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US Navy destroyers are equipped with CIWS and AA missiles designed to engage multiple supersonic sea skimming cruise missiles simultaneously. If the destroyers

US Navy destroyers are equipped with CIWS and AA missiles designed to engage multiple supersonic sea skimming cruise missiles simultaneously. If the destroyers had felt that they were in any danger they would have quickly made mincemeat out of the UAVs. Still curious to know who operated their (fairly capable) drones in such a brazen manner though.

wahern 6y ago
Here's what CIWS look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system Do those things have the capability to attack such tiny targets that are already close in? We're talking about something the size and speed of a bird. By the time you realize it's not a bird it's probably already on top of you. Moreover, they're small enough that they wouldn't represent a substantial threat to a ship in and of themselves (as compared to, say, an explosive-laden dinghy), and so perhaps not necessarily the kind of target that would've been specified for these weapons systems. I would imagine defenses for such small UAVs would be more in the vein of electronic countermeasures.
- hcurtiss 6y ago
  Did I miss some description of the size of the UAVs?
  - wahern 6y ago
    Fair point. Based on the admittedly thin circumstantial evidence in the article, I assumed relatively small craft. For example, 1) Why would a Carnival cruise ship feel the need to disclaim involvement for anything except a small, COTS drone? (IOW, presumably they at least believed they could have been such small drones.) 2) 4+ were spotted together. Wouldn't those be audible, especially if much larger than COTS drones? 3) The lights ("white light", "red flashing light") suggests COTS drones, especially because the cruise ship also noticed them. If they were special purpose military or intelligence drones, why keep the lights on? Granted, the supposed distances involved suggest otherwise, but the article never establishes why they believed the drones were necessarily flown such distances. Rather, it seems those distances are based on the presumption that the drones were flown from one of the ships with active AIS. But that's a rather dubious assumption in the context of someone buzzing military ships w/ multiple drones.
    - nonameiguess 6y ago
      The Navy knows every ship that is anywhere close to it, whether or not it has its AIS turned on, even if it's underwater.
      - wahern 6y ago
        The Navy can know, if it wants. Cataloging every pleasure boat and fish trawler days or weeks after the fact is something else entirely. Also, the Navy's recent history of situational awareness isn't the greatest. See, e.g., https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crashes-japan-cause-mccain/ https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crash...
- rblatz 6y ago
  So I thought about it, and even if a small drone was loaded with explosives it really couldn’t damage a war ship. Unless it attacked the sensors. A shaped charge hitting the EOSS, the radar dome, or parts of the Aegis system’s sensor array could potentially cripple the ship’s ability to defend itself.
  - roamerz 6y ago
    No not by itself. Honestly I know very little about modern explosives but I could imagine a swarm of drones, made of or carrying explosives could converge on a critical section of a target additively making a substantial explosive force.
    - topkai22 6y ago
      I know just enough about material science to say probably not. A munition needs to break or penetrate a surface to be effective. To do that it needs to apply a great deal of force in a short period of time- spreading the force out over space or time reduce the destructive capability of the munition. So getting hit 500 times by 1 lbs bombs is not the same as getting hit once by a 500 lbs bomb- it’s not additive, the 500 lbs destroys things the 500 1 lbs can’t. That being said, I’d imagine being on the receiving end of 500 1 lbs explosives is still a very bad day.
      - wincy 6y ago
        Right, if I apply 1 pound of force to your head 520 times, you’ll be really annoyed with me. If I apply 520 pounds of force to your head once, I’ve just crushed your skull.
      - twic 6y ago
        If each of those 1 lb bombs lands precisely on one of the ship's sensors, then that ship is out of action, even if its hull has not been breached anywhere.
      - e_proxus 6y ago
        One could imagine other payloads like chaff, smoke, or even paint or flash bangs to disable equipment and injure the crew perhaps. Not sure how efficient that would be though.
- krapht 6y ago
