The Navy once had a airplane, the EA-6B Prowler, with the ability to broadcast a jamming signal to knock out enemy radar. I'm hoping some folks with knowledge in electronics would opine on the possibility of a platform blasting out a signal strong enough to knock the drones offline.
You need to stop thinking man in the loop. Maybe we limit ourselves to the AI won't shoot, but the enemy won't. However, it doesn't mean our AI can't complete a recon mission, or deliver supplies, or many other things without a man in the loop. It might be hard to let Amazon and Wal Mart turn these buggers loose over our houses, but someone will green light them in a war zone.
Nobody wants to admit that logistics is a key part to winning the next war, although everyone knows that is true. We should be ramping up supplies on our side, and figuring out how to interrupt the "bad guy's" supplies. For example, self-seeding anti-ship and submarine mines...both from UUV's and long range JASM type missiles to mine every possible port supporting a hostile Navy. Are we planning for that? No. We continue to insist on force on force, when the most likely adversary already has a larger force and shorter supply lines. Bad idea, wars have been lost for less. We have to cut the oil flow and supply flow in any future war, esp when the potential adversary (cough-China) depends upon so many imports.
We have advantages Ukraine doesn't have. I'm not sure why we don't make the 8 ton payload on an XLUUV a bomb if we think we can get it through someone's harbor defense. Same with Mk 48s at this point. Also, make them defend it with ABM defense. This is where the ballistic/hypersonics start to cost justify themselves, potentially.
Subs, too. Mines are a great weapon for submarines. One wonders if the Virginia Payload Modules have openings on the bottom end...something Not Mentioned Openly. A Block V Virginia could lay a lot of mines that way.
True, and good idea, but something tells me that any attack sub is going to be chock-ablock with ASW missions in any hot war. I'm a big believer we should take all the Ohio class SSBM's as they are decommed and make them into SSGN's for missions like that, along with SPECOPS.
The problem with SSGN conversions is the original four were to use up the useful hull and material life on four boats getting removed from strategic service. Unless NR and NAVSEA can get the COLUMBIA-class building faster than predicted, there's little material reason to convert any of the remaining OHIO-class SSBNs in to SSGNs. The window for USS LOUISIANA (SSBN-734) passed, as she was released as having completed her ERO earlier this year. https://www.dvidshub.net/video/873586/uss-louisiana-ssbn-743-departs-bremerton
Go to Google Earth and look at where the continental shelf is around the Chinese coast. There's a pretty long transit between the 100 fathom curve and the mouth of any port. Some areas, like the southern mouth of the Taiwan Strait, could be mined by SSNs fairly easily, but the other areas would require sending four-story tall SSNs into shallow water. Water than could be mined and heavily patrolled by ASW vessels and aircraft. It's a big risk. There are other areas of the world that would be good candidates for submarine laid mines, but I wouldn't want to be on a crew that did it off China.
Let me ask, though: If we were attacked by DF-21s and you could launch a cloud of drones that could loiter over the formation (made up of explosive charges) that could manuever in front of a hypersonic warhead and blow it up if not intercepted by SM-3 or SM-6 - would that be of use? A drone shield wall? That could perhaps also spoof such missile targeting? A mobile shield against any type of missile?
You don't have to, I don't think. You can launch and recover them...probably from an ambhib, so we don't have to redesign anything.
Or you could launch clouds of them from ships using cannister launchers to deliver and deploy them...you could even do this with an aerostat or LTA over or near the formation that drops them and recovers them. When you get them back, you service them, fold them up back in the cannisters for resuse.
The point is, you have proximal warning time on launch detection to get them deployed during the attack. They can generally loiter for up to several hours, depending on power source. Most of the attacks they would be tasked with defending would be within miles of the ship (hopefully not close aboard)...next to last line of defense, so it doesn't take long to get them in position. I would even say having some tethered USV drones UNDER water and wire guided to act either as NIXIES or to directly interdict torpedoes might also be useful.
If you want a CAP in the air, though, you can launch, recover and recycle them.
