Iran war drives urgent need to counter underwater attack drones

The UK and US are looking for technology to counter the threat posed by underwater drones to ships, harbors and other critical maritime infrastructure, and are asking industry for answers. News of the AUV tender comes against the backdrop of the US deploying uncrewed drone boats around Iran as the conflict heats up. Iran is …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Might I propose?

Halibut with Laser Beams

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Might I propose?

Stingray............. heads off to find vids of Marina

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Might I propose?

They're fighting the Iranians, not the Australians.

[aardvarkus]

Re: Might I propose?

I'd still send in Flipper any day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Might I propose?

Skippy?

[Guido Esperanto]

Re: Might I propose?

Poor bugger might drown after a few lengthd.

"What's that skip?"

"Blublu...blublbu"

"Two kids are trapped down a mine again, the hell you doing in the Straight of Hormuz?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Might I propose?

Yeah, I was likewise thinking schools of kamikaze soft-bodied RoboFish and GhostSwimmer drone sharks, upgraded with lasers and nuclear power plants ...

They could be deployed around seafaring vessels as an escort, and provide effective (and fun) autonomous REEF protection against son-of-a-shoe adversarial UUVs! ;)

[NoneSuch]

Want to stop wars?

Any politician who votes for war should be in the first rank of the first wave.

Watch things change when it is their a$$ on the line.

[Furious Reg reader John]

Re: Might I propose?

Israel already has it's Shark program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-related_conspiracy_theories#Sharks

I'm pretty sure that by now the Space Laser program and the Shark program have been combined, to create a joint UUV and an AUV system.

So perhaps the US and the UK should just buy off the shelf Laser Sharks from Israel, instead of developing their own AUV programs.

[Dan 55]

Re: Might I propose?

But the US has already has Ill-tempered mutated sea bass. We can't throw all that development away.

[herman]

Re: Might I propose?

Old wooden trawlers with fishnets?

[Blazde]

Re: Might I propose?

Not a bad idea but they may counter by equipping their UUVs with scissors, and then the trawlers will need to wield rocks..

[Ken Shabby]

Re: Might I propose?

Sounds like my ex

[silent_count]

Where's my money?

Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution: don't attack other countries.

My sophisticated modelling suggests that the chances of an Iranian naval drone hitting a US navy ship stationed, for example, in San Diego is exceedingly low. Surprisingly enough, that number becomes just about zero when you're not bombing cities in Iran.

Now, where do I collect my payment?

[Like a badger]

Re: Where's my money?

Dear silent_count,

thank you for your underwater drone defence proposal. Our technical assessment showed this had the highest score of all proposals in terms of defensive outcomes, achieving 100%. However, it scored very low on three critical elements that have equal weighting with defensive outcomes:

i) Money making opportunities for the elite. Your score, zero

ii) Kill rate of incoming drones when tested. Your score, zero

iii) Epstein smokescreen value. Your score, minus 100%

Accordingly we will not be taking your proposal forward to the second round, although in line with the competition rules we have taken ownership of the concept and all IP inherent within it.

Thanks you for your interest,

Love,

Darpa

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Where's my money?

That assumes you tell people you aren't attacking other countries.

If however you announce an attack on Agrabah with accompanying AI generated footage of your glorious missliles defintiley not hitting playschools, milk factories and your own side.

Then you can keep a war going as long as you want for the price of a couple of Claude licenses, with perfectly timed victories, no returning coffins and no loss of expensive military kit

[Claude Yeller]

Re: AI generated footage

"If however you announce an attack on Agrabah with accompanying AI generated footage of your glorious missliles defintiley not hitting playschools, milk factories and your own side."

Fox News claims the Iranians are already doing that

Here again, the Iranians outwitted the US. Or this is just another case of accusing others of what you are doing yourself.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

"don't attack other countries."

Hell no !

That is manifestly un·american.

It is incontrovertibly the God given right of the US to fuck over every nation on the planet.

One consolation, small at that, is that the current MAGAty Administration didn't notice there ought to be an "other" between the "every" and "nation" above and commenced their fuckery on their own nation.

