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There is a combat flight sim called DCS where individuals repeatedly attempt different methods of killing carrier groups. The general take away is that anti-ai
by lumost 5y ago
There is a combat flight sim called DCS where individuals repeatedly attempt different methods of killing carrier groups.
The general take away is that anti-aircraft/missile systems are good enough that the only solution is to saturate the air defense and exhaust the 500-1500 million dollar missiles the carrier group has on hand to deploy (assuming you got past the air wing).
A swarm of ultra-cheap drones each with 50-100kg of explosive changes the cost dynamics of defending a ship/carrier group.
- alanbernstein 5y agoDoesn't CIWS solve that?
- formerly_proven 5y agoCIWS has very finite ammunition.
- barnesto 5y agosure, but there aren't finite drones. not sure you've ever seen CIWS in action, but it would put down the drones with dispatch.
- formerly_proven 5y agoAFAIK these are always firing 100+ rounds at every single target and only have ~1500 rounds in them, so that's not exactly a lot of targets. And then there is the matter that a CIWS/C-RAM would need at least some kind of upgrade to be able to engage (small, slow) drones: https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-rely-on-the-Phalanx-CIWS-to-shoot-down-small-drones https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-rely-on-the-Phalanx-CIWS-t... (I have no experience at all with these besides seeing some probably-fake Youtube videos supposed to show these shoot down mortar sheels)
- Dah00n 5y agoLikely but than there's nothing left for the next wave. Cheap drones could quickly use up all the rounds. You wouldn't even have to use advanced drones with weapons. CIWS have to kill every drone just in case. Add a few missiles and or better drones in wave two and you got a very effective mix.
- zdw 5y agoCIWS have a limited amount of rounds, and and are designed to stop a few large projectiles (think a cruise missile) sent sequentially. I'm not sure how they'd handle many drones, especially ones that could change course. Throwing "wave after wave" of anything eventually overwhelms a defender.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoUntil it runs out of ammo. But the laser type weapons they've been trying to develop solve this to some extent.
- WastingMyTime89 5y agoCWIS was developped as a solution to the threat of sea skimming cruise missiles after the USS Stark was hit by a couple of Exocet. It's not really geared towards fighting a swarm of light and slow adversaries. A small-caliber gun with a good fire-control system or a couple of marksmen should be a better answer. Asymmetric threats have been a major concern for modern armies at least since the first Gulf War. The threat used to be swarm of small boats. Now it's also swarm of UAV. Answers exist to both. Regarding the most likely origin of a UAV swarm targetting a US carrier close to the shore of the USA, I will go with the US army. It's good way to test both your offensive and defensive capabilities at the same time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jsnell 5y ago> There is a combat flight sim called DCS where individuals repeatedly attempt different methods of killing carrier groups. Do you happen to have any pointers to more details (e.g. forum threads)? I love reading about that kind of optimization in games.
- lumost 5y agoYoutube has a great set of videos on the topic. Depending on your interests you can also find fighter pilots demonstrating proper techniques for dogfighting etc. in DCS. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=US+Carrier+group+DCS https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=US+Carrier+grou...
- mhh__ 5y agoDCS is brilliant, best to chat on the ED forums for that kind of thing I'd assume.
- greedo 5y agoUltra-cheap drones are small. Small means very short range, so the launch platform for the drones becomes the target (kill the archer, not the arrows). This is no different than when we were concerned with Backfire regiments attacking the CSG with Kingfish etc.
- WaitWaitWha 5y ago"Fire and forget" drones exist.
- JackFr 5y agoThey're called cruise missiles.
- decafninja 5y agoThere's been a lot of talk about "kamikaze drones" lately, but aren't these basically slow cruise missiles that have the option to loiter and come home?
- musingsole 5y agoA ramming drone can be a fatal weapon. Thinking on that, the difference seems to be a drone is cheaper with more precision compared to a guided missile. Also can fit in a backpack or purse.
- decafninja 5y agoDoing a very, very, rough Google search, doesn't seem like that's always the case though. I see some articles where 10-15 IAI Harpy drones have been purchased by countries like the US and India for $100 million. Versus a late model Tomahawk missile being ~$1.5 million each?
- lumost 5y agoA cruise missile could close to within ~20-40 miles and then deploy multiple drones. Effectively making it a multi targeting missile.
- lizknope 5y agoInitially I thought the Phalanx would be able to defend against drones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS Lots of comments about why it could be overwhelmed. The ammo is still expensive and limited https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-rely-on-the-Phalanx-CIWS-to-shoot-down-small-drones https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-rely-on-the-Phalanx-CIWS-t... It looks like like Raytheon is still pushing the Phalanx though https://www.flightglobal.com/civil-uavs/raytheon-offers-phalanx-weapon-for-counter-uav-system/120722.article https://www.flightglobal.com/civil-uavs/raytheon-offers-phal... Northrop wants to use lasers https://warriormaven.com/land/army-c-ram-base-defense-will-destroy-drones https://warriormaven.com/land/army-c-ram-base-defense-will-d...
