My heartfelt thanks as an old Airborne Ranger to our "Modern Mahan" for continuing to educate all of us on the importance of "lessons learned"...unfortunately we tend to continue learning those tragic lessons from the past. Keep up the fire! Our incoming SECDEF will need your counsel.
The US Navy was particularly concerned with the vulnerability of surface ships to aircraft attack. It was clear that the problem of fleet protection demanded a drastically more effective means of destroying enemy air power than either the timed or contact fuze provided.
Section T of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, under the direction of Dr. Merle A. Tuve, was assigned the task of developing and overseeing the production of a proximity type of fuze for the Navy's 5" guns which were their primary long-range anti-aircraft weapon. The theory was simplicity itself: The fuze would contain a miniature radio transmitter-receiver which would send out a signal. When the signal reflected back from the target reached a certain frequency, caused by the proximity of the target, a circuit in the fuze closed firing a small charge in the base of the fuze that detonate the projectile.
Radar-controlled Mk. 110 is the replacement for 40mm and to a lesser extent, 5". Load with AHEAD rounds and have the World's Most Intense Sporting Clays competition.
going a bit too big with the Mk 110. use the 50x228mm bushmaster rounds are alot smaller and if you put say 5-6 of them on a ship with proper tracking and prox fused shells that will take care of most of the drone problem. It won't get rid of it entirely but it will make it manageable
The 40mm quads immensely increased AA effectiveness without VT rounds.
From the provided link:
"It is interesting to study the success rate of the 3"/50 gun, as this weapon was adapted post-war with automatic loading and VT fuzes to replace the 40 mm Bofors on most US warships. Even without VT fuzes, the shoot-down rate of the smaller weapon compares favorably to that of the 5"/38 firing VT-fuzed ordnance."
Except the Quad 40mm Bofors didn’t see action until the Battle of Okinawa in 26 March 1945, and even then only two ships in the battle actually had them! The Battleship West Virginia BB-48 and the Aircraft Carrier Hornet CV-12! All other ship equipped with quad mounts, were still using the Mk.1 and Mk.2 quad 1.1”/75-caliber 28x199mm guns…
The first shipboard quad installation was on the gunnery-training ship (ex-battleship) USS Wyoming (AG-17) on 22 June 1942, and the first twin installation was on the destroyer USS Coghlan (DD-606) on 1 July 1942. The USA started a massive production program for these weapons and a monthly production rate of 1,600 Army guns and 135 Navy twin-barrel guns was achieved by December 1942. Production continued to ramp up in the following year, so much so that the Army found that they had more guns than they could field and production of air-cooled single guns fell from a peak of 13,485 in 1943 to 1,500 guns in 1944 and then halted with no guns for the Army being produced during the last year of the war.
However, the needs of equipping Navy ships were not fully met until well into 1944
Yes, I’m are that the Gunnery Training Ship “Wyoming” was the first ship to receive the Quad 40mm Bofors gun mount, but that being said, Wyoming was a Training Ship that never left the coastal waters off the West Coast and never saw any combat action in the Pacific throughout WW2! Also I didn’t say that there weren’t any other 40mm Bofors guns in the Pacific, only said that the first [Quad 40mm Bofors] were mounted on only [Two Ships] West Virginia and Hornet during the Battle of Okinawa…
Both the South Carolina and Enterprise had quad 40mm's at Santa Cruz in 1942!!
Look again at the links I sent you!!!!
The highest value ships were receiving the mounts in numbers all through 1943 (like in the pic of the Monterey commisioning at Philly in 43), and as the first link I sent states, the fleet was fully equipped by late 1944.
BEFORE Okinawa Secundius!!
The increased firepower they brought at Santa Cruz greatly shocked the Japanese, and caused them to lose a critical number of their remaining experienced pilots.
H-011-3: Guadalcanal: Santa Cruz (Japanese Pyrrhic Victory), 26 October 1942
The new South Dakota and the repaired/refitted Enterprise each carried 16 (four quad mounts) of the new Bofors 40-mm anti-aircraft guns, which would prove very effective in the battle.
"The Big E entered Pearl Harbor on September 10 [1942], where repair crews immediately set to work on her, 24 hours a day. Not content to merely repair her wounds, the crews also replaced her old 1.1" anti-aircraft guns with 40mm Bofors quad (4 barrel) mounts. The Bofors delivered what the 1.1" could not: the power to knock a dive bomber or torpedo plane from the sky long before it had a chance to drop its ordnance. For good measure, a dozen more 20mm guns were installed as well."
"The performance of the 40mm in their first action was gratifying. Eventually these guns may prove to be our best defense against dive bombers. Several faults now exist, namely: empties jam in the chutes, local control is too sensitive, firing mechanism is not satisfactory, and our splinter shields are too high. Separate reports on these deficiencies will be forwarded.
1. Capability isn't cheap. The "FPV quadcopter with a grenade" may be useful in Ukraine, but it has neither the range nor the payload for a sea fight. Once you get to the longer-ranged systems, and heavier payloads, costs go up dramatically. MQ-9 Reapers are costing $30 million...and they are the LOW end. Filling the sky with cheap unmanned systems is plausible only for the close-to-shore fight. Any "loyal wingman" platform with useful performance will come with a tactical jet price tag.
