Command Modern Operations - Message from SOSUS: Be Quiet or Get Out of the Way

There is a reason why a version of Command is being used by professional wargamers at many armed forces around the world. This powerful, far-reaching wargame/simulation is versatile, educational and (nerdly) entertaining. 

My current obsession with the Cold War at sea was accidentally awakened by the patriotism, courage and leadership-exuding story in Oceans Ventured, by John Lehman. The NATO shock for the unexpected low acoustic footprint of the Victor III class submarines, although not specifically recounted in the book is still within the narrative lines of Western navies overcoming a rising Warsaw Pact/Soviet naval force.

So I wanted to experiment a bit to get an idea of what submarine warfare in the GIUK gap would involve. Certainly, Command has one specific scenario (They Shall Not Pass, The Silent Service DLC) for that. In the screenshot below you see it in full play. As you may realize, the complexity is a tad high for a starting player so I decided to setup my own scenario with the help of the in-game editor.

My setup is just a few SOSUS stations (just a conceptual framework), a generic US Los Angeles Class SSN and the very silent Victor III on the Soviet side. The Victor III starts in a random position and in transit to a patrol station. I took special care of making sure that the Victor III does not cavitate. During the scenario duration, the Victor III would use what Milan Vego in his Soviet Naval Tactics book, calls the "cruising" and "screen" forms of ASW combat employment.

On the NATO side, the LA Class submarine has the mission to track and destroy the enemy submarine.

In the screenshot above, you see that one of the SOSUS stations was able to pick up the Victor III from hundreds of miles away. As the time passed, the quality of information varied, but eventually 14 hours later another SOSUS station started picking up the sound signature of the Soviet submarine.

As seen above, and given the uncertainty of the actual range to the Victor III, I started carefully adjusting the speed of my submarine. In the above screenshot, when my submarine is at creep speed, the signal from the Victor III is solid. But when I get my submarine to full speed, the acoustic signal is no longer captured by the SOSUS system. In the screenshot below, the 19 sec note in the map indicates that we have lost the contact 19 seconds ago.

I believe that is the so-called sonar masking, so greatly explained by Command expert P. Gatcomb in his video.

Another thing I noticed is how multiple SOSUS stations start tracking simultaneously the Victor III submarine, reducing uncertainty.

As for the mission itself, this is probably the subject of another post. A remarkable finale, just a bit embarrassing.

I finally could get my submarine to track the Soviet, and I laboriously maneuvered into the baffles of the communist hull just in time to see the enemy turn at me. I immediately stopped my submarine, the Soviets apparently unaware of my presence. 

And then I screwed up: overzealous of geometry, I change course to face the Victor III. I may have made some noises during my twist, because a torpedo came fast and furious at my submarine. I got hit so bad that my reactor, my comms and three tubes went out of commission. But while this was happening, two own torpedoes were on their way to the Victor III, who sank with the loudest and sweetest explosion.

I am sure SOSUS caught that sound!

Cheers,