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Two 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
by t0mas88 5y ago
Two 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoA carrier group is not going to let an incoming missile pass a few kilometers above the carrier.
- unnouinceput 5y agoYeah, good luck with that when you're dealing with latest tech in that regards. Talking about hyperspeed ones, like 20 Mach. At that speed interception is a chance game, as outlined by recent tests.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoBut if you can do that, why not just use the hypersonic missile to hit the carrier? Why add the extra step of dropping drones? And deploying drones at Mach 20 might be rather hard on the drones...
- unnouinceput 5y agoMy entire point is economics. One hit might damage one ship, but 200 drones hitting on precise points, that's an entire different story. Also, let's assume the carrier does indeed posses great interception capability. There are other methods to deploy drones near it, be it underwater (submarine, human divers, submarine drone etc) or high above (missile, satellite). Speaking of satellites, if you manage to put those in orbit then the tech to also have drones inside a hypermissile already exists. Air superiority was always the first phase of winning the war. Boots on the ground was and always be the final phase. And the first phase was, throughout history, archers, ballistae, cannons, airplane and currently aircraft carrier. But these last ones are way too expensive and too juicy of a target. So the future of air superiority are drones. If anything the past 20 years of using Predator drones in Afghanistan already proves my point, but the HN crowd likes to downvote without actually thinking, but that's OK. Have at it.
- Someone1234 5y ago- Drop the drones from a larger aircraft (e.g. Xi'an Y-20). - Computer vision is incredibly cheap and small in 2021 (particularly "hit this giant thing that looks like a warship"). Western military thinking is obsessed with ever advancing technological solutions (with high associated costs/limited numbers). But "massing," be it small boats or small aircraft/drones defeats it consistently. Good enough is often good enough. No matter how good your technological advantage is, it can never be in two/four/six places at once and that $1M smart defensive missile can only shoot down so many incoming targets. That's why the US's nuclear defense was ultimately MAD, because Russia simply built tons of dumb/cheap nukes that overwhelmed anything the US could shoot down even assuming the perfect defensive platform. If the defense is 10x or 100x the cost/space/complexity, you'll win the mass war every time. We need more Embraer Super Tucanos and less F-35s, because an F-35 can never be in eight places at once no matter how advanced it is, same logic with cheap & small Vs. expensive & large warships. Warships need more computer controlled guns that shoot big bullets and less smart missiles that take up 100x the space, 100x the cost, and thus you get 100x less supply. A drone is an Embraer Super Tucano on steroids, because now you've reduced the pilot cost/limitation. The fact that the US doesn't already have offensive/defensive drone swarms means they're asleep at the wheel.
- adriancr 5y agolarger aircraft would be downed before it would get in range
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoOr, you could just shoot lots of autonomous supersonic missiles at the ship from the aircraft. Drones seem to have a lot of disadvantages to previous generations of rocket technology.
- captainredbeard 5y agoDude we don’t need Tucanos, we need stuff like F15X
- Someone1234 5y agoMaybe both, depends on the theater. Over water, I agree the F15X is the better option.
- lumost 5y agoA quick glance shows that gliders can manage a glide ratio of 15:1 meaning that a set of glide drones dropped at 60k feet could at least hypothetically reach 170 miles. ( The practical calculation for this is much much more complex ). There is no reason the drones couldn't wait to start their engines until they are at the ~40 mile line after being dropped at the edge of the CAP patrol. EDIT: it looks like a good glide ratio is 60:1 meaning that the above scenario could play out outside the effective radar range of the carrier group, and hundreds of miles away from the CAP patrol.
- robkop 5y agoUnfortunately to maximise glide ratio you are going to want to maximise wing surface area which isn't really optimal for both having the ability to deploy mass drones and for radar cross section.
- Robotbeat 5y agoYou maximize surface area if you want to minimize sink rate. Glide ratio is a different beast, where you want long and thin wings. Glide ratio is fairly independent of speed up to Mach 0.5 or so, so you’d want to maximize wing loading to go fast.
- captainredbeard 5y agoCarrier group will be operating with an AWACS or similar expanding radar range. A large plane or a swarm of smaller things would light up modern radars from a distance easily. Nuclear tipped missiles will be the response.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago>Carrier group will be operating with an AWACS or similar expanding radar range e.g. the E-2 Hawkeye, which is carrier-embarked, launches from the catapult, and (in modern variants) includes a surveillance radar that will detects threats out to 300 nautical miles and beyond.
- 5y ago
- ansible 5y agoWith standard electric motor quads, the range is very definitely an issue. But you could create a long-range gas powered plane, with Ardupilot and a GPS receiver, and get pretty long range with that. Here is one that crossed the Atlantic on less than 3 quarts of gas. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/model-plane-flies-atlantic https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/model-plane-f... You could easily design a slightly larger model, stick a Nvidia Jetson nano on the front with a camera, and have a go at it. With economies of scale, you could do the whole thing for less than $1000 USD per unit. Cheap. Individually, the planes are dumb, stupid and slow. But launch enough of them, and some might get through.
- newsclues 5y agoThe platform the drones launch from is the weakness. If the drones have less range than the combat radius of the fleets air power, they just need to locate and destroy the launch platform.
- ansible 5y agoFor a 10 to 15kg gas-powered model aircraft, a simple 4m launch rail is sufficient. For launch assist, that could be a spring or catapult system, or a small solid rocket motor. Can easily be mounted on a truck or small boat. Something like this should be sufficient (peak thrust 131N): https://www.rocketryworks.com/h100w-14a-dms-high-power-single-use-motor/ https://www.rocketryworks.com/h100w-14a-dms-high-power-singl... Larger motors are available for not much more money. --------------------- No one is going to try to take out a carrier in the middle of the ocean, but there isn't much need to do that either. Carriers are primarly used to attack land-based targets these days. So either they have to stay waaaay off-shore and rely on tankers to refuel planes for combat sorties (which reduces the cadence) or they will get within (for example) 500NM of land. Low and slow gas-powered drones can achieve this now.
- newsclues 5y agoSo the ISR drones will see the launch site or platform and it will get hit by missiles
- rini17 5y agoThere are many kinds of drones, not only energy-hungry quadcopters. What if they glide and use energy mainly for steering? Or autonomous sailboats?
- praptak 5y agoRelease them from an autonomous submarine?