2. Software is HARD. Processor speed is no longer the driving factor in capability, it's getting software that is reliable. And one issue with that has been that the software industry is not accustomed to working with classified capabilities, nor with the reliability demanded of military systems. They think in terms of commercial software that can be releases to let the early adopters do the final beta testing, then patched. Which won't work in combat.
3. Concur 100% on the need for range. The current air wing was designed for the needs of the 1990-2020 world. It's utterly unsuited to the needs of 2025 and beyond.
4. It's probably time to start experimenting with short-range defensive UAV capabilities. Both as active defense systems and as a way to deploy countermeasures.
Number 4 strikes me as something of an understatement. One would hope the work is well underway somewhere in the Defense Department like DARPA. But somehow this whole discussion leaves me with a foreboding sense of doom and gloom. And I am thinking of Neville Shute and the movie version of On the Beach. Why ?
What if a small warship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 1000 miles from anywhere is the safest place in the world to be ? What if this Plague comes to America. ? Hordes of drones popping out of shipping containers and warehouses ? The pace of this development is accelerating. We are far behind. We may never catch up. And would it matter if we could ?
Re: your “hordes of drones” phrase - Right after 9/11, I contacted the Coast Guard telling them that I, as a former naval officer, knew several different means of shutting down US commerce just like all of our airports were shut down. Essentially, I was shuffled off to their supposed “best and brightest”, who treated me as if I was an idiot. Those threats still remain. So, I firmly believe that official Washington will keep its head firmly lodged in a very dark place until *after* the next Pearl Harbor.
[1] Today, the variable cost of a Tesla is less than $30k, ditto for a gas Toyota. A $500 Huawei smartphone has all the electronics you will need for a smart drone. Some of the long range Ukraine drones cost around $30,000 (google it). We have a 'bespoke' defense industry today. What we need is mass manufacturing and cost control. We did it once before and we can do it even better now..
[2] I've in in tech forever. I founded an enterprise S/W company. Software is hard but a lot of 'classified' is unnecessarily expensive and even unnecessary for the mission. Commercial software in the hands of amateurs destroyed the use of heavy tanks and supporting equipment in Ukraine. If I can use inexpensive but lethal drones to deplete all the defensive weapons of a fleet, I suspect the next wave of these simple drones will sink or make ineffective the undefended fleet.
[3] Manned airwings will not be effective against mass fast AI drones. They will be incidental victims. Mass defensive drones long and short range will be the solution until we can put platforms at sea that can continuously generate gigawatts of power.
[4] Yes but time is very short. China is likely within 2 years of being to close off all their shore for a thousand miles out. We need to be in production very soon of defensive and offensive weapons to meet this and similar smaller threats.
On point #2, agree 100% .. there is a lot of "classified code" that is probably an import from a git somewhere on the internet .. why reinvent the USB serial code, or the Linux Kernel .. You do need to have very robust code review capability. AI may be the key here to review millions of lines of code in a short time looking for "strange" bits.
1) Cost is an under-appreciated factor. And not just monetary cost, but resources used. Adequate quantities of materials such as tungsten, chromium, etc. are just as vital as dollars. Tungsten, for example--" As of 2017, China, Vietnam and Russia are the leading suppliers ..."
So how is our stockpile of strategic materials doing these days?
And how do we intend to maintain the will to fight a war if a good part of the population is reduced to third-world living standards by hyperinflation, regulations, and high taxes?
2) "Flak suppression" doesn't necessarily require destroying the defensive weapons; making the enemy use them on false or decoy targets works just as well.
"the next wave of these simple drones..."
Just like the "real" aircraft; specialized fighters and support aircraft clear a path for the bombers.
Good stuff. In your list of the historical progression of warfare (bronze to iron to steel. Etc.),though, you skipped a small innovation that had a vast effect: the invention of the stirrup. Small innovations can have gigantic effects.
There’s a huge rabbit hole in the internet filled with arguments about when and who used stirrups first. It sounds reasonable to me that crusaders, or really, anyone who’d ever tried to ride a horse while wearing armour, would quickly want to adapt the technology as soon as they laid eyes on it. So sure, makes sense to me.
Indeed. Horses are kind of hostile about being ridden and try to rub you off on trees and bolt for no reason visible to humans. I have never tried to ride one in armor nor ridden a stallion and even so stirrups are a big help.
Assuming it is a UAV in low sea state and good weather. I am sure our enemies will be quite gentlemanly in their accommodation. More likely the swarm will come from above, on, and below the water. https://newatlas.com/drones/amphibious-drone-remora-disc/
Power is likely the limiting factor. A SPY-like phased array attack weapon putting out 100-1000 times the power could probably be developed to zap incoming drones
Frying sensitive electronics is one thing but old school servo motors are tough. You better hope you can cook the bird! Someone comes up with a defense then someone comes up with a way to defeat it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Eventually. But to do so you are going to need really powerful lasers and they are going to require platforms that can generate gigawatts of electricity continuously. And that capability is not yet on the drawing board. We need to survive the next 10 to 15 years first.
Near term, I'm thinking multiple CWIS systems and improved EW are a solution set. Already in the system, and possible to upgrade quickly.
Next, while the manufacturer states the 30 mm MK46MOD2 Gun Weapon system (Bushmaster II) can be used as a short range air defense weapon, is that in TTP for ships mounting one? According to public Navy information, it's a surface weapon only, however, there were mentions five years ago of it obtaining proximity rounds for counter UAS.
