Er-r, yeah, that peace dividend. Part of that peace dividend was getting me, a Gulf War burn-out, a 1 year waiver to retire early as a 26 year LT with only 9 years of commissioned CWO/LDO service. Whew.
I recommend "A Poisoned Chalice: The U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988" by Dr. Stephen Phillips. The resources that we have in the PG today are a fraction of what was there during Earnest Will.
#1: Will to fight - and poor "outcome" definition.
a) Are we willing to have a single downed airman on Iranian TV for 444 days? That's how long the held our hostages in 1979. (hint: the American public probably isn't). How many dead are we willing to suffer? For Iran? Probably a LOT less than we had in Iraq /Afghanistan. (Yes, I know. Chicago had more shooting deaths in that timeframe than we had casualties - that's irrelevant.)
b) What's our endgame? We flew over Iraq from 1991 to the present- almost every day. That was an asymmetric response and very, very expensive. My 1991 F/A-18C Lot XIV aircraft was brand new in 1991. By 2003? They each were through 3/4 of their service life. I spend 3 of 4 deployments to the Gulf. Everyone deployed to the gulf or Afghanistan from about 1991 to 2020.
#2: Asymmetry. a) How much do each of our "widgets" cost to defeat each of their drones? (Gotta be a lower cost to defend in the long run) b) How many widgets do we have deployed? (which includes training, maintenance, and resupply). c) Can we "survive" a picture of a CVN smoking from a fire? Note: I'm not worried about the fire from a drone. I'm worried about that picture plastered across the universe with the #ToldYouSo hashtag...
Iran's commands (I'm not sure talking about Iran as a single entity is accurate now) keep stuff back on every attack.
So you send a ship through and they launch some missiles, or some subs. You kill the missiles/subs. Send another ship through and they launch more.
"Open", meaning with no launches, likely will only happen when the Iranians somehow shoot themselves dry and also somehow can't resupply. How likely is that?
The MOU is pretty transparently now a method to show that the Iranians will not keep any promises ever. Anyone not persuaded by the present outcome is likely not persuadable.
As far as I can see, these Naval drones are defeated 100% of the time by APKWS mounted on helicopters or other aerial craft - heck, other small boats. So, creating more of the LHA/LHDs for this type of fleet defense against all types of drones does seem a sustainable use case - and we want more "Swiss Army Knife" amphibs anyway (IMO).
Well, if you can get them and get them mounted and powered, sure...but the APKWS is the outer layer that insures fog, weather, sea spray, or whatever doesn't interfere in hitting the drones (sea or air).
We have forgotten the well deck's versatility too. Thomaston class size LSD to pump the numbers. We also need an LCU like connector that can range further at speed while not costing 200 million like an LCAC does now.
Drones for military applications will likely follow the measure-countermeasure-repeat cycle that everything else has. For terrorism and assassination applications, it is another story. Scale isn't such a consideration there and the targets are not as heavily defended. That is sort of the definition of terrorism. To quote an IRA terrorist: You have to be lucky every time; we only have to be lucky once.
THe Hellfire modules with combat system integration can engage multiple targets. Mk 38 mod IV has more rounds and firing time in a bolt on solution rather than Mk 110. I am still for 2 x mk 110. Unlike LPDs, our LSDs still have 6 major weapons mounted with Mk 38, RAM, and 2 Phalanx. We need an updated version of that formula for amphibs and small combatants.
Stirring, reassuring words from the Good CDR. We can't predict the future. But we can recognize the present. The steel hull guys and the Zoomies are trying to forecast the future of war based on the past. Proud ships splitting the waves, men and women doing victory rolls over carriers and airfields. Good luck with that. YMMV.
You know the threat exists but are never really sure when they are going to connect.
It's definitely not a cure all for every scenario merely another lurking danger to be dealt with.
They elevate the security level to such a degree that your posture gets worn down and that's when it will sneak in and take its pound of flesh from you.
