> Let's try some classic Clancy: > Weapon Weight Volume Cost Power WPS VPS CPS TL > AS-6 - - - neg. 8,800 176 $2,700,000 7 > SM-2 13,200 264 $340,000 neg. 1,560 31.2 $570,000 7 > > Weapon Warhead Guid. Type Damage Spd. End. Max. Skill > AS-6 SAPHE BARHMU cr. 6d*133(0.5) 1,250 425 531,250 21 > plus exp. 6d*5,743[12d] > SM-2 HEPF BSARHMU exp. 6d*410[24d] 1,300 100 130,000 15
Reply to myself with the play of the engagement, part one ... * Thanks to a few Bears with elint gear, the Red Force knows the exact position of the Blue Force AWACS and the approximate location of the Blue Force ships. * The Badgers launch the decoy missiles. They activate their blip enhancers at some 500 miles, which is the Soviet estimate of the Hawkeye's sensor range (for a SM+6 bomber, I presume). So a skill 12 operator tries to detect a +6 target at speed/range -34. It would take scan 26 to give him an even chance, 300 miles nominal range, for the APS-138 radar (1,500 lbs. and 75 kW). A SM+2 drone with a blip enhancer should be detected at the same range as the bomber. * Going back to the Bears, a radar detector should find an active radar at double nominal range, which is 600 miles. Range in the book is 430 miles. Either I've overestimated the range of the APS-138, most likely by underestimating the skill of the operators, or this is an example of the inaccuracies of a mere game system. A bit of googling brings a range of 250 miles for the APS-138. http://books.google.de/books?id=l-DzknmTgDUC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=aps-138&source=bl&ots=2rhMB-leCo&sig=dx2bmj-h4AEvESuYgPdf2Wjtql4&hl=de&ei=sArjS_CaDJWUOK_TweUN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=aps-138&f=false * The Blue fighters (Tomcats) close in with the decoys and launch Phoenix at 140 miles. That takes them out of play, and leaves the numbers for another time. * When the ships activate their radars, they instantly pick up the Bears and Backfires, at 130 miles. The Bears activate their Big Bulge radars and start tracking the ships of the formation, but not good enough for recognition or identification. http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Bear.html#mozTocId824979 gives a range of 400 miles for the radar. That should be against surface targets for -4, but also against larger targets than SM+4, so maybe 200 mile nominal range is OK, perhaps an early TL7 set ... * A minute later, the Backfires launch 140 Kingfish in BARH mode on a target area ten miles wide. The AEGIS cruiser Ticonderoga picks them up instantly and goes into automatic mode. I'm not worried about nominal radar range because it is 'off the scale' -- high enough to detect the missiles short of a critical failure. Here my play diverges from Clancy, because I gave the missiles a much higher speed. * According to Clancy, the AEGIS cruiser launches the first salvo when the incoming missiles are 100 miles out, which leads to an intercept at 75 miles. Using my higher speed for the Kingfish, the AEGIS cruiser could fire at 120 miles and still only get 62 miles intercept range, because of the higher closing velocity. * The Kingfish will need 169 seconds to close those 120 miles, and that is enough time to launch all 88 SM-2s. The ranges are short enough that maximum range does not matter, SAMs and AGMs will hit or miss before they run out of fuel. When a brilliant missile closes with a target, it will activate the seeker at a preset distance and look for valid targets, cruising straight ahead until it does. I just noticed that SARH isn't on the list of seekers for the brilliant option, but SALH is, so I'm inclined to guess it is an error. The SAM is directed with the Midcourse Update (MU) option to a point where it tries to home on the painted target. Now there is a bit of a problem. The brilliant missile rules on VE195 refer to the homing missile rules on VE194, which include the gunner skill in the roll for the lock-on, despite the fact that there is no more connection between the gunner and the missile at this point. The radar does not count, since it just illuminates the target, it doesn't help to lock on. Say the gunner skill reflects how clever the SAM was programmed, or whatever. Again I'm assuming a C4 gunner program. The computer will be better than C4, but it has to run several copies at the same time. The roll to make a contact is gunner skill (12) plus missile skill (15) plus target SM (+2) minus range from the missile to the target. Counting back from the time when the SAM will either hit or miss, there are rolls at 2,550 yards (-19) 5,100 yards (-21) 7,650 yards (-22) 10,200 yards (-23) 12,750 yards (-23) 15,300 yards (-23) ... so counting forward in time, the rolls are against ..., 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10. The chances to fail all of these rolls are 90.7%*90.7%*90.7%*83.8%*74.1%*50% = 23.1%, which means that there is a 76.9% chance that at least one attempt works. Unless the Kingfish makes a defense roll, which would require a crit, that will be the chance of a successful SAM intercept. Call it a 75% success rate. Clancy puts the success rate at "just over 60%", so either I'm lucky or the rules are really good again. * That leaves 74 missiles to enter the inner defense ring of less capable SAMs. I'm going to ignore the messy details. Say they nail half the surviving Kingfish. * Active jammers try to prevent a lock. The best TL7 jammers are -6, and surely big ships will be that good. * Any surviving missile will have to try and make a lock at 10 miles (-23) vs. rather larger targets (maybr a +10), and since the SAMs got the benefit of the gunner skill, so do the Kingfish. Call it a gunner skill of 12 (even elite aircrew don't get to practice these things very often). With the jammer effect, the roll would be at an effective skill of 14, so ten percent of the survivors get lost. * The ships fire chaff, which requires a roll vs. missile skill minus decoy TL, i.e. 21 - 7. Ten percent of the salvo get lost, again. * 30 Kingfish are left to go after the individual ships, where CIWS fire will enter the picture. Clancy had 41 vampires, five of them heading for Nimitz. And that will be the stuff of my next posting. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
