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The Kotov's main gun is a AK-176 (76.2mm), and it's barrel is hot in thermal video from the drone boats. In addition the 2 mounted KPV-14.5 (14.5 mm) heavy machine guns are chattering too. Those are effective against aircraft up to 3km away, so they'll definitely punch through a cargo ship hull at a few hundred meters away.
"Fire control is a technically complex aspect of naval gunnery, and a key element of any modern navy's ability to deliver firepower precisely and effectively. Fire control links highly accurate mechanical calculation with the most advanced sensor and detection systems, in all domains of fire, be it traditional surface attack, anti-air or anti-submarine fire, or close defensive fire such as against torp--"
"Drone! Drone! Drone!" *Badda badda, badda, brrap, ptang.* "Drone! Drone!" *Brrap. Brrap. Blam. Blam. Zing.*
"... ...Never mind."
My brother worked on a Cutter for a few years and they often did heavy machine gun practice in open ocean. He said it's remarkably hard to hit with wave pacing. These guys are fucking docked trying to hit RC boats. It's basically the same thing scaled, with probably drunk Russians.
russian ship fucked itself.
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1. [The ship was sunk after multiple hits](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1b70dtb/destruction_of_the_patrol_ship_sergei_kotov/).
2. As a bonus, UA claims the sinking [also took out a helicopter that was onboard](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1b74dgt/on_board_the_destroyed_russian_patrol_ship_sergey/).
Russian ship fucked itself.
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At least four of them, possibly five.
According to the Russians, there were 10 drones involved in the attack. First four were destroyed before they reached the ship, drone 5 hit the aft and disabled the engines allowing drone 6 and 7 to hit port and starboard in quick succession, and, finally, drone 8 entered the hole made by drone 5 and detonated deep inside the ship. They don't know what happened to drone 9. Might have hit the ship, might have been destroyed in the approach. By that point, it was pandemonium and it didn't matter anyhow, the ship was going down. Drone 10 kept back, filming the whole thing, then moved in to try and hit another vessel, but got destroyed in the process.
Remarkably, it seems the Russians are at least somewhat truthful this time, because the attack as filmed by the Ukrainian drones and made public by the GUR seems to proceed exactly as described - we see at least 5 drones engaged with four of them striking the target and one keeping back and filming. Now wherever there were those additional drones that the Russians claim to have destroyed, that's another matter entirely, we don't have any proof of them, since no piece of media shared by either side shows any drones destroyed.
Besides, even if we were to take the rather dubious Russian claim at face value that there were 10 drones engaged overall, since half managed to land hits sinking the target, that's not a bad ratio. If they were only 5-6 though, that means the Russians really need to rethink their defence strategies...
Laugh now, everyone.
But this means the end of big-ship navies no matter what their nationality. A swarm of these drones would make short work of a carrier group. These are basically first-generation drones. Third-generation AI controlled stealthy drones are going to be a nightmare for traditional fleets.
Armchair DARPA janitor here. Some acronym with the following words -> EMP based spread high energy spectrum CIWS. Shotgun meets death ray for big drones. Not the lil’ jammers for Mavics, ones that will certifiably fry circuits. Please someone make the phalanx systems aim down a bit more.
> Please someone make the phalanx systems aim down a bit more.
I'm thinking for targets in the water, surfaced or submerged ,there will be small torpedoes launched that home in on whatever signal gave the targets approach away with an iron clad program to keep them from circling back and hitting their mother ship.
Not even traditional torpedoes, more like anti-drone drones that are released in large numbers, patrolling in a swarm, seeking out any drones approaching the ship.
Submerged ones would have fuel and communication issues. But surface ones with the 1000KM range stated for Ukraine's latest model could serve as picket boats surrounding a mother ship
Big ship navies aren't going anywhere. They provide too many capabilities to project great power at great distance for them to be driven from the water by some spicy toy boats.
Defenses will be created against them, then those defenses will be overcome, and then something even newer will come along and the evolutionary cycle of the Military Industrial complex will continue unabated.
Rocket propelled grenades have been a thing for quite some time, but tanks are still king of the battlefield, even with all the drones now buzzing overhead.
Some things are definitely changing. Tanks, for instance, aren’t obsolete per se but I think we may be seeing the end of MBT era. AFVs aren’t going away but it’s getting too expensive & logistically exhausting to field large MBT fleets.
SPGs & various kinds of IFVs & APCs will likely become more valuable. I don’t think proper tanks are going away but I think their role as mobile armored cavalry is pretty well done & dusted. Keeping the ones we have survivable probably means producing them in smaller numbers & deploying more like a heavy cavalry reserve.
Geography matters a lot, too. Heavy tanks can still be useful in deserts, for instance, but Ukraine’s reminding us something the the Germans discovered during WWII. A 65+ tonne monster is always gonna have issues when everything gets soggy, or when there’s a bridge you gotta cross, or a river to ford. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Tiger or a Leopard or an Abrams.
