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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.
Or... the hackers half way across the globe activate the kill switch and the swarm of boats turns into sitting ducks :D
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.
...heat ray.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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!
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.
"Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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).
If they dropped the 50 cal, made the microwave more traditional, and kept the flashing lights those would be AWESOME at a rave!
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.
Basically, seems like a large amount of money for a system...
...and, in the "defense" arena, that's what makes the world go around.
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
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).
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.
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.