Ammo eaters. Bubba's Fabrication's V-1 clone with 50 lbs of explosive can mission kill you, so you have to kill it like the defense contractor "real" weapon with a 500 lb warhead that might sink you.
This whole drone discussion, evolving now into "a new RMA" discussion, is indeed interesting. One particularly thoughtful voice notes that fixation on the *technology* of drones (or "warfare without humans") clouds even more interesting questions about organizational cultures, static thinking, bureaucratic (including industrial) fiefs that need defending, etc. In the end, the tech will eclipse key elements of existing tech -- or it will be accommodated, reaching it natural limit of development... and be just another thing in the toolbox, as Salamander notes. But all of that depends now less on the ones and zeros, and more on what innovative flag officers, mid-grade officers, line officers and NCOs think and do.
"At sea, drones are disruptive, but they are not decisive. They complicate the maritime fight, but they do not replace the enduring strategic logic of sea power."
Interesting.
Define 'decisive'.
Would a drone swarm attacking and rendering at least mission-kills on the ships in Pearl Harbor, Yokohama, San Diego, Norfolk, Rota be 'decisive'? How about shipping ports, like NY, Charleston, Houston, Los Angeles/Long Beach?
Does the 'enduring strategic logic of sea power' not include destroying an enemies ships in their own harbors? Fire ships in the Age of Sail, Scapa Flow, Taranto, Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor was certainly decisive in ending the Battleship era and major surface combatants beating each otherup.
Drones seem to be hectoring the Russians in the Sea of Azov, and as far as Murmansk. Decisive, but perhaps not definitive - the core difference is that "decisive relates to making a firm choice that impacts an outcome, while definitive refers to an authoritative, complete, or permanent conclusion". And right now, we (the US military) have no defenses against them and apparently no plans for them.
Drones still need fuel. Yes even the electric ones, they need the fuel to create the charge to fill the battery with. Transoceanic drones will not be small, neither will a carrier of same.
Shipping them behind the lines? Yeah, the answer to that is probably better inspection. Plus better control of the people who would set them up from freight.
Time is a potential friend to the energy conscious. U-Boats used to transit to the Bahamas and would drift in the Gulfstream to extend their fuel usage. There is a whole section on drift mining in the now declassified 1957 edition of Oceanography Applications in Mine Warfare. There is also quite a bit of synergy bewteen ocean shipping routes and trade winds & ocean currents.
Some USVs have sails. IIRC the Danes are testing some, and NAVCENT tried 'em out too.
We can turn a swarm of 'em loose to use the trade winds for the cross-Pacific transit, after which they furl their sails once they're within striking range, fire up their engines, and attack.
They can transit under EMCON all the way, receiving GPS positions and updated orders from satellites overhead.
Start from Guam, sail WSW with the trade winds and the North Equatorial Current while avoiding the populated islands around Palau, then duck NW with the Kuroshio Current to skirt the eastern shores of the Philippines, then duck east into the middle of the South China Sea … roughly 2000 nm of transit. If you average between 5-6 knots that takes about two weeks.
The drones get there by hiding in commercial traffic. There is simply no way to inspect every commercial ship within 1000 miles of the US coast, particularly in peace time.
But you have to containerize the drones and then deploy them at the destination. You can do things like requiring randomization of what layer containers are in on the ship to make it harder to deploy them.
I suspect there will also eventually have to be defensive swarms more or less constantly deployed. Yeah, that's going to be energy intensive. And the defensive swarm is likely going to have to be in a volume, not just at a perimeter or you could deploy inside.
Yep. Always good to define your terms. Also, as I recall, the Japanese planned for the "decisive" battle to win WWII. While they waited, they lost lots of INdecisive battles, one at a time, until they lost the war. "Decisive" battles are rare.
It seems like the loudest voices in these sorts of arguments always treat (whatever) as a binary: "Drones change everything; humans will no longer have a place in warfare!" vs "Small drones are just a fad, and the only ones worth bothering with are the ones that cost $100 million each and happen to be made by my firm."
