15 ms·

USS Carl Vinson has first UAV command center install aboard an aircraft carrier

37 points by protomyth 11y ago

reustle 11y ago
Offtopic: Man, these military websites are embarrassingly old looking. Where is 18F when you need 'em? :-) https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm?opendocument https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Why don't you ask them how to help fix it? https://twitter.com/18F https://twitter.com/18F https://chat.18f.gov/ https://chat.18f.gov/
  - reustle 11y ago
    I've already sent it to a good friend who works at 18F
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - 0xffff2 11y ago
    Better yet, why don't you not? Surely there are much more important problems with the government's computer systems than that some websites "look old".
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      There are always going to be problems. There are always going to be people to help fix them. There will always be arguments over the priority in which to fix what.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      But shitty websites are still a problem. Not everyone can work on the most important problem at the same time.
      - knieveltech 11y ago
        Craigslist finds your argument unpersuasive.
- maliker 11y ago
  Old looking, but they are also super-fast and highly readable. I wish more sites were like this.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  This site is perfect. You don't have superfluous information. The highlight is the text, which is easily readable given font and background (including clear accessibility options). There is an accompanying picture which you can click for high resolution, and the navigation is above and simple to use. What more could you want?
  - alex_doom 11y ago
    You're joking right? It's a nightmare and far from perfect. Reading text is an exercise in self-loathing. https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm?opendocument https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm... In which I can see: * Text over a lined background. How is that helpful? It's a constant Moiré pattern while you're reading * Awful leading/line heights. * Unoptimal character count per line. Best practices is 50-70 depending on font size. * Tiny type! I have 20/20 vision and there is 11px type I'm trying to read on a 15" laptop. * Spurious text areas on the right. There's poor organization of text. * The welcome text is small and lost above the image. I could go on about the design, but that always subjective.
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      Everything is forgiven because it loads fast and doesn't have tons of Javascript, Flash and whatnot. It's readable enough, not bloated, and there's an understandable logic in how you navigate. Hmm, the US Navy knows how to navigate! That makes sense.
    - navbaker 11y ago
      It's purely for information dissemination, not trying to get people to be repeat customers or join the Navy. That's what navy.com is for.
actionwords 11y ago
having completely autonomous navigation, and vehicle maintenance, and flights, aboard an ACC would make them EXTREMELY more compact and efficient.
nostrademons 11y ago
This reminds me a lot of the development of aircraft carriers during WW1 and the interwar period. At first, all aircraft carriers were converted tankers/freighters/cruisers/etc, and aircraft were only used for scouting (much like drones here will be used as tankers). Then came the converted battlecruisers - the capital ships of the day, much like the USS Carl Vinson is now. Even then, people didn't trust carrier-based air power: Lexington and Saratoga had a full suite of 8-inch guns, in case they ended up in a surface engagement. It was only in the run up to war in the late-30s that major parties started commissioning purpose-built aircraft carriers, and then only in small numbers. I predict that in the next major conflict, aircraft carriers will be utterly useless, most of our big flat-tops will be sunk in the first couple months, and the bulk of combat will fall to a large fleet of inexpensive drones. And then the AI controlling them will gain sentience and we'll be forced to send one of these drones back in time to save John Connor so that he can become the leader of the Resistance as they take over humanity...
- djrogers 11y ago
  > most of our big flat-tops will be sunk in the first couple months Carriers as they exist today may well become as obsolete as the Battleships of WW2, but there isn't a navy in the world that can currently get enough firepower inside the envelope of a single U.S. carrier battlegroup to sink a carrier, let alone all of them.
  - dforrestwilson 11y ago
    Lob enough hypersonic missiles at something as big as a carrier, and things will get through. Momentum alone will carry a "defeated" missile to the target if it's going fast enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 The carrier is becoming a relic.
    - nickff 11y ago
      Current hypersonic missiles require extensive guidance to intercept their targets (i.e. hit them); momentum will carry a defeated hypersonic missile right into the water. The Dongfeng 21 is a ballistic missile, and not usually referred to as hypersonic; the latter usually refers to cruise missiles capable of travel at > Mach 3. In addition, the DF-21 is very unlikely to be used in a conventional war, as it may look like a tactical nuclear weapon. The DF-21 is also relatively easy to intercept, and could only be successful if used in a saturation attack; the Wikipedia article is written more like an advertisement than a fact-based informational piece.
vlehto 11y ago
Being UAV has relatively little to do with anything. Background: Typical 4th generation fighter is about 20 tons. 5 tons fuel, 3 tons engines, 30% structures = 6 tons. 2 tons payload. ~400kg internal cannon with rounds and mount. Ton of avionics and flares and such. Ton of radar+flir+optics etc. 100kg pilot with ~100 kg life support and ~100kg seat. ~some stuff for balance. Removing the pilot completely gets you 300kg more fuel. Which gives you ~7% more range. Change the requirements? No need for 9g load limit, 5G will suffice. And the engine could be medium bypass because you don't really want to go supersonic. -> 2 tons more fuel while fuel consumption is halved. -> 300% more range. And we didn't even touch power/weight ratios. They cut down carrier air wings in the 90's because Soviet Union collapsed. Viking had to go the Prowler was phased out. Viking had range og ~5000km Prowler had ~3000km. The current best is super Hornet with about ~2000km and F35 will not change that. Now that China is ramping up, you need replacement. One of the most important things done by previous slow and clumsy planes was the refueling. Because it could extend the ranges of other planes. Ranges matter. The pacific is ~10 000km across.
djsumdog 11y ago
What a waste. Does the US really need to dump more money into air craft carriers? The US carrier fleet is already 10 times larger than any other country in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_c... "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -Dwight D. Eisenhower
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  We feed and clothe ourselves pretty well now. So does most of the world. There's a name for arguments containing irrelevant comparisons - what is it? I don't recall.
  - djsumdog 11y ago
    What planet do you fucking live on?! 1% of Americas have been through the prison system, the homeless population in my city is worse than Sydney's was in 2012, the US keeps most of the middle east perpetually in war to support the western standard of living and the majority of the people on the planet don't have clean water to drink. It's becoming more and more difficult for American kids to go to University while programs in European countries are either affordable or free. Poke your head out of your bubble for like a minute!
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      ...says the young guy who doesn't remember how the world was 50 years ago.
  - wukerplank 11y ago
    You should travel more.
- sickbeard 11y ago
  The american empire doesn't exist because it's nice.
forgotAgain 11y ago
Why does the command center have to be on the ship? It seems equivalent to me as to saying the routing function for a delivery service has to be in the vehicle depot. It would seem a better idea to have ten automated UAV launch/recovery depot type ships, controlled by a central command then a single ultra expensive asset/target.
- jauer 11y ago
  Latency & self-sufficiency. The initial use seems to be as tankers for crewed aircraft. Local control means no satellite round trip delay and perhaps the ability to conduct refueling operations if satellites are broken.
niels_olson 11y ago
I submit most people here miss the larger point of aircraft carriers: you can park 4 acres of sovereign US territory 2 miles from most countries. We have more night-qualified fighter pilots on one ship than almost every other country has period. Stats like this go on for days. We invite flag officers from other militaries, including China and Russia, to come inspect our units. They go home and recommend peace at all costs.

