How to avoid Submarine SAM

[Furia]

Surely our bubbleheads friends would not like I post this here but since some of them have special pleasure using they SAM against air assets I have developed some tactics to prevent it.

1st. If there is an overcast layer or clouds, USE them. You can drop torpedoes or Sonobuoys from high altitude unless there is really shallow water and if you are behind the clouds they cannot see you, neither lock on you :cool:
They fire manually so they must see you on their visor to have a chance of hitting you.
Specially on a cloudy night sky unless you are low and near they will have troubles finding and loking you.

2nd. Use your maximum speed when droping a sonobuoy field, thus reducing your exposure while transiting the area.

3rd. If you hear a new radar contact asume that is a sub coming to surface to fire on you, initiate inmediate climb and release flares (Chaff is usseles againts Sub SAM). Do not waste flares unless you have some certany than it is a sub or a threat. The flares will help to pinpoint your possition so if he have not seen you before now he knows where you are for sure. Clear datum ASAP.

4rth Never deploy your hidrophone while on hovering if you are playing against a human sub and you do not know where he is. You are a sitting duck there.
You can use your hidrophone line if you know the sub is deep or making fast speed or at least 3 miles away from you. Otherwise use only sonobuoys until you know his whereabouts.

5th If the sub surface nearby to attempt to shoot at you, inmediately relase a torp snapshoot set on a search mode CIRCLE and Active. But most important first Initiate a climb and release the Flares. You have to be alive to be able to kill him.

6th Most sub players would prefer to avoid engaging you unless you are the only human platform. They will expose their possition by coming to surface. However remember than a skilled player needs few seconds to expose his Sail (no need to surface completely) and release a SAM. But for doing this he must have adquired you on periscope first.

7th If there is Commercial Ariline traffic if possible use their corridor, the sub player would think twice before shooting on you unless he can visually ID you on pericope for certain.

8th When I know the sub skippers will expose themselves to try to kill me I usually drop a dense field of sonobuoys on the area at fast speed and high altitude, (3000 or 4000) if possible seeking cover on the overcast.
I always include some DICASS. The PING noise make the sub players sweat and get nervous and they make mistakes then. :cussing:

Once I have a rough bearing and approximate area location of the sub, I drop from high altitude an active torp in circles. Most times the subs honnor the threat and sprint and this is what I am waiting monitoring de acustic data from my sonobuoys. When I know when he is or that he is deep or running then I go down for the kill or in case I need I lower the hidrophone line.

9th Most important NEVER wander around low and slow in an area of a POSSUB human player, with your radar on (he will first use his EMS to get a bearing on you and after that aim his periscope on that bearing and if he sees you he will broach to fire on you).
ALWAYS keep altitude and distance from him until you are ready for the kill.

Hope this helps you to keep airborne more time :2ct:

[TLAM Strike]

Don't forget that the max altitude of the missiles is around 12,500 feet. The MH-60 can't fly that high but the P-3 can.

[Furia]

It is not about the height a missile can reach, the important thing is that for a sub fire on you they must visually adquire you and if you are high they will not even see you. Just make the try and place an helo at 4000 and try to find it :tongue: . Not to mention if there is some cloud layer or if its dark.
Being high gives you time to react to a missile launch, to drop flares and to evade.
If you also have clouds you can hide behind them and no IR missile can lock on you behind clouds.
:2ct:

[OneShot]

While those are valid and very useful tactics there is one big drawback to flying high.

First, when you deploy buoys they will fly a lot farther, the higher and faster you are. While at 300ft you can even at high speed (360+ kts for the Orion) more or less pinpoint drop buoys, if you try the same at 4000ft your buoy will fly a mile or more. Same goes for a torpedo, tho that one will reach the water much faster and with less way traveled. The advantage on this is, if you calculate right you can slingshot torpedoes as far as 3nm (with the P3) and sonobuoys even farther. But this is far from realistic. In real life torpedoes and sonobuoys have set parameters for dropping, if you exceed those you can kiss them goodbye, they will destroy on impact or be at least unusable.

