Just as the army needs to rethink survivability in the drone age so does the navy. The Russian navy, sad as it is, has found itself fleeing boats this size and smaller.
While true, the US navy is not the Russian navy. Drone boats are great, and we are developing a lot of them, but what we especially need is port defense. Same with all of our military bases.
A Marauder can hold a fair amount of containerized missiles.
Their new facility in Brownsville will build ships up to about the size of a wasp class LHD. Ships that size offer a lot of different possibilities for different roles in the navy but drone carriers are particularly attractive.
It is also great they are close to Starbase, since those facilities will need protection.
A Wasp class LHD is about the same length and displacement as an Iowa class battleship. Most anti-ship missiles would just mar the paint on the side of an Iowa, and we could use a ship that could take hits so we could risk sending it into contested waters.
Drones are likely going to produce some very asymmetric combat scenarios where the risk reward capital stakes are very biased toward the under-resourced (financially) drone fleet versus the $2.5 billion dollar a pop destroyer fleet. One of the potentially destabilizing effects of drones is that the costs to the attacker are low, and thus the risks of attacking with drones will seem low.
Regardless of drones and how to fight and defend them, the US needs ship building for shipping, mining, exploration. Yeah, we need an ability to build a Navy, but we also need an ability to trade and develop.
Like the word “aircraft,” covers everything from a kid’s toy to a C-5M or an A-380, the word “drone” also covers a lot of territory. Applying front-loaded modifiers is one way of slicing the whole semantic pie into more manageable pieces, e.g. “FPV drone,” “quad-copter drone,” etc. The term “UAV,” for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, has come into common use when the discussion is about much larger and faster robot aircraft such as Anduril’s Fury robo-fighter.
Did you have any specific alternative language to offer?
You stated several of the modifiers that the media should be being using, but rarely do.
Which is my point, the media just states “drone” regardless of type of drone. It is as if they believe that the same “drone” can be used regardless if the target is a single man, a truck, a ship, a refinery…. or if the target is a mile away or 500+ miles distant.
In the not too distant past, the Air Force operated Remotely Piloted Vehicles and drones. The difference was that drones flew a pre-programmed flight path independent of the ground. As an example, look at the Lockheed D-21 drone project from the 1960s. It wasn’t the only example.
Today’s UAs are almost all remotely operated, although the new CCAs are given general directions and then they fly on their own. The use of drone for everything isn’t a good idea. There are experimental drones that are the size of birds or even insects, and there are UAs with wingspans of airliners. Then there are unmanned (or politically correct uncrewed) surface (water or land) vehicles and underwater vehicles. It’s a interesting time.
Just as the army needs to rethink survivability in the drone age so does the navy. The Russian navy, sad as it is, has found itself fleeing boats this size and smaller.
While true, the US navy is not the Russian navy. Drone boats are great, and we are developing a lot of them, but what we especially need is port defense. Same with all of our military bases.
A Marauder can hold a fair amount of containerized missiles.
Their new facility in Brownsville will build ships up to about the size of a wasp class LHD. Ships that size offer a lot of different possibilities for different roles in the navy but drone carriers are particularly attractive.
It is also great they are close to Starbase, since those facilities will need protection.
Oh, and Saronic is just one of like 6 companies in that program.
A Wasp class LHD is about the same length and displacement as an Iowa class battleship. Most anti-ship missiles would just mar the paint on the side of an Iowa, and we could use a ship that could take hits so we could risk sending it into contested waters.
Drones are likely going to produce some very asymmetric combat scenarios where the risk reward capital stakes are very biased toward the under-resourced (financially) drone fleet versus the $2.5 billion dollar a pop destroyer fleet. One of the potentially destabilizing effects of drones is that the costs to the attacker are low, and thus the risks of attacking with drones will seem low.
Yeah, probably will.
Regardless of drones and how to fight and defend them, the US needs ship building for shipping, mining, exploration. Yeah, we need an ability to build a Navy, but we also need an ability to trade and develop.
For the long term fiscal health of these defense companies, having a commercial side would be great.
We need nuclear powered icebreakers.
Yeah, we do. And beyond those, the entire Navy should be nuclear-powered.
The use of the term “drone” to cover everything from hand launched recce / anti personnel weapons to long range, heavy payload craft is annoying.
Like the word “aircraft,” covers everything from a kid’s toy to a C-5M or an A-380, the word “drone” also covers a lot of territory. Applying front-loaded modifiers is one way of slicing the whole semantic pie into more manageable pieces, e.g. “FPV drone,” “quad-copter drone,” etc. The term “UAV,” for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, has come into common use when the discussion is about much larger and faster robot aircraft such as Anduril’s Fury robo-fighter.
Did you have any specific alternative language to offer?
You stated several of the modifiers that the media should be being using, but rarely do.
Which is my point, the media just states “drone” regardless of type of drone. It is as if they believe that the same “drone” can be used regardless if the target is a single man, a truck, a ship, a refinery…. or if the target is a mile away or 500+ miles distant.
The OSINT types use “class” as the differentiator. Class 1, Class 2, etc. It isn’t very helpful.
In the not too distant past, the Air Force operated Remotely Piloted Vehicles and drones. The difference was that drones flew a pre-programmed flight path independent of the ground. As an example, look at the Lockheed D-21 drone project from the 1960s. It wasn’t the only example.
Today’s UAs are almost all remotely operated, although the new CCAs are given general directions and then they fly on their own. The use of drone for everything isn’t a good idea. There are experimental drones that are the size of birds or even insects, and there are UAs with wingspans of airliners. Then there are unmanned (or politically correct uncrewed) surface (water or land) vehicles and underwater vehicles. It’s a interesting time.
I suddenly picture Musk building subterrain torpedoes.