Stopping a ballistic missile requires incredible speed, maneuverability, and some great math. Your drone won't be slow or cheap, and potentially less effective. Heck, I might even fund lasers for the job first.
Hear, Hear! the old chemical laser on a 747 idea was put aside; the weight of the equipment a bit high, and the operating costs in fuel for the plane too much..........but, LTA? Oh yeah! can easily carry more then a large airplane, and simply float-fly along at 150kts without the fuel needs of a plane. Or, no fuel at all in some cases. Yep. 'twould be a good anti-ballistic laser platform.
I think the COIL exhaust was pretty nasty. Solid state lasers are beginning to reach to power level of being useful, but are not close to being useful against hypersonics. You need vastly more power given the closing rate. And I tend to suspect the plasma bow wave isn't going to help any.
Not drone, droneS, as in a block of them - a cloud - rather close in to the ship. The missile still has to achieve a curved path within the laws of physics, especially at speed, to hit a target.
At a certain point, it can't turn and still hit the target - especially at those speeds. A little further out and it can't turn tightly enough to still hit the target, etc. So just getting the missile to move into an ineffective path is also good for defeating it. Directly interdicting most anti-ship missiles would be entirely possible. It would have to be tested and proven as to hypersonic missiles...but, remember, as a backup to the OTHER defenses.
But a block, or cube, of drones deployed in that path, provides for a "shield"...it only has to be big enough, and fast enough, to get in that required pathway based on the threat vector. Think of starlings maneuvering.
So, yeah, the drones can be cheap - and to a large extent already exist for this type of interactive maneuvering. Interesting you mention lasers, because if you use aerostats or LTA for this, you get a radar that can see futher over the horizon and the lift capacity to put up a large electric generation capacity for larger solid state lasers. All of the above.
Well, that's just it for the "carrier killer" hypersonic missiles...if they come in on a ballistic trajectory - from above - versus steering in on an angled glide path, it makes the missiles' job that much harder...and easier for our AAMs to hit them. A small deviation at speed will be huge in terminal targeting with no time to adjust to hit the target...not to mention if explosions disrupt air flow around the warhead at hypersonic speeds, it is likely to disintegrate anyway. From an angle on a glide path, that is not as acute a dilemma for the missile though it is still a problem for the targeting.
Murphy's Law does apply though...if the missile is off target and the explosions cause debris to move ON target, welllllll...crap as they say. But it is still going to be less mass and less damage than a full on strike. But this will also work against other anti-ship cruise missiles (even better), preserving your magazine - or at least giving you a back up and requiring MANY more missiles be fired to try to complete the attack. All about making it more expensive and requiring more resources.
"you could even do this with an aerostat or LTA over or near the formation"
"aerostat" sounds basically like a bunch of bloomin barrage balloons. Uhm. no. masses of small drones probably wouldn't have the range and speed to "cover" a battle group. Which means you would need rather larger drones that do. defeats the purpose of using some LTA for them as a carrier; since the "swarm" numbers would necessarily be smaller and less effective.
It's a less beneficial use for LTA. Those can best be used either in logistics, surveillance, or offensive roles. Not defense.
Just so you understand, they aren't chasing missiles, they are hovering in the path of the missiles. Yep, it would take a lot...inverse square law, as it were, applies in this instance. But a missile or warhead flying into a block of explosive drones would destroy the missile.
The point of the Aerostat or LHAs was to carry the thousands of drones, to drop on attack and recover the drones...not AS drones.
The LTAs could also host OTH radar for tracking and data link and, as I said, lasers as well.
They are already doing that...and chaff and flares aren't doing much to keep a DF-21 from hitting (assuming they can even find and target a carrier or battle group).
More P-8s, NSMs, and TASMs are a better bet Madame Secretary. Tell the jarheads they're really sea soldiers now and can buy boats up to 60 meters in length, so we'll finally get a missile FAC in US service. Subsidize production line(s) for returning the C-17 (and apparently our older tankers) at underutilized airports. Among other projects...
