LOL... is this realistic??

[swimsalot]

Certainly no expert on modern surface tactics, but it does seem unwise for ships to be banging away with active sonar.
Do the mission designers add this to the mission?
Is that the default setting for these ships?
Any way to make em intermittent?
Any way to make em go active when they get a contact from other assets indicating the sub is within active range?

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by swimsalot

Certainly no expert on modern surface tactics, but it does seem unwise for ships to be banging away with active sonar.

Not necessarily. It really depends on whether they feel they'd have decent chance of detecting an expected target with passive sonar. If they felt like they could count on their towed array then they'd use that. Against a quiet diesel electric submarine you'd typically not do so well without it. A nuke... they'd probably do a lot better. The nuke would have different advantages, though.

Surface warfare is different from undersea warfare in the sense that stealth is not necessarily their armor all the time. There is definitely that element, but they also rely on speed, firepower, and survivability. A good surface commander understands how these all fit together and strives to make decisions which balance the different factors to meet a given threat. I think in that sense, surface warfare is more difficult than submarine warfare. I can't imagine how a surface commander wraps his brain around the air picture, undersea picture, the strike picture, and surface picture simultaneously. The whole multi-threat, multi-axis thing must be really tough.

Do the mission designers add this to the mission?

Yes and no. Unfortunately, because of the way they set up their emissions control settings, you only have the choice of no emissions or all emissions. Limited emissions doesn't seem to be an option. I wish sometimes one could have different vessels turn on and off specific radars.

Is that the default setting for these ships?

Yes

Any way to make em intermittent?

Not that I know of.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by swimsalot

Certainly no expert on modern surface tactics, but it does seem unwise for ships to be banging away with active sonar.

Adding to the previous answer, the difference is a kind of offense vs defense thing. Part of the reason American surface ships use passive sonar so much is because they do a lot of Soviet sub tracking and the Soviet fleet includes many subs of the previous generation, which means that the normal relationship b/w surface ships and subs gets inversed for most cases. So American surface assets hunt subs.

The Soviet fleet faces the "normal" relationship (even against their own subs, let alone American ones), in which subs tend to have major advantages over surface ships. The sub can have a more flexible choice of depth, is deeper and thus is in waters better for its sonar, and tends to have better silencing. What do they do? They go active. No guarantee of course, but it gives them a much better chance of keeping the enemy out of a certain ring, so they would either be prevent from launching torps or at least they would be forced to launch further out and maximize chances of evasion - you will also notice that the Soviets built some weapons like the Udav-1 that's is supposed to actually try and intercept the torpedo with ASW mortars, while the Americans don't even try that. The offense vs defense affair is clear.