US plans crewless automated ghost-frigates Those splendid brainboxes at DARPA - the Pentagon's in-house bazaar of the bizarre - have outdone themselves this time. They now plan an entirely uncrewed, automated ghost frigate able to cruise the oceans of the world for months or years on end without human input. The new project is called Anti-submarine warfare Continuous …
For long endurance, a ship must be big, does this not make the ACTUV rather expensive? Even if it is cheaper than a frigate, but it is still a big target, more-or-less a sitting duck. Refueling at sea does not seem an option.
I am surprised they went for Unmanned, not Intelligent: ACTIV sounds better
Replace the galley, bunk rooms, food storage, water processing, etc. etc. with diesel tanks and you get a heck of a lot more range out of a fairly small hull, plus you could probably bin a lot of the the more bulky surface/air systems too.
Not entirely sure how plausible it is to have something chugging round the oceans for months on end without someone giving it a regular once-over, though, the marine environment is notoriously harsh on machinery. I can imagine it needing a lot of bath sealant applied before setting off.
Thinking about it, you might be better of with something rather like a surfaced sub than a conventional hull. And a bloody good insurance policy for when it inevitably causes havoc somewhere - even human captains are forever ramming their warships into islands, continents, boatloads of japanese schoolkids, etc. etc. etc.
What a totally garbage idea? Speaking from experience (ex submariner / ex skimmer) if I was being tracked by a robotoy ship as soon as I left port with constant active sonar pinging on my hull - sorry, but that is neer on an act of war - you are mr. Palitoy ship dude - putting the safety of me and my crew at risk by broadvasting to the planey where my submarine is!
First thing I'd do is take it out - which I suspect every boat Captain would - and what then? An excuse to invade that minor country? Oh wait........
Exactly how many countries are going to hand over a submarine to someone stupid enough to think that torpedoing a US Navy warship is a good way of passing a dull afternoon? Particularly one that that is sending a minute-by-minute update on his position back to Norfolk, Virginia?
I think "Are you an utter moron?" and "will you get us involved in a major war without asking us for permission first?" probably feature highly on most national sub-skipper selection tests.
But, is blowing up an unmanned vessel sufficient to allow the US to legally kill? Even though I suspect that the international-law-ignoring US may not like the bad publicity that could follow "Pakistani Submarine Crew killed for blowing up remote control boat" or "Somali fishermen gunned down by US for shooting unmanned boat".
Exit harbor, pick up tail, surface, yell through a bullhorn "Get out of our waters!", wait 2 minutes, blow up. Anything violating the borders of a sovereign nation without the permission of said nation is fair game, especially if it's unmanned.
Besides it would be a great propaganda coup. Any nation likely to attract the attention of such a vessel is not going to be overwhelmingly friendly in the first place. Offing a robot from The Great Satan is probably not going to earn the captain any demerits.
As for picking up the sub outside national waters - forget it. *That* takes a manned vessel unless the way there is extremely restricted. I can't think of any nations likely to be targets of Mary Celeste to have such restricted access to the high seas. Even Iran has a nice long coastline to the Indian Ocean, making any automated shadowing a losing proposition.
My thoughts exactly:
To get rid of one of those buggers, the sub has to go where the X-ship can´t.
Chinese teritorial water came to my mind. Or an ice shelf.
Though both are not natural habitats for foreign diesel subs.
Maybe they should just tell greenpeace about all the whale-killing active sonar.
I guess stalking people on the high seas must be ok? Your basic sub driver can't exactly call the international police whinging at all the pinging! Personally, I would put up with it for all of a day before letting the dratted thing have 'an accident' and thus suffer an unexplained sinking event!
If everyone took that attitude, the 'low cost' part of the idea becomes a lot more expensive! Plus I thought the whole idea was not to let the other sub know you could see them so that you could get rid of them as required. A continous yapping dog following you around is not exactly subtle!
If however, these things were to form a large patrolling circle around a carrier group in order to drive off enemy subs, that would make more sense...
Speaking also from experience, the idea of "Ghost Ships" scares the hell out of me. Once upon a time every boat kept a good look out and, as required by maritime law, would respond to any may-day calls. Now days you already have super-freighters, with perhaps no more than 10 or 12 crew, driving on auto-pilot for a large part of their journey.
They already scare me enough when sailing alone (a small sailing vessel would be almost invisible to their radar) - but at least you know there is a chance someone might be looking out, and worse-come-to-worse you can give the bridge a shout over the VHF and let them know you are there.
The idea of large, over-powered, unmanned warship, powering through the Atlantic, really will keep me awake at night when anywhere at sea from now on! I really do hope they pick up all local VHF communications and relay them back to an actual person, 24/7.
