Thinking Aloud About Tactics
 

Grumble... grumble... grumble...

I keep playing KILO scenarios. It's the same thing every time: approach a fast moving strike group and bag a high value unit (either a CVN or an LHD). I keep trying to wedge myself between the screens and the high value units, shoot, go deep, pop up and shoot some more. I'm beginning to think this is a bad tactic, because I get killed every time. The thing is, I can't think of a good reason why.

It seems like the only viable option is to actually avoid getting in front of anyone, come in from a far offset angle and shoot from behind. Anything else is suicide.

They can only detect you with active sonar (if you go 5kts). To lower this chance, face pingers directly to minimize reflective area. Do some course alternations to get better TMA, since you will use only one sensor (sphere). But stay at pingers average heading +- 10 degrees, +-30 at maximum.
Start shooting at escorts, no matter what torpedoes you use. You just want them to react. They will evade and will break formation. Then attack target with best torpedoes you have. You can also turn sideway for a while to get tracks from the other sensor array. Sometimes the target will also react on torpedoes targeted on escorts, and you should notice that.

There is no reason for going deep. Situation awareness is more important.
You can go deep after the attack, or when there is a layer. But layer only works at some distance. When you hear the pings, they can hear returns.
When running away, again, point your tail directly at pingers. It will be much harder to see you for them.

Shoot at escorts in the moment target is safely in range. Wakehomers are great for chasing escorts (and killing them too), but for target i prefer passive mode. Wakehomers tends to follow ANY wake, so sometimes it is hard to make them hit the ship you want. Wireguided torpedoes are even better, and kilo's tests are pretty usable for that.

Also if you see escorts are runnings fast, which they will when evading and also when returning to the formation, you can assume they can't hear you at all.

Watch for the helos. Do EWR and scope scan before the attack. They won't be able to launch them during the attack most probably, but surviving escorts will launch them for sure later. You should not be there at that time however.

Kilo has however really too few torpedoes for such tasks. You may try to make perfect shot with wakehomers at the target. Make perfect solution, choose ideal activation point .. take evasion into account .. then fire & forget. This is more likely Kilo tactic.

The geometry of the problem is such that against a CSG or ESG going 15-20kts, though, you will usually need to go faster than that in order to get within torpedo range.

Also, why bother with sonar at all? I have periscope and ESM which I can see further with.

I tried that and it always turns out badly. I usually get one escort but he has friends.

They do! With VLA! :-)

I don't think so. Bare in mind, if you manage to sink a CVN or LHD, you've just inflicted a 9/11 sized blow to the US forces. It can definitely be done with what one has. It's also worth tremendous risk because the loss of one of these assets might very well mean the end of the war. I mean if the conflict had less than the national survival of the US at stake, then the government might very well say, "Oh well... I guess you get XXXX, good fight. 3000 Marines really isn't worth it."

I mean Kilo is not good for killing both target and escorts. Not enough fishies. Even Akula has full hands of work. Kilo could score on the target, but dealing with the escorts is just relying on luck.

Missile torpedoes are pretty good. I'd say you have no chance against those. Attacking group with missile torpedoes launchers with one Kilo is suicide. Even attacking one ship with that capability is risky.

Gosh... you have very extreme opinions. I wouldn't go that far. I sank an LHD, damaged an LSD and a DDG this afternoon. I had to play the scenario four times to succeed, but eventually I pulled it off. There's no reason why it might also have turned out with two platforms sunk, an LHD and a DDG or CG would have been ideal. Better luck next time I suppose.

I don't think that going against any platform is necessarily suicide for any other platform. The hard part is figuring out what to do.

I wouldn't try to sink every ship in the strike group. That would be extremely difficult and you're right, I don't think I'd have enough torpedoes to do it, but that's okay. Sinking an LHD, damaging an LSD and a DDG constitutes a potentially war winning loss for the USN and 9/11 scale destruction. I think I can call that sufficient mehem for one afternoon's wargaming.

To have even a chance against a CVBG for example you need one crucial element before everything else and thats first class intelligence ... you need to know when they are at a given point. Without that, trying to go up against such a target with a SSK is like playing russian roulette with a semiautomatic.

Lets assume you have that intelligence, there are in my eyes two options.

Option 1

Lay in ambush waiting for the target. If its a CVBG for example let the screens run over you and go for the carrier. Once you shot your fish try to get away, but the chances for that are not to bright.

Option 2

Deploy one or more CAPTORS programmed for the high value target at the location where the target will be and pray your intel and the tech works. If everything works as planned you will get the target without risking your own ass.

Btw. I think Patrick Robinson described Option 2 (with the addition of a Nuclear Warhead) in Nimitz Class.

There might be other options if you have a SSK that can go fast and silent for longer periods of time (like the U212 class) but for the sake of the argument lets assume we dont have that available.

Cheers
OS

Have you looked in the soviet naval tactics book by Milan Vego?The best book i have seen is Submarine command by Ben Bryant for discussing some aspects of attacking in an ssk.

ISBN number of that book linton ?

Also what else do you wish to discuss?

Hey again .. here we talk about DW world. No captors .. ans AFAIK no chance of them runing over you without noticing you're there.

If you get near group protected by destroyers with missile torpedo, I don't see an option. They will detect you sooner or later. And they can kill you just a seconds after that. Akula could send torpedo to each escort to keep them busy, but kilo can't do that (and also kill the target).

