6 ms·

Nomars: No Manning Required Ship

25 points by croes 2y ago

shortrounddev2 2y ago
I assume it has some kind of security built in because otherwise what would prevent a Russian dinghy from floating up and climbing on board
- ahofmann 2y ago
  As far as I understood, the attack vector is different. Entering the ship is useless, there are no controls for humans.
  - mjd 2y ago
    Useless unless you want to blow it up, maybe. Or steal or sabotage the cargo.
    - gregoriol 2y ago
      If you want to blow it up, it's 100% easier without boarding it!
  - eesmith 2y ago
    If so, that means the ship cannot visit any port, harbor or waterway which requires a locally qualified marine pilot onboard. It also likely affects international treaties regarding the obligations of the master or officer in charge. If the computers go down, and with no one aboard, is it considered abandoned? Can anyone claim salvage rights by hooking up a tow? Currently, "vessels have an international duty to give reasonable assistance to other ships in distress for saving lives" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_salvage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_salvage). How does that duty extend to uncrewed vessels? I'm sure there are lawyers salivating at the chance to resolve these questions.
    - rspoerri 2y ago
      You only, but automatically, forfeit the ownership of you ship when you (as captain) accept a rope from somebody else and let you tow with it. You always have to throw your own rope to keep ownership.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    It's never useless to get physical access to a computer system. The fact that there's no driving wheel doesn't mean you cannot take control of the ship if you can plug your stuff to the right port.
  - barryrandall 2y ago
    I'd be very surprised if there's not at least a debug port onboard.
- gregoriol 2y ago
  Why would one climb on board if the thing is not meant to be manned and doesn't have any controls on board? Anyway, if I were to design such a thing for military, it would probably have some self-destruct option
  - pandemic_region 2y ago
    > Why would one climb on board if the thing is not meant to be manned and doesn't have any controls on board? to drop a grenade down a vent ? > Anyway, if I were to design such a thing for military, it would probably have some self-destruct option What would trigger the self-destruct in your design ?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      While in the Hollywood movies people always succeed to miraculously enter heavily guarded objectives without being detected, in real life this should be impossible. With a well designed system of redundant sensors of multiple kinds, it should be impossible for anyone to come aboard such a ship without being instantly detected as a foe and without having their movements tracked with precision. The ship should have some self-defense system, but when that defense system is overwhelmed and it is impossible to prevent enemies to enter certain critical zones, self-destruction should be activated. When the internal communication between certain parts of the ship is lost, presumably due to damage inflicted by attackers, self-destruction may also need to be activated. This seems as one of the easiest parts to design of such a ship. Designing various sub-assemblies to be repairable using automatic means will be more challenging, especially in their mechanical design.
  - KineticLensman 2y ago
    > Anyway, if I were to design such a thing for military, it would probably have some self-destruct option I'm reminded of the classic evil-overlord design mistake of putting a large self-destruct button very prominently on the big control panel that is close to the cell where you keep 007 Bond to gloat and give away your plans instead of just shooting him.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I mean if they get a dinghy close enough it's already lost, since that could also be a torpedo or whatever.
rspoerri 2y ago
First the terminators controlled the sea. They blocked the trade routes and fishing.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  s/terminators/Amazon terminators/
rkagerer 2y ago
Is it remote controlled, or some kind of autonomous behavior program?
mjd 2y ago
The article is really lacking all details. Is this a fighting ship, or materials transport, or something else? Is it intended to go from A to B, or to go out and patrol around and come back? How far away does it go from its base?
- gertrunde 2y ago
  At this stage it looks like it's just a prototype/technology demonstrator for testing. Other articles have mentioned testing automated refueling systems for this vessel, which implies a longer term patrol role. Other naval vessels of similar displacement seem to generally have a range around 1500-2500 nm. (All guesswork I'm afraid!)
  - mathgeek 2y ago
    It took me far too long to realize you meant nautical miles and not a mistyped nanometers. More coffee needed.
trhway 2y ago
Btw, the Ukrainian sea drones are already themselves carrying drones and MANPADs. Evolution from the ground up.
