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US Navy Develops Robot Boat Swarm To Overwhelm Enemies

Posted by samzenpus on from the angry-bees dept.

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."

96 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Until... by Coditor · · Score: 1

    ... someone drops a nuke on your HVU from 1000 miles away.

    1. Re:Until... by goodspeed64 · · Score: 2

      Or... the hackers half way across the globe activate the kill switch and the swarm of boats turns into sitting ducks :D

    2. Re:Until... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or ... sharks with frickin' lasers...

    3. Re:Until... by knightghost · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Chinese already developed ship killing missiles, making most large navy ships no better than targets. Unfortunately that won't change until you get the WW2-tactics trained admirals retired.

    4. Re:Until... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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).

    5. Re:Until... by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      If the US and China go to war, instead of dividing up the spoils as the Russians self-destruct, I will run barefoot down a street paved with broken glass to pop a pimple on a bobcat's balls with a hand full of barbed wire.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    6. Re:Until... by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2

      If the US and China go to war, instead of dividing up the spoils as the Russians self-destruct, I will run barefoot down a street paved with broken glass to pop a pimple on a bobcat's balls with a hand full of barbed wire.

      I would tend to agree with you, but I'll start looking for a venue just in case things go the other way...
      Shaving bobcat balls to find a pimply set is going to be the hard part.
      As for the rest, Vegas Baby!

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    7. Re:Until... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      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 would just turn half of Beijing into rubble with cruise missiles if the Chinese wiped out a carrier battle group. The Chinese economy would sink overnight - those big expensive high-tech factories take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to build and one bomb going off in the middle makes one worthless. Nobody outsources their business to a war zone.

      This is all fantasy scenario stuff. The Chinese aren't going to invade Taiwan, because the US is going to intervene, and about all the Chinese could do in retaliation is tick off the US population as thoroughly as the Japanese did in WWII. You can't just kill a few thousand soldiers in a single attack without basically getting into an unrestricted conventional war. Taiwan is a matter of national pride, so they're going to continue to posture over it and no doubt wrangle economically, but they're not going to get into a shooting war with the country that buys most of their manufactured goods.

    8. Re:Until... by MildlyTangy · · Score: 1

      The Chinese already developed ship killing missiles, making most large navy ships no better than targets. Unfortunately that won't change until you get the WW2-tactics trained admirals retired.

      The answer to ship killing missiles is to never let your high value ships get within range of the missiles in the first place. A carrier battle group's power lies in its aircraft, which have a longer range than the missiles. Intelligence is key.

    9. Re:Until... by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      This, of course, assumes that the defending fleet doesn't have any effective anti-missile defenses. Subs would be better, of course, if it weren't for our extensive ASW capability. You don't think that the people in charge of the USN haven't thought about how to protect their ships, do you?

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    10. Re:Until... by gtall · · Score: 1

      I don't think that is the Chinese model. They, rather, intend to build up to such an extent and any effort to "defend" what's left of Taiwan will be too costly for the U.S. to consider. In the meantime, they aim to make the U.S. Pacific Fleet much more expensive to defend and keep deployed. Those pinpricks around the S. China Sea are meant to see how much work they have to do to keep the U.S. Fleet occupied.

      And taking out Beijing would only cause them to take out Los Angeles.

    11. Re:Until... by RandomFactor · · Score: 1

      Hmmm...

      --
      --- Mercutio was right.
    12. Re:Until... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      And taking out Beijing would only cause them to take out Los Angeles.

      My point was that the Chinese don't have the ability to take out Los Angeles without the use of ICBMs. If they launch ICBMs at LA, then the US will launch land-based ICBMS at every Chinese military target before the Chinese ones are even at midcourse, and then everybody gets to find out what was in the Chinese warheads while the US nuclear warheads are halfway to China. If the Chinese didn't launch their nuclear arsenal in the first strike, they won't get a second one. The US would save the SLBMs for whatever comes next. Nobody plays games with ICBMs because the game theory basically boils down to "when one flies, they all fly." Again, fantasy hypotheses - the Chinese would never launch an ICBM against the US.

      US attacks on the Chinese mainland would be launched by subs - a capability the Chinese basically don't have right now, and which is much harder to counter than sinking an aircraft carrier since subs rely on stealth to a much greater degree.

      Also, carriers aren't quite as vulnerable as people think after a war starts. You can't target a carrier with a missile unless you have a sense of where it is. We take that for granted because satellite surveillance is ubiquitous. However, once a real war starts, the first thing everybody will do is shoot down everybody else's satellites and as a result the human race won't be able to put anything in orbit for a few centuries due to debris. Finding a naval task force at sea without the use of satellites is a much harder problem, and one which the US has a major advantage at due to its large navy.