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind:…the strangers shall swallow it up." [Hosea 8:7]

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

Attacking other countries is manifestly un·american. but might i suggest they concentrate on attacking America?

Since for much of the country the civil war was the height of their patriotic identity. It would be the one thing to heal the political divide and bring left and right together in the one thing they can agree on, enjoying killing Americans.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

Best case, after 20 years of attempting regime change the UA leave and abandon America to the locals

[Like a badger]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

Since for much of the country the civil war was the height of their patriotic identity. It would be the one thing to heal the political divide and bring left and right together in the one thing they can agree on, enjoying killing Americans.

I second that!

Today they are the Disunited States of America, and they're all prepared: Around 24 million individual private citizens own an assault rifle, even divided between two sides, US assault rifle owners form two corps each about the size of the entire Russian military at the end of WW2. And then there's about 450 million handguns and rifles in the US, so enough for every man, woman and child to have one, and still a hundred million looking for somebody to pull their trigger. Nobody needs miss out, the most inclusive civil war ever! And they've also got about 45 million pickup trucks just begging to have a heavy machine gun bolted to the loadbed. Even the ratio of 7 combatants and a babby to each pickup looks about right.

So there we have it, American civilians are the biggest, best armed infantry the world has ever seen, just itching to start popping off at each other. We know the lines of division and several of the flags. What are they waiting for?

[MonkeyJuice]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

"and still a hundred million looking for somebody to pull their trigger."

No, you need them after the gun you are shooting has run out of rounds and you toss it.

[Wang Cores]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

>Around 24 million individual private citizens own an assault rifle

I don't love how the English have come to comment on American armedness as if they have a clue. You'll scoff but let me paint a picture. The gun debacle is a check for to keep the country from being too democratic.

When crime happens, Fox News is first on the scene to find a misaligned door frame to turn into "MASS LOOTING COMING TO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU?" This primes the rural areas to take up arms, while urban people go vote for a Democrat who immediately starts banning guns from their constituents (often in direct contradiction of those voters' wishes - see Minnesota trying to ram gun control measures through while ICE was kneecapping people) as a way to rile the already armed rural right wingers and set them at their democratic neighbors' throats.

This is occuring in Virginia right now where a Democratic majority is not banning guns outright but banning enough to the point of uselessness after maintaining relatively loose gun laws for decades. Now the Republicans are re-energized and the rural areas are angry because "hey man that's my shit."

Both parties drive arms sales and the only people who might lose are the suckers who end up on some red hat's shitlist.

Blues are barely armed because of this. If even 3 million of those assault rifles were in Democrat voters' hands I would be shocked. Reds have their own arsenals and the passive cooperation of police and military personnel in "losing" serious hardware like machine guns.

So be careful what you wish for. You may grow to hate and fear the even more bastard US that is born from a civil war like this.

[Blazde]

Re: Here's my revolutionary, never-been-tried-before solution:

People naively imagining they can predict how a civil war will go down are one of the main causes of civil wars. Even if it somehow started as armed Republicans vs unarmed Democrats it'd be something entirely more chaotic by about day 3.

[midgepad]

both sides

Have nucular weapons.

How the Second Republic will work remains to be seen.

[Cav]

Re: Where's my money?

"don't attack other countries."

Yeah, just let the likes of Iran take out countries such as Israel with nuclear weapons. Whatever one thinks of the policies of the Israeli government, there is no justification for nuking millions of civilians. It's not that long ago that Iranian leaders were calling for the annihilation of Israel.

Should we have just let Russia take Ukraine? There will always be a need for offensive and defensive weapons.

[Filippo]

Re: Where's my money?

>Yeah, just let the likes of Iran take out countries such as Israel with nuclear weapons. Whatever one thinks of the policies of the Israeli government, there is no justification for nuking millions of civilians. It's not that long ago that Iranian leaders were calling for the annihilation of Israel.

1) North Korea has not nuked Seul; Pakistan and India have not nuked each other; Israel has not nuked Teheran; Russia has not nuked any of the various places it has threatened to nuke; and the UK, France and China have managed to not even really ever threaten to nuke anyone. A few of those countries are even less rational or stable than Iran.

