Emma
Helfrich, Associate Editor, Military Embedded Systems, early March
2020, has written an excellent article at http://mil-embedded.com/news/xl-autonomous-submarine-contract-won-by-msubs/
entitled:
PETE COMMENT
Armed UUVs of whatever size remain problematic.
Unlike flying stealth UAVs, that can (continuously 2 way) communicate direct to the originator (A's) friendly satellite network, there is no such ease of (continuous 2 way) communication with a stealthy UUV.
Even a giant UUV runs the risk that a hightech adversary (eg. China or Russia) could jam, capture (China seized a small UUV in 2016) and reprogram it.
If a reprogrammed UUV has, a warhead, small torpedoes or missiles, the UUV could be redirected to sink a friendly or neutral warship or worse, a passenger vessel.
This may result in mass casualties and very bad press for the originator (A).
“XL [extra large] autonomous
submarine contract won by MSubs
UNITED KINGDOM. An initial contract has been awarded
to Plymouth [UK]-based MSubs Ltd to build a test submarine that will be used to
explore the potential capabilities of larger un-crewed, underwater vehicles in
the future. According to officials, this extra-large autonomous submarine
measuring about 30m in length is larger than autonomous submarines used for
beach reconnaissance, allowing it to operate at a range of 3,000 nautical
miles.
[UK] Admiral Tony Radakin, First Sea Lord announced [see Radakin's text] the contract at the
Underwater Defence & Security Symposium in Southampton. He noted how the
Ministry of Defence wants to increase its presence in the underwater
battlespace and is exploring the use of extra-large, un-crewed underwater
vehicles (XLUUV) for surveillance, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare
operations.
XLUUV submarines are designed to leave their dock autonomously and
secretly move to the operational area without any embarked crew for up to three
months. They are also intended to be able to sense hostile targets and report
their findings back to the station, making them an important barrier for
anti-submarine warfare.
The first phase of DASA’s Developing the Royal Navy’s Autonomous
Underwater Capability program — run jointly with the Royal Navy and Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) — will see an existing crewed
submersible refitted with autonomous control systems.”
PETE COMMENT
Armed UUVs of whatever size remain problematic.
Unlike flying stealth UAVs, that can (continuously 2 way) communicate direct to the originator (A's) friendly satellite network, there is no such ease of (continuous 2 way) communication with a stealthy UUV.
Even a giant UUV runs the risk that a hightech adversary (eg. China or Russia) could jam, capture (China seized a small UUV in 2016) and reprogram it.
If a reprogrammed UUV has, a warhead, small torpedoes or missiles, the UUV could be redirected to sink a friendly or neutral warship or worse, a passenger vessel.
This may result in mass casualties and very bad press for the originator (A).
4 comments:
Drones seem to be the answer to everything these days. Many who comment on defence blogs think crewless machines can do it all whilst being much, much cheaper and exceptionally small. My favourite is when they suggest using UUV as a the ultimate solution to MCM warfare. We have few escorts in the UK but they will happily suggest that a frigate can be used as base for such.
I am sceptical about it to be honest. I don't think the machines are intelligent enough especially when it comes to undersea warfare where the captain and crew at times are extremely isolated.
Hi steve
Yes. Specially deploying some of the RN's few frigates as bases for UUVs doing mine counter-measures (MCM) would fall short of RN cost/allocation priorities.
This is why much smaller/hence cheaper minesweepers, using towed cutting devices, have been used by navies (eg. the RN's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Mine_Counter-Measures_Squadron using River-class minesweepers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River-class_minesweeper up to 2001) for decades.
Regards
Pete
Many get carried away with the idea of modularity with out understanding what is meant by the term or the costs involved. 60% of a surface warship cost is 'systems'. The idea that RN would have spare systems to swap in and out is just nonsense. What decides what module is fitted? What do the sailors trained to use that equipment do when it is sitting in a warehouse? What about time to and from station? It doesn't take long for the argument to fall apart on all manner of grounds. Yet I have been reading it being expounded for decades now. There seems to be little understanding that ships are designed a specific way to do a specific job. If you went on to one of those blogs and argued that the air force should just by C130's and just plug in different modules for every task from air superiority to VIP transport (!) they would think you mad. Yet they argue that for ships time and time over.
Hi Steve [March 11, 2020 at 6:16 PM]
Modularity indeed hasn't worked. Its more like crude advertising by arms companies and in the US, the Pentagon eg. "smaller, faster, cheaper" US examples:
- the 3 versions of a "common airframe" F-35 has evolved into 3 distinctly different sets of airframe components
- in the naval realm the USN modular Littoral Combat Ship concept has proven a dismal failure https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/its-official-us-navy%E2%80%99s-littoral-combat-ship-complete-failure-58837
"Now the Navy has announced it is abandoning the two fundamental concepts behind the program: a multi-mission ship with swappable mission modules...Instead, each LCS hull will have a single mission"
Regards
Pete
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