Evolution. It's been this way since the first caveman picked up a pointed stick. Just a couple decades after Thomas Edison patented the vacuum tube, John H. Hammond had combined radio control with gyroscopes and was shopping it to the U.S. Military. The more things change...
"Hammond created a target-seeking system that let boats find enemy searchlights on their own. His boats carried light-sensitive cells that spotted and tracked bright lights, then steered toward them.
This turned boats into self-operating weapons that could find targets without human help.
Hammond tested these systems in Gloucester harbor, showing they could locate light sources from over a mile away, even in fog."
Cheap drones are a literal sea change. We've known about for drone potential (checks watch), at least since 2000. I was in OPNAV N78 aviation requirements at the time, and RADM McCabe had VADM Cebrowski come speak to the Naval Avaition bubbas.
First point? Attendance was not required, so about 15 of 150 listened to the good VADM. Everyone remembers Cebrowski's "Network Centric Warfare". No one remembers his talk about "cockroaches".
Second? Cebrowski was a towering intellect one who gets very little credit. He predicted that there would be swarms of very cheap cockroaches, and that the cockroaches would shift the narrative from "Offense!" to sea lane denial.
CNO heard him, DCNO heard him, VADM McGee (USN N-7 requirements) heard him, RADM McCabe heard him. But. They ONLY heard the Network Centric Warfare piece...
We didn't change $10 million of spending in our $80 billion budget. Everyone DID have to incorporate a slide about "Network Centric Warfare!" to keep their money, but then we moved to the next shiny thing. Instead of fighting that inertia? I went to teach high school...
note: When you think about it - the four flights that day were "cheap drones" for Al Queda while very expensive for the USA...
Is a self-propelled, wire-guided torpedo launched from a submarine a drone? If not, why not? How is it different from an FPV drone on the Ukraine battlefield? If it is, what can we take from this (very mature) doctrine and (very mature) technology to apply to the development of this revolutionary and brand-new and changing the face and nature and character of warfare unmanned vehicle technology?
Submarine warfare was a terror weapon in The Great War to those on the receiving end. Now it has been a part (the best, IMO) of America's nuclear triad for decades.
The roadside bomb in the GWOT is, when you look at it, a precision attack technology. We are just not acculturated to expecting it from semi-literate guerrillas in man jammies (as an aside, when "IEDs" are manufactured in factories in Iran, and delivered to Iraq via clandestine logistics chains, when do you stop calling them "Improvised?"). Drone use in the Ukraine and Armenia wasn't a revolutionary technology, you could get them from Amazon. John Steinbeck's quote applies.
" We are just not acculturated to expecting it from semi-literate guerrillas in man jammies"
Speak for yourself, mate. I (and a few million other guys) was "acculturated" to expect it from even illiterate guerillas many moons ago. Command detonated "mines and boobytraps", as they were known before more gentile euphemisms became de rigueur, have been around for a long time.
I mean, my thought for the past few weeks since reading about the Ukrainian naval drones, which I have thus far refrained from expressing for fear of having missed something big that will make it a foolish one, is that submersible drones would be an excellent evolution. Certainly harder to detect and hit with an anti-drone weapon system, I would expect. Depends on how quiet you can make it, I suppose.
Why can't naval power keep the Persian Gulf/Strait of Hormuz/Gulf of Oman/Arabian Sea open for international oil shipments? Drones?
A certain lack of will, and a shortage of ships and munitions.
Indeed. It’s probably an oversimplification, but you may need to engage in total war to defeat a totalitarian state.
Cant's even take out the Houthis.
Oh, please. We can, we just chose not to
Why do we chose not to?
Because carpet bombing Yemen would be terrible optics.
So, the shortage of ships and munitions is due to lack of will. Thanks. Got it.
