ASW Sea Power
This page is about ASW tactics in Sea Power video game, this is not about "research paper" on real life ASW tactics, this is only what works for me in Sea Power, what I've learned through the years playing games/simulations that feature ASW.
US/NATO hunting Soviet submarines, best asset any ship can have is a helicopter like SH-2F Seasprite which can stream Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) device, drop Sonobuoys and then MK-46 torpedoes to ultimately destroy the soviet submarine.
Maritime Patrol Aircraft
Maritime Patrol Aircrafts (MPA) are land based. Sea Power features three different MPA's, these are P-3C "Orion" for US/NATO side, IL-38 "May" and TU-142M for Soviet/Warsaw Pact side.
ASW Planes
Wait what, whats the difference between MPA and ASW plane you ask? Well MPA is land based while ASW plane is aircraft carrier based.
Two different ASW planes are for US/NATO side S-3A "Viking" and Soviet/Warsaw Pact side P-42.
ASW Helicopters
Kaman SH-2F Seasprite is the US/NATO ASW helo asset operated from frigate type of ships like Oliver Hazard Perry class.
KA-25PL "Hormone A" is the Soviet/Warsaw Pact ASW helicopter with dipping sonar.
KA-27PL "Helix" is a follow-on design to the KA-25 Hormone A. This helo is equipped with dipping sonar.
MI-14PL is land based MPA and ASW helicopter equipped with VGS-3 "Ros" dipping sonar and AN/ASQ-81V2 MAD device.
ASW Tactics
These are ASW tactics that work for me, you might and most likely find or already know much better tactics or the ones you like more, I would love to hear from you what kind of tactics you use so I could improve my own.
Lets say I have Oliver Hazard Perry (OHP) class frigate with two SH-2F Seasprite helicopters there. The ship is obviously traveling to some destination so that gives me a line from the ship to the destination (wow, I'm really drawing with crayons here ain't I haha). Now I use Tactical Display map drawing tools to create a circle of 15nm radius, I move this circle in OHP's line of travel which gives me a range circle where I can drop my sonobuoys so either the ship passing by or stationary SH-2F in the center of this ring can still receive radio transmissions from sonobuoys it dropped earlier. Then I create second circle and put it right next to the first one so the edges just barely touch.
The whole purpose of these 15nm circle markers are that sonobuoys have 15nm radio transmitter range, if you move all your units beyond that range then you cannot receive signal from the buoys, so if a buoy detects enemy submarine on passive sonar you do not know about it, so you must maintain radio link to all your sonobuoys at all time, hence 15nm guidance range circle came to be. Now you don't necessarily have to maintain the contact all the time, you could spread out the buoys further out and zig zag fly your helos back and forth to fly over all the buoys in short amount of time, however I don't like this kind of "wild" random flying around tactic, especially as Sea Power has no cycle/loop waypoint feature for units to automate a simple back and forth loop, so you have to babysit the back and forth flying helo all the time.
There is although one point for these back and forth flying helos, if you set them to 20ft altitude, they could both monitor the buoys by radio transmitter range and also deploy MAD device for additional submarine detection. But MAD hits are more like blind luck when done in huge search areas than anything else, at least that's how I see it. So my tactic is to fly helos inside the circles and once they have dropped enough sonobuoys I'll park hover one helo in the center who is the master of that sonobuoy web so to speak.
Also helicopter fuel consumption, I am not even sure if this is a thing in Sea Power, but if a helo is just hovering it consumes less fuel than flying forward at fast speed. So I'm just assuming here, its longer duration to leave one helo hovering at the center of 15nm range circle than have him race back and forth with fast speed at 20ft altitude streaming MAD device. This needs confirmation from Sea Power devs if helo speed has anything to do with fuel consumption, I know for a fact that aircraft with afterburners on goes through fuel tanks in no time, but I can only assume engine power applies to helicopters as well, please be aware of this. PMCTODO
So far in my game-play I've had fairly limited number of helicopters at use, at max 3 any given time, so I use two range circles next to each other, moving them forward in the OHP's line of travel and the ASW helos along with the outermost circle.
I'm not perfectly happy with this setup as its somewhat tight on the range. I mean it only covers 60nm range and in my personal tactics my OHP is always within the second circle so the distance depending on ship movement and circle looping is always less than 60nm. There are many Soviet submarines that carry dangerous cruise missiles with far greater range than 60nm.
This is a quick example image of two 15nm circles for sonobuoy deployment guide with reference 60nm line on the side, note that the mentioned ship traveling line is on the center of those circles but for clarity of the image text font I placed it on the side.
Below I have gone through my own naval warfare gaming session screenshots and picked up some example images of me in action deploying sonobuoys.
This image shows basic sonobuoy pattern around these circles. If you slice the circle in half and go around clockwise you get positions for sonobuoys as follows: north, north-east, east, south-east and south. Them same for the west side as well.
Screenshot image shown here is essentially the same, just shows a nice big target, err I mean merchant ship I'm escorting towards Iceland.
This screenshot shows SH-2F helicopter sonobuoy waypoint pattern I setup using SHIFT-RMB clicking on the tactical display. The large blue circle is my currently selected helicopters (seen on the 3D world view in the center) fuel range, once that blue circle runs out its time to return to base. This sonobuoy pattern also has one for the center of the 15nm circle.
Fast flying helicopter at low level 20ft above ocean surface streaming MAD device behind it. This has the earlier mentioned zig zag pattern of flying while hoping to get lucky with MAD hit.
Tactical Display in full screen mode, shows another sonobuoy pattern laid out in helicopter waypoints, another flying task is about to begin, SH-2F is laden with full load of 15 AN/SSQ-53 DIFAR sonbuoys and 2 MK-46 ASW torpedoes.
In this image there is actual submarine sonar contact detected by AN/SSQ-53 sonobuoy, this contacts noise level is 7.5 desibels (DB). You can also see black submarine contact icon which designates a destroyed/sunk submarine.
This is transitioning phase to a new 15nm sonobuoy circle marker, the outer most marker is empty, no sonobuoys deployed yet. I am just leaving the last area, there are still several sonbuoys active there but since my "US Convoy" of ships transitioned to the next circle marker I moved the previous one up in the traveling path.
More sunk Soviet submarines in this image. The outer most 15nm sonbobuoy circle now has very few sonobuoys deployed, I cant remember the specific scenario here did I run out of sonobuoys or am I just deploying them as there is SH-2F helicopter in the NW part of the out most circle marker. US Convoy is almost at the destination but you should never let down your guard while protecting friendly vessels against enemy submarines. It only takes one SSGN to slip through and then your ships get destroyed.
That's it, this is how I protect my convoy of ships in Northern Atlantic Ocean. So far I've been lucky, sometimes with this tactic Soviet submarines get as close as 30nm, in fact I recall once there was an incident when it was in the 20nm range or so, that got a bit scary for a moment.
This was ASW tactics using ship borne helicopters, now if you get MPA's like P-3C Orions flying overhead then that is another force multiplier in your assets, those aircrafts pack a punch, many more sonobuoys and torpedoes. Personally at the moment of writing this 2024-11-08T06:29:24Z I have not had the chance to use P-3C's much yet, not sure how those high fast flying aircrafts would fit in the 15nm circle marker tactic, hmm they might expand the area with their fast speed to much larger like mentioned earlier to zig zag around, fly along sonobuoy patterns to monitor just few of them at the time, collecting data, just not sure, never done it yet.