Second, if you fly above 600 or so feet your MAD becomes worthless detecting wise, because your MAD/SAD is now outside of range to detect a submarine. Believe it or not, but unexpected MAD detection is something every Sub Skipper positively hates. Imagine you fly over an uncleared area, looking around doing a buoy pattern. If you fly at 300ft you can leave your MAD on and if you accidentaly overfly a sub - BINGO. If you do the same at 1000 or more ft then no MAD use and you have to rely on other things.

It all comes down to what you are doing and if you have help. For example if you are working in conjunction with a FFG or Submarines you prolly dont need to fly low and expose yourself because you have a friend around who has big ears to listen in the water. If you are alone (mostly when playing the Orion) then you have to use sometimes tactics that are risky.

[TLAM Strike]

It is not about the height a missile can reach, the important thing is that for a sub fire on you they must visually adquire you and if you are high they will not even see you.

You don't need a visual to detect an aircraft the SAMs (IR?) sensor will show when a target is in its detection range the binoculars at high power can find the target. I’ve scored a few kills with this technique. Also when you get several people on a sub they can coordinate the Periscope search, ESM, Radar and sail positions to cover the most amount of sky. On MS Subs my general policy is one player on SAM, one on scope and one of ESM/Radar (if there is a fourth player they get the radar) when shallow. The SAM shooter searches a wide area with the IR Seeker, the ESM gives contacts and warns of threats and the ‘Scope does a high power search above the horizon.

[Furia]

Yes the SAM indicator shows you when the TGT is in range, but only when you aim directly to it.
You know my bearing if I have the radar On. Hmm so you have one ESM mast and the periscope up... nice maybe I will get a radar retourn of you.
Anyway you cannot use the SAM IR seeker while submerged :cool:

But you do not have the range on me (on this case the azimut you have to search).

Lets imagine that you are really skilled with the periscope search and you can lock a target moving 120 knots at a minimum distance of 2 NM (I am flying 4000 feet) If I am on your vertical (minimum distance), How much the bearings will change flying at 120 knots since you first spotted me and ordered surface. How many miles I will be far away by that time? What would be my bearing?
Well you may get lucky, but believe me, if you do not score just right away, that would be the last mistake you do on that game because you will have at least 3 fishes on top of you before you can even think about lowering the masts.

Just a note about the SAM IR indicator. It gives you the intensity of the radiation source the missile heat seeker is looking at that precise moment. When you fire the missile, it try to focus on that heat source. If the target is far away the intensity signal is weak and chances of hitting a maneuvering target are reduced.
The scoring kill rate on those SAM for fire on TGT over 4 miles is low.
Of course my tactical proposal is not bulletproof, there are no such tactics, but I guess it gives more than reasonable possibilities of survival.
Anyway about tactics is like talking about food, somebody will tell you fish is better than meat, it is just about tastes.
My intention here is to give "options" to the people that seeks help to overcome the SAM danger.
However other tactics are always welcome and this is what this section is. :smile:

[JoGary]

Dw doesnt simulate radar returns on mast as far as i know but the rest of your post is valid.
Oh and if i am searching for air with my periscaope i usually already have the sail above the surface so i can get out there quick and get a SAM of if i spot a close air contact.

