Attacking Modern Warships?

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ARCNA442
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Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ARCNA442 »

I was wondering what tips and tricks everyone has for sinking modern first rate warships such as an Arleigh Burke?

They can shoot down anything you throw at them, while their rate of fire and number of fire control channels means saturation attacks don't really work. Is there any reliable tactic other than just attacking them until they run out of missiles? (I have been sinking some by closing to gun range, but that seems to be exploiting the scenario's doctrine settings rather than a realistic tactic)
Whicker
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by Whicker »

sneak up on them in a tanker/merchant in the dead of night and run them over? seems fairly effective in real life for some reason.

I know, not helpful. It does seem to come down to running them out of missiles. From what I have seen in the game based on the Russian vs US ships, the Russians have awesome ASMs but not so much SAM ability. US has awesome SAM ability but barely any ASM.
Cik
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by Cik »

what scenario are you actually in? i mean, the obvious answer here is "throw more missiles at it" but if the scenario doesn't allow that, then you can try something else.

often it's best to just route around these big fireblocks, if at all possible. as long as it isn't in range with it's guns and you can keep tabs on it, it shouldn't be a big threat to you.
ARCNA442
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ARCNA442 »

No particular scenario in mind, just sort of a general question.

While avoiding them is a good idea if possible, these sorts of ships tend to be escorting things that you need to kill.
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Sharana
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by Sharana »

Saturation attack combined with jamming and ARMSs. Supersonic anti-ship missiles work best as you need less of them to saturate the air defense (still a lot, just compared to subsonic ones).

The other way is with subs.
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ARCNA442
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ARCNA442 »

ORIGINAL: Sharana

Saturation attack combined with jamming and ARMSs. Supersonic anti-ship missiles work best as you need less of them to saturate the air defense (still a lot, just compared to subsonic ones).


I originally had that same thought but I created a test scenario and supersonic weapons and jamming seems to have little effect. I used a Flight IIA Burke with ESSM II and attacked it with Sunburn (80% defensive accuracy), Harpoon (75%), and NSM (70%). The Burke handled a 20 weapon raid the same regardless of whether it was subsonic or supersonic. Further, when I added an EA-18G with it full jamming loadout at 70 miles down the bearing of the attack (any closer it would be shot down), it did nothing to reduce the Burke's detection range or accuracy.
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Sharana
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by Sharana »

ORIGINAL: ARCNA442

I originally had that same thought but I created a test scenario and supersonic weapons and jamming seems to have little effect. I used a Flight IIA Burke with ESSM II and attacked it with Sunburn (80% defensive accuracy), Harpoon (75%), and NSM (70%). The Burke handled a 20 weapon raid the same regardless of whether it was subsonic or supersonic. Further, when I added an EA-18G with it full jamming loadout at 70 miles down the bearing of the attack (any closer it would be shot down), it did nothing to reduce the Burke's detection range or accuracy.


Sunburn is old, very old and ESSM II is not in service, so that's like attacking with obsolete weapons against sci-fi defense :)
Make realistic loadout of SM-2s + few SM-6s and ESSMs (but not IIs as that's different and not in service). Then attack with SS-N-27 or air launched AS-17 Krypton Bs (Kh-31AD). You will see the difference compared to the subsonic ones and 20 ASMs aren't that much if you consider the cost of single Arleigh Burke.
If you want to attack carrier group that has like 4 Arleigh Burkes as escort you will need a lot of firepower, something along the line of Kh-32 carried by Tu-22M3Ms.

For jamming I mean some MALD-J together with the subsonic stealth missiles like JSM. But you also need some timing so that they pop up above the horizon for the ship together with the ASMs and also very fast anti-radiation missiles (again timing, they need to pop up above the horizon together with the whole zerg or there is no point).
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SeaQueen
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by SeaQueen »

Is there any reliable tactic other than just attacking them until they run out of missiles?

Using a submarine with torpedos?

Other than that, no. Modern warships are designed to operate for weeks at sea without having to replenish their magazines, that means surviving not just one but MULTIPLE successive raids of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and aircraft. That means they're a tough nut to crack, and the best bet is to just grind them down and force them to withdraw or risk Winchester-ing out and being unable to defend themselves against a follow on strike.