2) If the West wants to stop other countries from developing nuclear programs, it should stop invading non-nuclear countries for no good reason, start protecting non-nuclear countries from invasion in return for them not developing nukes, and - this is important - stop blatantly breaking those agreements as soon as the administration changes. As things stand now, if there's any chance you might get on some great power's shitlist, you'd be insane not to pursue nukes, and the West is entirely responsible for setting up the game theory to work this way.

3) If the game is wiping countries off the map, so far Israel seems to be winning. Nobody is making any serious attempt to stop it, not even among countries that have no reason to love Israel and enough firepower to hurt it. Why? Nukes.

>Should we have just let Russia take Ukraine?

Fuck no, we should be defending it far harder. See above. We agreed to defend Ukraine in return for Ukraine giving up its nukes, and we broke that agreement the moment it looked like it might be costly to keep. Oh, I bet it made sense, but then don't complain if other countries start seeking nukes. If you can't make the rules, at least you can play by them.

If you were wondering what's the difference between Israel and Ukraine, it's that Israel is fighting a war of aggression, Ukraine is fighting a war of defense. Israel's defense excuse went stale a long time ago.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Where's my money?

Nukes are terribly expensive and you really don't want to use them up. Not when white phosphorus is so much more cost effective on undefended civilian targets and has the advantage that the resulting territory is sanitizwd and non-radioactive

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Where's my money?

...it's that Israel is fighting a war of aggression, Ukraine is fighting a war of defense. Israel's defense excuse went stale a long time ago.

Both are pretty much just plain'ol extortion. See for example-

With the United States stepping back from its military funding for Ukraine, Europe should develop innovative strategies to fill the gap: leveraging frozen Russian assets, utilizing Security Action for Europe (SAFE) loans, committing to regular contributions under the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, and ensuring long-term support through the Ukraine Assistance Fund.

EU & non-US NATO members pay into the PURL fund, that's supposed to supply weapons to Ukraine. US just announced the money is going to be diverted towards refilling US defence contractors coffers.. I mean replenishment, on account of the US & Israel having used up a lot of their stockpile bombing schools, apartment buildings etc. Then there's the continuing saga of the €90bn 'loan' to the little guy. Not really a loan because there's little prospect that will ever be repaid, but it'll buy a lot of gold toilets. Not just for Elensky's pals, but €60bn of that is also supposed to go to those defence contractors again to buy weapons that don't exist. So then it might be a bit of Uber-style surge pricing to see who gets priority, the US, Israel, Saudi, UAE.. and probably at the back of the line with be Ukraine, because their credit isn't very good.

Plus a small problem that Ukraine is rapidly running out of money to pay soldiers, pensions, civil servants salaries and social spending in general. And thanks to Israel and the US's antics, there's a bit of a cost of living crisis looming. So Europeans (ie 'voters') might not be too keen on throwing billions more into the black hole that is Ukraine. But there's also the general hypocrisy. So Russia takes Crimea and the world goes mad. Israel suckers the US into blowing up stuff in Iran, and takes the opportunity to blow up more of Gaza, Lebanon, and help itself to 30km of Lebanon south of the Litani River, which just happens to be the fertile bit.

And then the upcoming FUN!, where Mr Trump expects to pop over to China and presents the results of his oil blockade. First Venezuala, then Iran. Then presumably expects China not to have noticed those brilliant, genius 4D-chess moves, and Xi doesn't just politely point out that the aces Trump thinks he's holding are really jokers. But there's still probably a couple more years of Trump, so things are likely to get worse before they get better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Where's my money?

>...it's that Israel is fighting a war of aggression,

Israel is fighting a war of keeping the leader in the job and out of jail.

The USA ???????

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Where's my money?

... is fighting a war of keeping the leader in the job and out of jail.

Operation Epstein Fury ...

[Wang Cores]

Re: Where's my money?

* bombing elementary schools in Iran

[Bebu sa Ware]

VA-111 Shkval

Interestingly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval notes:

Operators: Iran (speculative) • Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (speculative)

At "speeds in excess of 200 knots" I imagine these are squalls that could really rain on your parade.

