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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:

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
    All branches of the military have been pushing for automation. As an example, 6th gen fighters are expected to either be crewless or to control swarms of smaller crewless drones from a distance and relay information.
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      I'm not disputing that. It's obvious to everyone that remote-controlled weapons are the future. My point is that a remote-controlled ship isn't going to be a 1 for 1 replacement for a crewed one anytime soon, and it's going to need a gigantic organizational and mindset change to deploy them at their full potential.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    There is no doubt that such a ship must store spare parts for most things that can break during operation and that everything must be designed so that such spare parts should be replaceable by robots, after running diagnostics that identify the faults. This is not simple, but it is feasible. It would be feasible much more frequently than currently used, but typically human technicians are cheaper than complex fail-safe automation. Presumably, at least in the beginning, such ships will not be used far from their bases, so they will return there after any defects that cannot be repaired. All essential functions should have enough redundancy so that the ship should be able to return to the base even when only partially operational, e.g. with some engines or propellers disabled.
- turnsout 2y ago
  And you can always send in a chopper with some seamen if needed
datadrivenangel 2y ago
Moving from a navy ship model to an air force plain model where the vehicles rarely undergo maintenance or repairs during operation is plausible, but salt tends to be bad, and over longer operations the errors are more likely to accumulate to a point of capability loss.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  Exactly. Operating those for missions of a few days near your shores is going to be easy, keeping them functional for long overseas operations isn't.

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
  All branches of the military have been pushing for automation. As an example, 6th gen fighters are expected to either be crewless or to control swarms of smaller crewless drones from a distance and relay information.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    I'm not disputing that. It's obvious to everyone that remote-controlled weapons are the future. My point is that a remote-controlled ship isn't going to be a 1 for 1 replacement for a crewed one anytime soon, and it's going to need a gigantic organizational and mindset change to deploy them at their full potential.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  There is no doubt that such a ship must store spare parts for most things that can break during operation and that everything must be designed so that such spare parts should be replaceable by robots, after running diagnostics that identify the faults. This is not simple, but it is feasible. It would be feasible much more frequently than currently used, but typically human technicians are cheaper than complex fail-safe automation. Presumably, at least in the beginning, such ships will not be used far from their bases, so they will return there after any defects that cannot be repaired. All essential functions should have enough redundancy so that the ship should be able to return to the base even when only partially operational, e.g. with some engines or propellers disabled.
turnsout 2y ago
And you can always send in a chopper with some seamen if needed

datadrivenangel 2y ago

Moving from a navy ship model to an air force plain model where the vehicles rarely undergo maintenance or repairs during operation is plausible, but salt tends to be bad, and over longer operations the errors are more likely to accumulate to a point of capability loss.

littlestymaar 2y ago
Exactly. Operating those for missions of a few days near your shores is going to be easy, keeping them functional for long overseas operations isn't.