The F-1 doesn't really need an anti-naval loadout, and quite honestly successfully deploying torpedoes from jet aircraft is more trouble than its worth. There's a reason most ASW is conducted by choppers, and a large part of it is that dropping torpedoes from an aircraft moving at jet engine speeds usually results in the torpedo splattering all over the water surface instead of submerging and operating as designed. For any of the existing aircraft to deploy them they either need very specialized drop equipment and extremely resilient torpedoes, or to come in flying low and slow to put the torpedoes into the water at a safe speed and angle, which is an open invitation to being swatted by all the AAA in the area.
The torpedoes are used against All ships not just submarines. if we want to use our air force to be able to knock out the Navy we're going to need to give them some sort of weapon that actually is suited for them. Right now only our heaviest bomber have any kind of anti-ship weapon. And those are not going to be deployed in a vast number. The main bulk of the Air Force that we send out is going to be made up of primarily F-1s, some A-2s, bombers are going to be mostly B-0s, with only a very small number of the B-1s.
Considering how one-sided this is shaping up to be I don't think we're going to be here for a while.
The effective difference between Anti-Ship Missiles and Air-to-Surface Missiles is "target". The fact that you can use torpedoes against surface ships doesn't mean it's smart to, something which is again true even or especially today, because as I already indicated no one arms aircraft intended for anti-shipping missions with torpedoes anymore. Air-deployed torpedoes are pretty exclusively used for anti-submarine roles, and it's for a damn good reason that nothing we've done or developed in-quest has invalidated. Torpedoes are slower, shorter-ranged, more limited means of attack against surface ships compared to an equivalent anti-shipping missile.
Normally I would agree with you. Since everything you just said is in fact correct. The issue is mostly that the QM has given us the torpedo as a anti-ship option. That means that the air-to-surface missile might not be as effective against ships. Also I think we should just wait the option is up in the Discord. He will either go with it or not. We also lose nothing from making the armament since it is no different from any other load out. Also the range on the torpedoes are about the same as the rest of our missiles that are not specifically long range.
*shrug*
To a degree, maybe, but even in that even you have to fly close enough to deploy the torpedoes, which have a much reduced practical range limit as compared to air-breathing missile weapons, simply because air-breathers aren't paying through the nose to plow through non-compressible and high-drag water. And that's kinda asking for your torpedo bombers to eat long-distance anti-aircraft lasers. Effective torpedo range is limited by torpedo fuel loads, speed, and as something of a corollary transit time. If you look at the publicly available range bands for modern US heavy torpedoes, the sprint setting is ~38km at ~55 knots, which works out to ~102 km/h. That means it's taking around twenty minutes, from launch to propulsion dying, to hit that distance. Torpedoes are slow as fuck. Simply turning around and sailing away from homing torpedoes is not an unreasonable tactic, absent other concerns. And this is as regards heavyweight torpedoes, which are practically aquatic cruise missiles. Lightweight torpedoes intended for use against "soft" targets like other submarines are much, much, much shorter-ranged.
So I was looking over the description for the torpedo. It is called a guided explosive equipped with aquatic propulsion. So I think it is the same as the guided bomb but instead of landing directly on target it can land a bit away then use its aquatic propulsion to hit the enemy vessels.
You'll also note it's much shorter-ranged, on the order of something like a third to a fifth of the range of more conventional designs. I believe it's intended purpose is as a short-range attack torpedo for submarines to use against other submarines, with the intent of giving them less response time to try to deploy countermeasures or go silent and break any acoustic targeting locks.
I mean...any missile is a "a guided explosive with X propulsion". That's not a particularly informative or tricky description.
I mean, technically that could actually work, but torpedoes don't really have big power requirements, and you'd still need some kind of propulsion system on top of the fusion reactor. I...suppose you could try some kind of steam jet or other renewable hydro-propulsion using the fusion reactor, but that would be loud as fuck in relative terms.
Pretty much what I'm arguing for, yeah. Torpedoes are for using with or against subs, not planes.
For some reason I thought it was only a 1 turn action.
unless your trying to use a stealth platform to launch the torpedoes the torpedoes being super loud inst a problem given that by the time they hear the torpedo it will still be too late to take out the entire salvo
Not necessarily. Supercavitating torpedoes can hit speeds in excess of ~200+ knots, or around ~370+ km/h (~6.17 km/minute). Range is ~7-15km. That means if you fire from the edge of your range, you're looking at something in excess of one to two and two-fifths minutes between launch and arrival. And supercavitating torpedoes are really fucking loud, so anyone with even shitty passive sonar is going to hear something that sounds like a rocket engine blowing a raspberry coming right at them. And it's not like modern submarines mount enough torpedo tubes for a real saturation attack. Russian Akula's mount eight tubes of mixed size, PLAN Han's and Shang's mount six tubes, and USN Los Angeles' and Virginia's pack four tubes and a heavy VLS missile armament. Trying for saturation would require getting an entire submarine wolfpack into a coordinate strike, and when you can't actually talk to each other that shit is basically impossible.
Well, hopefully the Naval technologies researched also apply to wet navy, otherwise we may not have laser PD and ship-to-ship laser cannons.
I've been under the impression our techs have been applying to our wet water navy. Fusion missiles research explicitly mentioned replacing the missiles of our ballistic submarines and we've had ship scale fusion reactors for the better part of a decade.
