US military readies drone submarine hunter Early next year a 140-ton warship will slip from its Pacific berth and sail out to patrol US coastal waters for up to three months, all without a single sailor on board. The Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) is a 132-foot ship packed with sensors designed to hunt down signals from diesel-electric …
I wonder if the following has been thought about.
Enemy sub owning country (ESOC) is a bit upset at this new capability. In the past eg during cold war, brinkmanship was the name of the game but in general, threats were made but no or minimal action was taken and certainly lives were not taken if it could be avoided. That simplifies things somewhat but these drone thingies have no people aboard or if they do then they are no longer drones.
ESOC arranges for a rock to appear under the water line in the Atlantic/Pacific. Shame but no person was killed so not a problem. Many drones start hitting "rocks" or whales or something and sink with no hands but the public don't care.
So you put people aboard and make ESOC well aware of the fact. Your drones stop sinking for odd reasons but you no longer have properly autonomous drones and you have to keep the baby sitters happy and they want to control the thing and they insist on eating and having water and/or booze and time ashore and so on.
Never mind, your drone contractors have a healthy profit margin and very happy shareholders. Lovely.
"Any ideas on how this hypothetical rock of your is supposed to appear without being visible on sonar? You know, the big active sonar that's on the drone boat?"
No one uses active sonar, that's like broadcasting a few megawatts of "WE ARE RIGHT HERE!" to the world. Active sonar can be detected far further away than it's own echo detection range. So passive sonar is usually used. It's very hard to detect some one listening for you.
And there are far stranger things in the worlds oceans than floating rocks.
Never mind hypothetical rocks, just have a fleet of little underwater drones equipped with big hifi systems capable of emitting sound signatures of all kinds of submarines, enemy and otherwise. Send them out into the oceans with a drunkards-walk course and watch the sub-chaser drones running in circles. Naval Robot Wars :)
Wouldn't that sort of thing work equally well for annoying a manned vessel?
Anyways, we have a power problem. If it's going to be big hifi it'll have to use valves, Big 'uns - ask any hifii buff.
Wouldn't want to be chased by the rainbow worriers for warming the ocean, now would we?
Re. "have a fleet of little underwater drones equipped with big hifi systems capable of emitting sound signatures of all kinds of submarines"
Bad idea. Whales and other sea life already suffer stress and navigation problems due to the noise pollution from shipping. They can do without more unnecessary noise, in particular outside of shipping sea lanes.
Following a "drunkards-walk course" would be a bit of a give away unless the submarines operated in the same manner.
Pass the popcorn. I'm waiting for the first (probably many) script-kiddies or state type actors to hack into it and take control*. This should be interesting to watch. I'd lay odds that after the first one, it would be manned by if nothing else than some armed guards who have access to a master control switch.
*It's not "if" anything IT related gets hacked, it is "when" and it will happen.
"... controlled via satellite by landlubbers in air-conditioned cubicles, ..."
I used to work a couple of desks away from a man who kept a bottle of rum in his desk. You could catch a smell of it when he added it to his tea. It was an open plan office so he couldn't have sodomy or the lash.
Unmanned ship, filled with expensive goodies... meets small fishing boat, with three guys as supercargo. They board, one with programming knowledge, one with hardware knowledge and, as the saying goes, another one, probably with a gun, to keep an eye on these two dangerous intellectuals.
Hacking remotely (don't use 'pASSword' as your password guys, that's too easy, put 'passWORD', much safer...) is always possible of course, but if you know what you're doing, and you have uninterrupted physical access to the beast, then hacking becomes somewhat simpler.
And the next round in this cycle is for an opposing nation (O.N.) to have a small submersible drone follow the good-guy-drone (G.G.D.) and... pump out lots of noise. I recommend the 1812 Overture.
Yes, I know I created two acronyms and didn't use them again, I just like making acronyms...
Hmm - haven't you ever watched one of those bait car shows, where they enable the remote locking after the thief enters? Maybe the whole point is to catch Somalian hackers?
And if anyone else is sad enough to have watched the Aussie navy soap - Sea Patrol, they will know that this immediately removes the number 1 threat to navies, which is the weekly kidnap of members of your crew by deranged psychopaths on yachts.
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>Unmanned ship, filled with expensive goodies... meets small fishing boat, with three guys as supercargo.