Exactly. A lack of will starting with the 'peace dividend' of the 1990s.
Er-r, yeah, that peace dividend. Part of that peace dividend was getting me, a Gulf War burn-out, a 1 year waiver to retire early as a 26 year LT with only 9 years of commissioned CWO/LDO service. Whew.
Overly restrictive ROEs, too
I recommend "A Poisoned Chalice: The U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988" by Dr. Stephen Phillips. The resources that we have in the PG today are a fraction of what was there during Earnest Will.
#1: Will to fight - and poor "outcome" definition.
a) Are we willing to have a single downed airman on Iranian TV for 444 days? That's how long the held our hostages in 1979. (hint: the American public probably isn't). How many dead are we willing to suffer? For Iran? Probably a LOT less than we had in Iraq /Afghanistan. (Yes, I know. Chicago had more shooting deaths in that timeframe than we had casualties - that's irrelevant.)
b) What's our endgame? We flew over Iraq from 1991 to the present- almost every day. That was an asymmetric response and very, very expensive. My 1991 F/A-18C Lot XIV aircraft was brand new in 1991. By 2003? They each were through 3/4 of their service life. I spend 3 of 4 deployments to the Gulf. Everyone deployed to the gulf or Afghanistan from about 1991 to 2020.
#2: Asymmetry. a) How much do each of our "widgets" cost to defeat each of their drones? (Gotta be a lower cost to defend in the long run) b) How many widgets do we have deployed? (which includes training, maintenance, and resupply). c) Can we "survive" a picture of a CVN smoking from a fire? Note: I'm not worried about the fire from a drone. I'm worried about that picture plastered across the universe with the #ToldYouSo hashtag...
As much as I still hold a grudge for what happened in 1979, I'm not spilling US blood to end it.
Rule 88: Vengeance will cost you everything.
You don't exact "revenge" on a cancerous growth. You excise it before it metastasizes and kills you. Your pejorative is noted.
Iran's commands (I'm not sure talking about Iran as a single entity is accurate now) keep stuff back on every attack.
So you send a ship through and they launch some missiles, or some subs. You kill the missiles/subs. Send another ship through and they launch more.
"Open", meaning with no launches, likely will only happen when the Iranians somehow shoot themselves dry and also somehow can't resupply. How likely is that?
The MOU is pretty transparently now a method to show that the Iranians will not keep any promises ever. Anyone not persuaded by the present outcome is likely not persuadable.
Political handicaps that preclude open Total war against the regime that kills, maims, and turns the people against Us.
The sharks hide among the fish of the sea.
People are acting under the assumption that we have the military of 1991, then get baffled by the results.
As far as I can see, these Naval drones are defeated 100% of the time by APKWS mounted on helicopters or other aerial craft - heck, other small boats. So, creating more of the LHA/LHDs for this type of fleet defense against all types of drones does seem a sustainable use case - and we want more "Swiss Army Knife" amphibs anyway (IMO).
Or, um, just directed energy weapons
Well, if you can get them and get them mounted and powered, sure...but the APKWS is the outer layer that insures fog, weather, sea spray, or whatever doesn't interfere in hitting the drones (sea or air).
We have forgotten the well deck's versatility too. Thomaston class size LSD to pump the numbers. We also need an LCU like connector that can range further at speed while not costing 200 million like an LCAC does now.
Good to see sobriety prevailing
Drones for military applications will likely follow the measure-countermeasure-repeat cycle that everything else has. For terrorism and assassination applications, it is another story. Scale isn't such a consideration there and the targets are not as heavily defended. That is sort of the definition of terrorism. To quote an IRA terrorist: You have to be lucky every time; we only have to be lucky once.
At least 2 57mm and 2 APKWS launchers on new ship designs, and you're a long way towards reducing the surface and aerial drone threats to manageable.
