Wargaming

[Manonthestreet]

Every Commander a Wargamer: Reforming Wargaming Education for the Fleet | Center for International Maritime Security

cimsec.org

I used to go to a game shop down on Lake St just before Uptown district. A govt contractor who was a friend of the owner stopped by and wanted to run a Harpoon campaign. Instead of just picking ships according to their current specs you were allowed to modify them as long as the weight remained within specs. One of the mods we made was the addition of a significant number of Tomahawk missiles to the Missouri.
After everyone turned in their fleets he declared us the winners without even anyone making move one and headed back to Washington.
Shortly thereafter the Missouri was outfitted with Tomahawks. True story.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

I have wargamed since I was eight and saw Afrika Korps.

 

[Mushroom]

War games have been a part of military planning for centuries now, there is nothing new in that.

However, forgive me but this makes no sense. The Tomahawk is a TLAM, and could carry either the conventional or nuclear armed version. And to give a hint, TLAM stands for "Tomahawk Land Attack Missile". In other words, having such would have absolutely zero impact on a naval battle. Especially as they only had 16 of them.

And I am familiar with Harpoon, mostly the original and II. But we mostly played the SPI game "The Fast Carriers", as it went more in-depth with a great many other ships over a longer period of time. Two that we often would game out were variations of "The Final Countdown", alternating if the Nimitz went to 1941 alone (movie version), or with their escort fleet.

We even gamed out a potential Malvinas conflict, that one was particularly fun. Especially if Argentina had amassed a real fleet and gotten their Brooklyn class "Machine Gun Cruiser" into action.

 

[Manonthestreet]

What is the Maritime Strike Tomahawk cruise missile?

The Maritime Strike Tomahawk is designed to provide a naval anti-surface warfare capability to the long-serving land-attack cruise missile.

www.naval-technology.com

 

[westwall]

What is the Maritime Strike Tomahawk cruise missile?

The Maritime Strike Tomahawk is designed to provide a naval anti-surface warfare capability to the long-serving land-attack cruise missile.

www.naval-technology.com

Didn't happen till 2017 IIRC. The big advantage that equipping an Iowa class battleship with TLAM is it gives it a stand off land attack capacity that places it far outside territorial waters. They were also equipped with Harpoon, though not enough of those in my opinion. That gave them a long distance anti ship capability.

The biggest advantage that the Iowa class enjoyed was their ability to absorb ASM hits.

By the bushel.

They could pretty much wipe out her comms, secondary armaments, and with a funnel hit, her speed, but they couldn't hurt her hull integrity, nor her main armament, so after running the enemy out of missiles, she could still fight on.

 

[Mushroom]

What is the Maritime Strike Tomahawk cruise missile?

The Maritime Strike Tomahawk is designed to provide a naval anti-surface warfare capability to the long-serving land-attack cruise missile.

www.naval-technology.com

Which as your own reference states first entered service in 2024. The last time I checked, that is some three decades after the last of the Iowa class ships were retired.

Now in the refit, the Iowa class was fitted with 4 quad mount Harpoon missiles. Not the Tomahawk, the Harpoon.

Did you even look at your own reference?

 

[Mushroom]

The biggest advantage that the Iowa class enjoyed was their ability to absorb ASM hits.

And that is exactly right. Being built "old school" with armor plating, it could laugh off the damage of any missile in use then or today short of a nuke.

Plus their big 16" guns. Pretty much worthless in the era of anti-ship missiles, but us Marines absolutely loved them. If we had to operate close to shore in hostile territory, there was little more comforting than knowing you had a ship at your back that could throw shells the size of a Volkswagen at your enemies.

I had friends that were boots on the ground in Lebanon as part of the UN peacekeeping forces in the early 1980s. And more than once they would call in for the USS New Jersey to drop down a smoke round. Often times the engagement they were trying to end was too close to civilians to actually fire live ordinance. But lobbing in a smoke was enough to cause the bad guys to pull out quickly, as it let them know that they were indeed right where the Battleship could hit them.

And in the Gulf War those ships and the Marine Amphibious forces absolutely terrified Saddam. He put the majority of his forces on the coast or facing it, and actually did try shooting at them several times. Which was perfect, as it put him in the perfect position to get buggered up the arse when the Coalition Forces actually did attack.

 

[Manonthestreet]

Which as your own reference states first entered service in 2024. The last time I checked, that is some three decades after the last of the Iowa class ships were retired.

Now in the refit, the Iowa class was fitted with 4 quad mount Harpoon missiles. Not the Tomahawk, the Harpoon.

Did you even look at your own reference?

So we were ahead of our time. Say thank you

 

[Mushroom]

So we were ahead of our time. Say thank you

No, not at all.

The Tomahawk is actually not a great platform for attacking surface ships at all. It is inferior in most ways to the Harpoon and other missiles, they simply have a longer range.

In fact, there was the TASM variant in that era, but they performed poorly in tests and were withdrawn. The old TASM missiles were then converted into the TLAM-E Block IV variant. That was not anti-ship at all but an improved land attack version known as the "Tactical Tomahawk".

No "thank you" at all for trying to claim something that appears to not true at all.

Sorry, but your entire claim comes off as nothing but "Trust me, bro". And I don't.

 

[Manonthestreet]

Yeah that's why Navy is improving em with a pop up attack profile. ....

 

[Mushroom]

Yeah that's why Navy is improving em with a pop up attack profile. ....

It is what is known as a "stand-off weapon".

Tell me, do you know anything about weapon systems and their uses outside of games?