    13. Re:Until... by rezme · · Score: 1

      And taking out Beijing would only cause them to take out Los Angeles.

      Not seeing the downside here...

    14. Re:Until... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Ship-killing missiles predate the Chinese naval expansion by a long time. A German attack in 1943 with ship-killing missiles sank the new Italian battleship Roma, and badly damaged HMS Warspite, an older British battleship. If you're willing to count torpedoes as underwater ship-killing missiles, you can go even further back.

      Also, WWII-tactics admirals have pretty much retired by now. Anybody who got any sort of training in WWII is retired now, and postwar the USN moved into a different sort of environment, where the main possible enemy was the Soviet Union, which was a much different and more modern threat.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    15. Re:Until... by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

      Who said anyone has the ability to shoot down satellites? I thought star wars was a bust.

    16. Re:Until... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Both the US and Russians have destroyed satellites recently in demonstrations. In the Russian case they did it in a manner that created quite a bit of long-lasting debris. Nobody really wants to brag about this capability, but shooting down a satellite isn't really all that different from shooting down a high-altitude plane - the velocities are just much higher.

      Whether the Chinese could pull it off right now is uncertain. The US clearly has the capability, and in an actual serious war they would certainly consider the pros and cons of destroying all satellites operated by anybody who might provide data to an enemy (including commercial operators who don't cooperate - but they will since they make more money with half the customers than with none of the customers and you can't really be neutral in a major war). I think the main US consideration would be losses to their own and allies satellite network due to debris, etc.

      Of course, nobody is going to start shooting down satellites unless we're talking about a serious war - that is one where most likely tens of thousands to millions of people will die.

    17. Re:Until... by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

      Thank you for explaining.

  2. Seems risky. by iamwhoiamtoday · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Seems risky. by vakuona · · Score: 1

      You can encrypt the signal and have a key that is constantly renewed so that any signal/key that has already been used once cannot be used again. That way, anyone who doesn't have the correct original key/keys can never take control of the autonomous craft.

    2. Re:Seems risky. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Even better, use fast wide-band frequency hopping. Any attempt at jamming would have to vastly increase its ERP to keep spectral power density sufficient to jam it. If you also use high-gain steered satellite dishes, that's again extra jamming or interception resistance.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Seems risky. by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

      (Mal)

      rofl'd hard at this. You fucking geek.

      Which is so much more fun than computer geek. On the down side, upgrading your equipment is way more complicated... (apologies to Mr. Universe for how the thread twisted)

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    4. Re:Seems risky. by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      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).

      It would ward off the 100% of successful attacks. How many attacks have US naval vessels actually come under in the last decade? These boats are probably going to save more lives than the billion-dollar antiaircraft defense systems they're carrying.

      This is about pushing the perimeter away from the boat. They can challenge approaching vessels from a distance, and it gives them the option of getting in close without putting the ship at risk. I'm sure these little boats could be evaded/destroyed/jammed/etc, but at that point the intruder has demonstrated hostile intent and they'll be sunk before they can get anywhere near the real target.

      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.

      Hijacking a military drone is not a trivial matter. All communications will almost certainly be encrypted and authenticated, and tested by folks like the NSA. Jamming is a more likely possibility, but even that isn't necessarily easy, and that just alerts the ship being defended that an attack is underway.

      This is about defense in depth. You keep everybody at arms length, and then anybody who tries to get close can be treated as unfriendly. It is like putting up a chain link fence on the prison property line, with a big wall further back. Anybody walking around at the base of the wall has already broken into the property and can be shot on sight.

    5. Re:Seems risky. by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      You really need those less than lethal solutions wheee possible and this seems to fill a void where if an approaching boat doesnt stop for some reason, it can be addressed without fireing shots.

      A plus side is that you could realistically determine hostility and intent by how they react to the robot boats.

      Oh, and BTW, this would likely replace other manned boats already in use for existing navy vessels and make it logistically easier to add non lethal protection to high value non military vessels subject to pirates and such.

    6. Re:Seems risky. by Nehmo · · Score: 1

      Even better, use fast wide-band frequency hopping....

      Making drone control communications secure is certainly an important subject, but cutting-edge for Al Qaeda downloading the Allahu Akbar (god is great) app for their cellphone. The previous attempted attack against the USS Sullivan failed because the attack boat was so overloaded it sank. And the USS Cole could have easily defended against the attack by using a more cautious and aggressive rules of engagement.

