Silent running... M.A.D.

[Mohrgan]

I agree, SILENT RUNNING should be based in SILENCE!!, if you click silent running and use your thrusters or weapons, there have to be a signature that shows you in the others radar!

SR and your ships thermal signature have nothing to do with sound. Sound cannot be transmitted in space. The sounds we hear are generated by our ships to aide us, the sounds are not a result of outside sound waves. The counter to SR ships is your eyes. SR doesn't make ships invisible, it just reduces, drastically, the heat signature released. You can still see weapon discharges, and thrusters in use, as well as the hull of the ship. SR is not a cloak.

The price for that loss in heat signature is that the SR ship Commander has to maintain internal ship temperatures manually. Heat Sinks are required in order to stay in SR very long, and are the 1st things to fail if/when a ship overheats. I don;t see anything wrong with the current mechanics. Time and experience will show you how to counter an SR ship, as we have them now.

 

[Noddie]

Maybe the answer is to allow eight axis cameras, so we can look for SR ships??

 

[SlugwormX]

@ Noddie: As much as I hate to support anything to do with the JSF, DAS is a pretty interesting technology (if they can get it to work properly). See AN/AAQ-37

Also, as has been mentioned, proper array and selection of RADAR, LIDAR, ES / EA, PASSIVE and ACTIVE sensors would provide an interesting mix for the discerning Commander to choose from.

Can imagine a number of ships in a wing utilising differing sensors, or maybe an Intel ship that has all sensors with Data Links to it's wing mates.... Now that would be an interesting game mechanic

 

[X-Terminator]

Why do you close your eyes if a ship is using Silent Running? You should use headtracking and FA off and look for smoke or laser fire LOL!!!!
Please keep up the hideous ideas please...

 

[Bigglesof206]

we did an excersie to test it the MAD aircraft ssent a signal when they calimed to have us and marked the position then we surfaced and we were a whole 5milles from where they climed we should be it doesnt work that well

Sorry to bust your bubble, but as my first career was as a dry AEOp on Nimrods for just over 20 years, that's just not so - we used MAD to finalise attack solutions all the time, most of the location and tracking was done using passive sonobuoys, and once you have the sub localised to a reasonably small area via sonobuoys a subsequent MAD search pattern would throw up a detection....that detection was good enough to drop a weapon on, as we proved several times a year at AUTEC.

A fair number of other things (during intial dry training we were taught the ten main sources to consider) could produce spurious signals, and nobody would attempt to localise a sub via MAD just by flying around and hoping to get a mad mark, but given cueing from acoustics the MAD was the final nail in the coffin.

The one occasion I previously alluded to was during an exercise, we were a little early into our area, and really just tooling round while setting things up - the ESM operator (who also worked MAD) called a MAD mark, which nobody really imagined could be legit (after all, what's the chance of accidentally just flying over your target?) Only, just that once, it WAS our target....as the sonobouys we dropped at the time confirmed. Once, in 23 years.....(out of which, to be honest, I spent 11 on other duties other than flying).

Dave