Any idiot with half ounce of old holbern of common sence knows a SAG wouldnt survive agasint a SAG but if you put it into context where there are 1 kirov 8 sovremennys 4 udaloys four to six oscars so how many missiles is that, too many to shoot down even with aegis i dont think aegis could counter them all at once.

And the Russians would be foolish to throw 19 platforms against a single SAG; especially since they are short on surface combatants to begin with. Who would be watching the rest of the ocean?

Really funny .. 'my navy is better than yours' .. be happy we don't know for sure :|\\

What would be more foolish is to disperse assets and not kill anything.

It is an unrealistic expectation for the present Russian Navy to be able to defeat multiple US CVBGs - that expectation was hard enough to achieve during the Cold War that now it is plain delusion. But if they can kill a single CVBG or two with confidence, this will place them within the top few navies in the world, which is not bad after over a decade of decay, and a vindication of their original tactical theory.

Well for a start the second the USN CVBG enters the 150 miles limit nukes will be flying and also the russian navy will not go to the ocean to fight they will go in thier own backyard ie the american will have to come to them which then put the american in the worst possible situation as the russian land forces can shower them with numerous missiles which i could garentee 90% of them will be nuclear.

The northern fleet is capible of holding off the USN in the bearnts sea i can definatly tell you that it would loose in the mid ocean, main targets being carriers amphibious warfare vessels and aegis ships the USN has the missiles availible also the units carrying them however if it came to it the russians would deploy everything to fight off just one CVBG as they expect to loose alot hence why in the cold war they had so much naval force.

there are plans in place for such an event the whole of the baltic area around russia would be mined the north cape area and a block by the main entrancies to the ports not only that i would speculate that block ships would be put in place

So yes definatly the USN would win in the blue water but i wouldnt be sure in the home waters.

Hence I think the USN dropped the Kola peninsula option a long time ago.

However I still think you're over estimating Russian capabilities. Although money is arriving in the fleet I still see no evidence of increased tempo of operations or in crew quality. EG the fire in Panther the other week. QC needs to be sorted out.

I know the fleet is going over to all contract sailors in 2008 but if as you say nukes were flying we'd all be ****ed.

The quality of the older ships isnt good the russian navy is no longer a blue water fighting force and its good reason the USN dropped the kola approach, but now the money is getting better so hopefully the whole fleet will be re done by 2020 or 2030

There is no nation that would committ its entire surface fleet, as well as a number of its most expensive and valuable submarines, to the destruction of one surface group. Remember, we are talking about a SAG, not a CVBG. This is, simply, not how wars are fought.

1) I was working under the assumption that when Kapitan said "Any idiot with half ounce of old holbern of common sence knows a SAG wouldnt survive agasint a SAG" he really meant a CVBG for the second one. Kapitan's later post seems to vindicate my assumption.
2) In any case, it is a function of what you can do. If your military is good enough have a good chance of killing three groups, then of course you will disperse your guys into three groups and send them against all three. However, if you can only kill one. A cardinal principle of warfare is adequate concentration of force.

There are some fundamental mistakes in the idea that a SAG could shoot so many missiles at a CVN that it would get some through. The main error is in thinking that such a super-SAG would ever get close enough to shoot those missiles to begin with.

Compare the range of an ASM with that of a carrier air wing (with tanker support). Compare the speed of a CVN with the speed of a Sovv, or a Slava. The SAG doesn't even have enough time to sprint toward first base.

No CVNBG would operate in the russian littlorals because there would be no need to. The brown-water arguments are insignificant, because they apply to an operational condition that would not exist.

Russian surface combatants were never a credible threat to a full-size CVNBG with 3-4 carriers making up the core. The threat came from soviet ground-based naval aviation and their submarines. That is the reason the US is so much more advanced in ASW and AAW than they are ASuW.

Yeah! The airforce would have gotten them, never had to leave Ohio, and still gotten back in time to watch "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" :D

For this mission, that means you take the information given in the briefing, mark the expected course on the map at one hour intervals, go deep and fast on course 270. When you intersect the line you marked, slow down and wait for them or approach quietly. Every time I played it, the briefing information in this mission was so good the enemy group would pass over your position, at the expected time.

I'm not sure that's always the best way to do it. My experience has been that if you try to get directly in front of a formation, you're usually going to get detected and pounded. That's fine if you're going to try to shoot your way past the screens to get at high value units but often that's not the wisest course of action.

Instead, I try to come in offset somewhat. That's sort of where it gets kind of squishy, because if the formation is designed smartly, to avoid detection you need to be super precise in your maneuvers.

The other option is to get behind them and shoot wakehomers from behind. It's not always such a bad idea in terms of survivability, but sometimes you can't always sink a ship.

Which mission is this, btw?

Barents sea loiter. In this mission, I've achieved success by simply staying ahead of them out of active sonar range, and sending passive adcaps to meet them head-on. TASM doesn't work well here initially because the escorts have good SAM systems. However, once a few of the escorts are out of action, it can work.

That should work.

I've never had any problem with the TASM in this scenario, though. Honestly, I think the TASM makes the scenario a bit too easy because they give you enough information to target the Russian SAG as soon as you receive the radio message. It's never out of range, so I can usually destroy at least one of the escorts using a salvo of TASMs.

The fact that they have good SAMs is the only thing that prevents me from destroying the entire battle group as soon as I get the radio message, actually. With a salvo size of 16 missiles, statistics says that at least one or two is almost certain to hit something. Suppose that a single missile only has a one in ten chance of getting through their missiles and chaff. Then the probablity of scoring at least one hit given a salvo size of 16 missiles is

pk = 1-(1-0.1)^16 = 0.81

That's pretty good! I like those odds! :know: The large salvo size lets you compensate for the relatively slow missile.

After clearing the datum from my initial cruise missile attack, I make another attack with the Harpoons. The salvo size is smaller, but they're faster and so individually they they are a little bit more likely to make it through the Russian formation's defenses. A salvo of four missiles usually does okay as well. With a little luck I can sometimes destroy a second escort.

Then I have to clear the datum again...

By that time I'm ready to make an attack with my torpedoes and finish off anything that survived the two strikes already made against it. For this I use tactics similar to what you described.