      --
      (||) Nehmo (||)
    7. Re:Seems risky. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Hijacking or listening in on a drone is simple by comparison. The drone is supposed to be usable by infantry on the battlefield, after sitting around for years, which means that it has to be simple and robust to use. The autonomous boat will be operated by a Navy ship. It will have to have some regular maintenance, and it doesn't have to be nearly as simple. Encrypting and authenticating communications is trivial nowadays.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  3. How would this have protected the USS Cole? by apparently · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by radarskiy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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
    3. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by mossy+the+mole · · Score: 1

      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.

      If being able to fire on boats (or use a drone swarm like the proposed) is going to be a requirement for a us ship to visit a port, there are going to a lot less ports for them to refuel at.

    4. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by khallow · · Score: 1

      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?

      The part where you have autonomous boats running around in a busy harbor blocking and possibly destroying other boats.

    5. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      Sure.

      It occurs to me though, that in the drone era when boats can be operated remotely for defensive purposes, well,

      remote airborne malevolent influence delivery Vehicles stand a bettor's chance of being ubiquitously available.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    6. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by AqD · · Score: 1

      And a fleet could be severely damaged by that in a real war. Small robot boats are really only useful in intercepting illegal immigrants or smugglers.

      Or they could be used to perform suicide bombing attack just like that, by pretending to be fish boats?

    7. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      The part where you have autonomous boats running around in a busy harbor blocking and possibly destroying other boats.

      Think about it. You're a peaceful merchant, or just a guy going sailing. A fast-attack boat sails up to you, points a 50 cal at you, and shouts on the bullhorn "cut off your engine immediately and put your hands in the air." What are you likely to do? You're going to stick your hands in the air, and thus you aren't likely to get shot. The guy controlling the drone isn't worried about never seeing his family again, so he isn't going to have a twitchy trigger finger. Then you sort the mess out and get an apology.

      The whole point is to enforce a perimeter far enough away that the folks working the guns can take their time and work things out.

      Countries that don't want to deal with this can just choose not to admit US warships into their ports.

    8. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by khallow · · Score: 2

      Think about it. You're a peaceful merchant, or just a guy going sailing. A fast-attack boat sails up to you, points a 50 cal at you, and shouts on the bullhorn "cut off your engine immediately and put your hands in the air." What are you likely to do? You're going to stick your hands in the air, and thus you aren't likely to get shot. The guy controlling the drone isn't worried about never seeing his family again, so he isn't going to have a twitchy trigger finger. Then you sort the mess out and get an apology.

      And this never goes wrong, right? You don't get a pilot who doesn't speak English or is deaf. Maybe the rudder broke and they can't cut the engine. Or maybe they're having a heart attack right now and are five minutes from death. Or maybe they're a terrorist faking one of the above and just trying to get their boat in close before they blow it up.

      My view is that if the security situation is so bad that you need a screen of automated boats, then you probably shouldn't use that harbor except in dire emergencies and get out as soon as you can. This scenario heavily favors the guys trying to ram with explosive-laden boats.

      They can change their tactics and come up with other ways to cause trouble. For example, they could have some dude climb on a roof of an apartment complex and start sniping those little boats. The boats could be hacked and then you have a bunch of remote controlled killing machines running through a busy harbor. Maybe they just float a few improvised mines in the harbor (for bonus points take out one or more US minesweeper ships first).

      Point is if such attacks are common enough that you're looking at special automated defenses from just this sort of attack, then the ship is in a vulnerable position from a variety of other attacks for which those defenses may not work as well.

    9. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by Nehmo · · Score: 1

      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...

      The rules of engagement for the Cole were clearly incorrect for the time and place. Bombed US warship was defended by sailors with unloaded guns It reminded me of the barracks bombing in Beirut.

      --
      (||) Nehmo (||)
    10. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by ixuzus · · Score: 1

      And unless the state has specifically permitted this by legislation or given you an ironclad immunity deal (let's face it, not many countries are going to be happy to give foreign navies the right to point large guns at their civilians without recourse) such actions would be highly inadvisable. If you point a gun at another vessel and demand it cut its engines while in port you better be able to make a very strong case that it was the threat otherwise you may be spending a lot longer on shore leave than anticipated. In my own jurisdiction those actions would likely have you on the hook for assault and false imprisonment

    11. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Think about it. You're a peaceful merchant, or just a guy going sailing. A fast-attack boat sails up to you, points a 50 cal at you, and shouts on the bullhorn "cut off your engine immediately and put your hands in the air." What are you likely to do? You're going to stick your hands in the air, and thus you aren't likely to get shot. The guy controlling the drone isn't worried about never seeing his family again, so he isn't going to have a twitchy trigger finger. Then you sort the mess out and get an apology.

