Sinking Ships/Anti-Surface-Warfare discussion (with DCS World 2.5 examples)

AGM-84 and RGM-84 are in game, but they’re both AI only and extremely simplistic at the moment. I’d imagine the former will get more nuanced when they integrate it with the F/A-18. The bigger issues with ship killing in DCS, at least in the eyes of this sport fan, are electronic warfare and damage models.

Without going too deep, the sensor modelling of ships in DCS is extremely simplistic. Taking the Slava class CG for example, it is configured with a Top Pair, a Top Dome, and a Pop Group for search/fire control like you would expect. However these radars are logically associated: they are not physically associated with any of the actual radar antenna on the ship, and as far as I can tell emit out of the model centroid.

Furthermore I just drove an invincible Su-25T into the side of one, and while the Fatasmagoria pod was able to pick up the Top Pair, it never picked up the Top Dome or Pop Group. When the Moscow started engaging me, the game just treated it as the Top Pair had gone into STT and was now guiding SA-N-6s on me.

That’s a huge problem because without that sort of damage granularity, hitting ships is extremely difficult. The first part of any attack on a ship of that capability would be a barrage of ARMs aimed at crippling its radar systems, starting with the SA-N-6 radars and working down through the SA-N-4s through to the Plank Shaves (payload permitting, of course). Without those defensive systems, the ships are clearly more vulnerable, and depending on the type, can open large holes in the enemy air defense plan. As it is any ARM fired at a ship tracks straight into the centroid, and subtracts from the larger pool of health, which isn’t nothing, but it sure isn’t what you want.

Combined with the total lack of stand off ECM at the moment, that means the only viable way to strike naval targets is massive saturation. Russia has it a bit easier because they invested in a wider variety of highly capable (but platform specific) weapons. The venerable Harpoon has the advantage that anything and it’s mom can mount two or more, but that means it takes a bunch to punch through anything more capable than a blob of Krivak FFGs. Putting a SA-N-9 equipped ship in any task force doubles your ASCM requirement. If you dare put anything like a Slava, Kirov, or a Luyang in, you’re going to need a full up Alpha strike (30+) Hornets to have any hope of punching through.

Salt - Lubber conversion
SA-N-4 = SA-8
SA-N-6 = SA-10
SA-N-9 = SA-15

Tl;dr it could be better.

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