GHQ Models Forums

Please allow me to entertain you with my ignorance of naval warfare.

So if modern warships are firing anti-ship missiles over the horizon and launching aircraft to attack distant land and sea targets, is there really such a thing as modern naval tactics? If all warships have missile and air defense systems does it really matter what formation they're in? Is there any maneuvering going on, or is it a matter of target acquisition and push the button?

I couldn't decide if I wanted to try modern micronaughts or WW1, but modern doesn't seem that much fun to me as someone who doesn't understand it. Can anyone school me, or better yet recommend some websites or referrences that will describe modern naval action?

Thanks.

redleg,

Not a bad question at all. As a serving US Naval officer let me give you my opinion. There are tactics in modern naval warfare. Its not the same fire and maneuver kind of tactics that a ground pounder might employ although that is there as well. In modern naval warfare much of the effort is spent in scouting/anti-scouting activities - find out where the enemy is without giving away too much about your position. Maneuver your forces to take advantage of the enemy's weaknesses or at least mitigate some of their strengths. Sometimes the mission dictates how the ships will move i.e. chokepoint transits. But open ocean warfare offers much more freedom of action.

redleg wrote:So if modern warships are firing anti-ship missiles over the horizon

Actually very few navies are capable of true Over The Horizon (OTH) targeting. A weapon's range might give it that capability but if there is no targeting data available its wasted capability. Knowing something is over the horizon and being able to target it are two different things. Time of flight of the weapon gives the target an opportunity to move out of the engagement zone before the weapon arrives if you can't update the enemy's position and update the weapon in flight.

In short its not as push button as many seem to think. Look at the RN experience in the Falklands. One of the most professional navies - maybe the most professional navy that has ever existed - with some of the most modern technology of the time and they took a shellacking. Of course we could go on and on about the whys of that conflict for weeks.

Paul

Yes, formations matter even in this day and age. You have to account for aircraft, subs surface ships and even missiles fired from over the horizon and it is all coming at once....fast. The basic philosophy is the same, knock out as many of the bad guys as you can before they get anywhere near you. As the threats come within striking distance if the placement of your ships and other assets is not well thought out a bad day just got a lot worse. It is a lot to keep track of...trust me, I used to do this for a living.

Personally, I prefer a good old fashioned slugfest between battleships.

A book you may find useful is "Fleet Tactics theory and practice" by Capt. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr. from the Naval Institute press. It starts with the basics, discusses advances in both world wars and goes right into the modern era.

I hope this helps.

Another useful book to own or just read is Soviet Naval Tactics. Lots of insight into small boat tactics, combined air surface and sub-surface attacks and much more.

Paul

Great topic and so glad that av8rmongo is giving such input.

In the 90’s a group of us started playing Harpoon and if that rule set is accurate to the real world there are definitely tactics in Modern Naval warfare. The rude awakening that I had was that just because your missiles have over the horizon range the curvature of the earth limits your effective range. As av8rmongo pointed out if you can’t lock up a target on radar or get a sonar solution it is a waste of missiles to fire them. Also at least with many cold war ships you don’t have that many missiles!

Another issue is that when your using active radar and sonar you have to remember that you can be detected at 1.5 to twice as far as you can detect. So you have t think twice about banging away with Sonar or trying to ping the work with active radar. Start blasting away with your carrier’s radar and you might lose it!

I find sub battles the most fascinating and the most fun. However carrier ops and the dance of Aircraft and ships takes a lot of concentration.

What killed gaming that era of naval warfare was lack of competent opponents and of course like the real thing keeping operational secrets. Things like my carrier launch sequence and radar search methods were kept very close to my chest.

Tactics I also feel are still critical in modern naval table top gaming.
Having played with/against AV8 in modern land & naval warfare.

One game that another person set up I had a Los Angles sub and AV8(Paul) had a Russian attack sub. We are both passive sonar, starting on opposite side of table. and we both moved closer and counter-clockwise circles getting smaller each time. I was able to get several passive sonar detection on him, but not enough for a firing solution. Paul had a few on me. Finally, I went active knowing that he was right in front of me at a short distance of a nautical mile or two, and "PING", and the game-master said "no detection" without looking at the roll..... he then mentioned to me...what does that indicate....I couldn't figure it out.... I knew he was in front of me, he had to be.... why didn't he look at the roll,.... I had him locked up with 4 ready to fire....... the GM after the game said that he was right behind me in my baffells...'whatever', BS, ...ya know what I mean...

Any way, as the game progressed, I was able to get an target acquisition being passive and did fire......changed my asmith, depth, direction....cut the wires and sent those fish active.................

Also, ask Paul about his task force in the Black Sea as commander of the Iowa and a Perry class frigate and there are Russian and Ukrainian ships all over the place and the Tiblishi is trying to sortie from the Black Sea to the Med to port in Europe.

AV8 has come up with some nice senarios in the past. Yugoslavia embargo and Russian attack force coming in to penetrate the NATO picket screen.

Interesting topic!

I've enjoyed computer games covering modern naval combat but have never understood why it would make for a good miniatures game.

Since the carrier battles of WWII it seems the engagement ranges are so great and stealth is so crucial miniatures would not be a good medium for this type of combat. In fact, if your ships are on the tabletop your enemy knows where you are and you're in deep doo-doo!

For this reason I've shied away from modern naval miniatures and instead play spaceship battles. Since it's pure fiction the scale distortions and anti-realistic nonsense don't bother me (my home-grown SF space rules are essentially WWI naval combat in space). On the other hand I've always been fascinated by modern naval miniatures. Just haven't found a reason to get into it.