Last thought for now, until DEWs are useful, it may cause a return to ships having a number of light autocannon topside. There was a reason our ships had major weight issues and were crowded during World War II. Hopefully, advances in RWS and the existing placement aboard destroyers can make these less manpower intensive.
the strength of ai drones is that they achieve their objective easily ... force systems like CWIS to consume all available ammunition so later waves come in uncontested. CWIS can be very effective against incoming on a fixed trajectory. AI drones can alter their path dramatically increasing ammunition use. Add in quantities of very cheap decoys and ammunition depleted even faster.
World war 2 in Europe was and is the story about flak. In 1943, 25 days of flying in the 8th Army Air Force had a 75% probability of a crew being killed, captured or severely wounded. That level of effectiveness is both amazing and terrifying. But the bombings continued and cities were leveled.
It will be easier offensively in the next round. We don't care if 75% of unmanned devices are destroyed .. no crew dies. But the ships will run out of ammunition much sooner than the land based Germans did. And even in the most intense early engagements, some will get through. Like WW2 it is all about quantity on target.
A quarter mile on a side incoming box of 500 drones is around 2 million square feet of space to shoot at. Front facing drone exposure will likely only be a few square feet. So a couple hundred thousand shots to have an impact. Unless the drones are also spaced to use depth as well. The the need rises to millions of shots.
AI directed fragmentation will destroy incoming and will be objectively beneficial. But not enough and not when ammunition runs out. But, I agree, CIWS are part of a comprehensive solution. More and many tons of 20mm per.
🤦♂️ We already have drones that can carry bombs big enough to blow a hole in the side of a ship. They're called Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles and Torpedoes. He's not a fellow military nerd, so I'm not surprised Andreseen doesn't know that. Make sure the Mk. 110s have good AA ammo and they can put a dent in your drone swarm inbound.
The problem with drones is that quantity is a quality. Mass inexpensive drones have the first objective of forcing the defending ships to consume all their ammunition. And many of today's defensive systems require a reload back at some port. Wave of drones and intelligent decoys will deplete missiles and ammunition. And the next wave of drones will have 'clear sailing'.
"...First, this is the worst-case, high order scenario against your worst-case, high-order threat. ..."
You just don't get it. Any second rate power will be able to acquire and use a thousand drones in a naval attack. A couple of destroyers in the Gulf of Aden would be defenseless to an attack by a few hundred drones deployed with any level of sophistication. Waves will overwhelm defensive systems until missiles and ammunition run out. And then it's flee or sink. And the threat can come from anywhere...land, air or random commercial ship. Cost to take out 2 destroyers is likely less than $20MM and by 2030 somewhere in the range of $5MM to $10MM.
So virtually all shipping choke points become indefensible except from carrier fleets. And carrier fleets probably can't get within 500 miles of contested land. Today's technology in modest volume could mean a thousand drone attack for around $50MM and by 2030 the same amount of money might buy 3,000 to 5,000 drones. Cheap enough for a dozen or more countries to deploy. Even a tactical nuclear defense might be ineffective with waves of drones in an attack from many points of the compass.
The first step in finding a solution is to accept that drones are changing naval war that favors the aggressor and that existing defensive measures are going to be beyond ineffective. Once agreement on this point happens, progress can move quickly.
The navy needs to make an expansive definition on what the navy is and this definition needs to be driven by mission and not history. It's time for the navy to explore the use of assets not traditionally associated with the navy or not traditionally considered appropriate. There is a large number of items that come to mind but for this discussion I'll describe just a couple:
[1] Long range arsenal aircraft based on 747/787 commercial technology. The ability ability to bring missiles and drones in quantity and continuously in hours for fleet defense.
[2] Moving from creating survivable ships to survivable fleets. Large fleets that are inexpensive to create (commercial standards or less) and which can distribute a lot of defensive and offensive firepower across huge geography in peace and dense clusters in war.
[3] Massive automation and the complete removal of humans from the operation of fleet defense. Massive quantities of relatively inexpensive and high speed defensive drones. A fleet with 100,000 immediately available drones has more than a chance. And based on what I know from publicly available Tesla and smartphone manufacturing costs, these drones should be less than $10k each or a billion dollars for the consumable portion of this defense.
The naval world has changed. It may not be the Houthis who do this first and maybe not China. But Iran...very possible. North Korea? Serbia? Sub-Saharan Africa? But if China didn't care about commercial ties to the traditional west, it could close ALL the waters around China and project enough military power to protect maritime routes to the Mideast. I'm reasonably confident that the USA might be able to react late to this new environment successfully but I'm not a fan of purposely making the choice to do so.
I'll close with a few quotes from Billy Mitchell, just change the words to reflect current technology:
"If a nation ambitious for universal conquest gets off to a flying start in a war of the future, it may be able to control the whole world more easily than a nation has controlled a continent in the past".
"All aviation policies, schemes and systems are dictated by the nonflying officers of the Army and Navy who know practically nothing about it".
2)" Large fleets that are inexpensive to create (commercial standards or less) and which can distribute a lot of defensive and offensive firepower..."
Ain't gonna happen. Firepower costs money unless you plan on using bows & arrows. Tonnage, even civilian standard, costs money. Crews cost lots of money. Warships have never been cheap, and they never will be.
3"Massive quantities of relatively inexpensive and high speed defensive drones."
Command & control? And where do you store those massive quantities? The drones themselves may be cheap, but like the proverbial yacht, it's not the initial cost that bankrupts you, it's the logistics of using and supporting the yacht.