      And this never goes wrong, right? You don't get a pilot who doesn't speak English or is deaf. Maybe the rudder broke and they can't cut the engine. Or maybe they're having a heart attack right now and are five minutes from death. Or maybe they're a terrorist faking one of the above and just trying to get their boat in close before they blow it up.

      Sure it will go wrong, but never in a way that results in the US ship being sunk, which is the point. Even if the guy on the boat is deaf, after enough deaf people get shot up in their fishing boats the local deaf fishing community will figure out how to go fishing without getting shot.

      The US doesn't build stuff like this for good community relations - they do it to protect their ships.

    12. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      And unless the state has specifically permitted this by legislation or given you an ironclad immunity deal (let's face it, not many countries are going to be happy to give foreign navies the right to point large guns at their civilians without recourse) such actions would be highly inadvisable. If you point a gun at another vessel and demand it cut its engines while in port you better be able to make a very strong case that it was the threat otherwise you may be spending a lot longer on shore leave than anticipated. In my own jurisdiction those actions would likely have you on the hook for assault and false imprisonment

      The ship wouldn't be in port without the permission of the local government. The guy opening fire would only due so under the chain of command, and the local police wouldn't be able to do anything about it since everybody issuing orders would be in the middle of a US naval vessel, if they're even in the same country. The officers who made the call would report back to their superiors.

      I'm sure the US navy makes arrangements with the governments where it sends its ships regarding how crisis situations get handled. Most likely the local government will express suitable outrage on TV and then reassure their diplomatic counterparts that everything is fine.

      Another likely scenario is that the US spends billions on these boats but doesn't prevent anybody from approaching their vessels to avoid an incident, making the investment in these vessels worthless other than as pork.

    13. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Countries that don't want to deal with this can just choose not to admit US warships into their ports.

      I think by your description, that would be everyone.

      I'd be shocked if it turned out that way. Why do these countries even want US warships in their ports in the first place? Those reasons aren't going to go away just because there is a risk a few local fishermen could get shot up. They don't exactly contribute heavily to political campaigns in democratic nations, and they aren't likely to be likely to related to the local despot elsewhere.

      This is like suggesting that the result of all these NSA revelations is that countries are going to take steps to keep the NSA out. I'm sure 99% of these countries already knew what the NSA was up to already, and likely invited them in the first place. The outrage is just a show for the voters.

    14. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Clearly the US needs a larger defense budget so we can overwhelm any other drone operator. 100:1 or so to start with, and we can negotiate up from there. ;-)

    15. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by khallow · · Score: 1

      Sure it will go wrong, but never in a way that results in the US ship being sunk, which is the point.

      Unless of course, they kill some innocent people a few times and then dial back the aggressiveness just in time for the terrorist attack. It can be worse than the status quo.

    16. Re:How would this have protected the USS Cole? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      The automated boats don't need to pull other boats over, just keep them away from their ship. This can be done by several means including putting themselves in the way.

      The tactics you're suggesting the bad guys use don't look good for me. Sniping at the autonomous boats isn't going to be very effective, and will put the USN on high alert. Hacking the boats will be really, really difficult. Mining the harbor is an act of war, and isn't that easy to do without being noticed.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  4. You had me at... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...heat ray.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    1. Re:You had me at... by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Does the microwave beam still make that "ding" sound when it's done roasting the aggressor? I hope they've left that in.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    2. Re:You had me at... by LessThanObvious · · Score: 1

      I love the smell of roasted enemies in the morning. In the next twenty years I predict we will see actual robot soldiers in battle. They wouldn't be humanoid because two legs doesn't work well. They will be more like dogs or something with many wheels, but I can see it. Imagine facing an attack force of a thousand robots on the ground that can run 40 miles per hour over varied terrain and have laser guided weaponry.

  5. Re:A little wide-band jamming... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

    And then watch as all 13 guard boats go sailing off to Iran...

    No, what you will see in a couple of weeks is a photoshopped image of 3000 toy sailboats with rockets and cannons mounted every which way overwhelming a US warship. After a bit more time goes by we will see a half scale replica made from styrofoam and RC boat kits.