There is apparently an argument that even single handed yachts are illegal in terms on international maritime law as you cannot keep a watch at all times, I don't see how an unpersonned ship could be any more legal. Still, not stopped them before, has it? And I see they use the blairite weasel words of "risk calculus" too.
How they will satisfy the rules laid down by the IMO in the IRPCS as they are binding.
There are statutes laid down that states that special rules can be implemented by governments in respect to them, but those can only be implemented in said governments local waters and NOT when upon the high seas.
@Trygve having a laugh - think Argentina and ARA San Luis, so that makes Germany and US for two
Think of this from a submariner's point of view. Active sonar pursuit is a hostile act. One torpedo fixes that. Don't run away - surface and standby to "lend assistance". What are the possible reactions? I think shooting up a surfaced and idling submarine will not do for good public relations.
And anyway, all said submarine needs do is take a few strolls through other country's territorial waters and I think all eyes will be on the highly visible trespassing ACHOO (Anti-submarine warfare Continuously Hovering Obstreperous Obstacle).
BTW: I love "relaxed reserve buoyancy margins". "No, our ACHOO didn't fire on your submarine, it just happened to sink onto it. Terribly sorry our unmanned can canned your manned can."
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Robot Planes, Robot boats, Robot(ised) soldiers. Wasn't there a SciFi novel about this rolling off into the future?
The biggest problem with a ship is accommodating humans. If you have them land based with the boat occasionally meeting supply ship for fuel and maintenance then what is the problem? The whole issue takes place in international waters so no problem there then. A spy satellite keeps the boat in view once it has acquired a target. One on a track and as fuel diminishes a second machine rocks up and takes over the pursuit. If the boat gets away then when it is next out and acquired they can keep a log of it. Just because it can track it doesn't need to just log the acoustic signature. If a diesel electric boat is sold to any Navy then you can be sure its acoustic signature is known by the supplying nation. I know, it can be changed.
Oh, and bollocks to the fish and other marine life that might be disturbed by active sonar.
Subs and frigates play this game of nautical tag all the time. Similar to "Hunt for Red October" its common for attack boats to trail enemy subs around anyway.
You'd have to have a couple guys back at a console in the U.S. monitoring the unmanned ship and the surrounding waters and being ready to take over the ship if there was a navigation threat issue or a nearby emergency or if someone tried to board the ship and loot some of the electronics or even the fuel/metal.
Firing on an unmanned ship is still a hostile act under international law, so you can't just say "this thing is pinging my sub so I am going to blow it up". Subs get pinged all the time by other navies ships, sonobuoys, etc, so you probably can't get away with the "it pinged me so I torpedoed it" and not expect to get into a war.
If you are being pinged, can you just surface? Doesn't that throw off the active sonar's ability to detect you? Then you just move on the surface in another direction until you separate from the unmanned ship.
So basically the 'enemy' sub has complete control over the obedient roboship, which follows it everywhere like a dumb dog? Hey why not have a jaunt around the English Channel or some other similarly congested area? Imagine the havoc you could cause dragging a surface ship around with you from below.
Works for tailing vehicles, would work pretty well for a DumbBoat. Find maritime activity on the surface, loiter under the sea lanes until the thing becomes a nuisance. If you could get a real time traffic feed, you could test out their avoidance for blindspots. Bumper Pool, but with boats.
[[in order to avoid getting picked up again and promptly sunk by responding ships or aircraft.]]
From whence come these ships and aircraft? This daft robo-ship is designed to reduce the need for them, so presumably, they won't be there.
Also, I predict these ships will soon be home to fleeing refugees, bases for Somali pirates and I dunno what-all else. Cripes, think what will happen when the pirates get their hands on unguarded roboship technology. A single pirate ship can become a flagship of a robo-regatta, threatening all who dare sail the high seas.
The UN should demand the decommissioning of these dangerous floating fiascoes before they're built!
Luckily, Blighty has the mighty Nimrod on which to rely against the insidious second-hand non-nuclear submarine menace and will never be drawn into trying to deploy robo-ships.
I'll wait to se the bill first.
Described in an old PCW short story (anyone remeber when they did those).
Fleet of robot naval ships gradually fall silent despite nothing big enough being in the area.
Finally someone orders an overflight.
2 men in a rowboat with a rifle. Shooting out the sensors.
What if, upon making your way out of port, you make Roboatcop follow you past a couple of chaps in a civvie trawler who accidentally drop a few tonnes of fishing nets in the way of the props?
Propulsive overmatch my arse. Global, months long deployments with no underway human maintenance my elbow.