Break it up into nodes and it will be. (Plus most tonnage is dirt cheap). Radar and directed energy on a manned ship with point defense. All strike missiles via off board ships.
Regarding #2 Think of cost and time to build differences between WW2 carrier classes. First, the expensive and long time to build Essex Fleet class. A year to build and a cost around $70 million. The "Casablanca" and "Commencement Bay" class aircraft carriers cost approximately $20 million each to build during World War II and individually were built in just a few months. In this new environment, 3 to 10 lesser ships instead of one Ford class might be more effective and less vulnerable than the single Ford.
Regarding #3 "Casablanca" style carriers could carry enormous amounts of drones. Think tens of thousands. And these ships could have very limited crew counts. No air crews and flight ops like a Ford and lots of everything else could be automated. Think 80% to 90% staffing reduction.
====
I have also stated in other forums and here that the Navy role should allow the navy to have heavy long range aircraft as part of their 'kit'. Aircraft like 787 and 747 could be stand off platforms that could launch hundreds of drones in a single flight. And be anywhere in the world from a USA controlled depot point in less than 8 hours. And a round trip to return with a new load is measured in hours while todays ships have to spend days or weeks to return to port for a reload.
This mess we have today that limits services to specific platform types and excludes other platform types entirely is an artificial construct of military and defense people trying to protect their 'rice bowl' at the expense of national security.
Costs could be fractions of what they are today and capability could be enormous versus today.
We should give careful thought to putting the drone swarm shoe on the other foot. Taiwan certainly should be capable of producing, basing, and using drone swarms. They should confront China with the prospect of thousands of drones striking the PLAN invasion fleet.
Taiwan should be able to depend itself. It has chosen not to build a defense.
All through the post WW2 period when the USA was a clear #1, defense spending was more than 10% of GDP and we had a huge standing army. Taiwan spends about 2% on defense and has only around 200,000 active military in a population of 23 million. It has strict gun laws versus the old Swiss policy of a weapon in every home.
Drones! I freaking hate drones! As would anyone who has played Startfleet Battles and had their beautiful Federation Heavy Cruiser taken out by a freaking Kzinti Destroyer loaded with drones.
Directed energy for point defense sooner rather than later will be exciting for surface and air but, still a fan of killing the archer.
I hope our surface warriors still have their fingers on the pulse of strong ASW prosecution and have not deferred to the rotary and fixed wing assets...same medicine here as above. Kill them where they berth, repair and rearm.
Directed energy is pretty far off. We need something for the next decade or so. "killing the archer" is good but the archer in the drone case might be an empty shipping container and a a group of operators 2,000 thousand miles away in some random office building in some random city.
Even going after those operators might not do it - the drones in Ukraine are getting to be self directed using AI code to find vehicles against backgrounds that are a lot more busy than the open sea. “Go find a ship and crash into it” might be the only command any operator sends.
My heartfelt thanks as an old Airborne Ranger to our "Modern Mahan" for continuing to educate all of us on the importance of "lessons learned"...unfortunately we tend to continue learning those tragic lessons from the past. Keep up the fire! Our incoming SECDEF will need your counsel.
Mahan also had a lot to say about commercial shipping. Let's not forget that part.
What made the difference in WWII was the proximity fuse paired with the 5 inch and 40 mm ...
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-075.php
The US Navy was particularly concerned with the vulnerability of surface ships to aircraft attack. It was clear that the problem of fleet protection demanded a drastically more effective means of destroying enemy air power than either the timed or contact fuze provided.
Section T of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, under the direction of Dr. Merle A. Tuve, was assigned the task of developing and overseeing the production of a proximity type of fuze for the Navy's 5" guns which were their primary long-range anti-aircraft weapon. The theory was simplicity itself: The fuze would contain a miniature radio transmitter-receiver which would send out a signal. When the signal reflected back from the target reached a certain frequency, caused by the proximity of the target, a circuit in the fuze closed firing a small charge in the base of the fuze that detonate the projectile.
Radar-controlled Mk. 110 is the replacement for 40mm and to a lesser extent, 5". Load with AHEAD rounds and have the World's Most Intense Sporting Clays competition.
and what happens when there are more 'clays' than ammunition?
What Nimitz said about the Kamikazes at Okinawa...
"We have more ships and bullets than they have planes..." [or something nearly like that]
Bottom line: Defending against swarms takes a plentiful and inexpensive counter.
A far cry from a few multi million $$$ missiles.
Totally the right point, but unfortunately that is not what we have today. We need to get there asap.
Then you use other weapons to kill the archer or the launch sites. Think of a modern version of the RAF Crossbow against the V-1 sites.
And no, it won't be 100% effective and sailors will die. Just like when we couldn't counter the Divine Wind 100%.
going a bit too big with the Mk 110. use the 50x228mm bushmaster rounds are alot smaller and if you put say 5-6 of them on a ship with proper tracking and prox fused shells that will take care of most of the drone problem. It won't get rid of it entirely but it will make it manageable
Tactical Retrograde is out.
The VT Fuse wasn’t available in 40mm in WW2! The smallest caliber the VT Fuse in WW2 was 75mm! The VT Fuse wasn’t available in 40mm until after 1954…
Wasn't clear about that.
The 40mm quads immensely increased AA effectiveness without VT rounds.