That being said there are things you can do to grind them down more quickly, and increase the likelihood of a given raid being successful. Using air launched decoys is one option, especially if you're constrained in terms of the number of munitions you've got. You can use them two ways: 1) by mixing them in with a real attack, so that they're less likely to shoot at your actual missiles or 2) by shooting just decoys until they're Winchester or at least low on munitions, thus making it easier for your raid to penetrate their SAMs. The jammers carried by some decoys will help hide the real attack, so those kinds of decoys I always mix with a real attack. If there was a human player on the other side, I might combine jamming decoys and non jamming decoys in order to confuse and disorient them. Another option is just shooting lots and lots of missiles. If you have enough munitions, this is better than the decoys option because if you choose a decoy over a missile, it costs you the opportunity to sink a ship. Unfortunately, missiles are expensive and you don't always get as many as you wish you had.

Different weapons have different survivabilities. LRASM seems to be very survivable in the game, even against modern warships. Supersonic missiles often require more shots than subsonic missiles to hit, and this grind the target warship down faster.
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by Cik »

also mix ARMs in (if pos.) often, a hit or two directly on the ship's radars will doom it vs. the first ASHM that happens by.
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SeaQueen
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by SeaQueen »

The problem with ARMs is that with few exceptions they'll almost always require you to get closer to the ship than is safe. I would only go in with ARMs if there were A LOT of cruise missiles and decoys in front of my strike package for the IADS to concentrate on, that increases the likelihood of the ARM carrying aircraft getting in close and being able to attack the engagement radars. With certain very long ranged ARMS, it might be possible to sit back and allow UAVs to ingress and then shoot on the radars.
ARCNA442
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ARCNA442 »

ORIGINAL: Sharana

Sunburn is old, very old and ESSM II is not in service, so that's like attacking with obsolete weapons against sci-fi defense :)
Make realistic loadout of SM-2s + few SM-6s and ESSMs (but not IIs as that's different and not in service). Then attack with SS-N-27 or air launched AS-17 Krypton Bs (Kh-31AD). You will see the difference compared to the subsonic ones and 20 ASMs aren't that much if you consider the cost of single Arleigh Burke.
If you want to attack carrier group that has like 4 Arleigh Burkes as escort you will need a lot of firepower, something along the line of Kh-32 carried by Tu-22M3Ms.

For jamming I mean some MALD-J together with the subsonic stealth missiles like JSM. But you also need some timing so that they pop up above the horizon for the ship together with the ASMs and also very fast anti-radiation missiles (again timing, they need to pop up above the horizon together with the whole zerg or there is no point).


As near as I can tell, ESSM I and ESSM II have the same accuracy and kinematics. Also, I do not believe that there are any platforms in the game that can actually fire AS-17B - not sure how that happened.

The AS-17 was a complete disaster and Burke shot them all down with SM-6 without issue. However, the SS-N-27 was ridiculously effective and a salvo of just 4 weapons had about a 50% chance of killing a Burke.

I tried setting up an attack using F-35's with NSM, F/A-18's with HARM and MALD-J, and EA-18's to get the entire strike package into range. However, even after four attempts using the editor to move units around, it still was more sequential than simultaneous and the Burke survived 3 times. The MALD-J was by far the most effective portion of the attack, although I'm not sure how realistic each decoy provoking half a dozen missiles launches is.

It does seem that super high speed sea-skimming missiles are the only way to go.
ARCNA442
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ARCNA442 »

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

The problem with ARMs is that with few exceptions they'll almost always require you to get closer to the ship than is safe.

I found that if you use EW aircraft they can escort the ARM carriers in close enough to be effective.

ORIGINAL: Cik

also mix ARMs in (if pos.) often, a hit or two directly on the ship's radars will doom it vs. the first ASHM that happens by.


The problem with ARM's is that they are generally high altitude missiles so the ship can shoot them down pretty easily - there is also the problem that you have to time them perfectly with other weapons or the ship can just shut down its radars and they will all miss (happened to me way too often).
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Sharana
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by Sharana »

ORIGINAL: ARCNA442

As near as I can tell, ESSM I and ESSM II have the same accuracy and kinematics. Also, I do not believe that there are any platforms in the game that can actually fire AS-17B - not sure how that happened.

