Seawolf Real Life Question
 

Is it true that on a real Seawolf Class that they do not use the Harpoon missle? Next question is about the tubes. Are each tube designed for a different weapon? Say tubes 1 & 2 for the Mark 48, tubes 3 & 4 for the harpoon(if they really use them in real life) and tubes 5 - 8 for the tomahawk? Or are the tubes all the same? Because I can't see how a tube for a Mark 48 would also work for a tomahawk or harpoon? The reason I ask this, is I though I read somewhere in real life that a harpoon could fit in the VLS on the 688 class? Sorry about being picky, I just would like to play the sim as in real life. Thanks for any thought.

From what I have seen The navy is not showing any harpoons being loaded on any of our subs. As for the tubes the are all the same 8-660mm torpedo tubes.But sea wolf was designed for
50 Tomahawk cruise missiles or
50 Harpoon antiship missiles or
50 Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes or
up to 100 mines

as for the harpoon I haven't heard about it beeing able to launch from a VLS tube but I wouldn't see a problem. And remember your not being picky your paying attention to detail.

The Harpoon has been deemed less useful for subsurface platforms than the ADCAP torpedo. Likewise the TASM. The sublaunched harpoon has been out of service longer than I have been IN the service. The TASMs have all been converted to TLAMs nd shot at Iraq by now.

As for the tube question, our tubes are fitted to carry any weapon we have on board. They basically fit the weapon to the tube, not the other way around. VLS is significantly different from CLS (torpedo tube launched) weapons; it is, in effect, a completely different weapons system.

I hope this answers your questions.

I think it's interesting because even though they don't deploy Harpoons anymore, they still fund R&D on "the next Harpoon." I think they want to maintain the capability of deploying a sub launched ASCM, even though they don't anticipate them being useful against their estimated future threats.

The technology hasn't caught up with the intent of the missile yet. Until things advance a little further, it's in the realm of pointlessness to have an over-the-horizon weapon deployed from submarines. It's the equivalent of bringing a cannon to a kinfe fight...unwieldy and impractical.

Thanks all. That does clear things up. Never served in the Navy but very interested in the boats & weapons.

It also raises the question, why didn't you just target the ship for a strike by aircraft? I guess ASCMs from subs, from are US perspective, a really very Kola Penninsula/Norwegian Sea.

Not directly regarding the armament but still a RL question:

Like the stealth bombers can adsorb RADAR radiation, is it not thinkable to have a sub with a surface able to adsorb active pings? This would make active torps useless as well as active intercept... Is this theorically possible?

They DO have a surface for absorbing sonar energy. It's called an anechoic coating. It reduces a submarine's target strength.

It doesn't make active torpedoes useless, nor does it make active intercept useless (not sure why it would?) but it does offer some help against active homing torpedoes.

The technology is actually quite old, the Germans in WWII covered their boats in an anechoic coating. The had a code name for it, Alberich. When I was taking a course in acoustics at Penn State, there was actually an interesting discussion of what materials make the best coatings. Apparently, there's a lot of voodoo to it, with no real general theory on how to make the best possible coating. They just experiment and see what works.

I found this article on them:

http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/arc...hp/t-3638.html

couldn't you just put rubber all over the hull (impractical I know, but will it work?)

That's sort of what an anechoic coating is. And yes, it works quite well. The hard part was developing the technology to make it stick to the hull, but they solved that and they've been able to do it pretty well for a long time now.

Cool, Im doing that to my bike.....:arrgh!:

Personaly the harpoon missile is well not very effective, against a modern DDG or even FFG or bigger it is pretty dam useless, its a small war head 70nm range it wouldnt do much damage to a ship if it did hit.

The TASM on the other hand is a lot better and i think they should either revert to using TASM or build another ASM weapon cause right now Russia, China and india all have the monopoly with the SS-N-19 and SS-N-22's

I think the most important question is: are ASMs really usefull? IMHO you give away your position if you use the Harpoon and those missiles are quite easy to kill (at least when you play DW, don't know if that's the same in RL).
I think that an ASM isn't the weapon of choice for a sub. Anybody aggree/disagree?;)

SSGN such as an oscar are designed to carry anti ship missiles its thier primary role.

Soviet and russian doctorine is to overwhelm enamy radar but masses and masses of missiles, each oscar can carry 24 nuclear armed super sonic SS-N-19 anti ship missiles and each flys at mach 2+

The missile if fired from around 40 miles away you would have incredibly little time to react by the time you classify the contact 24 are headed your way and by the time you fired the missile to intercept they are within 5 miles of hitting you.

CIWS is totaly useless against them from the time it gets into range its about 0.0000468 seconds to impact, each missile is fully capible of mission killing a carrier or sinking a DDG out right, even such ships as aegis cruiser and destroyers would have a rough time trying to swat them all.

However aegis is now so advanced that i wouldnt doubt that they would stop all but a few and the oscar war time doctrine is to either hunt in groups of 2 or 3 aided by and escorting akula or victor so that could mean 72 missiles heading towards you not including tube launched ASM missiles.

now days though the standard patrol is done alone one oscar is fully capible of holding up a battle group for a day or two untill back up arrives, id say that with all them missiles flying around aegis may have a hard time im not saying it couldnt do the job its a very effective and powerful system but i would say it may have a rough time.