I like the fact their LRUSV is also going to have a manned patrol boat variant. If only it could fit on a C-130. Still, something to consider for the LSM. Will it have boat davits? A 40 footer with 2 NSMs and a secure data link seems sexier to me than a JLTV with 2 NSM. I feel the same about the helos. AH-1Z with Osprey radar instead of the gun, and 2 NSMs.
I would lean towards the FACs for prewar presence missions. During war, concentrate on things like fishing boats, the "maritime militia", and cargo ships. Try to keep out from enemy SAGs.
I think we shoot for reload at anchorages for VLS and then start moving all the non AAW missiles into the 4 cell container launchers. Now the deck of LSVs and LSMs could be missile launchers. The deck space on FFG for the NSMs could host Tomahawks. Wheel them out on a helo deck of an amphib. Unlike GMLRS the exhaust goes up, not onto the deck.
Given the difficulties we already have if/when the balloon goes up in WESTPAC, there is NO FREAKIN’ WAY we could produce and appropriately deploy and disperse thousands of drones. Add to that the well established military axiom that you never attack into an enemy’s strength - Russia and China have a long history of using masses to solve military problems. Just another “brilliant” Potomac brain fart.
One issue I see with the cardboard drones in a crate issue is that it takes people to assemble them. We need a platoon of 3-d printers pumping these out onto an automated assembly line and straight out onto the flight deck or launched out a hole in the side of the ship. Think fishing processing ship except, drones and you leave the pier full and come back empty.
The "drone" is the Pentagon's answer to all problems. For all of the "success" of the "drone" in the war in Ukraine, it is the 155mm artillery shell and it's cousins thay are having the greatest impact on the war. The "drone" just makes for better headlines in the nightly press.
"We are not smarter than previous generations. There is no secret weapon or war winning technology - or magic beans - that will allow us to skip past the hard work of a viable strategy backed up by a properly resourced industrial capacity to build, maintain, deploy, and sustain a fighting force on the other side of the Pacific for years if needed."
Deja vu all over again.
Studying history is depressing. And very few of the cool kids bother. But man, do they have ideas!
"Every time we have our top leaders - smart hard working professionals with the best intentions - step up to sound more like this guy - the worse we will all be."
Do we have smart hard-working professionals with the best intentions? I don't question having smart professionals and I don't question professionals with good intentions, but both in the same professional? Maybe that isn't reaching too far...
Except, for most of a century, war was always an "away game" so our then massive industrial capacity could ramp up and meet the ravenous needs of not only our own military, but those of our allies.
The reality is that our industrial base is probably 10-25% of what it was in 1941, and the main place we rely on to meet our industrial production is our likely adversary, China.
Our ability to ramp up to win over 72 months is based on fond memories, not current inventories of machines and material we have on hand or can produce at home. Plus, most of the stuff is relatively high tech compared to WW2 gear.
Throw in the dung-brained focus on "shifting everything to green" and "environment is more important than winning wars" and we are half beat before the first shot is fired.
So what are these swarms of lightweight drones going to do against
"China’s most important asset in potential war with the United States is “mass,” says Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks: “More ships. More missiles. More people.”
To counter that advantage, the Defense Department will launch an initiative called Replicator to create cheap drones across the air, sea, and land in the “multiple thousands” within the next two years."
There certainly is a use for drones. But? How do “multiple thousands" of lightweight drones kill ships or missiles? (Maybe loaded with incendiaries and crashed onto a deck? Okay, what about the missiles?)
Production capacity aside? It seems at times like our elites have drifted into some sort of surreal modern version of André Maginot's universe.
What is the impact on the Navy's future ability to prosecute a major war in the Pacific if the Ford Class aircraft launch and recovery systems never do reach full reliability according to the original specifications from twenty years ago? Do the Ford Class hulls then become the world's largest and fastest LHAs? But LHAs nonetheless?
As of the most recent Tailhook, VADM Whitesell is saying that the Ford Class is on-track for becoming even more capable than the Nimitz Class. Timepoint 3:24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxPvYbKI_1Q
We seem to forget Newton. The enemy and hopefully our betters will find defenses to the swarm. As another Marine said to me.... In two weeks we will be back to fighting no-tec war, the kind of war at which the Marines excel.
