How I Lost the Battle of the South China Sea

[tomahawk6]

Fascinating read and it makes me want to try the game out.Despite the price.The scenario described in the article has the potential to become real.The PRC continues to encroach on PI territory which could become a flashpoint.One that our USN may not have suitable weapons to wage.

http://www.matrixgames.com/pro...Air/Naval.Operations

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/c47b367a1de2

How I Lost the Battle of the South China Sea
We gamed out a clash between the U.S. Navy’s latest ships and the Chinese Navy. Guess who won.

by KYLE MIZOKAMI

 

[Halifax Tar]

Interesting stuff. I have bought a few games from matrix.

I would say though your CTGs would be an almighty power and I suspect in reality one would be close by

 

[a_majoor]

Stuff like this drive me nuts for a number of reasons.

1. There seems to be zero understanding of the LCS. Sure, smaller ships carry heavier weapons suites, but that is because they stay deployed close to their home base. The LCS is steaming in from across the Pacific ocean, so needs far superior sea handling qualities, and must be able to operate deployed thousandss of miles from base for extended periods of time. OF course this means there will be compromises made in the design.

2. John Paul Jones is dead. So is Lord Nelson. Going for the whites of their eyes has not been the mode of naval warfare since the USN defeated the Japanese navy during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, using aircraft carriers and radar directed naval gunfire. The deployment was flawed by not positioning the sips to take advantage of their overlapping abilites. If the cruiser was closer the LCS's would be under the protection of the air defense umbrella, and the LCS's role in the battle might have been to assist in directing the heavy firepower of the  USS Halsey and help overwhelm the Chinese defense systems so the heavy weapons could get through.

3. On a larger scale, what is the purpose of the deployment? What did the USN and American government expect to gain by this? This may also have changed factors like the weapons loadout of the LCS, or even the seeming inability of the USN to detect an enemy sub in the waters (where did those missiles come from anyway?).

So in the end, even the best designed sim is pretty useless if the player does not understand the nature and rules of naval warfare as practiced.