- ponector 2y ago
  Yes, their sea drones are already carrying both sea and air kamikaze drones. No evidences how effective they are, though.
littlestymaar 2y ago
I can easily imagine how you could keep the mission crew out of the ship, having every operations being remote controlled. But this is only a part of the crew: on a ship you have plenty of sailors who are onboard not because they are needed for the mission itself, but because you need them to keep everything running. Having no one onboard means you cannot fix anything that starts misbehaving on the ship, and the likelihood of the ship being at least partly unavailable grows with the duration of the mission. You can work around that with redundancy or thanks to dedicated support ships with technicians onboard not too far away that can intervene when needed, but that needs to be taken into account. I'm not saying that this kind of automation isn't possible or even desirable, just that it's in no way magical and it will need a complete rethinking of how military vessels operate, because if you just expect a warship to sail autonomously for 3 months without issues, you're going to be disappointed.
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  >it's in no way magical and it will need a complete rethinking of how military vessels operate "designing a seaframe from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on board" I think the thousands of engineers that made this crewless seaframe possible thought about it being crewless and all of which that entails.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    The part you quote is explicitly not about the engineers of the vessel. It's about everybody else in the Navy! What I'm saying is that we are all used to operate in a certain way, and you cannot really expect the automated system to fawlessly adapt to the way you already operate. To benefit from the automation you need to change the way you operate in depth, and that's a much harder thing to do in the military than in the civilian world (where it's already not that easy in practice). The engineering side of things is always the easiest part of the job, no matter how challenging one particular engineering achievement is.
    - Almondsetat 2y ago
countWSS 2y ago
Could it even compete with modern submarine drones/underwater gliders that are thousands of times cheaper/smaller and can cripple these bulky ships in seconds?
- gorgoiler 2y ago
  Someone once said that looking for a ship on the ocean is like trying to find your car keys in a field with a pair of binoculars. Obviously this applies less to littoral waters (1.5 dimensional instead of 2 dimensions of open water) but still: how does scale factor into trying to task sea drones with hunter/killer roles? Also, always worth pointing out that while tactical warfare is a technological battle — in which drones may indeed be superior — war is also a strategic, political act and as such the presence of large scary ships — even 250t ones — is often enough to achieve ones strategic aims.
  - digdugdirk 2y ago
    Love that analogy. But on the topic of your final point - I agree with you, but I do think we're rapidly approaching the era where ships of this size will be difficult to defend from a mass drone strike, easily coordinated via a combined air/surface/submerged drone swarm. At that point, the asymmetric reward of sinking one of those large scary ships is going to be irresistible for both state and non-state actors, specifically for those same strategic and political aims.
    - ponector 2y ago
      Don't agree with that. In near future such huge ships will host swarms of defensive kamikaze drones to protect themselves.
      - littlestymaar 2y ago
        Exactly. The person you're responding to basically says that “big ships won't be cost effective against small droneship” but they fail to realize that these “small” droneship themselves must be pretty bulky if they want to carry a warhead big enough to destroy a big ship at long distance, and they will be pretty cost-effectively be dealt with by much smaller kamikaze drones that will be protecting the big ships.
pjdesno 2y ago
This would be great for civilian shipping in certain areas, as modern piracy seems to exclusively focus on holding crew members for ransom. Lots of comments here raise good questions about its fitness as a military vessel, but maybe the point is to develop tech that civilian vessels can use? Preventing piracy has always been viewed as a task of the military, and piracy-proofing civilian vessels would go a long ways towards meeting that goal.
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
I've wondering for a long time why we must have manned ships. I do not know anything about ships. I guess the problem is not with navigation: we could have remote piloting when needed, from a central place. Redundant communication and all. I believe that the other is that you need to maintain a ship when on sea? Make some small fixes awaiting to be in a harbor? That one does require people for now.