[soundken]

furia thanks for the post im really interested in your opinion on this, currently im working on drills and tactics to counter this threat i must admit ive gone the other way a little, and as yet havent really put it too the test

first in transit i try to stay low and fast as mutch as posible both hoping to get lucky on the mad and staying NOE

hydrophone i use it, i like it its a valuble tool there's a few keys here though
1 u got to be fast dont run the thing out to far if you dont know your safe. 2 try not to give away position to much 3 be prepared to move if need be the hydrophone aint worth the chopper 4 be ready ATO to use hellfire or torpedo on a snapshot also remember to go heavy on the flares get the sun between u and the missle all that good ir evasion stuff

as a pilot (furia) im very interested in your evasion tactics the missle itself i must admit you bring great news a high climb out is a lot easier to fly than low ( im still havig trouble overtourqe and keep geting into this sidways spin/stall? that i cant recover from, though improving) and as always any tips help with my flying would be apreciated

[Furia]

I regret to say the DW helo does not fly like a real helo, although steps are being done to fix this on future patches.
On the testing I did, flying low will not save you, first because there is no terrain to hide behhind and second that once the missile has locked on you, you basically rely on your flares to avoid it and flares droped when you are very low are not as much effective than ones droped from high altitude and that hang there for more time. So if you receive a missile warning and you are at 500 feet, you drop the flares at 500 feet and start a climb to 2000 ft, the frist thing the missile will encounter btw you and the sub will the the flares.
Of course try as well a 90º degree turn from your course.
Another thing useful to prevent the sub keep on firing on you many missiles is to have a torpedo "ready" for a snapshot, that is enable at very short range, active and search pattern in circles. If the sub is near enough to fire a SAM on you it is near enough for a torpedo to get a lock on him in most cases so the soon you drop the torp the sonnthe sub will stop firing on you and initiate evasion.
Then you can nicely turn for the final kill :cool:
Anyway this is not bulletproff tactics, there are not, they sub can get lucky and if he can fire from very short distance you are dead, no matter what you do, so keep moving all the way.
Dipping sonnar is a high risk maneuver with a sub near manned by human.
If it is by night and you are not using radar (they search for helos using the Radar warning set) then you reduce the chances of being shot at.

[soundken]

I regret to say the DW helo does not fly like a real helo, .

boy u aint kidin. she's a real beast im begining to tame her spent all day flying getting real good can land on up to sea state 3 now.

all you other nubs (like me) listning i found it helps to push the rotor rpm ( at least i think its the rotor rpm its not explained well in the manual/ big red lever next to the collective readout) a little Higher then its set, at least on my joystick i find i have more authority and am able to revover better from that wicked bad sidslip/blade stall that happens .

on landings you have to bring it down a lil so its not as touchy but not back to where it was or it will be hard to climb out if you need to, also be carefull takeoffs it has a tendency to be defaulted back to 0 which can have disasterous consuquences i found collective first (joy) then rpm after helps and dont be ginger bout it either gas it

thanks for your insight furia i never looked at it this way guess im still thinking like im over land, i must admit flying over water sure has its challenges lol somtimes no wind is worse than with wind cause you have nothing to refrance to :confused: and night time well thats some scarry stuff

as for sam evasion, its probably somthing im gonna have to experiance a few times before i get it down (all you bubbleheads out there thats an invitation to take some free shots at my helo if anyones game) catch me usuall ways icq/msnm/ CADW flash chat

ive been carying the hellfires as a defensive weapon perhaps this will fail totally, do you get any kind of radar return from the sub or visual contact somthing to asign the missle to?

all of this is of course from a nubs prosective as i learn ill post feel free to counter any opinions insight i might give and (as always) never take anything i post as "gospel"

[Furia]

The sub can fire on you faster you get an AI "new radar contact". The radar sweeps take time and the sub will surface when he see you in range through his periscope.
From there he can have a missile on your way in less than 10 seconds. No radar warning if the sub driver is an skilled operator. Just a missile warning :tongue:

[TLAM Strike]

And if they are really skilled you get no missile warning- happened to me the 1st time I did a MP game with the P-3. Ouch!!

[Molon Labe]

The missile lock warnings are weird. Even if you're getting painted by an FCR and a missile is on the way over, you don't always get one. And sometimes, passive IR homing missiles (like those fired from subs) create a missile lock warning even though there is no emission to detect! I wish they'd clean up the ECM suite in 1.04...modeling 'bug eye' detections of missile plumes would be nice too!

