs... So good skippers: back to work...

Should be 600 nautical miles at least. Those maritime patrol planes should have pretty wide search grid by the time they close the distance. The problem is that you have to do it pretty much point blank with the plane minutes away.