Harassment of Navy Destroyers by Drone Swarms Off California Went on for Weeks

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43561/mysterious-drone-swarms-over-navy-destroyers-off-california-went-on-for-weeks

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

18 8 5 years ago

thedrive.com

drooby• 5 years ago

I’d love to see two autonomous drone swarms attack and evade each other. The future of combat looks a lot like Battlesnakes.

watersb• 5 years ago

Oh boy. I'm reading "Ghost Fleet" at the moment, sort of a novel, but more of an annotated wargame using modern and near-future military technology.

It's pedantic, intentionally so, but might be worth reading through, to see what at least a few people think things could fall apart.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Fleet_(novel)

muthdra• 5 years ago

Great for people who like Tom Clancy.

mateo1• 5 years ago

They were probably doing classified field tests

lenkite• 5 years ago

Won't the Navy simply be deliriously happy for free target practice ? They can field-test their fancy laser weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System

mikewarot2• 5 years ago

The best way to deal with this is to produce a new generation of higher quantity, but smaller and far cheaper Proximity Fused ammunition. Perhaps even small enough to fire in a Phalanx CIWS?

Instead of kinetic kill/shrapnel perhaps a cloud of carbon fiber threads to blind electronics, and bind propellers might be more effective?

This is a very interesting design challenge.

throwawaylinux• 5 years ago

I don't intend any offense but just to clarify and purely because this is very interesting -- is that actually what the current thinking among experts agrees to be the best way to deal with this kind of drone swarm, or is this just what you think is the best (and do you have a background in this kind of warfare or weaponry?)

Would be interested to hear more details on why these kinds of ammunition would be the best way to go, why they haven't been deployed yet, what is being used today, and what the other options are being considered.

mikewarot2• 5 years ago

I'm just an old guy who's done way too much reading, I'm definitely not an expert on any type of warfare.

Before the advent of the proximity fuze, it was estimated to take upwards of 10,000 rounds of ammunition to kill an enemy airplane, because you had to time the fuze to go off at the right moment. After the proximity fuze, this dropped to about 10 rounds. Anti-aircraft became 1000 times more effective because of this change.

As far as I can tell, CWIS uses tungsten penetrators to kinetically kill a target. This means you have to actually strike the target, which is harder than being near it with a timed round, which is again harder than being near it with a proximity fuze.

So, it seems to me that taking advantage of the innovation that made anti-aircraft artillery 1000x more effective, would be a good strategy against drones. Given how small electronics have become since the transistor and IC, it should be quite feasible to put together a 20mm shell with a proximity fuze that can take the place of a normal round, but be far more effective.

Perhaps this is something already in development, or even deployment, I don't know.

My background is in programming, electronics, and lately I've made gears. I've been sick with long covid, so I've got lots of time to lurk here on HN.

Harassment of Navy Destroyers by Drone Swarms Off California Went on for Weeks

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