During the Cold War wherever the U.S. Navy sailed the Soviet Navy often sailed too. The Soviet ships were not always major (or even minor) combatants but often tattletails—ships assigned to trail U.S. Navy ships for the purposes of intelligence collection and targeting. As an article written for Naval Institute Proceedings in 1981 relates:
The Soviet tattletale has been with us for 20 years or more, but I wonder if we have sufficiently faced up to the implications.
It seems safe to assume that the tattletale is there not only to observe our operations for intelligence purposes, but also to signal data to the missile firers—the vital identification and positional data without which the preemptive coordinated attack will probably fail.
Both sides must realize that tattletaling at the outbreak of war is a suicide mission; the only difference for the tattletale between death-and-glory and simply death is timing—the timing of our retaliation.
Since our rules of engagement may be balanced on a knife-edge just prior to hostilities, and may be dependent on other rapidly changing indicators, it seems possible that we may have only a few seconds in which to eliminate the tattletale. During those few seconds nothing, perhaps in the entire history of naval warfare, will be so important as doing that job properly.
NAMB Silencing the Tattletale, by Captain C. H. Layman, Royal Navy
March 1981 Proceedings Vol. 107/3/937
Captain Layman’s scenario is pretty much the situation found in Tattletail: An Introductory Scenario for Harpoon edited by Andy Doty and digitally published by the Admiralty Trilogy Group in October 2023. The scenario depicts the opening night of World War III which finds a single Soviet Mod Kashin-class guided missile destroyer (DDG) in the Norwegian Sea shadowing a NATO task force which is composed of an oiler (AO) escorted by a multi-national assortment of four frigates. The Soviet player must cripple (50% or more damage) the oiler and other ships while the NATO player must avoid too many sunk or crippled ships. Although called an introductory scenario, players will have to understand the rules for surface detection and combat as well as the use of aircraft.
Tattletail is a scenario for the naval wargame Harpoon V (Admiralty Trilogy Group) and includes one page for the scenario and 11 complete Harpoon V Form 10s for ships and Form 20s for aircraft (helicopters in this case). As Larry Bond notes in The Naval SITREP Issue #65 (October 2023) the scenario book, “is an experiment” and a response to calls by players for more Form 10s (calls that Mr. Bond points out do not always result in sales). Tattletail was a scenario originally found in a scenario book for Harpoon III (GDW, 1987) called Battles from the Third World War (GDW, 1987) but now brought up to Harpoon V standards.
For an inexpensive $3 pricetag I think it is safe to say that Tattletail is a successful experiment. In The Naval SITREP #65 Larry Bond reveals that a future Form 10/20 book will have all the ships and aircraft from the High Tide (Clash of Arms, 2003) expansion that covered the U.S. and Soviet Navies in the Cold War of the 1980’s for Harpoon IV (Clash of Arms, 1997).
Can’t wait.
Feature image “On 12 February 1988, the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Yorktown, while exercising the “right of innocent passage” in Soviet territorial waters, was rammed by the Soviet frigate Bezzavetniy (collision pictured) with the intention of pushing the Yorktown into international waters. This action has been called “the last incident of the Cold War”. Service Depicted: Multi-National The SOVIET Krivak I class guided MISSILE frigate BEZZAVETNY (FFG 811) impacts the guided MISSILE cruiser USS YORKTOWN (CG 48) as the American ship exercises the right of free passage through the SOVIET-claimed 12-mile territorial waters.” – Unknown author – http://www.defenseimagery.mil/imagery.html#guid=3fbec26218ee63044a583fa43631f40681be4e95
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Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 
We’ve just started playing this scenario online using Discord on the Harpoon server run by Peter Robbins.
Let us know how it goes!
Interesting. I’d known about Ivan having vessels shadowing our fleets. Didn’t know that it was a war-starting strategy.
I think there is a rule in SEAPOWER & THE STATE that when nuclear warfare breaks out that major surface ships are destroyed based on being targeted by tattletails and the like.