How about OSD/JCS first determine an actual joint strategy and war termination terms requirement for a conflict with the PRC before getting into the tactical weeds on drones? Force in the Indo-Pacific need more ordnance in general to start and short-range drones would not be in the first category of requirements.
Yes it would, but it is of vital need or else we will continue to get "capabilities" that may not be desired or even fit well with service operational and tactical planning.
Taiwan might need a lot of short range, one use drones for coastal defense but does the U.S. Pacific Fleet need those? Maybe long-range expendable drones ?
Design competition? Drone with GPS and INS, carries either AESA OR TACAN Beacon. 24-hour endurance, MUST survive at least 10 takeoffs and landings, minimal maintenance desired, winning design(s) based on total cost per hour.
It can save in the big picture. Training especially when you hand it over to an AI that learns 24/7/365 never forgets, and can instantly transfer the knowledge.
The Navy once had a airplane, the EA-6B Prowler, with the ability to broadcast a jamming signal to knock out enemy radar. I'm hoping some folks with knowledge in electronics would opine on the possibility of a platform blasting out a signal strong enough to knock the drones offline.
We already have developed and employ these types of counter drone technologies.
You need to stop thinking man in the loop. Maybe we limit ourselves to the AI won't shoot, but the enemy won't. However, it doesn't mean our AI can't complete a recon mission, or deliver supplies, or many other things without a man in the loop. It might be hard to let Amazon and Wal Mart turn these buggers loose over our houses, but someone will green light them in a war zone.
Nobody wants to admit that logistics is a key part to winning the next war, although everyone knows that is true. We should be ramping up supplies on our side, and figuring out how to interrupt the "bad guy's" supplies. For example, self-seeding anti-ship and submarine mines...both from UUV's and long range JASM type missiles to mine every possible port supporting a hostile Navy. Are we planning for that? No. We continue to insist on force on force, when the most likely adversary already has a larger force and shorter supply lines. Bad idea, wars have been lost for less. We have to cut the oil flow and supply flow in any future war, esp when the potential adversary (cough-China) depends upon so many imports.
We have advantages Ukraine doesn't have. I'm not sure why we don't make the 8 ton payload on an XLUUV a bomb if we think we can get it through someone's harbor defense. Same with Mk 48s at this point. Also, make them defend it with ABM defense. This is where the ballistic/hypersonics start to cost justify themselves, potentially.
Subs, too. Mines are a great weapon for submarines. One wonders if the Virginia Payload Modules have openings on the bottom end...something Not Mentioned Openly. A Block V Virginia could lay a lot of mines that way.
True, and good idea, but something tells me that any attack sub is going to be chock-ablock with ASW missions in any hot war. I'm a big believer we should take all the Ohio class SSBM's as they are decommed and make them into SSGN's for missions like that, along with SPECOPS.
The problem with SSGN conversions is the original four were to use up the useful hull and material life on four boats getting removed from strategic service. Unless NR and NAVSEA can get the COLUMBIA-class building faster than predicted, there's little material reason to convert any of the remaining OHIO-class SSBNs in to SSGNs. The window for USS LOUISIANA (SSBN-734) passed, as she was released as having completed her ERO earlier this year. https://www.dvidshub.net/video/873586/uss-louisiana-ssbn-743-departs-bremerton
Thanks.
In many ways, the Block V Virginias are SSGNs. 40 tubes for Tomahawks is nothing to laugh at.
Go to Google Earth and look at where the continental shelf is around the Chinese coast. There's a pretty long transit between the 100 fathom curve and the mouth of any port. Some areas, like the southern mouth of the Taiwan Strait, could be mined by SSNs fairly easily, but the other areas would require sending four-story tall SSNs into shallow water. Water than could be mined and heavily patrolled by ASW vessels and aircraft. It's a big risk. There are other areas of the world that would be good candidates for submarine laid mines, but I wouldn't want to be on a crew that did it off China.
We won't admit it because it's not "Washington Sexy". We still are prisoners of the transformationalist strip club.