  > Do those things have the capability to attack such tiny targets that are already close in? Yes > We're talking about something the size and speed of a bird Birds have nothing on stealthy, supersonic anti-ship missiles. > By the time you realize it's not a bird it's probably already on top of you In a war scenario all wildlife gets shot first. Modern systems developed in the past ten years also commonly have the capability to discern bird wings from propellers for this scenario. Hurray cheaper compute, everybody can run a SVM classifier in real-time now. Without spending too much money on your radar (40k USD? parts only) you can classify birds at about 0.5-1km away, who knows the exact capability of people with money to spend on the problem. > I would imagine defenses for such small UAVs would be more in the vein of electronic countermeasures. ?Porque no los dos?
  - DickingAround 6y ago
    I don't think they can afford to see every bird as a threat during a battle. That means they'll also see every piece of shrapnel as a threat. And every piece of outgoing large munitions. I got the impression that speed and direction of travel are common filters. So something that's slow, tiny, and changing direction a lot is legitimately going to be hard to distinguish from a lot of non-threatening things.
    - krapht 6y ago
      I can't speculate on what's actually on US Navy warships right now, but I'm telling you commercially you can distinguish birds from drones under a kilometer away today. The knowledge has been around on how to do so with radar since 2006 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1603402 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1603402, but even without that, there are numerous combined radar-camera surveillance systems out there for accurate target classification. Not like you don't have time to cue a camera to look at an interesting radar target when it's travelling slowly like a UAV might.
      - runjake 6y ago
        The military’s been able to distinguish this since the early 90s — at least. And yes modern drones didn’t exist in the 90s but other similarly-sized machines did, eg balloon-mounted telemetry devices. Citation: personal experience with those sensor systems.
- snypher 6y ago
  An eg Exocet missile is only 12" in diameter when it's approaching you head-on. So optically it would be similar to a DJI-size drone. Thermal will be vastly different ;)
- lamontcg 6y ago
  For a UAV hovering over the helicopter pad I would imagine that small arms would suffice.
  - quantified 6y ago
    Shotguns. Automatic shotguns would seem to be right for this.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Most target shooters couldn't hit a drone that wasn't hovering let alone a sailor who had guns training several years back. A shotgun would be the way to get these guys when they got in close enough.
- nodesocket 6y ago
  US uses Phalanx CIWS. Here is a video all about Phalanx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrpEfNaQO8&ab_channel=USMilitaryNews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrpEfNaQO8&ab_channel=USMil...
- baybal2 6y ago
  From what I read, those quadcopters were far bigger than a bird, and even more noisier than civilian quadcopters, heard from hundreds of meters away.
- imtringued 6y ago
  If you can detect it, it is dead. https://youtu.be/bdwjcayPuag https://youtu.be/bdwjcayPuag
threatofrain 6y ago
But how expensive are those missiles? Are they meant for killing small drones?
- sigstoat 6y ago
  > But how expensive are those missiles? i don't think the officers in charge of protecting the ship generally factor the material costs of doing so in to their decisions. they've got standing orders from above, and somewhere far up the chain, somebody traded off costs, lives, reputation, etc, etc. dude at the bottom has a set of rules.
  - gretch 6y ago
    Well they should factor in strategic loss by attrition. If you shoot a $1 million dollar missile at every $100 dollar drone, that’s a good way to lose a war. Not sure about mid ranking officers, but captains who are in charge of ships think about such things.
    - withjive 6y ago
      From my perspective of American warfare - shooting a $1 million dollar missile at every $100 drone is how they keep the war going :)
    - cobookman 6y ago
      But does the 1 million dollar missile cost 1 million to build a second one? Often times military cost per unit factors in a fixed R&D cost. It doesn't necessarily mean it literally cost 1 million in parts and labor to assemble the single missile.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      HN conveniently forgets that a $100 dollar drone has a $100 performance. Smaller range, smaller payload, worse navigation electronics. You can probably kill unprotected civilians and protected soldiers if the explosives reach the head. That's scary for civilians but for the military? It's only as bad as bullets and missiles.
caconym_ 6y ago
With so many civilian vessels nearby, and so near the coast, it seems like "shoot first and ask questions later" might not be the way to go in cases like this. A Phalanx CIWS round can travel over 5 km if it doesn't hit anything.
quantified 6y ago
Would that weaponry be capable of taking out a small target that can dance? I’d like to understand the rules of engagement- it seems a bit odd we’d just stand around watching them.

