What they do in the real world?
 

I designed my own missions.

I placed my boat within the battlegroup. I can't receive any broadband nor narrow band meaningful signal.

Question: In the real world, do submarines stay very far away from its battlegroup, like at ;east 5 miles away.

Yep. It would not be strange for the attached sub to be much farther away than 5 nmi from the battlegroup. Remember, they are there to find enemy subs before they can get close enough to the battlegroup to launch anti-ship missiles or torpedos.

How many subs usually escorts a big battlegroup?!
If you had any submarine at your disposal, how many and what type would you choose to defend an american BG and the same on the russian attacker side.

When we did the research what to call our submarine group, we could only find the one sub that was the SSN 724 Louisville that was attached to the Nimitz Strike Group. But in saying that I'm sure if the situation was required they would employ more then one submarine to a Group.

BonKeRS
www.vcvw-11.net

I was working on a scenario simulating a Taiwan Strait crisis. Target package located at 25-27N* 119-04E*. Maximum range stands at 178nm. Strike time pending. Mines in the area.

I notice that the whole strait is shallow waters! Nothing like 400ft deep. This is very weird. Is it good for submarine warfare or not I mean the whole area is so shallow.

Re: What they do in the real world?
 

It wouldn't be unusual, but really, it depends on what the submarine is tasked to do.

Some difficulties. See, if getting too close to the BG, I can tell who is who because of noise. Maybe what detected are actually the enemy convoy or even their diesel escorts. They have too many diesel subs.

It depends on what you mean by "good."

It's probably better to say, they're the only ones that CAN do it.

There's really not any good reason to put a surface ship in the straights themselves. They'd almost certainly get swatted.

The straights are easy to mine. There'd be shore-based antiship cruise missiles on at least one side. You'd be limited in your ability to maneuver a large surface fleet. They'd be vulnerable to attack by aircraft. In light of that, a submarine might not be great, but it is the best platform for doing operations there.

The thing that makes the Taiwan straights so challenging for a submarine, though, is that it's all bottom limited, so you can't expect very good sonar performance there.

Nobody said it'd be EASY. :-)

So according to what you say, most likely naval battles will be conducted east of Taiwan?

Re: What they do in the real world?
 

As said Bill, 5 miles is very CLOSE to the battle group.
They use to be much farther than that.

You can try this mission =>
http://okof4.free.fr/missions/DW/MP4_Steel_storm_v1.mu

it's a fight beetween 2 task forces, with SSN opening the way for each of them.
Edit the mission to see how I put the SSN relative to the battlegroup.
As SSN have random positions, you could see the closest position with the TF is 20 miles in front of her, and the farthest is 40 miles on left or right side.

The first detection will be made on active intercept and not on sonar.
You should use this to improve you path for interception, until you get them on sonar.

I wouldn't say that. It all depends on what everyone involved is trying to do. Honestly, I'm really not at liberty to say much in this respect. I can say, though, that putting a surface ship in the straight itself is not the smartest thing in the world to do. It doesn't really buy you much.

Since the acoustics are rotten, they can't defend themselves effectively from submarines. There's a good chance they'll find themselves in a minefield, they can't get too close to shore without getting shot at by a shore based antiship cruise missile. They'll most likely have the whole Chinese airforce after them. It's just not a good place to be if you're a surface ship. Put the surface ships somewhere else.

I would have thought SSN escorts don't work that close in to CVBGs, it's not worth running the risk of having them MISIDENT it as a hostile. Plus, further away from the CVBG the sonar picture is clearer.

Actually, there is such a thing as underwater telephone. All they have to do is pick it up and say, "hey? is that you?" Subs aren't as out of touch with other warships as they are sometimes given credit for.

Gertrude (the 'underwater telephone') is very short range and often unreliable. And, in a wartime situation, if an escort thinks it may have an enemy sub nearby (within Gertrude range), the last thing it's CO wants to do is to pick up his Gertrude handset and say, "hey, are you a friendly?" :|\

Oberon is right on the money -- Direct Support subs want to stay away from the battlegroup -- both to aid their own sonar performance, and for self-protection from 'friendly' forces.

There are lots of formal rules for ship/sub interaction - waterspace management is the term. If a sub is working with a surface group there may be no permission granted for air/surface units to use ASW weapons in the area. If it's an ASW free area and a friendly sub stumbles in, oh well, he shoulda paid more attention to waterspace management. And all sorts of situations in between. Submarine generated search areas, bullpens, stovepipes, joint action areas, and on and on.

No one involved in an action is just allowed to cowboy it up however he sees fit, mainly because direct communication between ships and subs is pretty much impossible in tactical situations.

Compressioncut is right there are lots of well defined rules for Subs operating near surface ships and vice versa. The Navy learned its lesson and paid for it with blood in WWII, remember the Seawolf? They have 1,000 page reports on every aspect of that incident and others for determining SOP for today’s operations so it doesn’t happen again.

Our satellite can see us. And why don't we use e-mail? They dont produce any offensive sound/noise except that ding-dong out of the laptop's speaker.

Direct support of CVBG
 

Ideally, if you have the assets, three boats are used in Direct Support one boat way out ahead of the group, 100-130 nm, the other two boats will be on either side 15-20 nm.
Probably now with cutbacks, two boats out ahead covering a 180 dgree arc, these I imagine would still operate well in advance of the group.
Direct Suport (DS), was intended to remove a sub threat, and cruise missiles have made this more difficult, that is why they nedd to be far ahead. I am not sure of the range of enemy cruise missiles, not sure, hell I don't know, but I would guess 200-300 nm, and with Recon Satellites they could get targeting data, so the DS subs need to be out far enlught to find and stip SSGNs. If you have the assests the two close in subs are really looking for Fast Attacks.
I hopr this helps in your efforts, and also I have been away from active duty a long time, Moby Dick was a minnow when I retired, so maybe someone currently on active duty could provide more up to date info on how Direct Support is done now.
The leading sub probably still uses sprint and drift to maintain position, used to be 25 minutes at 25 knots, and five knots at 4-5 knots and the boat(s) are assigned a ASW kill zone, theory the only friendly subs are you and your mate anyone else is assumed hostile and could be attacked.

Respectfully,

Ron Banks MMCM(SS), USN(Ret)

I thought the Russians were big on co-op ASW tactics with an area of sea mapped out into sub, ASW frigate, and asw air zones, and basically they stick to that zone so as to avoid friendly fire.

Russian ASW
 

XabbaRus;
I am not sure how the Russian ran DS, they had ASW patrol areas for Surface an Air in their declared areas, Barents Sea etc..
Their subs had patrol areas off most of our major bases. Also when studying the Russian Navy in the "Cold War" period, they used Trawlers a lot. We became very good at tricking them, we always had to dodge them coming out of Scotland and Rota. You have all seen pictures of them, there used to be one station off Cape Kennedy all the time.
I was addressing how we ran DS in the 60s-80s, now I am not sure how we do it.

Respectfully,

Ron Banks MMCM(SS), USN(Ret)