THe Hellfire modules with combat system integration can engage multiple targets. Mk 38 mod IV has more rounds and firing time in a bolt on solution rather than Mk 110. I am still for 2 x mk 110. Unlike LPDs, our LSDs still have 6 major weapons mounted with Mk 38, RAM, and 2 Phalanx. We need an updated version of that formula for amphibs and small combatants.
Stirring, reassuring words from the Good CDR. We can't predict the future. But we can recognize the present. The steel hull guys and the Zoomies are trying to forecast the future of war based on the past. Proud ships splitting the waves, men and women doing victory rolls over carriers and airfields. Good luck with that. YMMV.
IMHO, drones equate to a sucker punch.
You know the threat exists but are never really sure when they are going to connect.
It's definitely not a cure all for every scenario merely another lurking danger to be dealt with.
They elevate the security level to such a degree that your posture gets worn down and that's when it will sneak in and take its pound of flesh from you.
Drones only have to work once.
Defense has to work all the time.
Consider the USS Cole... A smartwatch has more processing capacity than the 'crew' of that RIB
Ammo eaters. Bubba's Fabrication's V-1 clone with 50 lbs of explosive can mission kill you, so you have to kill it like the defense contractor "real" weapon with a 500 lb warhead that might sink you.
This whole drone discussion, evolving now into "a new RMA" discussion, is indeed interesting. One particularly thoughtful voice notes that fixation on the *technology* of drones (or "warfare without humans") clouds even more interesting questions about organizational cultures, static thinking, bureaucratic (including industrial) fiefs that need defending, etc. In the end, the tech will eclipse key elements of existing tech -- or it will be accommodated, reaching it natural limit of development... and be just another thing in the toolbox, as Salamander notes. But all of that depends now less on the ones and zeros, and more on what innovative flag officers, mid-grade officers, line officers and NCOs think and do.
"At sea, drones are disruptive, but they are not decisive. They complicate the maritime fight, but they do not replace the enduring strategic logic of sea power."
Interesting.
Define 'decisive'.
Would a drone swarm attacking and rendering at least mission-kills on the ships in Pearl Harbor, Yokohama, San Diego, Norfolk, Rota be 'decisive'? How about shipping ports, like NY, Charleston, Houston, Los Angeles/Long Beach?
Does the 'enduring strategic logic of sea power' not include destroying an enemies ships in their own harbors? Fire ships in the Age of Sail, Scapa Flow, Taranto, Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor was certainly decisive in ending the Battleship era and major surface combatants beating each otherup.
Drones seem to be hectoring the Russians in the Sea of Azov, and as far as Murmansk. Decisive, but perhaps not definitive - the core difference is that "decisive relates to making a firm choice that impacts an outcome, while definitive refers to an authoritative, complete, or permanent conclusion". And right now, we (the US military) have no defenses against them and apparently no plans for them.
How do those drone swarms get there?
Drones still need fuel. Yes even the electric ones, they need the fuel to create the charge to fill the battery with. Transoceanic drones will not be small, neither will a carrier of same.
Shipping them behind the lines? Yeah, the answer to that is probably better inspection. Plus better control of the people who would set them up from freight.
Time is a potential friend to the energy conscious. U-Boats used to transit to the Bahamas and would drift in the Gulfstream to extend their fuel usage. There is a whole section on drift mining in the now declassified 1957 edition of Oceanography Applications in Mine Warfare. There is also quite a bit of synergy bewteen ocean shipping routes and trade winds & ocean currents.
Some USVs have sails. IIRC the Danes are testing some, and NAVCENT tried 'em out too.
We can turn a swarm of 'em loose to use the trade winds for the cross-Pacific transit, after which they furl their sails once they're within striking range, fire up their engines, and attack.
They can transit under EMCON all the way, receiving GPS positions and updated orders from satellites overhead.
Start from Guam, sail WSW with the trade winds and the North Equatorial Current while avoiding the populated islands around Palau, then duck NW with the Kuroshio Current to skirt the eastern shores of the Philippines, then duck east into the middle of the South China Sea … roughly 2000 nm of transit. If you average between 5-6 knots that takes about two weeks.
