After Seeing a “Milestone” US Unmanned Vessels Exercise the Chinese Are Already Mailing a Surrender
FedEx to drop it any minute now
Unmanned vessels continue to make stunning advances in naval warfare. From a Breaking Defense website article,
A new US Navy task force recently completed its first at-sea exercise featuring unmanned vessels sailing in concert with friendly foreign ships, US 5th Fleet announced on Tuesday.
“During the two-day training exercise, Task Force 59 integrated and evaluated new MANTAS T-12 unmanned surface vessels (USV) that operated alongside manned U.S. patrol craft and Bahrain Defense Force maritime assets,” according to a Navy statement. (1)
Wow! Unmanned vessels in a Navy task force! Operating with US patrol craft! This is full-fledged naval combat taken to the next level. This is the future of naval warfare.
Here’s a photo of the event.
Uh … is it just me or does the future of naval warfare seem a bit … well … small? Those aren’t the unmanned combat ships I was envisioning from the Navy’s description of the exercise. Instead, those are unmanned canoes. The US Coast Guard patrol boat in the photo dwarfs the unmanned canoes. Those canoes appear to have a single ?sensor? (FLIR or optical camera, maybe?). How is a canoe with a single, small sensor going to contribute anything to naval combat?
The exercise was a stunning success by Navy standards as described in this official statement:
“This is a significant milestone for our new task force as we accelerate the integration of unmanned systems and artificial intelligence into complex, cross-domain operations at sea,” Capt. Michael Brasseur, commander of Task Force 59, said in a written statement. (1)
Does Capt. Brasseur have a regular salary or is he paid by the buzzword?
I understand that advances begin with baby steps but if this is the extent of our advances after a decade of unmanned efforts, we’re in trouble and there’s nothing worthwhile about unmanned assets.
Source: Navy Matters
We can waste Billions on useless Military WMD’s but we can’t take care of the Health or welfare of our Citizens
Well lets be honest
Why waste resources on humans with no economic value
Health and welfare is a waste of resources
Don’t waste your time.
If these toy boats are the best that the Yanks can come up with, they are absolutely doomed!
And the Yanks laugh at the Iranians with their gun boats ? L.O.L. seems like they are copying them.
Oh be nice. What you don’t see under those modest surface markers are the huge 10 billion dollar Australian-built nuclear submarines slowly sinking… sinking…
They will NEVER get built, period.
Oh i don’t know about that. See what a wonderful “milestone” was reached by outfitting fishing motorboats with Walmart remote controls? All that is needed for Australia it to toss a microwave into a contractor garbage bag and drop in in the bay. Poof! New milestone! China trembles!
Propaganda is well and alive.
This looks a lot like the Meggitt Target Systems Hammerhead. I used to run the Navy cell that provided them for live-fire exercises. The cell ran a swarm-attack demonstration for the US Navy back in 2010 in which 16 Hammerheads were operated simultaneously on a single control frequency, using 4 operator consoles with each operator controlling 4 boats. I have to say it was a bit more ambitious than what we are seeing here.
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2012/06/meggitt-hammerhead-live-target-training.html
The boats run on a datalink generated either from shore or from a console carried aboard a ship, as the Coast Guard is probably doing here. The operating range in calm weather is probably about 5 miles. Like many drones, the Hammerhead has a default program in case it loses link because the boat exceeds its control range; it applies starboard rudder and just does circles until the signal is regained. We used them as targets launched by the firing ship, driven out about 8000 yards and then turned to close the ship at high speed, zigzagging to make a harder target. They’re very difficult to hit, because naval gun fire-control radars use a predictive algorithm which aims to bring together the target and the gun round at a future point where the target will be if it does not change course or speed. Obviously, zigzagging messes that up.
I’m not sure what role the USN has for them, but unless range is greatly extended they would still operate so close to the ship that is controlling them that it would be in danger itself in any surface attack. You might be able to fit radar augmenters on them and convince an enemy that you had a larger force than you do, but satellite coverage or an overflight would soon reveal the deception. And if you know which ship is controlling them and wax that, they’re no use without a control signal.
Here’s a Hammerhead with the radar reflector fitted.
http://www.navaldrones.com/images/xhammerhead.jpg.pagespeed.ic.foQ42-i-Nv.jpg
but but but gayboat harvey milk and admirale$$, the manwoman thing Levine are all set to invade Taiwan…. Onward down the hershey highway where cream puff pies rule the waves. Does it get any more ridiculous, USSA?
Ho ho ho and a bottle of cum…transgendermutantretards me hearties.
https://www.rt.com/usa/538287-congressman-censored-twitter-transgender/
https://www.rt.com/usa/539573-us-navy-ship-harvey-milk/