    They will CLAIM is was all stolen from the US (or Israel) but it's mostly lifted from an old comic book.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  6. Eh, been selling those since 2011 by spiritplumber · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... No, really, check it out. I still have a few for sale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
  7. This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

    The Persian gulf. The issue there is that lots of tiny boats could swarm US ships and destroy them. This is an Iranian plan by the way. To use the proximity of the US to the shore and just hundreds of little boats. The drone swarm idea appears to be a counter strategy.

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    1. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

      We calculate with at least a 98.71 percent probability that massed mutalisks can be successfully neutralized by well placed psychonic storms from our templar.

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    2. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

      We are currently increasing our map control by picking off defensive strong points. After that whole thing with Carter and the special forces, we are a little more cautious about deep strikes. More likely, we'll go around the edges knocking things out until we can bring a deathball with massed carriers and void rays into just overwhelm.

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    3. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      The Persian gulf. The issue there is that lots of tiny boats could swarm US ships and destroy them. This is an Iranian plan by the way. To use the proximity of the US to the shore and just hundreds of little boats. The drone swarm idea appears to be a counter strategy.

      I think that ships like this would be more useful for investigating approaching traffic and warning it off so that fishing boats and such don't get accidentally destroyed.

      If you wanted to deal with swarms of attack craft I think this is only perhaps useful as a first step. The problem is that these things are just armed with machine guns, which is plenty to sink a small craft at close range, but if you send 200 speed boats against an aircraft carrier and one is carrying an antiship missile that is lethal at 20 miles, then I don't think you can count on stopping that attack with a bunch of drones with short-range weapons.

      I think the better option is a medium-range missile system that is inexpensive to deploy in quantity. You can use the fancy Harpoons and such for the fancy warships that have armor and air defenses and all that (and which are so expensive that the enemy only owns a handful). When the enemy sends in 200 zodiacs then you basically just need some cheap slow rockets that fire off in a ballistic trajectory, glide in to a designated target (radar or maybe laser, or maybe even optical), and set off a warhead not much bigger than a hand grenade. You just need a few thousand of them manufactured for $500 apiece. They're not going to do more than scratch the paint on a real warship and maybe a well-trained soldier with a shotgun could shoot them out of the sky, but the enemy won't be able to field hundreds of attack boats capable of defending against a system like this.

      Now, you could very well use boats like this as a launch platform for these cheap anti-ship rockets, to further reduce their range/cost. It wouldn't be too hard to station a cheap defense drone every mile along a perimeter outside of the enemy's effective missile range.

    4. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

      The Iranians have wargamed attacking US fleets in the straight. Their favored tactic will be swarms of small ships armed with anti ship weapons. To protect the carrier group, we must have a means of quickly killing off hundreds of scattered ships before they can close the range.

      Do you have a missile system that can fire about a thousand or so missiles?

      Not terribly convinced it is practical.

      --
      I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
    5. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      LOL at the notion of $500 guided missiles. Anti-tank missiles with a range of a mile or two cost almost six figures.

      These missiles don't have to destroy a tank.

    6. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Do you have a missile system that can fire about a thousand or so missiles?

      From my post: "You just need a few thousand of them manufactured for $500 apiece." The whole point is to fight swarms of cheap bots with swarms of cheap missiles. I don't see why this wouldn't be practical. What necessarily makes a missile expensive? It is a small warhead (cheap), a solid fuel rocket engine (cheap), a sensor of some kind (probably cheap, depending on design), and a computer (cheap). The cost is in the design/etc, but that gets cheaper the more you make.

    7. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

      Because a missile able to home on a target and carry a heavy enough payload to kill even a small boat is going to cost more then 500 dollars. Consider what one of those cheap drones cost. Well... that is basically what a guided missile is doing except it explodes when it reaches its destination.

      For something like this you going to want lots of machine guns all able to independently target in different directions.

      Ironically, a WW2 US destroyer wouldn't have a problem with this situation. They were covered in machine guns and anti aircraft guns. This was before missile defenses so the way you protected your ship was by putting enough anti aircraft guns on it that you could protect yourself to some extent. Given that the japanese would intentionally crash bomb laden planes into your ships they couldn't be allowed to get even one pass on you because that could sink your ship. So the solution was triple the number of guns on the ship so that there was such a withering volley of fire coming out of the boat that not even a kamikaze could get through.

      As a result of that... if the Iranians tried this tactic on such a ship they'd all be annihilated. A modern carrier group with a swarm of drones around it might be able to fight off such an attack as well. It might be cheaper to just put WW2 close defense guns on our ships. But no one is gong to do that... it isn't futury enough for them.