From the provided link:
"It is interesting to study the success rate of the 3"/50 gun, as this weapon was adapted post-war with automatic loading and VT fuzes to replace the 40 mm Bofors on most US warships. Even without VT fuzes, the shoot-down rate of the smaller weapon compares favorably to that of the 5"/38 firing VT-fuzed ordnance."
Except the Quad 40mm Bofors didn’t see action until the Battle of Okinawa in 26 March 1945, and even then only two ships in the battle actually had them! The Battleship West Virginia BB-48 and the Aircraft Carrier Hornet CV-12! All other ship equipped with quad mounts, were still using the Mk.1 and Mk.2 quad 1.1”/75-caliber 28x199mm guns…
The first shipboard quad installation was on the gunnery-training ship (ex-battleship) USS Wyoming (AG-17) on 22 June 1942, and the first twin installation was on the destroyer USS Coghlan (DD-606) on 1 July 1942. The USA started a massive production program for these weapons and a monthly production rate of 1,600 Army guns and 135 Navy twin-barrel guns was achieved by December 1942. Production continued to ramp up in the following year, so much so that the Army found that they had more guns than they could field and production of air-cooled single guns fell from a peak of 13,485 in 1943 to 1,500 guns in 1944 and then halted with no guns for the Army being produced during the last year of the war.
However, the needs of equipping Navy ships were not fully met until well into 1944
Yes, I’m are that the Gunnery Training Ship “Wyoming” was the first ship to receive the Quad 40mm Bofors gun mount, but that being said, Wyoming was a Training Ship that never left the coastal waters off the West Coast and never saw any combat action in the Pacific throughout WW2! Also I didn’t say that there weren’t any other 40mm Bofors guns in the Pacific, only said that the first [Quad 40mm Bofors] were mounted on only [Two Ships] West Virginia and Hornet during the Battle of Okinawa…
You are simply incorrect Secundius!
Both the South Carolina and Enterprise had quad 40mm's at Santa Cruz in 1942!!
Look again at the links I sent you!!!!
The highest value ships were receiving the mounts in numbers all through 1943 (like in the pic of the Monterey commisioning at Philly in 43), and as the first link I sent states, the fleet was fully equipped by late 1944.
BEFORE Okinawa Secundius!!
The increased firepower they brought at Santa Cruz greatly shocked the Japanese, and caused them to lose a critical number of their remaining experienced pilots.
That's why I am referencing it.
Facts.
Another link that hopefully you will look at...
https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-011/h-011-3.html
H-011-3: Guadalcanal: Santa Cruz (Japanese Pyrrhic Victory), 26 October 1942
The new South Dakota and the repaired/refitted Enterprise each carried 16 (four quad mounts) of the new Bofors 40-mm anti-aircraft guns, which would prove very effective in the battle.
At the Battle of Santa Cruz, the Japanese were horrified at the intensity of USN AA fire ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Islands#/media/File%3AUSS_Enterprise_(CV-6)_under_attack_by_dive_bombers_during_the_Battle_of_Santa_Cruz_Islands_on_26_October_1942_(80-G-20989).jpg
"The Big E entered Pearl Harbor on September 10 [1942], where repair crews immediately set to work on her, 24 hours a day. Not content to merely repair her wounds, the crews also replaced her old 1.1" anti-aircraft guns with 40mm Bofors quad (4 barrel) mounts. The Bofors delivered what the 1.1" could not: the power to knock a dive bomber or torpedo plane from the sky long before it had a chance to drop its ordnance. For good measure, a dozen more 20mm guns were installed as well."
http://www.cv6.org/ship/logs/action19421026.htm
From the Enterprise Santa Cruz Action Report....
"The performance of the 40mm in their first action was gratifying. Eventually these guns may prove to be our best defense against dive bombers. Several faults now exist, namely: empties jam in the chutes, local control is too sensitive, firing mechanism is not satisfactory, and our splinter shields are too high. Separate reports on these deficiencies will be forwarded.
https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=24686
Gun crews aboard USS South Dakota man their 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, 26 Oct 1942
Monterey commissioning with 40mm's 1943
https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/022622.jpg
My thoughts:
1. Capability isn't cheap. The "FPV quadcopter with a grenade" may be useful in Ukraine, but it has neither the range nor the payload for a sea fight. Once you get to the longer-ranged systems, and heavier payloads, costs go up dramatically. MQ-9 Reapers are costing $30 million...and they are the LOW end. Filling the sky with cheap unmanned systems is plausible only for the close-to-shore fight. Any "loyal wingman" platform with useful performance will come with a tactical jet price tag.
2. Software is HARD. Processor speed is no longer the driving factor in capability, it's getting software that is reliable. And one issue with that has been that the software industry is not accustomed to working with classified capabilities, nor with the reliability demanded of military systems. They think in terms of commercial software that can be releases to let the early adopters do the final beta testing, then patched. Which won't work in combat.
3. Concur 100% on the need for range. The current air wing was designed for the needs of the 1990-2020 world. It's utterly unsuited to the needs of 2025 and beyond.
4. It's probably time to start experimenting with short-range defensive UAV capabilities. Both as active defense systems and as a way to deploy countermeasures.
Coyote uavs were originally designed to drop out like a sonobuoy. This issue is resolved with a nesting dolls approach to uavs.
Number 4 strikes me as something of an understatement. One would hope the work is well underway somewhere in the Defense Department like DARPA. But somehow this whole discussion leaves me with a foreboding sense of doom and gloom. And I am thinking of Neville Shute and the movie version of On the Beach. Why ?