25 points by croes 2y ago

I assume it has some kind of security built in because otherwise what would prevent a Russian dinghy from floating up and climbing on board

ahofmann 2y ago
As far as I understood, the attack vector is different. Entering the ship is useless, there are no controls for humans.
- mjd 2y ago
  Useless unless you want to blow it up, maybe. Or steal or sabotage the cargo.
  - gregoriol 2y ago
    If you want to blow it up, it's 100% easier without boarding it!
- eesmith 2y ago
  If so, that means the ship cannot visit any port, harbor or waterway which requires a locally qualified marine pilot onboard. It also likely affects international treaties regarding the obligations of the master or officer in charge. If the computers go down, and with no one aboard, is it considered abandoned? Can anyone claim salvage rights by hooking up a tow? Currently, "vessels have an international duty to give reasonable assistance to other ships in distress for saving lives" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_salvage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_salvage). How does that duty extend to uncrewed vessels? I'm sure there are lawyers salivating at the chance to resolve these questions.
  - rspoerri 2y ago
    You only, but automatically, forfeit the ownership of you ship when you (as captain) accept a rope from somebody else and let you tow with it. You always have to throw your own rope to keep ownership.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  It's never useless to get physical access to a computer system. The fact that there's no driving wheel doesn't mean you cannot take control of the ship if you can plug your stuff to the right port.
- barryrandall 2y ago
  I'd be very surprised if there's not at least a debug port onboard.
gregoriol 2y ago
Why would one climb on board if the thing is not meant to be manned and doesn't have any controls on board? Anyway, if I were to design such a thing for military, it would probably have some self-destruct option
- pandemic_region 2y ago
  > Why would one climb on board if the thing is not meant to be manned and doesn't have any controls on board? to drop a grenade down a vent ? > Anyway, if I were to design such a thing for military, it would probably have some self-destruct option What would trigger the self-destruct in your design ?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    While in the Hollywood movies people always succeed to miraculously enter heavily guarded objectives without being detected, in real life this should be impossible. With a well designed system of redundant sensors of multiple kinds, it should be impossible for anyone to come aboard such a ship without being instantly detected as a foe and without having their movements tracked with precision. The ship should have some self-defense system, but when that defense system is overwhelmed and it is impossible to prevent enemies to enter certain critical zones, self-destruction should be activated. When the internal communication between certain parts of the ship is lost, presumably due to damage inflicted by attackers, self-destruction may also need to be activated. This seems as one of the easiest parts to design of such a ship. Designing various sub-assemblies to be repairable using automatic means will be more challenging, especially in their mechanical design.
- KineticLensman 2y ago
  > Anyway, if I were to design such a thing for military, it would probably have some self-destruct option I'm reminded of the classic evil-overlord design mistake of putting a large self-destruct button very prominently on the big control panel that is close to the cell where you keep 007 Bond to gloat and give away your plans instead of just shooting him.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I mean if they get a dinghy close enough it's already lost, since that could also be a torpedo or whatever.

rspoerri 2y ago

First the terminators controlled the sea. They blocked the trade routes and fishing.

actionfromafar 2y ago
s/terminators/Amazon terminators/

rkagerer 2y ago

Is it remote controlled, or some kind of autonomous behavior program?

mjd 2y ago

The article is really lacking all details. Is this a fighting ship, or materials transport, or something else? Is it intended to go from A to B, or to go out and patrol around and come back? How far away does it go from its base?

gertrunde 2y ago
At this stage it looks like it's just a prototype/technology demonstrator for testing. Other articles have mentioned testing automated refueling systems for this vessel, which implies a longer term patrol role. Other naval vessels of similar displacement seem to generally have a range around 1500-2500 nm. (All guesswork I'm afraid!)
- mathgeek 2y ago
  It took me far too long to realize you meant nautical miles and not a mistyped nanometers. More coffee needed.

