The U.S. Navy’s efforts to build a fleet of unmanned vessels are faltering because the Pentagon remains wedded to big shipbuilding projects, according to some officials and company executives, exposing a weakness as sea drones reshape naval warfare.
Lmao. By drones they mean guided explosives with an engine. Can we not blow shit out of proportion? You’re not getting the mission set of anything larger than a patrol boat out of a naval drone yet. The Navy is on top of drone research and when the time comes for drone plane carriers and drone arsenal ships I guarantee you they jump on it to reduce costs and losses.
That was the through before Ukraine managed to use sea drones effectively to sink multiple non-patrol ships. That just shows that tests and theoretical analyses only goes so far. Real life situations where stakes are real are great motivators.
You’re forgetting two key things. This is the Russian Navy. They have a ship that routinely tries to sink itself. And they can’t get their heads around proper training. They lost the Moskva because they were operating under enemy missile range with their air defense turned off.
And we don’t have the luxury of operating from a nearby friendly cost line. This is the entire reason the Navy wanted a modular mission system in the LCS. One of the missions was explicitly to act as a drone launch and recovery ship.
To illustrate the difference between capabilities, check out the low visibility drug runner boats the Cost Guard routinely catches in the Caribbean. We actually have years of experience catching exactly these kind of low visibility boats.
Look nobody is saying drones are a dead end. Just that this is a sensationalist article. The Navy is absolutely on board with drones.
That’s my point. Sea drone capabilities were never tested in an active war before, and US is not actively investing them because it’s against their current modus operandi. They even booted one of the top navy admiral because he wanted to change that. Ignoring the title, the article talks about budgeting and slow paper heavy approval processes and focus on big carriers, cruisers, frigates, and destroyers. Comparing Coast Guard’s experience where adversaries goal is to avoid instead of actively attack is not even close to being the same.
This might change now that Ukraine showed the effectiveness, but US is behind its adversaries in this area and falling more behind with current budget being already approved.
That’s just not true. The Navy has been working with drones for years now. Reuters is usually pretty reliable but they let industry reps highly exaggerate the situation.
Where does the article, or I state that US has 0 sea drones? They have around 100 as of now and a plan to double it with $500 million program, but it’s small numbers in comparison to the other countries that are investing heavily into them. You keep misconstruing what was reported.
Dude, we sent Ukraine 700 loitering munition drones. We do not have “100 drones”. We have 100 USVs and UUVs which are generally larger and more logistically complex than a Switchblade or Predator. The idea that we’ve been sleeping on this is ridiculous, there are articles going back years about testing drones. And who has a lot of drones? Which Navy specifically is investing heavier than the US Navy in drones right now?
I don't see why they don't do both? I see drones eating the lunch of destroyers and such but larger nuclear subs and aircraft carriers will still be mobile command centers.
why would a dedicated ship be needed? You would just need some sort of interface mechanism on the carrier. The word carrier group means multiple ships. The idea im thinking of is those other carrier defense ships would be replaced by drones.
I am confused as to even what size you conceive these drones to be. Will they be carried or attached to the carrier (the aircraft carrier? A helicopter/landing ship?). Will they be able to independently travel in the ocean like proper escorts do?
Will they actually be supposed to provide air defense and/or anti-submarine capabilities on their own? Because you will need size to house the equipment for all those capabilities and of course all that equipment is expensive.
I envision them being scaled to a particular task. So take a destroyer. Every gun would be its own drone ship and specific drones would just drop depth charges.
Guns are not much used in modern destroyers, especially in escort duty as they are not really effective at engaging air targets and not capable of attacking submarines at all.
Then there are CIWS, which can provide self-defense for the ship they are on but can’t really protect other ships. 1 or 2 per ship are enough but if we split a destroyer’s capabilities to multiple hulls we might need more or just accept that if missiles get past outer defenses they can hit our drones.
Outer air defense, which can cover other ships on the fleet, being a very important role for modern destroyers. It’s accomplished via missiles of various sizes and necessitates expensive electronics such as air search radars and fire-control radars. Those are housed in vertical enclosed tubes and are also fired from them. Current US destroyers have ~90 of those as does the plan for the future replacement.
We certainly are not going to make a ship for each cell but we presumably are going to split it some otherwise the ship will be practically the same size as the current destroyer. Of course we are going to have to replicate some elements and/or add new networking equipment to make things work. It certainly ain’t going to be cheaper or more robust than the current destroyer for the same amount of missiles.
Then there are 4-8 anti-ship missiles per destroyer, we could put those on a drone along perhaps along with the torpedoes. We are going to need a surface radar for those.
Then a sonar array (and torpedoes maybe) for the anti-submarine role.
There are also some self defense measures (electronics and decoys) that the destroyer have. Maybe we put then on some of the drones that we deem more important?
But the point is why? What you get will be more expensive unless you choose to reduce capabilities significantly, less robust, less survivable and probably less seaworthy (if you are envisioning lots of small ships).
What is the benefit ? Reducing crews? It is already being done via automation to the extend that it is possible. You also still have a crew (and the ability to increase crew) if the automation is not performing well unlike the case with a drone.
Also your existing carriers, they already carry stuff, you can’t just have them carry the drones around nor do they have the means to safely attach them somehow.
Main difference is that the battles are going to be a hyper-advanced nuclear-powered vessel with a mounted cannon that can turn on a dime, vs. An aluminum encased stick of dynamite with a sail x2000.
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