What if a small warship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 1000 miles from anywhere is the safest place in the world to be ? What if this Plague comes to America. ? Hordes of drones popping out of shipping containers and warehouses ? The pace of this development is accelerating. We are far behind. We may never catch up. And would it matter if we could ?
Re: your “hordes of drones” phrase - Right after 9/11, I contacted the Coast Guard telling them that I, as a former naval officer, knew several different means of shutting down US commerce just like all of our airports were shut down. Essentially, I was shuffled off to their supposed “best and brightest”, who treated me as if I was an idiot. Those threats still remain. So, I firmly believe that official Washington will keep its head firmly lodged in a very dark place until *after* the next Pearl Harbor.
[1] Today, the variable cost of a Tesla is less than $30k, ditto for a gas Toyota. A $500 Huawei smartphone has all the electronics you will need for a smart drone. Some of the long range Ukraine drones cost around $30,000 (google it). We have a 'bespoke' defense industry today. What we need is mass manufacturing and cost control. We did it once before and we can do it even better now..
[2] I've in in tech forever. I founded an enterprise S/W company. Software is hard but a lot of 'classified' is unnecessarily expensive and even unnecessary for the mission. Commercial software in the hands of amateurs destroyed the use of heavy tanks and supporting equipment in Ukraine. If I can use inexpensive but lethal drones to deplete all the defensive weapons of a fleet, I suspect the next wave of these simple drones will sink or make ineffective the undefended fleet.
[3] Manned airwings will not be effective against mass fast AI drones. They will be incidental victims. Mass defensive drones long and short range will be the solution until we can put platforms at sea that can continuously generate gigawatts of power.
[4] Yes but time is very short. China is likely within 2 years of being to close off all their shore for a thousand miles out. We need to be in production very soon of defensive and offensive weapons to meet this and similar smaller threats.
On point #2, agree 100% .. there is a lot of "classified code" that is probably an import from a git somewhere on the internet .. why reinvent the USB serial code, or the Linux Kernel .. You do need to have very robust code review capability. AI may be the key here to review millions of lines of code in a short time looking for "strange" bits.
1) Cost is an under-appreciated factor. And not just monetary cost, but resources used. Adequate quantities of materials such as tungsten, chromium, etc. are just as vital as dollars. Tungsten, for example--" As of 2017, China, Vietnam and Russia are the leading suppliers ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
So how is our stockpile of strategic materials doing these days?
And how do we intend to maintain the will to fight a war if a good part of the population is reduced to third-world living standards by hyperinflation, regulations, and high taxes?
2) "Flak suppression" doesn't necessarily require destroying the defensive weapons; making the enemy use them on false or decoy targets works just as well.
"the next wave of these simple drones..."
Just like the "real" aircraft; specialized fighters and support aircraft clear a path for the bombers.
What if a delivery platform drops short range drones within range of the targets?
Like the Betty bombers with Baka Bombs.
And yes I know how that went bad for the Japanese.
Good stuff. In your list of the historical progression of warfare (bronze to iron to steel. Etc.),though, you skipped a small innovation that had a vast effect: the invention of the stirrup. Small innovations can have gigantic effects.
Depending on source, invented either by the Chinese or Iranians (Sarmatians).
Yup, and also variously said to be invented in 3rd, 4th, or 5th centuries CE. Likely brought to Europe by Genghis Khan.
Stirrups seem to have appeared in Europe before Genghis. Crusaders for sure and perhaps earlier. Anna Comnena provides a description
There’s a huge rabbit hole in the internet filled with arguments about when and who used stirrups first. It sounds reasonable to me that crusaders, or really, anyone who’d ever tried to ride a horse while wearing armour, would quickly want to adapt the technology as soon as they laid eyes on it. So sure, makes sense to me.
Indeed. Horses are kind of hostile about being ridden and try to rub you off on trees and bolt for no reason visible to humans. I have never tried to ride one in armor nor ridden a stallion and even so stirrups are a big help.
Make FLAK great again.
Laser beam weapons are the answer to the drone. A DD(L) with six or eight lasers could wipe out a drone storm in minutes.
Lots of movement and aiming. My chips are on microwave or other energy shotguns.
Very true.
Assuming it is a UAV in low sea state and good weather. I am sure our enemies will be quite gentlemanly in their accommodation. More likely the swarm will come from above, on, and below the water. https://newatlas.com/drones/amphibious-drone-remora-disc/
Power is likely the limiting factor. A SPY-like phased array attack weapon putting out 100-1000 times the power could probably be developed to zap incoming drones
Frying sensitive electronics is one thing but old school servo motors are tough. You better hope you can cook the bird! Someone comes up with a defense then someone comes up with a way to defeat it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP1hJLepOhw
True that:)
Eventually. But to do so you are going to need really powerful lasers and they are going to require platforms that can generate gigawatts of electricity continuously. And that capability is not yet on the drawing board. We need to survive the next 10 to 15 years first.
Cloud cover? Limits range and effects of lasers?
kill decision by daniel suarez
Most of his books, especially early, were excellent. I may be a bit behind. Daemon and Freedom were both quite good.
K.I.S.S........it's always gonna be that ROE. mess that starting point up, you lose. full stop
Chicago is the threat?
Things don't change much
Lets Go Brandon! could always reprise the Nike sites that once peppered the area...
Would be about as attached to reality as anything else that comes out of his mouth.