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    8. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      So the solution was triple the number of guns on the ship so that there was such a withering volley of fire coming out of the boat that not even a kamikaze could get through....As a result of that... if the Iranians tried this tactic on such a ship they'd all be annihilated. A modern carrier group with a swarm of drones around it might be able to fight off such an attack as well. It might be cheaper to just put WW2 close defense guns on our ships. But no one is gong to do that... it isn't futury enough for them.

      Uh, I think you misunderstand the tactic. This isn't about kamikaze attacks where the explosives are on the boats - they probably couldn't get close enough to do anything unless there were thousands of boats to attack a single ship, since the ships do have 50 cal machine guns and often radar-controlled cannons.

      The tactic is to swarm a target with boats, with some of those boats carrying anti-ship missiles. The boats don't need to get within range of small arms and cannons. They can't afford to equip EVERY boat with a missile. So, they send in 200 boats, and 3 of them have anti-ship missiles with something like a 10-mile range. If you sink 90 of those boats, chances are that 1-2 with missiles are still intact, and when they get within 10 miles they can fire a missile at you.

      The tactic works because they force you to engage many targets with sophisticated long-range weapons, while only needing to invest in equipping a few of them with similar weapons. They have to buy 3 exocets, and we have to launch 250 harpoons to be likely to take them out.

      It is a kamikaze attack, but of a different kind.

    9. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

      Modern carrier groups have weapons to drop anti ship missiles fired from 10 miles away. What is more, a mere 3 missiles could be stopped very easily by an Aegis Destroyer.

      The missile you proposed has a max speed of about 700 MPH and entered service in the 1980s.

      If that is the threat then the navy doesn't have to worry about it.

      Possibly I have misunderstood what they are worried about... but it can't be some outdated french missile from the 80s fired at a range long enough for the prodigious missile defense systems of a carrier group to intercept.

      --
      I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
    10. Re:This is meant largely to counter threats in... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Agree. I suspect the issue isn't that they'd drive boats up with explosives so much that they would be able to get close enough to fire a missile from a short enough range that it couldn't be intercepted. The minimum engagement range of an AA missile has to be larger than an anti-ship missile, if for no other reason than the latter can be pointed at the ship while the former is often launched vertically, which means it has to follow a curved arc before the target is in front of the seeker. You also can't fire the AA missile until AFTER the anti-ship missile is fired, which means that even if you launch from a launcher capable of pointing at the target the launcher still has to be turned towards it since until the launch you don't know which of the 47 incoming boats to point it at.

      I don't think hundreds of boats loaded with explosives could actually get in close enough. Certainly the WWII defense would stop that, and I imagine that even a single radar-controlled cannon on a small warship could sink quite a few small boats at the edge of visual range. Nobody is going to be driving a zodiac into a hail of 50 cal either. I'd also question whether you could really find that many people determined to mount a suicide attack at once. Sure, you'd get lots of people claiming that they would do it, but when you give the order to go how many would take that patrol boat and head for someplace where they'd escape prosecution?

  8. ED-209 by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  9. Robot Assassins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When robots are able to assassinate people, it will be harder to catch the perpetrators. Also with automated cars, you could easily load the car with explosives and have it drive somewhere and it could be difficult to catch perpetrator as well.

  10. they said before WWII by raymorris · · Score: 2

    The Japanese already developed ship killing airplanes, making most large navy ships no better than targets. Unfortunately that won't change until you get the WW1-tactics trained admirals retired.

    Ftfy to match what they said before WWII. Then some smart person put airplanes ON the ships. So it was mobile airfields off of Japan's coast vs fixed land-based airfields in Japan. No fighting in the U.S. once we went to war. If we could figure out a way to put missiles on ships, it could be our missiles on mobile platforms off their coast vs their missiles in their territory. Again keeping the fight several thousand miles away from the US.

  11. Re:Meh by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Congrats. Your vessels are no longer allowed into any foreign harbors.

    HAHAHAHA "allowed" HAHAHAHA

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  12. awesome! by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    If they dropped the 50 cal, made the microwave more traditional, and kept the flashing lights those would be AWESOME at a rave!

  13. Sounds like Eurisko by AsOldAsFortran · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:Meh by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.
  15. Red Team Wins! by hirschma · · Score: 1

    Looks like Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper was finally proven correct.

  16. You've hit the nail on the head... by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Basically, seems like a large amount of money for a system...

    ...and, in the "defense" arena, that's what makes the world go around.

  17. friggin' laser beams by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    You've got to give it to the defense industry. They are endlessly inventive when it comes to coming up with ways to spend our money. If it wasn't for the fact that it usually results in hundreds of thousands of innocents dead, it would be kind of cool.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  18. Or... Check this radical idea... by denzacar · · Score: 1

    They send out a decoy first.