37 points by protomyth 11y ago

Offtopic: Man, these military websites are embarrassingly old looking. Where is 18F when you need 'em? :-) https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm?opendocument https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm...

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Why don't you ask them how to help fix it? https://twitter.com/18F https://twitter.com/18F https://chat.18f.gov/ https://chat.18f.gov/
- reustle 11y ago
  I've already sent it to a good friend who works at 18F
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- 0xffff2 11y ago
  Better yet, why don't you not? Surely there are much more important problems with the government's computer systems than that some websites "look old".
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    There are always going to be problems. There are always going to be people to help fix them. There will always be arguments over the priority in which to fix what.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    But shitty websites are still a problem. Not everyone can work on the most important problem at the same time.
    - knieveltech 11y ago
      Craigslist finds your argument unpersuasive.
maliker 11y ago
Old looking, but they are also super-fast and highly readable. I wish more sites were like this.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
This site is perfect. You don't have superfluous information. The highlight is the text, which is easily readable given font and background (including clear accessibility options). There is an accompanying picture which you can click for high resolution, and the navigation is above and simple to use. What more could you want?
- alex_doom 11y ago
  You're joking right? It's a nightmare and far from perfect. Reading text is an exercise in self-loathing. https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm?opendocument https://foia.navy.mil/foia/webbas02.nsf/(vwwebpage)/home.htm... In which I can see: * Text over a lined background. How is that helpful? It's a constant Moiré pattern while you're reading * Awful leading/line heights. * Unoptimal character count per line. Best practices is 50-70 depending on font size. * Tiny type! I have 20/20 vision and there is 11px type I'm trying to read on a 15" laptop. * Spurious text areas on the right. There's poor organization of text. * The welcome text is small and lost above the image. I could go on about the design, but that always subjective.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    Everything is forgiven because it loads fast and doesn't have tons of Javascript, Flash and whatnot. It's readable enough, not bloated, and there's an understandable logic in how you navigate. Hmm, the US Navy knows how to navigate! That makes sense.
  - navbaker 11y ago
    It's purely for information dissemination, not trying to get people to be repeat customers or join the Navy. That's what navy.com is for.

actionwords 11y ago

having completely autonomous navigation, and vehicle maintenance, and flights, aboard an ACC would make them EXTREMELY more compact and efficient.