I doubt there's a problem. It's probably running Windows 10.
Also hacking is kind of useless unless you also have access to the DARPA satellite network - which I'm guessing Somali pirates don't.
...you'd have thought the designers would have that sort of scenario in mind, given its potential role in our rather volatile political climate.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if such a vessel wasn't fitted with an emergency self destruct which could be either triggered remotely by the humans in the air conditioned cubicle, or perhaps a dead mans trigger which would be initiated if the use of jamming were deployed against it to block comms from the air conditioned cubicle and internal sensors detected attempts to gain access to the vessel.
Repeat
$Elevation = $Elevation - 10'
until $pirates == 0
Muahaha!
But yes, as with all automated things, if you can beat the automation, you own it.
As it is automated is there any reason it needs to operate above sea-level? Five feet below the surface for normal running at 20 knots should be fine.
And that ignores any consumables...
And it ignores the cost impact of R&R downtime, shore based support, training, pensions for the meatsacks etc etc.
There's some missions that would be very difficult to replace servicemen with automation, but submarine and mine hunting are just the start. Attack submarines, and surface missile platforms could easily be automated - why have a meatsack crew to launch autonomous missiles, or fire ballistic weapons that are wholly dependent upon automated guidance and targeting? Even the big stuff like aircraft carriers could be almost fully automated (and launch only UAV and cruise missiles), although the complexity of the systems would mean that they'd undoubtedly need a skeleton crew of techs and mechanics.
In fact, not too much different to the vast container ships that now can operate with minimal crews (eg Emma Maersk, 170,000t with a crew of 13) the only thing with naval vessels is whether the communications links can be secure enough and long distance enough for the actual attack decisions to be made by a few petty officers sitting in a shed in Arizona.
This will be a re-run of the drone debate: The Navy will of course fight back, just as the Air Force maintain that they can't possibly replace fast jets flown by officers and gentlemen with drones controlled by NCOs. So long as these vessels replace the dull stuff like mine sweeping and coastal patrol, the Navy top brass will be more than happy. As soon as the technology threatens to remove the opportunity for glamorous derring-do on the high seas, the culture of the Navy will start to argue why unmanned boats are a bad idea.
given that one of the advantages of a submarine is it's secrecy, I'm pretty sure a drone sub would have to be able to operate - and complete any attack - while under conditions of radio silence. Meaning the people in those air conditioned cubicles would be blind and deaf at the critical points in a mission.
So still possible, but those subs need to be a bit more autonomous than the airborne ones.
Of course, that's the real problem. With current comms technology the data rate to subs with VLF is extremely low.
So you either do a google and let it decide for itself or have at least 1 meatsack on board to make the decisions. For security reasons ( doolally meatsack) you need more than one.
See icon.
"given that one of the advantages of a submarine is it's secrecy, I'm pretty sure a drone sub would have to be able to operate - and complete any attack - while under conditions of radio silence. Meaning the people in those air conditioned cubicles would be blind and deaf at the critical points in a mission."
Not really, the meatsacks in the air-conditioned offices are OK, the enemy know where they are. The can broadcast commands to the drone and it can reply via laser to a satellite quite safely. Haven't you read any Tom Clancy manuals?
IANAS (I am not a sailor) but I suspect the real savings in running costs would come from the ability to build the drones without all the support systems required to keep the relatively poorly-paid officers and ratings warm, fed and protected - the savings in volume and weight would be significant. Less kit on board = less weight to propel = less fuel required = lovely virtuous circle leading to lower running costs. Plus the salary savings on shore - driving and fighting the drone would require fewer men/women than driving/fighting a full sized vessel. Plus the ability to make the little whatsits go really really fast, compared to other vessels, for the same fuel expenditure. Those bursts of speed would see off the Somalian pirates referred to in other posts, and would probably even give some ability to avoid airborne threats.
Isn't this is the same sort of argument used to argue for unmanned space exploration? pxd
Under the laws of the sea, isn't any unmanned vessel eligible for salvage? Couldn't someone just turn up, board the ship and make off with it... perfectly legally? You couldn't even cover it with guns to keep salvagers away as the right to defend yourself against pirates wont apply against salvagers?