[Furia]

There are IR launch detectors installed on the helos. The detect the launch by thermal signature and warn you that a possible missile has been launched. Most military helos have this kind of warning system instaled, however once agin this is usseless if they fire on you from short range. Basically the missile wins.

[Molon Labe]

that's what I meant by the "bug eyes." But bug eyes do not detect "missile locks," which is what the alert in DW is for.

[JoGary]

If the sub is close enough you will get a new visial contact but if it this close it usually tolate. You may just have time to get of a circling torp if you lucky but doubt you would get a penguin or hellfire of in time. Would be nice if the Periscope and other masts could be spotted visually and detected on radar. Also it would get easier to spot the faster the sub is going due to the wake. I have also heard reports that in real life that radar can actually pick up a sub that is just under the surface in the right conditions?

[Furia]

Yes, it could be very nice if we can see them like in real life from the helo :cool:
http://menorca.infotelecom.es/~raulurbina/shallowsub.jpg
Surely they will no take such chances to wander at PD like they do on DW.
I remember Sub Command have the option to make the water more transparent but I guess our bubblehead friends would not love to have it, Surely they will claim is totally UNREALISTIC to see a sub from the air when it is submerged.
:tongue: :tongue:

[JoGary]

well i am a bubble head of sorts :arms: but if seastate is ok and sub near suface then yeh i would like it. Aslo even in high seastate and at night would be good if infrared cam of P3 could see them to. But main thing is masts and wakes should be visable and be able to be spotted on radar given the right coditions.:2ct:

[Molon Labe]

Yes, it could be very nice if we can see them like in real life from the helo :cool:
Surely they will no take such chances to wander at PD like they do on DW.
I remember Sub Command have the option to make the water more transparent but I guess our bubblehead friends would not love to have it, Surely they will claim is totally UNREALISTIC to see a sub from the air when it is submerged.
:tongue: :tongue:

Why would we say that? It's pretty well known that shallow subs can be seen from the air in clear water.

[soundken]

i did some experimenting with this today here's what i found out

i set up a mp game between my 2 comps one as a kilo improved my normal pc as the helo

sea state 3 weather clear mididay
helo started hovering 50'
kilo within 1 mile at pd depth ready to surface

1: Radar. well its practicly usless is this situation (your not getting much range anyway) also the AC never detects the sub (even if its surfaced) or the incoming missle not to mention it also makes you much easier to home in on using the missle launcher.

2. visual warnings. some good news here. a lot of this depends on the angle of attack from the sub if its in front of you its spotted pretty quick by the AC , they manage to pick up the periscope as well the sail and surfaced boat, they also spot the missle quite well. behind you this all falls apart (realism kudo's) you get no visual warning sub or missle (i heard it whiz by but nobody said anything)

3: threat warnings; a lot of this has to do with the angle the missle is shot at if they aim high you get a warning, low no warning however the lower they go the less acurate the missle seems to become

4 sam evasion: game over man...game over (hicks, Aliens) at close range at hover your done there simply isnt enough time to react manualy and the autopilot dosnt react fast enough (i knew when the missle was coming and still couldnt) you have less than a second and by the time the ac says "enemy missle lock" and the sa's aim was good your dead, if you by some chance survive this you better MOVE cause the missle reloads real fast

conclusions: the radar is a big detriment to your health in this situation and should be used with caution and not at all within hover it is a lot more challenging to aim the sam visually than with the esm detector. also a quick low level orbital seach around the area where u want to dip wouldnt be a bad idea if they do have there scope up u might get lucky either mad or visually , also what bearing you keep while at hover also very helpfull try to keep what you know behind you and what you dont know in front if you get a new visual contact at close range . BUG out put as much visual distance between you and the sub and keep the radar off move as fast as you can get below the horizon if you can if they cant see you they cant shoot you, get some bouys out (you probably just lost the hydrophone) if you can clear the area then restablish contact you will have a big advantage knowing where he is