nostrademons 11y ago

This reminds me a lot of the development of aircraft carriers during WW1 and the interwar period. At first, all aircraft carriers were converted tankers/freighters/cruisers/etc, and aircraft were only used for scouting (much like drones here will be used as tankers). Then came the converted battlecruisers - the capital ships of the day, much like the USS Carl Vinson is now. Even then, people didn't trust carrier-based air power: Lexington and Saratoga had a full suite of 8-inch guns, in case they ended up in a surface engagement. It was only in the run up to war in the late-30s that major parties started commissioning purpose-built aircraft carriers, and then only in small numbers. I predict that in the next major conflict, aircraft carriers will be utterly useless, most of our big flat-tops will be sunk in the first couple months, and the bulk of combat will fall to a large fleet of inexpensive drones. And then the AI controlling them will gain sentience and we'll be forced to send one of these drones back in time to save John Connor so that he can become the leader of the Resistance as they take over humanity...

djrogers 11y ago
> most of our big flat-tops will be sunk in the first couple months Carriers as they exist today may well become as obsolete as the Battleships of WW2, but there isn't a navy in the world that can currently get enough firepower inside the envelope of a single U.S. carrier battlegroup to sink a carrier, let alone all of them.
- dforrestwilson 11y ago
  Lob enough hypersonic missiles at something as big as a carrier, and things will get through. Momentum alone will carry a "defeated" missile to the target if it's going fast enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 The carrier is becoming a relic.
  - nickff 11y ago
    Current hypersonic missiles require extensive guidance to intercept their targets (i.e. hit them); momentum will carry a defeated hypersonic missile right into the water. The Dongfeng 21 is a ballistic missile, and not usually referred to as hypersonic; the latter usually refers to cruise missiles capable of travel at > Mach 3. In addition, the DF-21 is very unlikely to be used in a conventional war, as it may look like a tactical nuclear weapon. The DF-21 is also relatively easy to intercept, and could only be successful if used in a saturation attack; the Wikipedia article is written more like an advertisement than a fact-based informational piece.

vlehto 11y ago

Being UAV has relatively little to do with anything. Background: Typical 4th generation fighter is about 20 tons. 5 tons fuel, 3 tons engines, 30% structures = 6 tons. 2 tons payload. ~400kg internal cannon with rounds and mount. Ton of avionics and flares and such. Ton of radar+flir+optics etc. 100kg pilot with ~100 kg life support and ~100kg seat. ~some stuff for balance. Removing the pilot completely gets you 300kg more fuel. Which gives you ~7% more range. Change the requirements? No need for 9g load limit, 5G will suffice. And the engine could be medium bypass because you don't really want to go supersonic. -> 2 tons more fuel while fuel consumption is halved. -> 300% more range. And we didn't even touch power/weight ratios. They cut down carrier air wings in the 90's because Soviet Union collapsed. Viking had to go the Prowler was phased out. Viking had range og ~5000km Prowler had ~3000km. The current best is super Hornet with about ~2000km and F35 will not change that. Now that China is ramping up, you need replacement. One of the most important things done by previous slow and clumsy planes was the refueling. Because it could extend the ranges of other planes. Ranges matter. The pacific is ~10 000km across.

djsumdog 11y ago

What a waste. Does the US really need to dump more money into air craft carriers? The US carrier fleet is already 10 times larger than any other country in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_c... "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
We feed and clothe ourselves pretty well now. So does most of the world. There's a name for arguments containing irrelevant comparisons - what is it? I don't recall.
- djsumdog 11y ago
  What planet do you fucking live on?! 1% of Americas have been through the prison system, the homeless population in my city is worse than Sydney's was in 2012, the US keeps most of the middle east perpetually in war to support the western standard of living and the majority of the people on the planet don't have clean water to drink. It's becoming more and more difficult for American kids to go to University while programs in European countries are either affordable or free. Poke your head out of your bubble for like a minute!
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    ...says the young guy who doesn't remember how the world was 50 years ago.
- wukerplank 11y ago
  You should travel more.
sickbeard 11y ago
The american empire doesn't exist because it's nice.

forgotAgain 11y ago

Why does the command center have to be on the ship? It seems equivalent to me as to saying the routing function for a delivery service has to be in the vehicle depot. It would seem a better idea to have ten automated UAV launch/recovery depot type ships, controlled by a central command then a single ultra expensive asset/target.

jauer 11y ago
Latency & self-sufficiency. The initial use seems to be as tankers for crewed aircraft. Local control means no satellite round trip delay and perhaps the ability to conduct refueling operations if satellites are broken.

niels_olson 11y ago

I submit most people here miss the larger point of aircraft carriers: you can park 4 acres of sovereign US territory 2 miles from most countries. We have more night-qualified fighter pilots on one ship than almost every other country has period. Stats like this go on for days. We invite flag officers from other militaries, including China and Russia, to come inspect our units. They go home and recommend peace at all costs.