Let me ask, though: If we were attacked by DF-21s and you could launch a cloud of drones that could loiter over the formation (made up of explosive charges) that could manuever in front of a hypersonic warhead and blow it up if not intercepted by SM-3 or SM-6 - would that be of use? A drone shield wall? That could perhaps also spoof such missile targeting? A mobile shield against any type of missile?
Tell me how you will do that for months on end.
You don't have to, I don't think. You can launch and recover them...probably from an ambhib, so we don't have to redesign anything.
Or you could launch clouds of them from ships using cannister launchers to deliver and deploy them...you could even do this with an aerostat or LTA over or near the formation that drops them and recovers them. When you get them back, you service them, fold them up back in the cannisters for resuse.
The point is, you have proximal warning time on launch detection to get them deployed during the attack. They can generally loiter for up to several hours, depending on power source. Most of the attacks they would be tasked with defending would be within miles of the ship (hopefully not close aboard)...next to last line of defense, so it doesn't take long to get them in position. I would even say having some tethered USV drones UNDER water and wire guided to act either as NIXIES or to directly interdict torpedoes might also be useful.
If you want a CAP in the air, though, you can launch, recover and recycle them.
Stopping a ballistic missile requires incredible speed, maneuverability, and some great math. Your drone won't be slow or cheap, and potentially less effective. Heck, I might even fund lasers for the job first.
Hear, Hear! the old chemical laser on a 747 idea was put aside; the weight of the equipment a bit high, and the operating costs in fuel for the plane too much..........but, LTA? Oh yeah! can easily carry more then a large airplane, and simply float-fly along at 150kts without the fuel needs of a plane. Or, no fuel at all in some cases. Yep. 'twould be a good anti-ballistic laser platform.
I think the COIL exhaust was pretty nasty. Solid state lasers are beginning to reach to power level of being useful, but are not close to being useful against hypersonics. You need vastly more power given the closing rate. And I tend to suspect the plasma bow wave isn't going to help any.
Not drone, droneS, as in a block of them - a cloud - rather close in to the ship. The missile still has to achieve a curved path within the laws of physics, especially at speed, to hit a target.
At a certain point, it can't turn and still hit the target - especially at those speeds. A little further out and it can't turn tightly enough to still hit the target, etc. So just getting the missile to move into an ineffective path is also good for defeating it. Directly interdicting most anti-ship missiles would be entirely possible. It would have to be tested and proven as to hypersonic missiles...but, remember, as a backup to the OTHER defenses.
But a block, or cube, of drones deployed in that path, provides for a "shield"...it only has to be big enough, and fast enough, to get in that required pathway based on the threat vector. Think of starlings maneuvering.
So, yeah, the drones can be cheap - and to a large extent already exist for this type of interactive maneuvering. Interesting you mention lasers, because if you use aerostats or LTA for this, you get a radar that can see futher over the horizon and the lift capacity to put up a large electric generation capacity for larger solid state lasers. All of the above.
By the same token, A basic UAV may not even get high enough to stop the drop of a missile even if it gets hit.
Well, that's just it for the "carrier killer" hypersonic missiles...if they come in on a ballistic trajectory - from above - versus steering in on an angled glide path, it makes the missiles' job that much harder...and easier for our AAMs to hit them. A small deviation at speed will be huge in terminal targeting with no time to adjust to hit the target...not to mention if explosions disrupt air flow around the warhead at hypersonic speeds, it is likely to disintegrate anyway. From an angle on a glide path, that is not as acute a dilemma for the missile though it is still a problem for the targeting.
Murphy's Law does apply though...if the missile is off target and the explosions cause debris to move ON target, welllllll...crap as they say. But it is still going to be less mass and less damage than a full on strike. But this will also work against other anti-ship cruise missiles (even better), preserving your magazine - or at least giving you a back up and requiring MANY more missiles be fired to try to complete the attack. All about making it more expensive and requiring more resources.
