UCAV in the Maritime Domain

[Cloud Cover]

Figured it’s time this subject has its own thread. There is a lot happening with UCAV in broad spectrum naval warfare, and it makes sense for our adversaries to lead because they generally do not have a traditional vested political and economic interest in large, heavy, expensive fleets. They can abruptly displace their own technology and adopt newer, innovative systems and platforms without worrying about job loss, maintaining the prestige of maritime power, platform life cycle and especially cost.

On that note, it looks like China may have secretly built a carrier purposely designed to support, launch, recover numerous and fairly large/heavy UCAV. Not a lot is known other than the vessel dimensions appear to suggest it is indeed a small carrier, probably too small to support crewed aircraft. It’s unknown if the ship has the means itself to direct and track the UCAV missions. Regardless, if turns out to be true and if they operationalize the thing, it will be a huge development in naval strike warfare. Note that the ship itself has a crew, but there’s probably a lot of automation, creativity and ingenuity in the design. Appears to be more than just a science fair project or a demonstrator, but less than a full carrier strike vessel.

Looking forward to learning more through this thread!

 

[NavyShooter]

China Builds World's First Dedicated Drone Carrier - Naval News

China has built the world's first dedicated drone carrier. The ship has not been reported however and many of the circumstances surrounding it remain a mystery.

www.navalnews.com

There's some sat photos of the ship in question.

Apparently it's undergoing sea trials already. Built since 2022.

 

[HavokFour]

Canada has begun dipping our toes into the UCNV game.

Canada deploys explosive drone boat in first proof of ‘new operational concept’ for navy

The Royal Canadian Navy is experimenting with explosive-packed drone boats, turning lessons learned from Ukraine’s war with Russia into a “new operational concept” for Canada’s maritime forces.

www.ctvnews.ca

 

[Navy_Pete]

Canada has begun dipping our toes into the UCNV game.

Canada deploys explosive drone boat in first proof of ‘new operational concept’ for navy

The Royal Canadian Navy is experimenting with explosive-packed drone boats, turning lessons learned from Ukraine’s war with Russia into a “new operational concept” for Canada’s maritime forces.

www.ctvnews.ca

Hopefully they've improved on their comms and logic; when they rolled out as targets in gen 1 they would occasionally lose track and do things like wander off or run into the ship that launched it.

DRDC has also developed a number of different drone concepts over the last 20 years, with a lot of them getting to fully working proof of concept before being shelved (as they can't compete with industry) so hopefully we can dust off a lot of that work and adapt it.

Really changes the game though, as means no real safe harbours, and forward deploying aircraft and leaving them on the tarmac may no longer be a good option, so forward deployable shelters and harbour security booms and anti drone systems may suddenly be a big deal.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Hopefully they've improved on their comms and logic; when they rolled out as targets in gen 1 they would occasionally lose track and do things like wander off or run into the ship that launched it.

DRDC has also developed a number of different drone concepts over the last 20 years, with a lot of them getting to fully working proof of concept before being shelved (as they can't compete with industry) so hopefully we can dust off a lot of that work and adapt it.

Really changes the game though, as means no real safe harbours, and forward deploying aircraft and leaving them on the tarmac may no longer be a good option, so forward deployable shelters and harbour security booms and anti drone systems may suddenly be a big deal.

The Japanese were dabbling in that space in WWII, although due to the lack of computing power they used expendable humans.

USS Mississinewa (AO-59) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Shinyo (suicide motorboat) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Stoker]

Canada needs to do a lot more getting this off the ground as what Canada just did we had the capability to do this for years and something Ukraine did a number of years ago. We are way behind..

 

[Underway]

Hopefully they've improved on their comms and logic; when they rolled out as targets in gen 1 they would occasionally lose track and do things like wander off or run into the ship that launched it.

Gen 1 had LoS comms issues. For this Hammerhead things were different.

They had SATCOM enabled FPV capability. The conversion package took about two months to pull together, engineer and install. Lessons learned but basically they can now do the same with the rest of the Hammerheads should they want to do that.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Gen 1 had LoS comms issues. For this Hammerhead things were different.

They had SATCOM enabled FPV capability. The conversion package took about two months to pull together, engineer and install. Lessons learned but basically they can now do the same with the rest of the Hammerheads should they want to do that.

For sure, I think the ones on that sail may have been the first shipboard trial. We also did the remote control RHIBs as targets, and atomized one with an SM 2 so pretty fun (although huge amount of preps for a trial over in a few seconds total).

