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 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.

[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

[Falkirion]

Well heck I must have been lucky. I got sent up to Arkangel for the port strike mission and managed to get a night time attack time. Had all the escorts/merchants as solid contacts.
Fired my first set of TLAMs while headed straight in at 090, fired the next set off when I was heading 180 and then turned tail and ran once I had all 8 confirmed hitting the IP.

It must have been luck getting the right attack time because I had no ASW Aircraft or port guards looking for me beyond the port guard firing up their active sonar. Night so no merchants could see the smoke plumes I guess. Also the Arkangel port depth is deep enough that you can comfortably run at a higher speed without cavatation being a problem.

I guess what I'd do if I got a daytime attack. I'd get close to a merchant and fire off my TLAMs, reload and fire off the next salvo then book it elsewhere. Use his active noise to suck up any attacks/confuse the escorts while I stayed silent as possible and evaded.

[Barleyman]

With realistic reload that business takes a while..

[Spartaner251]

There is a clock in the upper left corner of the worldmap, so you can also wait close to the port till night and then get so close to trigger the mission.

[GoldenRivet]

keep in mind this is the single mission i was referring to in the OP

in the campaign you can wait the hours out, this much is true, but not in the single mission. though the difficulty i have experienced with TLAM strikes in the past has lead me to avoid them in the campaign altogether. though i will be using a different approach from here on in

I have found that the mission starts with you only about 10 miles from the coast, when in reality the cruise missile strike could be completed from a hundred miles out to sea if necessary, so the best strategy is to just leave the area for a point on the map as far away as possible and let your TLAMs go from there.

this takes forever and a day and a half to do it, but this is the most realistic scenario, i don't know of a sub skipper on earth who would maneuver his boat to spitting distance of the shore in water barely 100 feet deeper than his keel to fire a TLAM sortie... especially when there are ASW surface vessels helicopters and aircraft patrolling the immediate area. strategy might work on ISIS cave dwellers... but we're talking about one of the Soviet Navy's busiest naval bases here

EDIT: i have also noted that (1) the enemy will only fire their SS-N-14s if they are within sensor range of your TLAM launch and (2) enemy surface vessels do not appear to make any attempt to shoot down TLAMs as they pass overhead on the way to target, so taking out enemy surface vessels between you and port is a non-issue.

[XenonSurf]

The most important factors for a successful missile launch and after-evasion are these in my opinion:

- What is the safe distance to enemy ships?
- At which distance enemy active/passive torpedos will find me immediately?

I will assume there are no enemy subs nearby because this will complicate my task to a big extend.

Before I fire my TLAMs or attack ships with Harpoons I will decide for a random escape course first, once my missiles are launched I'm not concerned about stealth for the next minutes, so I go flank and head just under thermal layer with *low* downward planes and low downward ballasts, I don't want to get down fast but sure I want to get *far* fast. If there is no thermal layer I would just go to 150 feet to get out of sight from an improbable overflying plane or helo. It doesn't make a big difference going deeper, remember you want to go *far* away as fast as possible.

At some point, my crew will tell me about torpedos in the water, it takes some time for the enemy to launch their missiles, the missiles heading to my position and their torpedo splash. Now if the distance to the torpedos is too small I'm usually doomed, baring that I setup a savant MOSS tactic, but it's all about the 2 factors I've mentioned above, they are crucial and life-saving. The torpedo distance will govern my further tactics: If the ships were far enough away at the moment I launched my missiles, then their torpedos will also splash far away from me and I can go stealth, I can kiss the enemy good bye, otherwise I'll enter the hell of a dance...

If the ship distances are too small, you won't make it even if the enemy has 0 TMA on you, the moment you fire your missiles they know where you are. So you must deal with close-by ships first. Make a stealth wire-guided torpedo attack against the ships making sure all torpedos would hit at roughtly the same time, seconds before they hit it's a good time to launch your missiles, make your torpedos active and shallow and fire your missiles. Then evade on your random course.

I hope this gives you some good ideas to work with !

[Julhelm]

These missions aren't supposed to be realistic. The original intention was to have something of a fresh break from sinking ships and see some land scenery go boom. Maybe we should redesign them into more like the SSN missions where you had to fight through a bunch of subs and warships to get to your launch basket.

[EnjoyableSTIG]

I think the mission is difficult enough as is. Due to game limitations the mission has to be short ranged which works pretty well for a pseudo-simulation. Good job so far.

[GeneralGamer]

I thought I posted this around 2AM but being late and having odd hours I could be mistaken but here is a tutorial on how to do the missions.

The link is (of course LOL) in the sig.