Re: Tin Cans versus Dreadnoughts

Jon Davis wrote:

> Richard and Emily Bell wrote:
> > If the Kirov is allowed to defend itself, a single carrier airwing
will have a
> > lot of trouble as the SA-N-6 missile has a long enough range to
launch before
> > the harpoons, the Kirov class has at least one missile per harpoon
on the
> > carrier, and it has plenty of other missiles and multibarreled
cannon, too.
>
> My FA-18s would hit the deck before entering SA-N-6 missile range and
close
> to within 50-60 km before unloading their harpoons.  The harpoons
would come
> over the horizon in range of the SA missiles, but not the attack
craft.
>
> We've played this out using the Harpoon rules and the Kirov ends up a
bloody mess.

I think you meant 50-60 nm as 50-60 km means that some F-18's (even on
the deck) have
already been shot down after crossing the radar horizon

Your opponent forgot about blip enhance, and you forgot that you have to
find the
target with your radar before you can start to launch harpoons; unless
you do a
bearing-only-launch, and you still need to know where the target is. 
The F-18's
searching for me will give me enough time to get my helicopters in the
air (I think
the Kirov carries four).  If you do a bearing-only-launch, four out of
seven of the
harpoons will uselessy try to shoot down helicopters and ignore the
Kirov entirely.

 If you do the whole flight on the deck, or just above it, the F-18's
won't have the
legs to search for very long, and may not find the Kirov before the
Kirov accomplishes
whatever it was attempting to do.  So I suspect that the actual hunting
of an
unescorted Kirov by an unescorted carrier would not go entirely as
planned, and if the
carrier must expend its entire complement of harpoons (the USN doesn't
have that many)
to kill the Kirov, the carrier has been mission killed as an
anti-surface unit as
dropping bombs on Soviet ships bristling with 30mm gatlings is not a
pretty thought.