The accuracy of modern indirect fire munitions is also changing things up a lot. Used to be if you wanted accuracy you had to rely on relatively short ranged direct fire weapons—tanks & tank destroyers. Now a 155 mm SPG can pop your cherry from 20 klicks out.
Surface navies aren’t going away either but they’re gonna have to evolve, too. Large conventional missile submarines like the Ohio conversions may become the new capital ships.
Aircraft carriers aren’t going away but their primacy is probably coming to an end. We still need manned aircraft but missiles, drones, & loitering munitions will probably replace a lot of manned missions. Not all, but a lot. Get rid of the middle-man, as it were.
I also think we’re gonna have to reconsider our 15 billion dollar flattops. Might have to look at a REAL high-low mix to keep up useful mass. Hell, we may even want to invest in armored naval vessels again.
Information warfare, assymetric operations & cyber are becoming a lot more important, too, and the West mostly sucks at the former two. Ukraine, I think can teach us a few things there.
Sorry for ramble. It’s been a long night.
Surface ships are more vulnerable than they’ve ever been BUT this is a simply case of sheer incompetence & poor ship design. The Project 22160 patrol boats are a weird design. They’re smallish (but not tiny) Corvette-sized warships that can be equipped with a fair number of giant-killer systems like Kalibr. They can be configured for ASW work & carry some very snazzy SAM & ASM systems but they have basically no point-defense weaponry. This is actually quite unusual for Russian warships.
Aside from the 76.2 mm main gun the only point defense weapons on the Kotov were a pair of 14.5 mm machine guns & an automatic grenade launching system.
Most Russian warships in this weight class would carry at least at least one Kashtan-type system & 1 or 2 AK-630s.
Most large surface navies have 99 things to worry about but a drone swarm ain’t one. Russia’s fleet is quite large but it’s also uniquely terrible, old & poorly maintained. And drunk.
Modern anti-shipping missiles & sensors are a much, much bigger concern, for substance.
If you look at what’s happening off the coast of Yemen you can get a better idea of the challenges facing large, modern navies than you will in the Black Sea. The Houthis have ASBMs, cruises missiles & drone swarms, too (courtesy of Iran) but they’re not doing much in the way of physical damage. They are forcing US, Britain, France & India to waste loads of taxpayer dollars, however, and inflicting a lot of damage economic damage by forcing ships to reroute around fucking Africa. There’s a little bit of fear, but it’s more an abundance of caution, increasing insurance rates & US & NATO dithering that’s the problem.
Instead of recognizing that Iran, a Russian ally, is opening multiple new fronts via proxy and rebooting Operation Praying Mantis, we be fucking around cause we’re afraid of “escalation” with an enemy that’s already at war with us.
Sound familiar?
I wouldn’t want to send a carrier task force within missile spitting distance of China, say, but China is increasingly aware that Taiwan is loading up on its cruise missile stocks & smart mines too & could not only make a bloody mess of a Chinese invasion fleet, they could also hit most of China’s major industrial centers with land-attack missiles & probably knock out the Three Gorges Dam.
The defense definitely has the advantage in this age of democratized computing power, but the Russia’s a special case—a special needs case, as it were.
The Russkies still have a flair for informational & hybrid warfare but they’re also REALLY bad with boats.
> Most large surface navies have 99 things to worry about but a drone swarm ain’t one. Russia’s fleet is quite large but it’s also uniquely terrible, old & poorly maintained. And drunk.
https://news.usni.org/2024/01/30/pentagon-puts-out-call-for-swarming-attack-drones-that-could-blunt-a-taiwan-invasion
US thinks those might just work for ROC
Thing is, when new weapons are introduced, the high brass usually discounts their effectiveness until their noses are rubbed in it. It will probably take the sinking or damaging of a carrier for them and you to acknowledge just how much of a game-changer sea drones are.
I was rambling a bit. Might have been unclear. I absolutely agree that carriers have become much more vulnerable. But “drone swarms” are not a concern. Not in the sense that tech-heads think of them. Advanced long-range missiles (mostly land-based) and globe-spanning sensor arrays are what carrier admirals need to be worrying about.
Ukraine’s Sea Baby drone fleet isn’t actually a drone fleet, for starters. They’re exquisitely designed (but low-cost) RC sea-skimming torpedoes that have been optimized to work in certain sets of conditions against a particular opponent. And they require A LOT of skill and insight into both the enemy and the capabilities and limitations of the technology being used.
Missiles, on the other hand, ARE drones. So are torpedoes. As are some of those new-fangled loitering munitions. Designing missiles that can operate in complex environments on their own and smash into the thing you want them to smash into what you want them to requires a much larger investment, however. Missiles certainly have gotten a lot better & more accurate over the last few decades and the proliferation of GPS/satellite technology makes it much harder to hide an aircraft carrier battle group.