Conventional Diesel/electric/AIr independant/fuel cell powered subs are usually used in costal or shallow waters, not the best environment for sonar whether passive or active. This robo target, would have to enter a countries territorial waters in peace time, which makes it a legitimate target for boarding or destruction as a hazard to navigation. In war time it will still have to close in to pick up any transiting subs, making it an easy target again. Besides in nearly every naval exercise that the Americans run, where a diesel electric sub is tasked with sinking the carrier, they always succeed. They have even hired Swedish subs to practice on. The big fear is that the sub will always get in torpedo range, whether it could evade and escape afterwards I don't know. The US fears the Iranian navies submarines, which are Russian Kilo class boats with a quite a good reputation for stealth. But as always it comes down to crew training. In the Falklands conflict the argies had a couple of post war german U-boats, type 209's which if it was not for dud German weapons would have caused major problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_San_Luis
Robo ship silly idea, just can't wait for it to latch on to an American sub by mistake. "where is the off switch?" LOL.
I hope someone at DARPA has, otherwise the first time a Robo-ship meets it's swift demise under a freak wave, the USA will nuke some 'minor' country, such as Australia or Sweden, who both run diesel subs. Unless, of course, that's THE PLAN.
I think it's a great idea for the next Tom Clancy novel, not so good for that pesky real-life thing we have to deal with.
If active sonar becomes the thing to use, you could actively confuse it. There are several easy ways to do this (one nice trick is to launch a small torpedo-like object which generates false echos (actively) while the real sub goes and sits under some merchant vessel). Once the robofrigate has lost contact it is fairly useless
...but once a country has realised that the US is sneakily following its submarines, all they have to do is sneak a couple of guys with large amounts of explosives very near the 'ghost-ship'. The country can claim to have nothing to do with the resulting explosion. Even better if the ghost-ship is destroyed inside that countrys waters - then they can claim it was an act of agression from the US that was only prevented by a chance terrorist activity...
The sub itself has to do nothing. After this has happened five or six times, the US will rethink this idea.
This is actually what the Americans are now implimenting for mine hunting (amongst other missions):
http://www.gdlcs.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_%28LCS-2%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPufnytAMUk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1uZfwws2WI
This was the rather embarassingly implemented and ugly concept attempt by the Royal Navy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RV_Triton
As the LCS is a snip at $208 M each, we do seem to have rather managed to forget our Naval history lessons, perhaps we need to hire another Samuel Pepys.
So this is going to be in accordance with the rules as described in the article? Good Luck, rule 5 says "Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision." With intermittent communication back to base how exactly are they keeping a look-out by sight and hearing???
Of course this being the US they'll probably ingonore the inconvenient bits and say they comply...
Bit sick of this "cyberwar robot masturbation frenzy".
Starting to think that the citiens of their own countries ought to be able to attack and sink and shoot down all of the robo-killer madness machines and the people and factories that make them.
Speaking of idiots and arseholes, I look forward to the day these shitheads sail their junk past Somalia. Megamillion Roboship vs, thieving pricks in a rubber dingy.
Should be fun.
I hope they post the video of them smashing it's computer brain in with a rifle butt on Youtube.
Would be really cool. Fire control could be automated, so the ship would automatically fight back if threatened or attacked. No crew to risk, no chance of anyone taken hostage. No need for food or water or bunks, so more room for fuel, ammunition, armor, and so on. In addition to hunting subs, ships like this could be used to constantly monitor suspected pirate bases, terror camps located near the coast, and so on. In a way this would be a very good way to save on limited manpower. Since they could stay at sea in large numbers they could also act as a blockade force (off the Somalian coast perhaps?) as required.
All in all, a very good idea.
With more than a little experience in the matters here, I agree with a lot of the faults mentioned.
However, unmentioned and probably most important, is the difficulty of initial acquisition. The vision presumes the ghost-tracker already has it, but a noisy (pinging) surface ASW sonar is one of the easiest things for a submarine (even a slow one) to avoid as its passive sonar hears the pinger at a vastly greater distance than the pinger can hear its own sonar's echo off the sub. For starters, consider the acoustic two-way travel, then the added attenuation experienced in littoral waters, etc. Given that small, stealthy, diesel-electric/sterling-engined/fuel-celled subs with added anechoic coating are exceptionally difficult to detect in shallow littoral zones when stationary - and doubly so if they have plenty of time to evade - this thing sounds like a non-starter. Also, regarding initial acquisition, they are assuming software as sophisticated as the brainy-ear of a trained and experienced sonarman - ears that are the select of the best and practiced for years in all manner of conditions to achieve competence - unless, of course, they plan a real-time data-link to a sonarman in Gackle, North Dakota.
From another forum where I posted this story:
' . . By the way, I passed this thread on to my wants-to-remain-anonymous contact at the Pentagon and he responded "One thing he is wrong about though...unmanned is NOT cheaper than manned (yet)...satcom time is eating our lunch."'
http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/forum/ceilidh.htm#88924
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