Swarms and Emcon don't work very well. They need to know where other drones are, not just where they are.
You can use visual identification of other drones when conditions are good, but that limits when you can do it.
I'm sure there are solutions, but that's more complication.
Dump you offense in the current and let it drift through a trade route or by an enemy port. This starts to look like a natural process.
Remember those Chinese balloons a couple of years ago?
The drones get there by hiding in commercial traffic. There is simply no way to inspect every commercial ship within 1000 miles of the US coast, particularly in peace time.
Yeah commercial traffic is hard.
But you have to containerize the drones and then deploy them at the destination. You can do things like requiring randomization of what layer containers are in on the ship to make it harder to deploy them.
I suspect there will also eventually have to be defensive swarms more or less constantly deployed. Yeah, that's going to be energy intensive. And the defensive swarm is likely going to have to be in a volume, not just at a perimeter or you could deploy inside.
"Shipping them behind the lines?"
Why ship them when you can just make or buy them on the spot?
I would definitely consider a drone attack on a major US naval base to be "decisive"...
I'd consider any sort of attack on a major US military base to be decisive...
"Define 'decisive'."
Yep. Always good to define your terms. Also, as I recall, the Japanese planned for the "decisive" battle to win WWII. While they waited, they lost lots of INdecisive battles, one at a time, until they lost the war. "Decisive" battles are rare.
Indeed. The attack on Pearl Harbor was both successful and decisive: It rendered all the major surface combatants as at least mission kills....
Still lost them the war.
There were no carriers at Pearl, by pure happenstance.
Would you consider the battle of Midway to be decisive?
It was the end of the Kido Butai as an effective fighting force, so yeah.
It seems like the loudest voices in these sorts of arguments always treat (whatever) as a binary: "Drones change everything; humans will no longer have a place in warfare!" vs "Small drones are just a fad, and the only ones worth bothering with are the ones that cost $100 million each and happen to be made by my firm."
Gluten Morgan,
It’s Deutchland… uber allas!
Drones do matter, as do the men and women operating them.
Do not trust the French!
The French are sending weapons and delivery systems to Ukraine, praised by the EU.
Spanish Ceramic Tiles covered up drones and weapons sent via overland route into Russia. Perpetrators were caught! Oh yes, they were Ukrainian!
Please take note that Turkish vessels in the Black Sea were targeted by Ukrainian drones and missiles! Sea of Azmov is targeted also!
Kindly be aware, China has both eyes on Taiwan! As does China, all the way down to Indonesia. So ships and boats do matter!
Where are we building those ships safely?
In Norfolk, VA… in Florida, the Free State?
In Texas?
Washington D.C. needs to approve the USA Military Defense Budget. Will that happen by end of October 2026?
Please be advised : TANGO new Russian light weight airplane!
Parliamentary Election Day in Russia, today!
Dates to keep in mind : mid - October:
Africa meets with Russia in Moscow!
It’s not just commerce, it’s military training in some African nations!
Please be aware, Australia is “Down-Under”; Japan is never to be trusted! Vietnam rolls with the Money…
Philippines is good training ground.
Canada, that’s where eyes need to be now!
Newfoundland, Montreal and Greenland!
Raging fire in Ontario bringing hazardous smoke down and across to New York and New England! Ship building in New Hampshire and Maine!
Pay attention to the Mining efforts.
That means Texas, shipmates!
Protect our Southern borders!
Of course our Middle Atlantic and Southern States!
We wouldn’t be building our own Shield Dome if we weren’t worried about Drones and Missiles.
CDR, please save “Sexy” for your personal quarters. “Sleek” is a more appropriate word, in my opinion. Very respectfully, Nurse Jane
BZ CDR…..excellent post!