What is a CAPTOR ? :hmm:

CAPTOR is a MK46 tethered to the sea bed, releases on hearing a target that matches a database.

Ah, to be effective it requires beforehand knowledge of where your target is going to pass.
Don't know how useful it can be in real life scenarios.

Kap which book do you want the isbn of?A kilo really is the wrong platform to go against a csg with and I am surprised that SeaQueen has not realised this or is just playing with the limited choice of DW.
A kilo is a barrier weapon.The USSR seemed to have a weapon for every different situation.They went for an Oscar to take out a CSG not a kilo!The latter is more of a 1v1 weapon not something you want to be in when your opposition is a lot of 30kt+ffg/dg armed with nuclear asrocs.Trying to take on a convoy in a diesel was ok in WW2 when most of the hunters barely went faster than you and their weapons were short range.The type XXI could easily outrun their hunters for short periods.
After WW2 there was a trend towards fast SSK ,notably the peroxide powered boats that were usurped by the SSN.There was however a corresponding increase in speed from the hunters as well.The kilo was never meant to be a fast submarine-silent and quiet like an alley mugger is a better description of it.
SQ you will get to take out the hvu in a Kilo but you will die every time doing it!
The whole argument against the kilo covers the post war history of the ssk and the soviets understood thir limitations!

Any country that would want to deliver such a decisive blow might send more than one Kilo into such a situation... sounds like a good co-op mission.

TG

It depends on what you mean by sending more than one. Just because they sent more than one doesn't mean they'll be acting together in coordination. As I've said before, a single submarine skillfully handled can certainly sink an LHD or CVN.

You might also send out a group of submarines to fill a large area so that the strike group the submarines intend to attack is more likely to be found. If a sub finds the strike group he might send a message back to headquarters (since it's unknown if the other subs are capable of communicating, they can't send it directly to them), and then begin his attack.

I'm not sure I'd want to concentrate a group of subs in too small an area though because it means that if one detects one, one is more likely to detect all of them and at that point they all get smacked. The other thing is that it compouds the big handicap of KILOs: they're slow and can't search a big area quickly.

The other vessels, once they get the message that the strike group was sighted at a particular location at a particular time, moving at a particular speed and course might then move to attack it, if they're in range they might even fire cruise missiles at it but by that point, the initial submarine's attack is most likely over.

Im not too sure if it is even possible today, with the invention of AEGIS the threat of cruise missiles is very low, plus (I have not heard this from any of you yet) Standard carrier battle group formation ALWAYS includes 2 (sometimes 1) SSN's, Los Angeles Class for the U.S.

The SSNs virtually eliminate the threat of SSK intrusion (except maby for a 212 or a Go(a)tland, but even then once the SSK fires, it will give itself away) I think the possibility of an SSK killing a CVN or LHD is VERY low, and getting lower because of advancing technology.

Maybe... all this depends on things like how many you shoot, what kinds of missiles they are, etc. AEGIS is powerful, but it is not a magic cruise missile shield.

What things say on paper and how things actually work are two different things.

Just because it says there's a 688 in a CSG doesn't mean that he's RIGHT THERE in the formation. He might be quite a substantial distance away from the CSG, he might even have been sent into the area of operations days in advance, covertly paving the way, gathering intelligence, making cruise missile strikes or assuming a blocking position in critical chokepoints.

I don't see that it's impossible for the SSK to get past an SSN, and if the SSK has fired, then he's essentially done his job right? Afterwards isn't really important from the US perspective. Then it's just a matter of how effective the torpedoes are. That's not really the submarines fault, though, if it employs them smartly. The CVN or LHD might still luck out and somehow survive, but it'd still most likely be substantially damaged. That'd be almost as good.

I don't know how likely it is, but even if it was unlikely the high payoff for a nation in conflict with the US would almost certainly make the attempt worthwhile. The possibility of success enables them to hold at risk any forces operating anywhere enemy subs are known to be operating.

It can be done. It's not easy, but it can be done.

So a KILO has to do it by being sneaky, striking what it wants, and then running.

Not yet, no. It's been sitting in my boss's bookshelf for a while now, though. I'm thinking I need to borrow it. Ugh... so much to read. I'll have to put it in the queue some time after I finish the current book on ancien regime Europe and the public sphere.

Does it have lots of diagrams, charts, numbers and calculations? I like that.

Exactly. It's intended for access denial. That's what I use them for. You pre-position them someplace, and then wait for strike groups to run over them. In this sense, a KILO is sort of like an intelligent, mobile, mine field. That's fine though, they can sink ships.

Right, but they had a little bit of a different spin on things. The big limitation of the KILO is not it's weapons load, but it's speed. That forces a KILO to be constrained by the limiting lines of approach of the target in order for it to successfully execute it's attack. That's exactly what makes it an interesting tactical problem, because you have to really think about the maneuvering within a limited set of space while not getting too close to the screening warships.

The Oscar, on the other hand, being a nuke, doesn't have to deal with that problem as much. It's ability to maintain high speeds for long periods of time means it doesn't have to wait for the strike group to come to it, but can be more aggressive. It just needs the word on when to shoot it's missiles.

Nobody has nuclear ASROCs anymore.

FOR THE GLORY OF THE MOTHERLAND!!! :D

Actually it's not that bad. You just have to be slinky and willing to pick your fights. You can't be like, "Oh! there's a DDG I better shoot him." It's more like, "Oh.. there's a DDG, I better keep my distance." The KILO v. fast moving strike group problem requires a much cooler player.