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US Navy Develops Robot Boat Swarm To Overwhelm Enemies
HughPickens.com writes "Jeremy Hsu reports that the U.S. Navy has been testing a large-scale swarm of autonomous boats designed to overwhelm enemies. In the test, a large ship that the Navy sometimes calls a high-value unit, HVU, is making its way down the river's thalweg, escorted by 13 small guard boats. Between them, they carry a variety of payloads, loud speakers and flashing lights, a .50-caliber machine gun and a microwave direct energy weapon or heat ray. Detecting the enemy vessel with radar and infrared sensors, they perform a series of maneuvers to encircle the craft, coming close enough to the boat to engage it and near enough to one another to seal off any potential escape or access to the ship they are guarding. They blast warnings via loudspeaker and flash their lights. The HVU is now free to safely move away.
Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of the Office of Naval Research, points out that a maneuver that required 40 people had just dropped down to just one. "Think about it as replicating the functions that a human boat pilot would do. We've taken that capability and extended it to multiple [unmanned surface vehicles] operating together within that, we've designed team behaviors," says Robert Brizzolara. The timing of the briefing happens to coincide with the 14-year anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 sailors. It's an anniversary that Klunder observes with a unique sense of responsibility. "If we had this capability there on that day. We could have saved that ship. I never want to see the USS Cole happen again."
Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of the Office of Naval Research, points out that a maneuver that required 40 people had just dropped down to just one. "Think about it as replicating the functions that a human boat pilot would do. We've taken that capability and extended it to multiple [unmanned surface vehicles] operating together within that, we've designed team behaviors," says Robert Brizzolara. The timing of the briefing happens to coincide with the 14-year anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 sailors. It's an anniversary that Klunder observes with a unique sense of responsibility. "If we had this capability there on that day. We could have saved that ship. I never want to see the USS Cole happen again."
The USS Cole was in the middle of a harbor being refueled when it was attacked. Would putting the rest of the harbor at risk of autonomous craft justify a small bit of extra security? How many times have the US Ships put into port / refueled without getting hit? Just seems that it would be a way to spend a ton of money for something that overly complicates normal procedures, and only wards off that 1% of attacks. (Note, percentage pulled out of my rear)
Also.... any autonomous craft would surely need a remote control system. You can't stop the signal (Mal). It wouldn't be impossible for another country / faction to take control of said boats, and use them to accomplish their goal.
Basically, seems like a large amount of money for a system that would cause more problems than it would solve.
A drone swarm would have impeded the progress of the boat even without firing any weapons, so that either a) identification could be made during the delay and orders given, or b) the boat was provoked to fire itself, thus allowing return fire under the ROE.
The Chinese would like to be able to invade Taiwan, but the presence of a Carrier Battle Group in the region has a deterrring effect. An Antiship ballistic misdle capability would deter the carrier from doing much interference.
(The US has certain obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act).
In the early 1980s Doug Lenat used an evolutionary AI system to win a sci fi naval battle contest. His system, Eurisko, designed unexpected large fleets of ships that defeated more conventional systems designed by other players, overwhelming them with numbers. http://aliciapatterson.org/sto... So when the Navy uses AI to run the ships, AND to design them, might have something.
"Having a pair" and firing without positively identifying targets means accidentally shooting down airliners on occasion, and no one wants that. It's a tough spot for our armed forces, no doubt, and I don't think it's helpful to oversimplify the problem. Robot boats are essentially disposable, so they're a great way to allow the Navy to get in close for better identification before enemies get close enough to kill our sailors, as well as warn off anyone who is just curious or happens to stray into the wrong area.
We actually have a lot of less-than-lethal technologies at our disposal now as well. Employing those as a first defense in peacetime seems pretty reasonable to me. Why risk accidental death with our abundance of highly lethal weapons if we don't have to? If intruders keep coming past the obvious warnings and attacks by heat beams or sonic weapons, then by all means, break out the big guns and allow our personnel to properly protect themselves.
I'm actually glad to see the Navy thinking outside the box instead of simply building more giant carriers. These smaller boats are probably pretty inexpensive, comparatively speaking, and seem much more suited for the sort of asymmetric warfare they're likely to face in the future.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Is the Admiral suffering from dementia, or is he just a fucking idiot? The attack on the Cole was successful because the rules of engagement did not allow the Cole to fire upon the boat.
So what was the crew of the Cole supposed to do? Blast every speedboat that came within 300 meters of their ship with a 20mm cannon? ...and before you say yes, consider the amount of shit that would hit the fan if some foreign warship blew a speedboat out of the water in New York harbor because, and I quote: 'Well Admiral sir, it looked uuuhhh.... threatening' ? Unpopular as the notion may be with some people, you can't just sail into a harbor in a foreign country and start shooting up speedbaots that you feel _might_ be a threat. Harbors in Asia and the Middle East are crawling with all kinds of boats and collateral damage is a certainty. By the sound of it that admiral is planning to field a swarm of small autonomous boats that can be deployed by a warship to patrol around it, surround any intruder and block him, allowing the warship to escape, prevent the intdruder from escaping or just destroy him depending on the ROE in that particular location. What precisely is ididotic about that?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Basically, seems like a large amount of money for a system...
...and, in the "defense" arena, that's what makes the world go around.