The Gulf is a rather small barrel with a lot of quite large fish which are proverbially easily to shoot although only a raving lunatic is likely to think discharging a firearm into a tub of fish would give you anything other than a facefull of cold water laced with fragmented fish. Unfortunately the planet appears to have produced a bumper crop of raving lunatics who have managed to promote the more homicidal of their number to high office.

[tmTM]

Come on people

Four years of war in Ukraine have shown how effective drones can be on the battlefield.

Why have you left it till now to start thinking about protective measures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Come on people

Drones fly = air force in charge of drones = air force get all anti-drone funding

Air force not know about water - air force did go to Florida on spring break but didn't go in pool cos it would mess up their hair

Navy not believe in drones because obviously no space onboard for petty officers to have their own mess.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Come on people "Why have you left it till now to start thinking"

Question rhetorical definitively.

Honestly if each useful human thought were a 20 kiloton atomic explosion the neither the planet nor civilisation would be much inconvenienced.

The only reason AI looks even vaguely plausible is the complete mental lassitude exhibited by the totality of humanity (save a few rebels.)

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Come on people

Four years of war in Ukraine have shown how effective drones can be on the battlefield.

Why have you left it till now to start thinking about protective measures?

Ukraine likes to claim credit for inventing the drone threat, but that pre-dates the SMO. So Iran had been making Shaheds before then. Criminals had also been using drones and 'ring droppers' or 'fish baiters' to smuggle drugs & phones into prisons, who then pioneered 'cope cages' and netting over open areas to prevent that. Houthis had also used drones to attack Saudi oil facilities, and American bases in Syria had also been attacked. Iran may have supplied those drones, or helped users. But then the same is probably also true with Ukraine, eg-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Baby

In an interview with CNN, Vasyl Malyuk, the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, stated: "Marine surface drones are a unique development of the Security Service of Ukraine. No private company was involved in this.

But also rumors that those drones were actually a US development intended to defend Taiwan. But as the article also points out-

One of the first examples of an attack by an unmanned boat happened in 2020, when a Saudi frigate was bombed by the Houthi rebels using a surface craft loaded with explosives.

It's one of those genies that is well and truly out of the bottle, with a lot of hostiles thinking 'Hey, we can do that!' and convert a cheap jetski into a bombski, and make cheap precision guided munitions that cost a lot less than MIC-missiles. Ukraine has certainly innovated with sneaky things like adding SAMs or surface-surface missile launchers to their drones.. But then Russia and Iran have also been innovating, hence the growing drone threat. Especially in confined waters like the Straits. Or just the way Iran's been releasing videos showing their soldiers getting ready to defend Kharg Island, with each soldier equipped with a couple of attack drones.

So I'm curious how we can respond to the threats of air, surface and sub-surface drones. Especially when we're rolling out £4bn+ Type-26 Frigates.. Which are probably the kinds of warship Trump wants to unblock the Straits. Which is one of those 'You first!' political issues. Trump's been flipping between bigging up the mightiest military in the world! with rants about NATO not helping. Someone should point out NATO Article 6 and why Israel and the US aren't sending in their own warships. But then the US has been struggling with developing their own Frigates, and has probably been too focused on stand-off capability and not the kinds of brawlers needed.

Which I think is much the same issue with WW2 and the air threat. That resulted in a lot of existing ships being retrofitted with lots of 5" and smaller calibe guns to deal with that challenge, then new designs being upgunned. Which is now the challenge with ships like the Type-26. It already seems to have a lot of ship protection systems, but now it's going to need more. And where do you put additional mounts for additional systems to defend the ship against drones? Plus in a Hormuz-type conflict, how a warship can protect any ships it's trying to escort?

So personally, I think the solution is to have warships like the Type-26 or Type-45 as sensor platforms, then we probably need dedicated anti-drone picket ships bristling with guns, grenade launchers, maybe DEW and the ability to launch lots of their own drones. Type-26 has a large flight deck & hanger, but if that's full of drones, then less room for helicopters.

[VoiceOfTruth]

How about instead...

We just condemn the USA for its latest illegal war?