- t0mas88 5y agoTwo problems with drones, their range isn't enough and they would need to navigate visually towards the boat because all radio including GPS would be jammed if you tried this. For the range, I think the typical outer perimeter of a carrier group is 100 to 200 nautical miles as patrolled by the air wing. Then at 20 nautical miles you would run into ships, and that's still too far away to launch a big swarm of ultra cheap drones because they wouldn't make it to the carrier.
- kgwxd 5y agoCould the drones be programmed with enough stand-alone smarts to target a giant ship surrounded by nothing but ocean? I know nothing about image analysis but it kind of sounds like the big boy version of detecting a black square on a white background.
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoTurkey's drones are already autonomous and function in the absence of radio communication by optical sensors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_Tactical_UAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_Tactical_UAS https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/05/05/turkey-converts-simsek-drone/ https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/05/05/turkey-converts-si...
- unnouinceput 5y agoHow about put them all in a missile, launch it to pass at above the target ship at, I dunno perhaps few kilometers, and then free fall up to several hundred meters where their motors will come online. After that they'd have enough power to start acquiring targets and destroy that billions aircraft carrier. Do this 2 or 3 times and it would be Afghanistan all over again where $80k missile was destroying millions $ soviet aircraft. Exhaust the expensive platforms using cheap drones. Global war won in a week.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoThat threat's not exactly new and it's undoubtedly one of the reason that the US Navy is investing in directed energy weapons research - people mostly think of lasers, but the hugely powerful AESA radars on modern combat ships are also candidates. EDIT: I couldn't easily find data on the AN/SPY-6 AESA radar that's going into the newest generation of ships, but the AN/SPY-1 PESA system from the prior generation has 6 MW peak power output.
- flohofwoe 5y agoAlternatively, use a single Swedish submarine ;) https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/hit-and-sunk-swedish-submarine-killed-aircraft-carrier-during-war-game-184722 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/hit-and-sunk-swedis...
- adriancr 5y agoor use a cargo ship with sheep - https://www.romania-insider.com/cargo-ship-carrying-sheep-romania-sinks-russian-military-vessel https://www.romania-insider.com/cargo-ship-carrying-sheep-ro...
- avereveard 5y agoultra cheap drones aren't fast enough to need to expend a missile, and the 20mm gatling bullets required to down one are far cheaper
- beckingz 5y agoApparently Phalanx CIWS ammo costs $15-30 per round (numbers all over the place depending on ammo type and age of information). On the other hand engaging a target typically uses 100+ rounds or ~$1500-3000 per target. Definitely cheaper than a good drone (~$5000-20000?), but maybe not far cheaper.
- avereveard 5y agowe're not at war tho, so you don't have economy of scale in place, those will benefit especially low tech ammunition - i.e. solid bullets as opposed to guided munition/drones - I expect the former to came down in price a fair bit once the big order gets put in, while drones chip production will always be tied to silicon yields economies and will benefit a little from scaling, but not as much.
- tootie 5y agoI'd assume building a drone capable of carrying enough ordnance to sink a ship over that much distance would be higher than the equivalent cost for a cruise missile?
- cestith 5y agoThere are anti-missile technologies. They'd be about the same things you'd use your ammunition from if you engaged these things as hostile. If they are drones, they're possibly designed as cannon fodder. They might just be testing the radar and FLIR capabilities. They might even just be testing the ability to track and target a large vessel. They may even be something classified from the US to surround its own ships and in the future help intercept inbounds. They may actually be probes from somewhere other than Earth, as highly unlikely as that is. If there wasn't FLIR and radar corroborating one another, I'd think they might be an experiment specifically in creating false images on sensors. I'm not sure how one would go about faking both FLIR and radar in the same shape and same place with rapid motion of the images. If someone managed, the likely shapes might be a sphere or an amorphous blob. When we talk about the distance of drones, should we be assuming these weren't launched from nearby from under the water, from above the radar's ceiling, or from that civilian craft in the video?Might they be lighter-than-air for hovering but with powerful propulsion for changing direction? I think it'd be premature given we don't know what they are to speculate on their launch point or maximum range.
- jandrese 5y agoI have my doubts about a 50kg bomb being effective against an armored flight deck. Bombs for anti-ship work tend to be more in the 1,000kg range.
- time0ut 5y agoDoes it sim any of the really modern anti-ship stuff like a DF-21D or an Iskander? Just curious how carrier battle group defenses supposedly fair against a nuclear ASBM with evasive terminal maneuvers.