Evolution. It's been this way since the first caveman picked up a pointed stick. Just a couple decades after Thomas Edison patented the vacuum tube, John H. Hammond had combined radio control with gyroscopes and was shopping it to the U.S. Military. The more things change...
https://wheninyourstate.com/massachusetts/why-a-1923-patent-sale-made-this-gloucester-inventor-filthy-rich/
"Hammond created a target-seeking system that let boats find enemy searchlights on their own. His boats carried light-sensitive cells that spotted and tracked bright lights, then steered toward them.
This turned boats into self-operating weapons that could find targets without human help.
Hammond tested these systems in Gloucester harbor, showing they could locate light sources from over a mile away, even in fog."
Interesting. Thanks. Too bad the US military didn't spend more effort exploring his ideas. On the bright side, neither did the Japanese or Germans.
I liked your drone column, and I think you have intelligent friends. Does that mean that the truth must be somewhere in the middle?
It usually is.
I slightly disagree.
Cheap drones are a literal sea change. We've known about for drone potential (checks watch), at least since 2000. I was in OPNAV N78 aviation requirements at the time, and RADM McCabe had VADM Cebrowski come speak to the Naval Avaition bubbas.
First point? Attendance was not required, so about 15 of 150 listened to the good VADM. Everyone remembers Cebrowski's "Network Centric Warfare". No one remembers his talk about "cockroaches".
Second? Cebrowski was a towering intellect one who gets very little credit. He predicted that there would be swarms of very cheap cockroaches, and that the cockroaches would shift the narrative from "Offense!" to sea lane denial.
CNO heard him, DCNO heard him, VADM McGee (USN N-7 requirements) heard him, RADM McCabe heard him. But. They ONLY heard the Network Centric Warfare piece...
We didn't change $10 million of spending in our $80 billion budget. Everyone DID have to incorporate a slide about "Network Centric Warfare!" to keep their money, but then we moved to the next shiny thing. Instead of fighting that inertia? I went to teach high school...
note: When you think about it - the four flights that day were "cheap drones" for Al Queda while very expensive for the USA...
We should consider the difference between a drone and a manned weapon being the expectation of the manned weapon system returning home.
There are drones, and there are drones.
Is a self-propelled, wire-guided torpedo launched from a submarine a drone? If not, why not? How is it different from an FPV drone on the Ukraine battlefield? If it is, what can we take from this (very mature) doctrine and (very mature) technology to apply to the development of this revolutionary and brand-new and changing the face and nature and character of warfare unmanned vehicle technology?
Submarine warfare was a terror weapon in The Great War to those on the receiving end. Now it has been a part (the best, IMO) of America's nuclear triad for decades.
The roadside bomb in the GWOT is, when you look at it, a precision attack technology. We are just not acculturated to expecting it from semi-literate guerrillas in man jammies (as an aside, when "IEDs" are manufactured in factories in Iran, and delivered to Iraq via clandestine logistics chains, when do you stop calling them "Improvised?"). Drone use in the Ukraine and Armenia wasn't a revolutionary technology, you could get them from Amazon. John Steinbeck's quote applies.
Walt, great point. What is a torpedo if not an underwater drone?
If a torpedo is a drone, a missile is also
Or, a pilotless kamakzi.
Or a piloted Kamikaze.... There is no difference, that guidance package is single-use one-way
" We are just not acculturated to expecting it from semi-literate guerrillas in man jammies"
Speak for yourself, mate. I (and a few million other guys) was "acculturated" to expect it from even illiterate guerillas many moons ago. Command detonated "mines and boobytraps", as they were known before more gentile euphemisms became de rigueur, have been around for a long time.
ok
I mean, my thought for the past few weeks since reading about the Ukrainian naval drones, which I have thus far refrained from expressing for fear of having missed something big that will make it a foolish one, is that submersible drones would be an excellent evolution. Certainly harder to detect and hit with an anti-drone weapon system, I would expect. Depends on how quiet you can make it, I suppose.