Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Castout
I have also heard that DW only model direct sound contact but
Are these detection ranges not ridiculously too short for modern top of the line submarine?:hmm:
|
The answer, ultimately, is that it depends. There are times a modern submarine might not detect something until it is a couple miles a away, there are times a modern submarine might detect something hundreds of miles away. You have to understand that the only major difference between an SQS-53 (today's high-end surface ship sonar) and an SQS-26 (shortly after WWII technology) was the composition of the sonar dome. The biggest advances have been in signal processing but even then, what the technological advances bought you, in practice was not always clear.
One of my pet peeves in submarine simulations is that people are always whining about what they think sonar ranges ought to be, and everyone mods things to reflect what they think everything ought to be in the abscene of any useful evidence or experience regarding actual sonar performance.
The truth is that sonar ranges are highly variable things that depend greatly on the minutiae of everything from whether the operator is tired or inexperienced, to small variations in the properties of the water column. Under some set of circumstances, you will can experience any sonar range.
In this light, the imporant thing from the perspective of a wargamer is not whether the range in game X is Y, and whether it is real or not, because basically any range is realistic for any sonars. Rather, the important thing is the tactics you develop to exploit or deal with the detection range you happen to get.
That's what real submariners do, and the point of wargames is to give you a taste of that. Each day, they use sophisticated computer models of sound in the ocean to attempt to get some feel for what it might be, and even that is subject to great uncertainty. There is no single answer to point to and say, "Ah Ha! that's the range for sonar X." I mean... in the sonar equation, the one of the most important terms is the recognition differential, which is simply to reflect operator skill and experience. I have read at least three papers arguing about how to actually compute it and they all have different opinions. I've also found inconsistences in identical conditions between pieces of software used to compute sonar ranges. Nobody has the answer. Sometimes they're big inconsistences. I remember one time I found a model that predicted that one got a convergence zone detection and in another they didn't. That's the difference between detecting at 35 miles and detecting at maybe 10 (on a good day).
Nobody knows how far their sonar can really see on any given day, at any given time. At best they can make educated guesses, which are frequently wrong.
There is no reason for submarine simulations to be consistent with one another. There is no reason for submarine simulations to choose any particular sonar range over any other. They're all correct.
I almost think the best way to handle things is to completely take any pretention of attempting to model underwater sound in the ocean out of the simulation and just draw it at random from some distribution. You'd probably end up with a result that was at least as correct as any painstakingly accurate acoustic model.