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Originally Posted by ASWnut101
so it was sort of like a Seawolf against a torpedoless corvettes? thats pretty sad.
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It wasn't just that. Also, the targets moved slowly. At spawn, the ships were already in weapons range. The whole scenario was a straw man.
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I think that putting any surface combatant against a sub without at least a ASW aircraft makes it way too easy for the sub to do ASuW.
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Not necessarily. This gets into what I was saying about geometry. Try the NATO EXWAR Exercise scenario a few times and you'll see what I mean. Submarines are limited by their weapons range and the fact that to remain silent and have a long endurance, they must remain slow. That imposes certain kinematic constraints on a battle. Surface vessels have the advantage of speed, and team work as well. They have great communications, and heavier armament.
While an SSK might be able to get off a first shot against a surface combattant, the surface combattant, by using his speed, can frustrate an SSK's ability to get off a shot at all. If a surface combattant detects an SSK, even if he's just armed with SVTT, then he has successfully defended the high value units he's escorting because now they have the option of changing course, leaving the SSK HOPELESSLY out of position for a torpedo shot. So, the battle is more competitive than one might imagine.
There's also the fact that if an SSK shoots a surface vessel, now there's a flaming datum. So now they have the SSK localized to a certain degree, if they know it's weapons range (i.e. they look in the USNI reference). Now the problem is how to search the area of uncertainty faster than it's expanding, which a surface warship can do. So... an SSK really needs to pick it's shots because if he shoots early, he's risking having a bunch of angry destroyers chasing after him, even if he hits his target of choice. Submarines need to shoot the target of maximum impact to be effective.
A surface vessel can kick a submarine's butt, but it has to be very smart about what is working in it's favor and it has to choose it's battles. Surface ASW is really an art of it's own, but it requires a very high degree of proficiency to be competitive. I think that DW people tend to have a pro-submarine bias, though, and make scenarios from the perspective of a submarine being the ultimate weapon.