Probably mentioned before, but when it lost tracking and we ran it over the trial staff tried to blame it on the ship running it over (after it did a 180 turn right back into our path before we could do anything). The CO was not happy, but got a chuckle when we added a few of them temporarily to our gun, including the run over one.

I assumed they had ironed all those bugs out when I saw UKR use them very effectively.

Target wise, they are a nightmare, and even on a controlled path perpendicular to the ship direction pretty hard to track, as they will disappear between normal waves fairly easily, and they are mostly styrofoam so took a surprising beating and were very hard to sink. Some kind of AI enabled drone that could target it from the top down through visual ID would make me sleep a lot better at night if I was sailing in that region.

 

[FJAG]

Canada has begun dipping our toes into the UCNV game.

Canada deploys explosive drone boat in first proof of ‘new operational concept’ for navy

The Royal Canadian Navy is experimenting with explosive-packed drone boats, turning lessons learned from Ukraine’s war with Russia into a “new operational concept” for Canada’s maritime forces.

www.ctvnews.ca

There's an interesting parallel here with land based drones. When the army first started dabbling with UAVs at the RCAS in the early '00s, some of the work was being done using Vindicator air defence target drones.

 

[Underway]

Target wise, they are a nightmare, and even on a controlled path perpendicular to the ship direction pretty hard to track, as they will disappear between normal waves fairly easily, and they are mostly styrofoam so took a surprising beating and were very hard to sink. Some kind of AI enabled drone that could target it from the top down through visual ID would make me sleep a lot better at night if I was sailing in that region.

The three pumps really help them float as well. Usually after a shoot if we can we turn the pumps off remotely (something that was added later), so they will actually take on water.

The best bet for dealing with them is HE as it just flattens them with a pressure wave. The shrapnel options also usually destroys their comms connection so they become uncontrolled. For training of course we're usually using inert warheads... need a pretty direct hit to do anything.

 

[Underway]

Check it out! The video of the drone strike. Three drones being used together. One target, one observer and one weapon!

 

[Rainbow1910]

Really changes the game though, as means no real safe harbours, and forward deploying aircraft and leaving them on the tarmac may no longer be a good option, so forward deployable shelters and harbour security booms and anti drone systems may suddenly be a big deal.

I would argue that it doesn't really change the game for proper naval vessels as much as anything else, considering basically all Western navies have been taking the threat of small attack craft fairly seriously for the past decades. I do think you are correct regarding infrastructure defence though, it's obvious that basically nobody is ready for a potential threat like this and the only bit of saving grace for Canada currently is out geography provides some measure of protection currently. In a time of conflict, drones from all avenues are going to be a major stressor and I hope we can adequately adapt.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I would argue that it doesn't really change the game for proper naval vessels as much as anything else, considering basically all Western navies have been taking the threat of small attack craft fairly seriously for the past decades. I do think you are correct regarding infrastructure defence though, it's obvious that basically nobody is ready for a potential threat like this and the only bit of saving grace for Canada currently is out geography provides some measure of protection currently. In a time of conflict, drones from all avenues are going to be a major stressor and I hope we can adequately adapt.

I don’t think geography protects Canada’s Naval Dockyards as much as many people would like to believe

 

[Furniture]

Canada needs to do a lot more getting this off the ground as what Canada just did we had the capability to do this for years and something Ukraine did a number of years ago. We are way behind..

Let's not lose sight of the fact Ukraine is just scrambling to get things to throw at the Russians. If they had more Neptune missiles, they'd likely use them instead most times.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I would argue that it doesn't really change the game for proper naval vessels as much as anything else, considering basically all Western navies have been taking the threat of small attack craft fairly seriously for the past decades. I do think you are correct regarding infrastructure defence though, it's obvious that basically nobody is ready for a potential threat like this and the only bit of saving grace for Canada currently is out geography provides some measure of protection currently. In a time of conflict, drones from all avenues are going to be a major stressor and I hope we can adequately adapt.

It absolutely does, as most harbours we go into don't have a security fence, and the ones that do don't go down very deep. The concept of drone swarms isn't new on the defence side, it's just now advanced to the point where you can do it commercially for things like fireworks display, and you can put a much bigger payload a lot easier on a boat.

The USS Cole was a suicide attack, but that killed a number of people and took it out of action for years. Lot easier to find drone operators than suicide bombers, and with image recognition being fairly basic thing for anything with a cheap camera, you don't even need people on the other end, so just jamming doesn't do anything.