Re: Sensors

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Alan and Carmel Brain wrote:

> Passive sensors rely on the radiation of the target being detected.
> As different targets tend to have different radiation "signatures",
> Passive sensors are very good for Identification.

I agree in principle with this, but I have a few things to
note. 

If we use Radar and Sonar as a reference here for
principles. Passive Sonar will give you some general
information about the vessel and allow you to get some
pretty good ideas of what it could be. It'd be hard to get a
specific ID on a specific vessels' hull number with passive
sonar. 

Active sensors (say like the MMW radar the S-3 Viking
carries) is very fine in detail and allows one to view a
picture of the vessel based on the processed radar data.
Such data allows one to determine the class, specific
weapons/sensor/superstructure fits and after a quick look at
a data base (electronic version of Janes in 2180's anyone?)
what the hull number would likely be. 

In the onld days of WWII, you could get this after you got
close enough to figure this out. Naturally there was some
Jamming that one could do against the mark one eyeball.
Witness the profusion of fals bows and wakes, darkly painted
turrets with the next one back clearly defined, stacks
painted a darker color than their next and even a similar
outline to vessels of much larger classes (Scharhorst,
Gneissau, Bismark, Prinz Eugen and Graf Spee all had similar
lines, several engagements had one being identified as one
of the others).

It would seem that passive at closer range would give you
adequate fire control solutions after several readings.
Eventually once you got really close, you could tell what it
was. 

Long range, poor detail, active would give you hard info on
how big, where and how fast it was. Not much else. It's
navigational in basis or for those that don't plan on really
looking close at the enemy. 

Long range, fine detail, active would give you a really good
idea but also say "Here I am look at me". How to rectify the
common fitments of similar sensor systems on different
platforms is a trick (this is from the sense of identifying
an emmitter of active sensors). "Is that a Majestic or is
that an Agincourt SDN pointing its Mk 30 Fire control and
ranging radar at us? They both use the same systems..."

Perhaps a further profusion of fine-detail/poor-detail
passives would make sense?

ECM could have passive and active modes as well (though
passive ECM really aught to be "stealth") and would have
chances for decoying ordinance. I'm wondering if rather than
a per shot basis one should perform a per battle basis of a
die roll for each vessel's passive/active sensor quality as
well as ECM quality number based on the Die type. 

ie at the start of the battle my Santa Maria Class BDN rolls
a D10 for Passive, a D8 for Active Sensors, a D6 for passive
ECM and a D10 for Active ECM. Each of these numbers based on
their difference against your foe's numbers would give a
basis for modifying other results.

Theoretically a vessel could stack its numbers with other
freindly vessels for a shot at inferometricly influenced
data or buddy jamming (if they have Area ECM). 

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