4 ms·

What’s to stop development of unmanned drone SSNs? Including ones that act as motherships for underwater drone swarms to boot.

kayodelycaon 2y ago
Communication and detection underwater is a major issue. Radio is not effective at any range. Audio datalinks are short-ranged, low-bandwidth, unreliable, easily jammed, and give away your position. Active sonar gives away your position. High speed both gives away your position and makes passive sonar useless. Torpedoes are forced to use physical wires for remote guidance because nothing else works. It would be pretty easy for someone to develop a quiet, long-range torpedo that can be launched undetected outside active sonar range. (Assuming this capability doesn’t already exist.) Also, SSNs already carry long-range drones called cruise missiles. Manned subs will take a long time to become obsolete.
- decafninja 2y ago
  Most of what you listed would not be necessary for an autonomous SSN without a “man in the loop” no? Order it to perform a patrol or sit on the seabed, periodically sending up an antennae to listen for updates to orders. If it receives a kill order, it starts hunting. Preposition them at strategic locations if necessary. To be fair, I’m (partly) playing devil’s advocate, but I don’t think the tech to create a fully or nearly fully autonomous attack sub is that far out. Key point is that you would have to be willing to give it more autonomy than the current crop of UAVs.
  - anonylizard 2y ago
    How small are the autonomous attack subs? GPUs powerful enough to power autonomous decision making attack subs are going to consume a lot of energy, a lot more than what a car sized system powered by batteries can provide. As such, only nuclear AI subs may be viable, since that gives the strategic advantage of a submarine that doesn't need to resurface for like years. But putting nuclear reactors in an autonomous AI system sounds like a terrible idea. Human societies have spent millenia developing the infrastructure to produce reliable/trustworthy soldiers. AI is not nearly at that level in terms of trustworthiness/fault tolerance, even if they will quickly be as smart as soliders.
  - kayodelycaon 2y ago
    It could be done. We have autonomous underwater drones that can map the seafloor. There are a lot of problems. Technically, you need the resources of a nation-state to make stealthy ones that can operate at depth. There are no off the shelf systems you can strap together. Salt water and pressure destroys things very quickly. It wouldn’t take long for non-moving propellers to get fouled with debris. If you want a mine that launches a torpedo, I think that already exists. If you don’t need to operate at depth, a surface drone would be sufficient. If you’re attacking ships, aerial drones or missiles are better. If you’re not a nation-state, diesel-electric submarines have been around for more than a century. They are easier to build and will be for a long time. Even once you have drones, what are they attacking? The US has less than a hundred submarines. In my opinion, this is an advanced technology weapon as part of a combined arms strategy. Basically a more sophisticated torpedo.
fastball 2y ago
Long-range underwater comms is difficult.
SJC_Hacker 2y ago
They would have to be completely autonomous. Not much radio range under 500m of water.

kayodelycaon 2y ago

Communication and detection underwater is a major issue. Radio is not effective at any range. Audio datalinks are short-ranged, low-bandwidth, unreliable, easily jammed, and give away your position. Active sonar gives away your position. High speed both gives away your position and makes passive sonar useless. Torpedoes are forced to use physical wires for remote guidance because nothing else works. It would be pretty easy for someone to develop a quiet, long-range torpedo that can be launched undetected outside active sonar range. (Assuming this capability doesn’t already exist.) Also, SSNs already carry long-range drones called cruise missiles. Manned subs will take a long time to become obsolete.

decafninja 2y ago
Most of what you listed would not be necessary for an autonomous SSN without a “man in the loop” no? Order it to perform a patrol or sit on the seabed, periodically sending up an antennae to listen for updates to orders. If it receives a kill order, it starts hunting. Preposition them at strategic locations if necessary. To be fair, I’m (partly) playing devil’s advocate, but I don’t think the tech to create a fully or nearly fully autonomous attack sub is that far out. Key point is that you would have to be willing to give it more autonomy than the current crop of UAVs.
- anonylizard 2y ago
  How small are the autonomous attack subs? GPUs powerful enough to power autonomous decision making attack subs are going to consume a lot of energy, a lot more than what a car sized system powered by batteries can provide. As such, only nuclear AI subs may be viable, since that gives the strategic advantage of a submarine that doesn't need to resurface for like years. But putting nuclear reactors in an autonomous AI system sounds like a terrible idea. Human societies have spent millenia developing the infrastructure to produce reliable/trustworthy soldiers. AI is not nearly at that level in terms of trustworthiness/fault tolerance, even if they will quickly be as smart as soliders.
- kayodelycaon 2y ago
  It could be done. We have autonomous underwater drones that can map the seafloor. There are a lot of problems. Technically, you need the resources of a nation-state to make stealthy ones that can operate at depth. There are no off the shelf systems you can strap together. Salt water and pressure destroys things very quickly. It wouldn’t take long for non-moving propellers to get fouled with debris. If you want a mine that launches a torpedo, I think that already exists. If you don’t need to operate at depth, a surface drone would be sufficient. If you’re attacking ships, aerial drones or missiles are better. If you’re not a nation-state, diesel-electric submarines have been around for more than a century. They are easier to build and will be for a long time. Even once you have drones, what are they attacking? The US has less than a hundred submarines. In my opinion, this is an advanced technology weapon as part of a combined arms strategy. Basically a more sophisticated torpedo.

fastball 2y ago

Long-range underwater comms is difficult.

SJC_Hacker 2y ago

They would have to be completely autonomous. Not much radio range under 500m of water.