trhway 2y ago

Btw, the Ukrainian sea drones are already themselves carrying drones and MANPADs. Evolution from the ground up.

ponector 2y ago
Yes, their sea drones are already carrying both sea and air kamikaze drones. No evidences how effective they are, though.

littlestymaar 2y ago

I can easily imagine how you could keep the mission crew out of the ship, having every operations being remote controlled. But this is only a part of the crew: on a ship you have plenty of sailors who are onboard not because they are needed for the mission itself, but because you need them to keep everything running. Having no one onboard means you cannot fix anything that starts misbehaving on the ship, and the likelihood of the ship being at least partly unavailable grows with the duration of the mission. You can work around that with redundancy or thanks to dedicated support ships with technicians onboard not too far away that can intervene when needed, but that needs to be taken into account. I'm not saying that this kind of automation isn't possible or even desirable, just that it's in no way magical and it will need a complete rethinking of how military vessels operate, because if you just expect a warship to sail autonomously for 3 months without issues, you're going to be disappointed.

Almondsetat 2y ago
>it's in no way magical and it will need a complete rethinking of how military vessels operate "designing a seaframe from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on board" I think the thousands of engineers that made this crewless seaframe possible thought about it being crewless and all of which that entails.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  The part you quote is explicitly not about the engineers of the vessel. It's about everybody else in the Navy! What I'm saying is that we are all used to operate in a certain way, and you cannot really expect the automated system to fawlessly adapt to the way you already operate. To benefit from the automation you need to change the way you operate in depth, and that's a much harder thing to do in the military than in the civilian world (where it's already not that easy in practice). The engineering side of things is always the easiest part of the job, no matter how challenging one particular engineering achievement is.
  - Almondsetat 2y ago

countWSS 2y ago

Could it even compete with modern submarine drones/underwater gliders that are thousands of times cheaper/smaller and can cripple these bulky ships in seconds?

gorgoiler 2y ago
Someone once said that looking for a ship on the ocean is like trying to find your car keys in a field with a pair of binoculars. Obviously this applies less to littoral waters (1.5 dimensional instead of 2 dimensions of open water) but still: how does scale factor into trying to task sea drones with hunter/killer roles? Also, always worth pointing out that while tactical warfare is a technological battle — in which drones may indeed be superior — war is also a strategic, political act and as such the presence of large scary ships — even 250t ones — is often enough to achieve ones strategic aims.
- digdugdirk 2y ago
  Love that analogy. But on the topic of your final point - I agree with you, but I do think we're rapidly approaching the era where ships of this size will be difficult to defend from a mass drone strike, easily coordinated via a combined air/surface/submerged drone swarm. At that point, the asymmetric reward of sinking one of those large scary ships is going to be irresistible for both state and non-state actors, specifically for those same strategic and political aims.
  - ponector 2y ago
    Don't agree with that. In near future such huge ships will host swarms of defensive kamikaze drones to protect themselves.
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      Exactly. The person you're responding to basically says that “big ships won't be cost effective against small droneship” but they fail to realize that these “small” droneship themselves must be pretty bulky if they want to carry a warhead big enough to destroy a big ship at long distance, and they will be pretty cost-effectively be dealt with by much smaller kamikaze drones that will be protecting the big ships.

pjdesno 2y ago

This would be great for civilian shipping in certain areas, as modern piracy seems to exclusively focus on holding crew members for ransom. Lots of comments here raise good questions about its fitness as a military vessel, but maybe the point is to develop tech that civilian vessels can use? Preventing piracy has always been viewed as a task of the military, and piracy-proofing civilian vessels would go a long ways towards meeting that goal.

BrandoElFollito 2y ago

I've wondering for a long time why we must have manned ships. I do not know anything about ships. I guess the problem is not with navigation: we could have remote piloting when needed, from a central place. Redundant communication and all. I believe that the other is that you need to maintain a ship when on sea? Make some small fixes awaiting to be in a harbor? That one does require people for now.