"you could even do this with an aerostat or LTA over or near the formation"
"aerostat" sounds basically like a bunch of bloomin barrage balloons. Uhm. no. masses of small drones probably wouldn't have the range and speed to "cover" a battle group. Which means you would need rather larger drones that do. defeats the purpose of using some LTA for them as a carrier; since the "swarm" numbers would necessarily be smaller and less effective.
It's a less beneficial use for LTA. Those can best be used either in logistics, surveillance, or offensive roles. Not defense.
Just so you understand, they aren't chasing missiles, they are hovering in the path of the missiles. Yep, it would take a lot...inverse square law, as it were, applies in this instance. But a missile or warhead flying into a block of explosive drones would destroy the missile.
The point of the Aerostat or LHAs was to carry the thousands of drones, to drop on attack and recover the drones...not AS drones.
The LTAs could also host OTH radar for tracking and data link and, as I said, lasers as well.
You want to constantly launch and recover drones full of explosives. On a ship?
A more viable option would be to use unmanned systems to deploy chaff, flares, and jammers.
They are already doing that...and chaff and flares aren't doing much to keep a DF-21 from hitting (assuming they can even find and target a carrier or battle group).
More P-8s, NSMs, and TASMs are a better bet Madame Secretary. Tell the jarheads they're really sea soldiers now and can buy boats up to 60 meters in length, so we'll finally get a missile FAC in US service. Subsidize production line(s) for returning the C-17 (and apparently our older tankers) at underutilized airports. Among other projects...
I like the fact their LRUSV is also going to have a manned patrol boat variant. If only it could fit on a C-130. Still, something to consider for the LSM. Will it have boat davits? A 40 footer with 2 NSMs and a secure data link seems sexier to me than a JLTV with 2 NSM. I feel the same about the helos. AH-1Z with Osprey radar instead of the gun, and 2 NSMs.
Part of me is wondering what we could do in terms of range and armaments for a Chinook......
Couple NSMs and use the interior for extra fuel.
We need to do more on good uses of existing platforms and weapons by mating A with B.
P-8s. Hell, maybe pick some B-1s out of the boneyard and load them with antiship missiles.
Fast attack craft are an unsurvivable substitute for long-range aircraft.
I would lean towards the FACs for prewar presence missions. During war, concentrate on things like fishing boats, the "maritime militia", and cargo ships. Try to keep out from enemy SAGs.
This. In many ways, LCS needed to be a corvette with a 5-inch gun on the front end, a helo pad on the back end, and a RAM launcher amidships.
Incheon class
In that big 5 focus list, I hope that embedded in there is the ability to reload VLS, if not underway, then in austere sheltered anchorages.
That presupposes enough missiles have reloads
As for drone swarms, which of us, China or the US, seems to be better at 'replicating' and deploying large numbers of anything.
Also high on that focus list would be cyber, and the ability to protect this new IP, lest China deploy it first ad for free
I think we shoot for reload at anchorages for VLS and then start moving all the non AAW missiles into the 4 cell container launchers. Now the deck of LSVs and LSMs could be missile launchers. The deck space on FFG for the NSMs could host Tomahawks. Wheel them out on a helo deck of an amphib. Unlike GMLRS the exhaust goes up, not onto the deck.
agree
Given the difficulties we already have if/when the balloon goes up in WESTPAC, there is NO FREAKIN’ WAY we could produce and appropriately deploy and disperse thousands of drones. Add to that the well established military axiom that you never attack into an enemy’s strength - Russia and China have a long history of using masses to solve military problems. Just another “brilliant” Potomac brain fart.
One issue I see with the cardboard drones in a crate issue is that it takes people to assemble them. We need a platoon of 3-d printers pumping these out onto an automated assembly line and straight out onto the flight deck or launched out a hole in the side of the ship. Think fishing processing ship except, drones and you leave the pier full and come back empty.
No drones were harmed in making this blog.
The "drone" is the Pentagon's answer to all problems. For all of the "success" of the "drone" in the war in Ukraine, it is the 155mm artillery shell and it's cousins thay are having the greatest impact on the war. The "drone" just makes for better headlines in the nightly press.