    And while all 13 boats are busy flashing lights and playing Metallica at the decoy boat, the other boat does whatever it was planning to do.
    For the price of 13 robotic boats they've raised the cost of an attack to... stealing two boats instead of one?

    And then the decoy rushes at the boats around it and explodes, taking out or damaging at least some of the robotic boats as well.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
    1. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by C0R1D4N · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They want to stop another USS Cole incident, how about this radical idea. Put some frikkin armor on the ships. We went from 12in armor around the entire ship to 2.5in armor around vital spaces only. It's absurd. Our entire Navy is just one big expensive glass cannon (except without the cannon part, we got rid of those too).

    2. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by Jeremi · · Score: 2

      And while all 13 boats are busy flashing lights and playing Metallica at the decoy boat, the other boat does whatever it was planning to do.

      Or... perhaps the software designers have considered that possibility and programmed the boats so that some will remain on patrol, and/or some will break off to handle the second attacker?

      They aren't complete idiots, you know. If they were, the drones wouldn't be able to steer.

      For the price of 13 robotic boats they've raised the cost of an attack to... stealing two boats instead of one?

      You've raised the cost of an attack to stealing N boats (where N is the number of boats required to overrun the drones' defense) plus (more importantly) N crews. My guess is that finding people who are both willing to go on a suicide mission AND proficient at piloting a boat and setting off explosives is the bottleneck, not the theft/purchase of a boat.

      Plus even if/when someone does get past the drones, it's likely that bypassing the drones will have bought the ship enough time to bring up its internal defenses to deal with them. (come to think of it, perhaps they should convert a few dozen of these to land duty and place them on the White House lawn...)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    3. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by gtall · · Score: 2

      Nope. If we armored ships like the battleships of WWII, they'd be fat, slow, and cost too much to keep supplied with power. Modern Navies have moved way beyond that. Now the ticket is to kill the enemy first because no matter how you armor it, the enemy will always have a missile that can kill your ship.

    4. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      Because 12 inches of armor doesn't help at all against modern 'ship-killer' missiles? Hell, plenty of those gigantic battleships were sunk in WWII by ordinary torpedoes of the era.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    5. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by saleenS281 · · Score: 1

      You're assuming a the enemy is another nation. The people who perpetrated the USS Cole did not and still would not have a missile that could kill a ship with 12" of armor.

    6. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by saleenS281 · · Score: 1

      Assuming the enemy decides to show up with one boat. Which is unlikely.

    7. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by saleenS281 · · Score: 1

      You're right, people waging these attacks are generally idiots. Which is why the Cole bombing failed. Nope, wait, they aren't. If our defense technology has that big a glaring hole, it's not going to be very difficult to subvert.

    8. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by denzacar · · Score: 1

      You've raised the cost of an attack to stealing N boats (where N is the number of boats required to overrun the drones' defense) plus (more importantly) N crews. My guess is that finding people who are both willing to go on a suicide mission AND proficient at piloting a boat and setting off explosives is the bottleneck, not the theft/purchase of a boat.

      Plus even if/when someone does get past the drones, it's likely that bypassing the drones will have bought the ship enough time to bring up its internal defenses to deal with them. (come to think of it, perhaps they should convert a few dozen of these to land duty and place them on the White House lawn...)

      Nope.

      You don't need more than two crews nor do you need to overrun the drones.
      One boat dragging another boat, which detaches from the main boat and continues to approach the main ship or the drones on inertia alone, is two potential threats.
      Threats which drones have to control by limiting the movement of the potential threat - NOT the other way around.
      Attack boats don't have to engage a single drone - just keep it busy.

      And with each additional boat, which can be added cheaply and with an inexhaustible supply of boats to steal or even purchase or make (anything that floats is a threat) the number of potential threats rises easily while the number of drones remains constant.
      If their effectiveness is at maximum at 13:1, falls to 50% at 13:2...
      It is obvious that at 6 decoys + 1 attack boat they can no longer block or intercept all boats at the same time.
      That's when only 6 boats are covered by 2 drones each, and one drone is left covering the +1 boat.
      Now, if you're not sure, just add another boat.

      To encircle one boat they need the minimum of 4 drones.
      To block it from advancing towards the ship they need 3.
      2 drones per boat can only block 180 degrees of area around the incoming boat - and the same goes for the area they can protect around the main ship.
      So, at 13 drones, 7 is the magic number. And that's for all drones being exactly the same. Which they are not.