It's the same missile. The difference is the seeker - the difference between SARH and ARH is very significant in mass attack scenarios - with SARH only it's a lot easier to run out of channels.
ORIGINAL: ARCNA442

The AS-17 was a complete disaster and Burke shot them all down with SM-6 without issue. However, the SS-N-27 was ridiculously effective and a salvo of just 4 weapons had about a 50% chance of killing a Burke.
How many SM-6s were there and how many AS-17s did you launch against it? That's also low flying missile, when did the Burk engage it? Without external data that can happen on the horizon only so 30km at best or so.

ORIGINAL: ARCNA442It does seem that super high speed sea-skimming missiles are the only way to go.
Yes or generally very fast missiles like Kh-32.
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kevinkins
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by kevinkins »

They can shoot down anything you throw at them, while their rate of fire and number of fire control channels means saturation attacks don't really work.

For a academic and historical treatment of the problem, Google all things "Salvo Model". I attached a cool spreadsheet that is fun to play around with since it does all the math. But here is a wiki link to start with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvo_combat_model

The model might be dated, but it's worth a look at.

Unfortunately, this will not teach how to combine arms and sink modern ships. That takes practice and the advice from the forum.

Kevin

PS: I believe this problem is part of the reason hypersonic missiles are all the rage right now in the effort to defeat a ship's aerial defense without saturation.

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ARCNA442
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ARCNA442 »

ORIGINAL: Sharana

It's the same missile. The difference is the seeker - the difference between SARH and ARH is very significant in mass attack scenarios - with SARH only it's a lot easier to run out of channels.

I don't think the seeker head really makes a huge difference when launched from an Aegis ship since the limitation is rate of fire, not fire control channels. The only improvement I saw was that ESSM II is a bit more forgiving about acquiring a new target after its original target is destroyed - but I was mainly using a 1 missile per target authorization so that didn't really come into play.
ORIGINAL: Sharana

How many SM-6s were there and how many AS-17s did you launch against it? That's also low flying missile, when did the Burk engage it? Without external data that can happen on the horizon only so 30km at best or so.

Sorry, I meant AS-15 there.

It was 10 Backfires with 20 AS-15's. When the missiles started descending (I think that was around 75 miles) the Burke fired 1 SM-6 per missile and wiped them out with 80% accuracy.

ORIGINAL: kevinkin

For a academic and historical treatment of the problem, Google all things "Salvo Model". I attached a cool spreadsheet that is fun to play around with since it does all the math.

PS: I believe this problem is part of the reason hypersonic missiles are all the rage right now in the effort to defeat a ship's aerial defense without saturation.

Thanks for the spreadsheet. I'm familiar with the Salvo Model, but the way modern warships are modeled in game seems to seriously call it into question and turn naval combat into a matter of who has the deeper magazines.

I would have to agree with you that hypersonics may be the solution to this stalemate. However, the low level extremely high speed attack seems to succeed primarily because of OODA loop and rate of fire limitations and I'm not sure the game is modeling things accurately here. I believe that in the real world Aegis does have a fully autonomous mode that should be able to react far faster than human operators to attacks, and I see no reason why a ship with two widely spaced VLS modules should not be capable of firing at least two missiles simultaneously.
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RE: Attacking Modern Warships?

Post by ExNusquam »

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

The problem with ARMs is that with few exceptions they'll almost always require you to get closer to the ship than is safe. I would only go in with ARMs if there were A LOT of cruise missiles and decoys in front of my strike package for the IADS to concentrate on, that increases the likelihood of the ARM carrying aircraft getting in close and being able to attack the engagement radars. With certain very long ranged ARMS, it might be possible to sit back and allow UAVs to ingress and then shoot on the radars.
You don't necessarily need to expose the ARM shooters to the ships - I usually have ARM shooters below the horizon, timed so that ARM+ASM will come over the horizon simultaneously. This generally is a way of drawing fire off of subsonic weapons, as defenses tend to prioritize the faster targets, allowing the ASMs to get closer and overwhelm point defense.

Obviously, this doesn't work if there's airborne sensors and an EOR SAM.
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