"We are not smarter than previous generations. There is no secret weapon or war winning technology - or magic beans - that will allow us to skip past the hard work of a viable strategy backed up by a properly resourced industrial capacity to build, maintain, deploy, and sustain a fighting force on the other side of the Pacific for years if needed."
Deja vu all over again.
Studying history is depressing. And very few of the cool kids bother. But man, do they have ideas!
The pusuit of the "Transformational" ignus fatuus seems to be endemic these days.
"Every time we have our top leaders - smart hard working professionals with the best intentions - step up to sound more like this guy - the worse we will all be."
Do we have smart hard-working professionals with the best intentions? I don't question having smart professionals and I don't question professionals with good intentions, but both in the same professional? Maybe that isn't reaching too far...
72 months. Not a problem. America is best when it comes to long wars that pan several administrations Think Vietnam Afghanistan Iraq etc
Except, for most of a century, war was always an "away game" so our then massive industrial capacity could ramp up and meet the ravenous needs of not only our own military, but those of our allies.
The reality is that our industrial base is probably 10-25% of what it was in 1941, and the main place we rely on to meet our industrial production is our likely adversary, China.
Our ability to ramp up to win over 72 months is based on fond memories, not current inventories of machines and material we have on hand or can produce at home. Plus, most of the stuff is relatively high tech compared to WW2 gear.
Throw in the dung-brained focus on "shifting everything to green" and "environment is more important than winning wars" and we are half beat before the first shot is fired.
So what are these swarms of lightweight drones going to do against
"China’s most important asset in potential war with the United States is “mass,” says Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks: “More ships. More missiles. More people.”
To counter that advantage, the Defense Department will launch an initiative called Replicator to create cheap drones across the air, sea, and land in the “multiple thousands” within the next two years."
There certainly is a use for drones. But? How do “multiple thousands" of lightweight drones kill ships or missiles? (Maybe loaded with incendiaries and crashed onto a deck? Okay, what about the missiles?)
Production capacity aside? It seems at times like our elites have drifted into some sort of surreal modern version of André Maginot's universe.
No, because the Germans didn't attack the Maginot Line until they'd conquered most of France. What the elite are proposing won't do that.
We're playing Maginot. The Chinese are playing German General Staff.
What is the impact on the Navy's future ability to prosecute a major war in the Pacific if the Ford Class aircraft launch and recovery systems never do reach full reliability according to the original specifications from twenty years ago? Do the Ford Class hulls then become the world's largest and fastest LHAs? But LHAs nonetheless?
As of the most recent Tailhook, VADM Whitesell is saying that the Ford Class is on-track for becoming even more capable than the Nimitz Class. Timepoint 3:24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxPvYbKI_1Q
We seem to forget Newton. The enemy and hopefully our betters will find defenses to the swarm. As another Marine said to me.... In two weeks we will be back to fighting no-tec war, the kind of war at which the Marines excel.
How about OSD/JCS first determine an actual joint strategy and war termination terms requirement for a conflict with the PRC before getting into the tactical weeds on drones? Force in the Indo-Pacific need more ordnance in general to start and short-range drones would not be in the first category of requirements.
That, my dear Laz, would be hard work.
Yes it would, but it is of vital need or else we will continue to get "capabilities" that may not be desired or even fit well with service operational and tactical planning.
Taiwan might need a lot of short range, one use drones for coastal defense but does the U.S. Pacific Fleet need those? Maybe long-range expendable drones ?
Fully agree with your piece on this issue.
Design competition? Drone with GPS and INS, carries either AESA OR TACAN Beacon. 24-hour endurance, MUST survive at least 10 takeoffs and landings, minimal maintenance desired, winning design(s) based on total cost per hour.
Unmanned and Capable don't come cheap. Just a friendly reminder.
Fully agree. Many think that the absence of people means less cost.
It can save in the big picture. Training especially when you hand it over to an AI that learns 24/7/365 never forgets, and can instantly transfer the knowledge.
We could come up with a strategy for Ukraine too, at the same time. And maybe an objective. "At the end of this war we want..."