Interesting question, So interesting I have had to look it up on the fountain of truth and accuracy that is Wikipedia, and it says the for the law of salvage to be used the subject has to be in danger (not necessarily immediate). I guess an army of military lawyers would rush to court to explain it was under autonomous control and not in any danger, thus you owe them time in a location of their choosing and/or plies of cash.
If US soldiers can now spy, surveil and kill from the comfort of their air conditioned offices homes
From what I read about the US pretend-competitive market I suspect that's not going to happen as they won't be able to get enough bandwidth for the job.
Sounds great,
wunder why its got those pontoons on each side ?
Pity its not a sub, best place to hear a sub I thought was from deep under water, below the thermo cline,
as its disposable, it can ping away to its hearts content I guess,
pity the whales etc, the sea is going to get very noisy
I suspect the pontoons are there for at least two reasons, to allow a narrower hull because there is no need for crew space, in which case the pontoons add stability while maintaining reduced wetted surface area (less drag).
Also the extra width will give forward or rear facing sonar better resolution if the sensors are outboard on the outriggers. Could also be extended range fuel tanks.
My hydrodynamics is a little rusty but I would say its a wave piercing hull design, so good for cruising at speeds in excess of fifty knots no matter what the weather and that's definitely going to make submariners nervous. However this turn of speed could be a bonus and a bugbear for with no appreciable bow wave if it encounters floating debris then the hull may become damaged.
US military hires Glade Air Fresheners' marketing department to give their submarine photos a more female-friendly makeover?
sitting duck for an aircraft armed with even just a basic anti-ship missile, even more so against a ballistic missile. With the correct jamming techniques the ship's sensors wouldn't even register the attack until its already happened
I assume anyway that any defensive weapons release would have to be human-authorised to prevent a repeat of the USS Vincennes incident. Jam the datalink and the droneship is helpless
Yes, sitting duck for a pre-emptive strike when no hostilities are declared, and better so than an equally sitting duck ship with live humans on board. But once you start shooting, you change the rules, broadcast a message that basically says 'fly near me and I'll shoot first, ask questions later', and set the switch that says 'if jammed launch anti jamming homing missile'.
I think most here are missing the point and getting lost in the ways such a ROV/USV could be disabled.
As it stated in the article, it would patrol US coastal waters looking for submarines. If there were enemy surface vessels or aircraft (which would be unlikely that close in to shore), then there would be a full naval response. Also, any attempt to use jamming or ES counter measures against the USV would give away their location.
The aim, from what I can see is for a semi-autonomous means of patrolling coastal waters looking for any sneaky attempts by an enemy to breech the 12-mile territorial sea limit. So a full defensive capability would be completely unnecessary.
it gives our government yet another excuse to not react since "no lives were lost" and the enemy proudly declares to the world how it can destroy America's greatest technological assets with impunity, gaining lots of local support, which emboldens them and other leaders needing positive political support to do the same, or start attempting to outdo each other for international bragging rights.
But that would never happen, because too many people actually believe all political and martial stupidity only exists in America, and sometimes Britain, and everyone else in the world is a paradigm of common sense, and therefore all sectarian or international violence is caused by America/Britain or made up by State Controlled Media to force us to support "jingoistic" and "imperial" ideals...
I guess that explains why internet scams work so well, no need to try to sell a bridge anymore.
The article mentions that its role would be to 'look' for diesel-electric subs. What about those that run on fuel cells (and of course nucs)? AFAIK the USN doesn't operate any diesel-electric subs anymore, so any diesel-electric sub spotted is 'nor one of ours'. So far, so good - but some potential 'not-friendlies' have nucs. And a lot of those nations operating diesel-electric subs are at least considering phasing out their diesel-electric subs for fuel cell powered ones.
North Korean subs are diesel, so are Iran's.......this is a cheap risk free way of patrolling hostile coastal waters Pick up the subs with these drones as the subs leave harbour. Productionised versions will be fast, quiet, stealthy and possibly semi-submersible. Remember this particular machine is a technology demonstrator, service vessels will be harder to locate/track
"submarine detected; trying to report..."
"please wait while your windows operating system is being patched with essential security updates"
"please reboot"
"welcome to Windows13"
"Sorry but that website 'navy.us.com' is not reachabe with this licence, would you like to listen to Rick Ashley ?"
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