Like the one that used to be down right next to where the Obama Worship Shrine is going up...
https://www.ed-thelen.org/C-41-Epperson/SurveyMap_lg.jpg
Nike sites were once as numerous in Chicagoland as Dunkin Donuts is today!!
https://www.ed-thelen.org/C-41-Epperson/
https://news.wttw.com/2022/03/01/ask-geoffrey-old-nike-missile-sites-chicago
It's been 8 years - has anything actually been built there, yet?
And my guard unit included an old NIKE site in Van Nuys, CA...all sorts of interesting things in the old silos
It looks like some menacing fortress from a dystopian sci-fi flick...
https://x.com/EngineerGuySE/status/1860000426399244459/photo/1
Good for when the zombies get frisky.
Too bad though: No guns
Ok...OCD can't resist.
Due to riots in the 19th Century, Marshall Field and other wealthy Chicago scions got this place built to be a potential refuge...
https://x.com/EngineerGuySE/status/1860000426399244459/photo/1
So, they haven't actually built anything for Obama?
We had one in the town where I grew up, but it was relegated to primarily a high-school kegger location by the time I went there.
He did say it was from '86. I think DC is more likely the threat of late
That is how Wisconsinites think of Chicago.
Near term, I'm thinking multiple CWIS systems and improved EW are a solution set. Already in the system, and possible to upgrade quickly.
Next, while the manufacturer states the 30 mm MK46MOD2 Gun Weapon system (Bushmaster II) can be used as a short range air defense weapon, is that in TTP for ships mounting one? According to public Navy information, it's a surface weapon only, however, there were mentions five years ago of it obtaining proximity rounds for counter UAS.
Last thought for now, until DEWs are useful, it may cause a return to ships having a number of light autocannon topside. There was a reason our ships had major weight issues and were crowded during World War II. Hopefully, advances in RWS and the existing placement aboard destroyers can make these less manpower intensive.
the strength of ai drones is that they achieve their objective easily ... force systems like CWIS to consume all available ammunition so later waves come in uncontested. CWIS can be very effective against incoming on a fixed trajectory. AI drones can alter their path dramatically increasing ammunition use. Add in quantities of very cheap decoys and ammunition depleted even faster.
Something along the lines of a fragmentation or shotgun type weapon would probably be more efficient & effective; area type weapon.
World war 2 in Europe was and is the story about flak. In 1943, 25 days of flying in the 8th Army Air Force had a 75% probability of a crew being killed, captured or severely wounded. That level of effectiveness is both amazing and terrifying. But the bombings continued and cities were leveled.
It will be easier offensively in the next round. We don't care if 75% of unmanned devices are destroyed .. no crew dies. But the ships will run out of ammunition much sooner than the land based Germans did. And even in the most intense early engagements, some will get through. Like WW2 it is all about quantity on target.
A quarter mile on a side incoming box of 500 drones is around 2 million square feet of space to shoot at. Front facing drone exposure will likely only be a few square feet. So a couple hundred thousand shots to have an impact. Unless the drones are also spaced to use depth as well. The the need rises to millions of shots.
AI directed fragmentation will destroy incoming and will be objectively beneficial. But not enough and not when ammunition runs out. But, I agree, CIWS are part of a comprehensive solution. More and many tons of 20mm per.
🤦♂️ We already have drones that can carry bombs big enough to blow a hole in the side of a ship. They're called Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles and Torpedoes. He's not a fellow military nerd, so I'm not surprised Andreseen doesn't know that. Make sure the Mk. 110s have good AA ammo and they can put a dent in your drone swarm inbound.
And Make Nuclear-Tipped Interceptors Great Again!
The problem with drones is that quantity is a quality. Mass inexpensive drones have the first objective of forcing the defending ships to consume all their ammunition. And many of today's defensive systems require a reload back at some port. Wave of drones and intelligent decoys will deplete missiles and ammunition. And the next wave of drones will have 'clear sailing'.
And of course that mass of drones will include a fair number of anti-radiation weapons.
A drone with a 5 pound explosive that homes in on fire control radars should do it.
"...First, this is the worst-case, high order scenario against your worst-case, high-order threat. ..."
You just don't get it. Any second rate power will be able to acquire and use a thousand drones in a naval attack. A couple of destroyers in the Gulf of Aden would be defenseless to an attack by a few hundred drones deployed with any level of sophistication. Waves will overwhelm defensive systems until missiles and ammunition run out. And then it's flee or sink. And the threat can come from anywhere...land, air or random commercial ship. Cost to take out 2 destroyers is likely less than $20MM and by 2030 somewhere in the range of $5MM to $10MM.
So virtually all shipping choke points become indefensible except from carrier fleets. And carrier fleets probably can't get within 500 miles of contested land. Today's technology in modest volume could mean a thousand drone attack for around $50MM and by 2030 the same amount of money might buy 3,000 to 5,000 drones. Cheap enough for a dozen or more countries to deploy. Even a tactical nuclear defense might be ineffective with waves of drones in an attack from many points of the compass.
The first step in finding a solution is to accept that drones are changing naval war that favors the aggressor and that existing defensive measures are going to be beyond ineffective. Once agreement on this point happens, progress can move quickly.
The navy needs to make an expansive definition on what the navy is and this definition needs to be driven by mission and not history. It's time for the navy to explore the use of assets not traditionally associated with the navy or not traditionally considered appropriate. There is a large number of items that come to mind but for this discussion I'll describe just a couple:
[1] Long range arsenal aircraft based on 747/787 commercial technology. The ability ability to bring missiles and drones in quantity and continuously in hours for fleet defense.