      Now... Instead of boats, just drag behind a boat a barge loaded with crates.
      Have it detach from the boat, spilling floating crates in the water. Or make it balloons. Or make it a line of floating "dangerous looking" oily color. Now set it on fire.

      They are trying to win an asymmetric war where the goal is NOT to win but to keep engaging the opponent - by providing the enemy with more targets.
      Enemy does not care if it kills soldiers or just damages property.
      The "Glorious goal" for them is to die fighting their enemy.

      And assuming that US admirals are not all complete retards - this is an attempt to wage a bloodless war.
      For the US side, at least.
      Except, the enemy is just fine with shooting empty boats with RPGs and kidnapping and beheading journalists and tourists from time to time - until they provoke another bloody war.

      --
      Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
    9. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      12-inch armor was never around the entire ship. The bow area in particular is thinner, has less buoyancy, and can't take the extra weight.

      Moreover, belt armor isn't going to protect against torpedoes or bombs or anti-ship missiles, which are the main threats. You're advocating adding a tremendous amount of weight to counter a minor threat.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    10. Re:Or... Check this radical idea... by Sciath · · Score: 1

      The more armor, the heavier, the more costly to operate, with questionable end results because you'd have to upgrade armor on nearly every ship to guard against attack. The boat swarm idea may very well be more cost effective. A more diversified attack/defensive force could be more successful by spreading out military but coordinated small units makes it much more difficult for an enemy to concentrate its force against any one target. Assuming the boat swarm units are smaller, faster, relatively light weight they could very well have results superior to monstrous single units with heavy armor.

      --
      "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
  19. 14 years by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    If we had this capability there on that day [14 years ago]. We could have saved that ship. I never want to see the USS Cole happen again.

    Obviously if US navy managed to do without this solution for 14 years, that means it is not such a breakthrough

  20. Re:April Fools by Velox_SwiftFox · · Score: 1

    I'll admit I was surprised by this proposal for the Zergling Class ships...

  21. The Terminator by speedplane · · Score: 1

    Is it just coincidence that the embedded YouTube video has a terminator style soundtrack?

    --
    Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
  22. Re:The US should be worrying more... by C0R1D4N · · Score: 1

    Except this one time

  23. Re:Meh by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Claiming that 50 meters around a ship is US territory and then driving into another country's sovereign territory is literally an invasion.

    We have already altered the deal in many cases.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  24. Re:A little wide-band jamming... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    On August 29th 2014, Skynet became aware of the oceans and promptly took over control of the sea lanes....

  25. What a waste of Tax money. by el_jake · · Score: 1

    This has been tried before. A single high power multi spectrum RF jammer can stop the command and control and inter-communication of the swarm... Hell you can buy one from Ebay!

    --
    In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
    1. Re:What a waste of Tax money. by gtall · · Score: 1

      Gee, you should tell the Navy this. I'm sure it never occurred to them.

  26. Numbers by Old+Aylesburian · · Score: 1

    40 people will keep a better watch than one. Consider: 40 total with one asleep leaves 39 active lookouts. One person, asleep, leaves zero.

  27. Why not just shoot them and be done with it? by Ihlosi · · Score: 1

    I'm still not convinced why you need a dozen computer-controlled boats with toys when you could just shot the presumed enemy vessel.

    1. Re:Why not just shoot them and be done with it? by dave420 · · Score: 1

      You notice you wrote "presumed", right? If you didn't, then there's your answer. If you did realise you wrote that, then you suck as a human being.

    2. Re:Why not just shoot them and be done with it? by Ihlosi · · Score: 1
      You notice you wrote "presumed", right?

      If you presume another vessel to be sufficiently hostile to unleash a swarm of robot boats armed with, among other things,

      ".50-caliber machine gun and a microwave direct energy weapon or heat ray."

      on it, then you might as well give it a warning shot and, if it doesn't react, shoot it with a real gun.

  28. Re:The river Thalweg by dave420 · · Score: 1

    It's a feature of a river, namely the deepest part. It appears to come from the German for 'Valley' ('Thal'/'Tal') and 'Way' or 'Path' ('Weg').

  29. Popcorn bomb! by Dareth · · Score: 1

    Needs a popcorn gun to fill ship with popcorn, then hit it with the microwave cannon! Imagine how much popcorn they could pop in just 30 seconds.

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  30. Sounds Great! by sudon't · · Score: 1

    What could possibly go wrong?

    --
    -- sudon't

    Air-ride Equipped

  31. Re: Office of Naval Research (ONR) by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

    It's still annoying.