TASM
 

What are their proper tactics-specifically in "Barants Sea Loiter"

All around, sending TASM on frigates or even destroyers is useless. TASMs are slow. They will be shot down, if you send them one by one. If you send them all at once, it is quite possible that all will folow same chaff cloud and miss.
Use torpedoes for vessels with anti-missile defense. TASMs are good only for defenseless targets.
Harpoon is better. It is smaller and faster. But hardly a chance against big ships with missiles, guns and countermeasures.
Torpedo is always better. Yeah .. you must get closer, but that's what's sub good in. Any bloody frigate can shoot Harpoons, but only sub can get close enough to shoot torpedoes.

What I generally do is disable the vessel with torpedo's and then take them out with TASM's. I'm closer to them and they watch from 'scope view...awesome show! :rock::rock:

Here's the two options I use:

Localize the target as best you can using ESM and sonar, or even just by guessing from the information about the target's initial location, course and speed. The missile's seeker will take care of any uncertainty if you just get it in the ballpark.

Shoot a maximum sized salvo of TASMs. That means all twelve VLS tubes plus 4 torpedo tubes (16 missiles). Don't worry so much about whether all your TASMS hit or not. It only takes 1 or 2 hits to essentially put a ship out of action, so even if you manage to just pick off one of the escorts you've accomplished the goal. The point of shooting a lot of them at once is to improve the odds that at least one of them penetrates his AAW defenses and electronic warfare.

Start closing (quickly).

If you want to try a second salvo, follow up with another max sized salvo of 4 Harpoons.

Next, quickly close to engage with torpedoes. You don't want to be anywhere near the datum you just left by shooting all those missiles. Don't go too slow.

The second option requires more patience:

Get within the limiting lines of approach of the formation, slowly get close to them and engage with torpedoes when you're in range.

I haven't made up my mind about which is the best tactic, necessarily, but I can say that the second tactic is more time consuming and requires more navigational skill. The good thing is that in a nuke, you don't have to worry so much about being in a tail chase, so you'll probably be able to get off lots of shots if you use the second option.

I never load TASMs -- the Navy converted theirs to TLAM long ago...

Well .. TASMs are better than nothing, and to equip TLAMs on ASuW mission is useless. Reality is reality, but DW is DW :|\\

There's nothing wrong with equipping yourself the way the actual platform would be equipped in that mission.


That being said, I think the best use of the TASM against SAM-equipped ships is to fire at least 8 missiles from a range of between 5-10 miles. You might get away with 6 in some cases, but its chancey. Of course, if you can get that close, a torpedo will get the job done too. I usually only fire the missiles if I know I'm detected and I want to take out the ASROC shooters before they put some serious hurt on me.

The other way to use them would be to hit the capital ships immediately after the escorts have moved out of position due to torpedo evasion. It's basicly a sucker punch, and you hit them with the whole VLS.

There's nothing that says we need to play in the present day time frame. I think it's interesting to compare how different technologies (TASM for example) change one's tactics. The conscious exploration of alternatives is one of the joys of wargaming. So, sometimes I play in 1988, sometimes I play in 2007.

That's cheesy to me, I don't like to do that kind of power gaming. I think if one is going to use them, one should be conscious of what they're doing, and compose scenarios appropriately. The Barents Sea Loiter is fun because you can play it with or without TASMs, but sometimes that's not always the case. In a lot of scenarios, if you change the weapons you change the whole game.

The new version is the tactical tomahawk (TACTOM) which has all kinds of weird capabilities. It can do things like loiter in an area and attack on command, and other stuff. It's more like a kamakazee UAV than a cruise missile, because of that, the TACTOM's functionality is very different from the old TASM. I'm not sure the model adequately reflects that.

Wait til y'all see the next generation weapon...

Yes its about time the USN got some better ASuW weapons

What are you talkin' about? The USN pretty much owns the ASuW realm. Carriers with their airwings can provide an ASuW punch at a longer range than any Russian or Chinese group. Plus a carrier air wing can put 8-10 times more weaponry on any Russian group with Harpoon, JDAM munitions, Maverick, etc. in one sortie. And don't forget the MK-48 ADCAP on the numerous USN SSN's used in the ASuW mission. US SSN's are a part of CSG's. These are all excellent state of the art weapons. What they got now is quite adequate indeed. No other navy even comes close to the USN in the ASuW role. The extra stuff built into this new Tomahawk only adds to it.

POint made spectacularly. The russians focused on missile development out of necessity, due to a lack of the platforms and capabilities you described. The US was not worried about a surface threat, they were worried about air and submerged threats. An old-style soviet SAG always was, and still is unsurvivable in a modern warfare environment vs. a us CVNBG.