[2] Moving from creating survivable ships to survivable fleets. Large fleets that are inexpensive to create (commercial standards or less) and which can distribute a lot of defensive and offensive firepower across huge geography in peace and dense clusters in war.
[3] Massive automation and the complete removal of humans from the operation of fleet defense. Massive quantities of relatively inexpensive and high speed defensive drones. A fleet with 100,000 immediately available drones has more than a chance. And based on what I know from publicly available Tesla and smartphone manufacturing costs, these drones should be less than $10k each or a billion dollars for the consumable portion of this defense.
The naval world has changed. It may not be the Houthis who do this first and maybe not China. But Iran...very possible. North Korea? Serbia? Sub-Saharan Africa? But if China didn't care about commercial ties to the traditional west, it could close ALL the waters around China and project enough military power to protect maritime routes to the Mideast. I'm reasonably confident that the USA might be able to react late to this new environment successfully but I'm not a fan of purposely making the choice to do so.
I'll close with a few quotes from Billy Mitchell, just change the words to reflect current technology:
"If a nation ambitious for universal conquest gets off to a flying start in a war of the future, it may be able to control the whole world more easily than a nation has controlled a continent in the past".
"All aviation policies, schemes and systems are dictated by the nonflying officers of the Army and Navy who know practically nothing about it".
We can do better and move faster.
2)" Large fleets that are inexpensive to create (commercial standards or less) and which can distribute a lot of defensive and offensive firepower..."
Ain't gonna happen. Firepower costs money unless you plan on using bows & arrows. Tonnage, even civilian standard, costs money. Crews cost lots of money. Warships have never been cheap, and they never will be.
3"Massive quantities of relatively inexpensive and high speed defensive drones."
Command & control? And where do you store those massive quantities? The drones themselves may be cheap, but like the proverbial yacht, it's not the initial cost that bankrupts you, it's the logistics of using and supporting the yacht.
Break it up into nodes and it will be. (Plus most tonnage is dirt cheap). Radar and directed energy on a manned ship with point defense. All strike missiles via off board ships.
What happens after this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMjo_UY8vEM
Regarding #2 Think of cost and time to build differences between WW2 carrier classes. First, the expensive and long time to build Essex Fleet class. A year to build and a cost around $70 million. The "Casablanca" and "Commencement Bay" class aircraft carriers cost approximately $20 million each to build during World War II and individually were built in just a few months. In this new environment, 3 to 10 lesser ships instead of one Ford class might be more effective and less vulnerable than the single Ford.
Regarding #3 "Casablanca" style carriers could carry enormous amounts of drones. Think tens of thousands. And these ships could have very limited crew counts. No air crews and flight ops like a Ford and lots of everything else could be automated. Think 80% to 90% staffing reduction.
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I have also stated in other forums and here that the Navy role should allow the navy to have heavy long range aircraft as part of their 'kit'. Aircraft like 787 and 747 could be stand off platforms that could launch hundreds of drones in a single flight. And be anywhere in the world from a USA controlled depot point in less than 8 hours. And a round trip to return with a new load is measured in hours while todays ships have to spend days or weeks to return to port for a reload.
This mess we have today that limits services to specific platform types and excludes other platform types entirely is an artificial construct of military and defense people trying to protect their 'rice bowl' at the expense of national security.
Costs could be fractions of what they are today and capability could be enormous versus today.
We should give careful thought to putting the drone swarm shoe on the other foot. Taiwan certainly should be capable of producing, basing, and using drone swarms. They should confront China with the prospect of thousands of drones striking the PLAN invasion fleet.
Taiwan should be able to depend itself. It has chosen not to build a defense.
All through the post WW2 period when the USA was a clear #1, defense spending was more than 10% of GDP and we had a huge standing army. Taiwan spends about 2% on defense and has only around 200,000 active military in a population of 23 million. It has strict gun laws versus the old Swiss policy of a weapon in every home.
Taiwan is not worthy of our support.
Lat I checked we don't have 3 million active military which would be comparable to the statistic you just provided.
why are they not spending 10% or 20% on their defense of their homeland?
Economics. Same as everyone else.
Drones! I freaking hate drones! As would anyone who has played Startfleet Battles and had their beautiful Federation Heavy Cruiser taken out by a freaking Kzinti Destroyer loaded with drones.
It has been said before. Russian Ukrainian war is the WWIII as the Spanish Civil war is to WWII
Yes.
If so, then what do you do when your choice is between communists and fascists?
My gut feeling is to stay out of other people's civil wars be it Spain, Vietnam or Russia.
Not worth the expense.
Directed energy for point defense sooner rather than later will be exciting for surface and air but, still a fan of killing the archer.
I hope our surface warriors still have their fingers on the pulse of strong ASW prosecution and have not deferred to the rotary and fixed wing assets...same medicine here as above. Kill them where they berth, repair and rearm.
Directed energy is pretty far off. We need something for the next decade or so. "killing the archer" is good but the archer in the drone case might be an empty shipping container and a a group of operators 2,000 thousand miles away in some random office building in some random city.
Even going after those operators might not do it - the drones in Ukraine are getting to be self directed using AI code to find vehicles against backgrounds that are a lot more busy than the open sea. “Go find a ship and crash into it” might be the only command any operator sends.