Detecting submarines in a MH60

[GiantBunnyRabbit]

Hello,

I'm new to the game and I decided to start with the MH60. I chose the 'MH60 Demo' mission where I have to sink the Victor before it crosses the goal line. My 'tactic' was to patrol the area around the buoys and wait until the Victor shows up on the buoys. After I flew around for about one hour I wanted to know what happened and activated 'Show truth'. The Victor was moving in the opposite direction with about 5kts.

Is there another way to detect a submarine or do I have to fly around and drop buoys until I get a contact? I don't think I would have found him, because I was hanging around near my mission objective, where the Victor didn't want to go.

Thanks for help

[Smaragdadler]

Where your buoys active or passive? AI subs can get nervous if you ping them.
There are two main methods to detect submerged subs with airborne platforms.
Sound (buoys) and MAD. (and maybe with IF camera if they are shallow and you are lucky). But only the Orion has MAD and camera. On the helo you have to use buoys.

If you like, you can read my Landlubber Guide. It has some articles about ASW tactics in the appendixes.

[GiantBunnyRabbit]

The buoys were passive. The only time I used them active was when I realized the Victor wouldn't come to me. Thanks for the hint, I'll read your guide

[JoeL_221]

You have to learn how to use the dipping sonar on the MH60. It does a much better job than the sonobouys. Use the drawing tools on the map to draw a 7.5 mile range circle around the MH60. Drop to 150 ft and hover then deploy the dipping sonar. You should be able to get a contact on any nuc boat inside that range. Don't go below 150ft because, if the sub turns into an instant ready to fire SAM site, the AI pilot will try to increase speed to get away. When he lowers the nose to pick up speed, he'll hit the water if you're at 50 ft. Kilo's are hard to hear beyond 2-3 miles. You will most likely need to use the active to find the Kilo's. After you have scanned an area, retract the sonar, draw an area circle of 7.5 miles on the map where you searched and when the sonar is up, move to a point where the range circle around the helo just overlaps the area circle and search again. BE VERY CAREFUL OF THE DIPPING SONAR, don't fly with it deployed or you will use it. Go slow and keep doing the stop, search, retract and draw until you find a sub. Mark it and upload it to the link. Always stay 4-5 miles away from a sub contact or you will be getting an infared present from the sub/SAM site. The secret of the helo is to go slow and try to stay 20-40 miles from the ships you are protecting. Best is to work with a P-3, you find, he kills. After you mark a sub, he can swoop in at high speed and drop torps on the target. If the sub/SAM site pops to the surface, you stuff a Penguin down his hatch. Also, once you have found a sub, use your sonobouys to keep contact. The high speed of the P-3 should keep him from being a SAM target. Once the P-3 has dropped, you can drop a torp from stand-off distance once you've determined where the sub is heading. If it's just you against the sub, the search method will still work, just stay out of SAM range and practice dropping torps from stand-off distances. When using the dipping sonar, remember to drop a BT bouy to find the layer level and search above and below the layer. The active sonar does a good job and can give returns out to 10 miles. Try to find the subs from outside SAM range and then work into position to attack using passive sonar and passive bouys. Don't fly over an enemy sub in MP or you will be dead.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Smaragdadler

There are two main methods to detect submerged subs with airborne platforms.
Sound (buoys) and MAD. (and maybe with IF camera if they are shallow and you are lucky). But only the Orion has MAD and camera. On the helo you have to use buoys.

No, the orion has the camera but both the p-3 and the mh60 have mad sensors.
On the helo you have to stream the mad sensor and start doing runs not exceeding a threshold speed otherwise you will break the wire.
On the p-3 you just activate the sensor and you're good to go, you don't have to worry about going to fast.

[Smaragdadler]

*lol* You are right.
Should had have a look in my own stuff befor posting.
And maybe start to play again...:hmm:

[OneShot]

Particularly for the air platforms I suggest reading the P-3 OWTOP which can be found both at the CADC and at SubGurus ... while its written for the P3, most of the stuff applies to the Helo as well.

Btw. as far as the Demo goes (or the demo mission in the full game), the VLADs wont show anything because after patch 1.03 they rest deep in the bottom (Or did someone upload a fixed Demo/fixed Demo mission?)

[GiantBunnyRabbit]

Thanks for all your tips, I've got him this time