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I get into arguments with pro-Navy people about the laughable waste of Naval surface ships. As you state, antiship missiles are unremarkable, I believe 1980s p

I get into arguments with pro-Navy people about the laughable waste of Naval surface ships. As you state, antiship missiles are unremarkable, I believe 1980s pop and drop from above are undefendable. I got argued down about antiship ICBM/IRBMs, but I still think they will work. And drone subs will make any nearshore unnavigable to capital ships, if the cost of your carrier is 10x the cost of a fleet of 100 drone subs whose only job is basically fire a couple torpedos. Drones/infantry portable weapons are being tested in real time by the pentagon with the Ukraine war, against a reasonable facsimile of a peer war. The only thing lacking is high altitude anti air, but I think this war will result in the true air superiority denial weapon: the cheap air drone. Hell, it could be a solar balloon-drone hybrid: stay up as long as you want, relocate with "acceptable" flexibility, fire missiles at aircraft. That will push more emphasis to Space superiority I predict. The other aspect of force multiplication of drones hasn't been properly explored or used yet in this war: drones are currently used as CENTRALLY coordinated weapons. But if you also have combined arms drones coordinated by boots-on-ground infantry, that means your ten man squad can direct (with low casualty risk) ten faster, better armed, more capable drones in helicopter, grenade shelling, scouting, and direct fire. And if you can give basic AI orders to a drone once you get it place and then direct other drones into position, then a 10 man squad may be able to direct 20-30 ones. And they can have reserves to deploy if their controlled drones get damaged. And they are probably more durable to fire. Truly effective infantry forces have sergeants and officers with ability to adapt tactical battle plans on the fly. Current drone organization doesn't strongly support this, but then again we are in the stone age of drones.

KineticLensman 4y ago
> But if you also have combined arms drones coordinated by boots-on-ground infantry, Brings back memories of Network-Centric Warfare [0], with self-synchronising edge-based forces operating on the cusp of tactical anarchy, IIRC. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-centric_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-centric_warfare
chipsa 4y ago
Why would "pop and drop" be undefendable? It's not as if the ship won't be able to see the ASCM the entire time it's doing that maneuver. The Harpoon does it because of it's origin: it was supposed to hit surfaced Soviet submarines, and it needs to do it in order to actually hit the target. But that target class disappeared before it really reached service. ASBMs have a similar issue in that there's no way for them to get out of the radar view of the target (or a ship near the target). And we've got missiles designed to take them out as part of the target set (SM-3 and SM-6 are quite capable, depending on range). Drone subs are just mobile minefields. The idea of a mobile minefield isn't new, and you have all the problems of a minefield (including, but not limited to: sinking ships you didn't intend to), along with new challenges like: how do you communicate with your drone subs? Your cheap anti-air drone is just a missile carrier? You're thinking weapons, not systems here. How do you target with them? And how do you keep them from getting targeted? Even being 20kft up (and improving the range that way), an equivalent AAM from a fighter will have longer range, simply because it's able to be launched from Mach 0.85, instead of 30kts. Sure, the drone might be cheap, but the missile won't be.

KineticLensman 4y ago

> But if you also have combined arms drones coordinated by boots-on-ground infantry, Brings back memories of Network-Centric Warfare [0], with self-synchronising edge-based forces operating on the cusp of tactical anarchy, IIRC. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-centric_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-centric_warfare

chipsa 4y ago

Why would "pop and drop" be undefendable? It's not as if the ship won't be able to see the ASCM the entire time it's doing that maneuver. The Harpoon does it because of it's origin: it was supposed to hit surfaced Soviet submarines, and it needs to do it in order to actually hit the target. But that target class disappeared before it really reached service. ASBMs have a similar issue in that there's no way for them to get out of the radar view of the target (or a ship near the target). And we've got missiles designed to take them out as part of the target set (SM-3 and SM-6 are quite capable, depending on range). Drone subs are just mobile minefields. The idea of a mobile minefield isn't new, and you have all the problems of a minefield (including, but not limited to: sinking ships you didn't intend to), along with new challenges like: how do you communicate with your drone subs? Your cheap anti-air drone is just a missile carrier? You're thinking weapons, not systems here. How do you target with them? And how do you keep them from getting targeted? Even being 20kft up (and improving the range that way), an equivalent AAM from a fighter will have longer range, simply because it's able to be launched from Mach 0.85, instead of 30kts. Sure, the drone might be cheap, but the missile won't be.