wahern 6y ago

Here's what CIWS look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system Do those things have the capability to attack such tiny targets that are already close in? We're talking about something the size and speed of a bird. By the time you realize it's not a bird it's probably already on top of you. Moreover, they're small enough that they wouldn't represent a substantial threat to a ship in and of themselves (as compared to, say, an explosive-laden dinghy), and so perhaps not necessarily the kind of target that would've been specified for these weapons systems. I would imagine defenses for such small UAVs would be more in the vein of electronic countermeasures.

hcurtiss 6y ago
Did I miss some description of the size of the UAVs?
- wahern 6y ago
  Fair point. Based on the admittedly thin circumstantial evidence in the article, I assumed relatively small craft. For example, 1) Why would a Carnival cruise ship feel the need to disclaim involvement for anything except a small, COTS drone? (IOW, presumably they at least believed they could have been such small drones.) 2) 4+ were spotted together. Wouldn't those be audible, especially if much larger than COTS drones? 3) The lights ("white light", "red flashing light") suggests COTS drones, especially because the cruise ship also noticed them. If they were special purpose military or intelligence drones, why keep the lights on? Granted, the supposed distances involved suggest otherwise, but the article never establishes why they believed the drones were necessarily flown such distances. Rather, it seems those distances are based on the presumption that the drones were flown from one of the ships with active AIS. But that's a rather dubious assumption in the context of someone buzzing military ships w/ multiple drones.
  - nonameiguess 6y ago
    The Navy knows every ship that is anywhere close to it, whether or not it has its AIS turned on, even if it's underwater.
    - wahern 6y ago
      The Navy can know, if it wants. Cataloging every pleasure boat and fish trawler days or weeks after the fact is something else entirely. Also, the Navy's recent history of situational awareness isn't the greatest. See, e.g., https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crashes-japan-cause-mccain/ https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crash...
rblatz 6y ago
So I thought about it, and even if a small drone was loaded with explosives it really couldn’t damage a war ship. Unless it attacked the sensors. A shaped charge hitting the EOSS, the radar dome, or parts of the Aegis system’s sensor array could potentially cripple the ship’s ability to defend itself.
- roamerz 6y ago
  No not by itself. Honestly I know very little about modern explosives but I could imagine a swarm of drones, made of or carrying explosives could converge on a critical section of a target additively making a substantial explosive force.
  - topkai22 6y ago
    I know just enough about material science to say probably not. A munition needs to break or penetrate a surface to be effective. To do that it needs to apply a great deal of force in a short period of time- spreading the force out over space or time reduce the destructive capability of the munition. So getting hit 500 times by 1 lbs bombs is not the same as getting hit once by a 500 lbs bomb- it’s not additive, the 500 lbs destroys things the 500 1 lbs can’t. That being said, I’d imagine being on the receiving end of 500 1 lbs explosives is still a very bad day.
    - wincy 6y ago
      Right, if I apply 1 pound of force to your head 520 times, you’ll be really annoyed with me. If I apply 520 pounds of force to your head once, I’ve just crushed your skull.
    - twic 6y ago
      If each of those 1 lb bombs lands precisely on one of the ship's sensors, then that ship is out of action, even if its hull has not been breached anywhere.
    - e_proxus 6y ago
      One could imagine other payloads like chaff, smoke, or even paint or flash bangs to disable equipment and injure the crew perhaps. Not sure how efficient that would be though.
krapht 6y ago
> Do those things have the capability to attack such tiny targets that are already close in? Yes > We're talking about something the size and speed of a bird Birds have nothing on stealthy, supersonic anti-ship missiles. > By the time you realize it's not a bird it's probably already on top of you In a war scenario all wildlife gets shot first. Modern systems developed in the past ten years also commonly have the capability to discern bird wings from propellers for this scenario. Hurray cheaper compute, everybody can run a SVM classifier in real-time now. Without spending too much money on your radar (40k USD? parts only) you can classify birds at about 0.5-1km away, who knows the exact capability of people with money to spend on the problem. > I would imagine defenses for such small UAVs would be more in the vein of electronic countermeasures. ?Porque no los dos?
- DickingAround 6y ago
  I don't think they can afford to see every bird as a threat during a battle. That means they'll also see every piece of shrapnel as a threat. And every piece of outgoing large munitions. I got the impression that speed and direction of travel are common filters. So something that's slow, tiny, and changing direction a lot is legitimately going to be hard to distinguish from a lot of non-threatening things.
  - krapht 6y ago
    I can't speculate on what's actually on US Navy warships right now, but I'm telling you commercially you can distinguish birds from drones under a kilometer away today. The knowledge has been around on how to do so with radar since 2006 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1603402 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1603402, but even without that, there are numerous combined radar-camera surveillance systems out there for accurate target classification. Not like you don't have time to cue a camera to look at an interesting radar target when it's travelling slowly like a UAV might.
    - runjake 6y ago
      The military’s been able to distinguish this since the early 90s — at least. And yes modern drones didn’t exist in the 90s but other similarly-sized machines did, eg balloon-mounted telemetry devices. Citation: personal experience with those sensor systems.
snypher 6y ago
An eg Exocet missile is only 12" in diameter when it's approaching you head-on. So optically it would be similar to a DJI-size drone. Thermal will be vastly different ;)
lamontcg 6y ago
For a UAV hovering over the helicopter pad I would imagine that small arms would suffice.
- quantified 6y ago
  Shotguns. Automatic shotguns would seem to be right for this.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Most target shooters couldn't hit a drone that wasn't hovering let alone a sailor who had guns training several years back. A shotgun would be the way to get these guys when they got in close enough.
nodesocket 6y ago
US uses Phalanx CIWS. Here is a video all about Phalanx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrpEfNaQO8&ab_channel=USMilitaryNews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrpEfNaQO8&ab_channel=USMil...
baybal2 6y ago
From what I read, those quadcopters were far bigger than a bird, and even more noisier than civilian quadcopters, heard from hundreds of meters away.
imtringued 6y ago
If you can detect it, it is dead. https://youtu.be/bdwjcayPuag https://youtu.be/bdwjcayPuag