Where are the voices that condemned Russia, but are miraculously silent when the USA does the same only 10 times worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How about instead...

10 times worse? And you really have not read any forums if you think people have been silent. But thats how it works for people like you.

VoT, the resident anti west lunatic

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: How about instead...

Not anti-West. Holding the West to the same standards and account that the West holds $bogeyman to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How about instead...

> Not anti-West. Holding the West to the same standards and account

That is actually a point well worth considering. Can we call ourselves liberal democracies when our respect for the rule of law is selective at best?

Self criticism and holding ourselves to account is by far the strongest form of democracy.

[Cav]

Re: How about instead...

"10 times worse" - Voice Of Lies

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: How about instead...

Do you see any silent voices around here? Literally most of the comments on this thread and any other thread re. Iran have been "what the fuck are the US playing at"?

The voices condemning the USA are fucking everywhere. Everywhere. Every headline, every commentator in the news, every social media post. Everywhere. Trump's war is reprehensible but guess what? So is Putin's. It is possible for both of these things to be true, and the sooner you wrap your head around it the better for everyone - although I expect the irony of you "holding the west the the same standards" while manifestly failing to do just that yourself is unfortunately going to be lost on you.

[retiredFool]

Re: How about instead...

I know I've condemned both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Trump's attacks on VZ and Iran. Oddly, or maybe foretelling, Trump never complained much about putin's attack on Ukraine. He has always been conflicted as to whether to support Ukraine or not. Things that really should be obvious to a typical western pro-democracy person is confounding to orangey. I don't think he really wants to allow anyone without money to have any say. And really I think he admires putin and wishes he could be a diktator too. He is trying with some success, unfortunately.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How about instead...

"The voices condemning the USA are fucking everywhere. Everywhere. Every headline, every commentator in the news, every social media post."

Except ....

* all western governments (but Spain) are not really condemning and some are actually facilitating (b52s loaded with jsams are taking off from GB)

* Israel and USA not expelled from IOC

* Israel not expelled from Eurovision

* Israel and USA not under sanction regime

....

I could go on, but I think this should disprove the point you try to make.

Unless those kind of things we (rightfully) did to Russia are applied to other rogue states, our hypocrisy is blatant. International law is not a 'choose your own adventure' book.

[retiredFool]

Already mined

I have recently thought the strait's may already be mined. Reasons include, ships transiting at the moment hug the coast line next to Iran and TACO has really chickened out this time. If it were already mined except along the coast and mined in a way that clearing will take months, and that became public knowledge, oil would skyrocket, markets would tank, and donnie would be in a world of hurt. One way to prevent that knowledge of coming into the open would be to TACO. Hard to say for sure though as the TACO thing is a thing too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Already mined

At most it's a small number of moored mines. Iran is still sending its ships through, which means safe passage does exist.

If they wanted, they could start dumping drift mines in the Gulf, which would make the drone threat look positively minor.

[retiredFool]

Re: Already mined

Yes they are, but as I said, the ship is directed to follow close to shore. Makes sense if you mined the far/middle parts. Easier to control an even narrower strait. And if you can mine waterways like land, it would be very difficult to unmine them. I don't know how they get laid and removed. Several countries decades later are still extracting land mines which were cheap as chips to put in.

[elsergiovolador]

Thick

Ministry of Defence (MoD), the US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU)

Is British MoD that thick? It's common knowledge that US administration is compromised by Russia, so anything military done with the US will land on Moscow's desk the same day.

[Rory B Bellows]

April 3rd deadline?

I was looking for a raspberry pi project for the weekend...

[elsergiovolador]

Re: April 3rd deadline?

I think the first step to winning a tender is booking a very fancy restaurant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trumpedo

Powered by hot air and excessive exhaust gasses, walrus shaped, totally dispensable. Point and shoot.

[Ribfeast]

Maybe they need to lower nets or cages into the water to entangle them or something....a bit like what the russians are doing on their tanks

[chololennon]

Iran war drives urgent need to counter underwater attack drones...

Wrong, we need urgent measures to counter American colonialism, piracy and terrorism across the world. That's all we need.