My favorite naval scenarios (18th century to sci-fi!) involve convoy escorts and as much terrain as possible whether shoals/reefs or planets and asteroids.

Hopefully others will reply to the OP and provide some inspiration for me to make the leap into modern naval!

I miss playing Harpoon dispite the miniature problems (lack of Aircraft types) it is a great system for Geo Political Wargames. Those small high tech skirmish strikes. Punative air strikes or sending a couple of ships off a 3rd world country's shore to let them know they are ticking us off.

It was just the lack of smart players. for example:

We did a game where the US players had to get a boomer out of King's Bay and into deep water without being followed. The US had 2 players The Boomer Capitan and a Los Angeles sub returning from patrol its last misstion was to sanitize and intercept any Soviet sub trying to get on the boomer's tail.

The Soviet player had an Alpha class sub luring and waiting for the Boomer.

To make a very long scenario story short. THe US commander of the Boomer was a newby and an idiot. First every 30 second tactical turn he ordered a 90 or 180 degree turn then decided it was a good idea to go to the surface at his best speed trying to look like a pleasure craft!

After dancing with this Alpha and nearly starting World War 3 in the process I go so frustrated with my teammate I topedoed him!

Sorry Tim I know it is not too inspiring but when I was up against and educated and informed opponent they were some of the most fun games I have played.

Wow - lots of great information, guys. I knew I would get some great feedback on this forum! Thanks for the help - I guess I'll need to get some micronaughts after all!

voltigeur
What a great story, I am still laughing... we have had that in micro armor and Harpoon....

I must have been doing some civil war reenacting that day at Ft Clinch (where the subs enter & exit) when the boomer and its escourts were going out to sea including the two little boston whalier with M60 MG and 8-10 marines getting smack abit from the waves.

And after an hour we hear an explosion, and then helos take off a few minutes later from Kings Bay, Coast Guard goes out and sherriff office boat goes out fast as all. I was wondering what happen with all that.
Must have been when you launched a torp at him for all those Crazy Ivan, you must have thought he was a Soviet sub. BTW, your career in the navy is over.
chris

I've run a couple of games by email (I plot all movement on CAD, then turn off the layers each player can't see, then send them a pdf of their plot). The first game stopped when the guy that had to make all the play wouldn't commit to shooting. The last game fell over because I got slack. That was a bit of a shame. Again, the guy who had to force the result (and it was his to have after about four turns) didn't, so it started to drag on. Only luck turned it until a vaguely even fight again. There was a game that was fascinating where not a shot was fired. There were ROEs, so not open slather.

The one drawback by email is that there aren't the debriefs and discussions that you get around a tabletop. I could see the bad calls getting made because I had complete knowledge of what was going on. It's not that easy when you don't. So keeping a guy who has just had his head handed to him interested is harder. And guiding those who get too fancy is no easier.

But back to the question, yes there are tactics. But as has been indicated, it's more about how you look for the other guy without compromising your own situation. If you want to run around with battle lines, go with WW-I. There are interesting smaller actions too.

Mike

Mike,

You bring up an interesting point about PBEM games. A few years ago when i had more free time I was running 4 or 5 PBEM games a year. Instead of a pure email game I set up a Yahoo Group, three groups actually, for each game. (They're still there actually - Look for From The Sea (FTS) groups) I had one Group site for everyone to allow trash talking, lurkers general rules for everyone that sort of thing. Then I had a Group site for each side which had their data sheets special rules maps etc. I gave the players a turn deadline and let them haggle over their plan and tactics and come up with their solution. This way I could monitor what was going on, nudge if I had to, answer questions if needed but generally be only in the background. After each side gave their turn input I would plot it then return a new plot with any new contacts and a kind of play by play description of the action that took place during that turn. I think it was a fair compromise between speed, flexibility and detail. I guess my players would be the best judge if it worked or not.

If anyone wants to get their feet wet in a PBEM kind of game there are a couple good Yahoo Groups that specialize in this kind of thing and new games are starting all the time - or at least they were when I was more actively doing it. I haven't checked lately. All the Groups I know of use Harpoon rules but if you don't have the rules some Referees will guide you through an introductory scenario to give you a tates of the game mechanics. If you are familiar with Harpoon but haven't played in a few years there are many changes that have happened - most for the better. If you have any questions on how or where to get started PM me and I'll gladly help out.

Paul

Hmm the entire mechanics for modern naval tactics seems really mind boggling to me now.
But to put it in real layman terms, can i say that modern naval warfare is like a more advance type of "battleship" boardgame?

While I am a Modern Naval Enthusiast that loves collecting Modern Naval Warships. The Battle and Tactica have never been more complicated compared to any other armed forces elements.

Got my hands on playing Fleet Command once, and like you guys said, sometimes its guess work.

I guess maybe that is why the modern naval scene for tabletop isnt so lucrative for GHQ.

"... modern naval warfare is like a more advance type of "battleship" boardgame."

This is not a bad an*logy. Since the development of high-capacity guided weapons, the following principles apply to naval warfare:
- If you can see it, you can hit it.
- If you can hit it, you can kill it.

Don S.

And after an hour we hear an explosion, and then helos take off a few minutes later from Kings Bay, Coast Guard goes out and sherriff office boat goes out fast as all. I was wondering what happen with all that.
Must have been when you launched a torp at him for all those Crazy Ivan, you must have thought he was a Soviet sub. BTW, your career in the navy is over.

Thanks for the add on to the story. Everyone thought I was crazy when I told them my wargame table is actually a alternate universe and the fate of my figures are reflected in this world. Yeah now I have proof; yeah proof at last.

Having a good laugh at your post Chris.