threatofrain 6y ago

But how expensive are those missiles? Are they meant for killing small drones?

sigstoat 6y ago
> But how expensive are those missiles? i don't think the officers in charge of protecting the ship generally factor the material costs of doing so in to their decisions. they've got standing orders from above, and somewhere far up the chain, somebody traded off costs, lives, reputation, etc, etc. dude at the bottom has a set of rules.
- gretch 6y ago
  Well they should factor in strategic loss by attrition. If you shoot a $1 million dollar missile at every $100 dollar drone, that’s a good way to lose a war. Not sure about mid ranking officers, but captains who are in charge of ships think about such things.
  - withjive 6y ago
    From my perspective of American warfare - shooting a $1 million dollar missile at every $100 drone is how they keep the war going :)
  - cobookman 6y ago
    But does the 1 million dollar missile cost 1 million to build a second one? Often times military cost per unit factors in a fixed R&D cost. It doesn't necessarily mean it literally cost 1 million in parts and labor to assemble the single missile.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    HN conveniently forgets that a $100 dollar drone has a $100 performance. Smaller range, smaller payload, worse navigation electronics. You can probably kill unprotected civilians and protected soldiers if the explosives reach the head. That's scary for civilians but for the military? It's only as bad as bullets and missiles.

caconym_ 6y ago

With so many civilian vessels nearby, and so near the coast, it seems like "shoot first and ask questions later" might not be the way to go in cases like this. A Phalanx CIWS round can travel over 5 km if it doesn't hit anything.

quantified 6y ago

Would that weaponry be capable of taking out a small target that can dance? I’d like to understand the rules of engagement- it seems a bit odd we’d just stand around watching them.