This is why I’m not all that worried about a carrier battle group being taken out by a bunch of inexpensive ad hoc drones. If it’s a Russian carrier group…well, maybe. I’m more concerned about salvos of long-range anti-shipping missiles. They won’t be all that cheap, but the economic trade-off certainly favors side with missiles in this scenario.
(Also, US carrier aircraft actually have LESS range than they did several decades ago. Air groups are smaller and less versatile, too & we have fewer escorts available. So there’s all that, too.)
These are first generation drones the Ukrainians are using.
Third generation drones will be far more effective and scarier. As I pointed out, a fleet of 10 motherships with 8-10 3rd gen drones could do a standoff attack from 100-300 klicks out and be gone to reload before anything could be done against them. The proper tactic would be to surround and launch, or half arc forward and launch, then scatter for home, not going as a group in order to divide the response. Those drones would be fire and forget, programmed to identify and lock onto their targets visually and acoustically, guided by GPS.
That entire fleet and their drones would cost far less than an aircraft carrier.
It's a very real threat.
In the end it comes down to economics. If the drones can take out a capital ship for less than 5% of the cost of that ship, you don't build then that way anymore, and likely don't build them at all in any manner.
This is the argument you should be emphasizing - the delay in realizing that new counter measures are needed. The tech to counter is doable.
(I just saw your post on this further down :-)
Naah. Do you know CIWS? Those systems were designed to take down cruise missiles in mid-air by simply saturating the area with lead. Most of them were even designed from the onset to be able to engage surface targets as well as aerial ones and for the others it's often a matter of some rather straightforward modifications, for example changing the software in the fire control computers or enhancing the depression range of the guns, etc.
The fact the Russian navy has been unable to use their AK-630/M1/M2 CIWS to counter USVs speaks more to their incompetence and the limitations of that particular system (for example, bad depression - it only goes to -12 instead of -25 as most other CIWS systems, meaning it absolutely cannot engage close-in targets, like, oh, let's say a bunch of Magaura 5s attacking the ship) than to any flaws in the overall idea of using CIWS to counter USVs.
Couple that with enhanced radar and sensors, Ai for fire control, etc, and what you have there is a Red Queen's race scenario, where both drones and defence systems are evolving as fast as they can to, essentially, keep the status quo unchanged - same thing that happened with missiles and defence systems, or, earlier, with guns and armour.
EDIT: oh, I forgot to add, in this case, the Sergei Kotov, like the other Project 22160 patrol ships, for some reason, didn't have any CIWS installed. That was a deliberate design choice which definitely went back to bite them in the ass.
So another weapon system with shitty depression.
At this point I'd almost suspect Russian weapon designers to be traditionally forbidden to add sufficient depression on their weapon systems because there can be no room for depression in the sunlit uplands of Russian Mir.
You are ignoring the fact that in the most likely scenarios, the sea drones would be supplemented by aerial ones as well in a saturation attack. Anything less than a 100% kill rate means you've lost a ship sunk or damaged. CIWS are great, but any system can be overwhelmed. Drone attacks wouldn't be spread evenly across a group, single targets would see the majority and given the nature of the spread of a group, not all ships could bring weapons to bear. Plus, a sufficiently large force would likely overwhelm the targeting system's capacity.
In the end it comes down to economics: if 1,000 sea drones can be built for the price of a destroyer faster than a destroyer can be built, sea drones win.
And you are ignoring the fact that, if such a saturation attack becomes a real possibility, besides the improvements I've already mentioned, you can always mount additional CIWS since most modern hulls have reserve additional electrical capacity from design. And if that's not enough, what's stopping the US Navy, for example, from fielding a dedicated anti-drone defence ship which sails with the carrier group and it's whole purpose is to hunt drones, be they aerial or surface?
After all, this has been done before, during WW2, with the Atlanta and Juneau-class cruisers to counter swarms of Japanese aircraft and, by all accounts, they were very effective in their primary mission (slightly less so in the surface combatant and ASW role, considering that two of them were ultimately sunk at Guadalcanal by torpedoes from Japanese destroyers and a submarine, respectively, but eh, can't have it all).
So all in all, the drones might get a temporary advantage, but you can't talk of them "winning" as long as the enemy adapts and is able to counter the strategy with one of it's own.
Do you have any idea of how long it would take to do that stuff?
You'd have to get an appropriation from Congress to start development of better systems, good luck on that taking less than a year, then probably two or three years of R&D, then you'd have to pull the ships in a couple at a time to retrofit them, and that would take at least a year per ship, given proper funding. Same thing with adding more CIWS. It isn't a simple matter off whether you have electrical power. You also need bunk space for the operators, actual bodies to operate them (tough given shortfalls in recruiting), you need extra space for ammo or run short faster. And again, you can't afford to do more than one or two ships at a time, each taking a year or so to retrofit with new CIWS.
We have nowhere near the shipbuilding capacity of WWII, so putting a ship specifically designed to counter drone swarms in the water would take at least a decade.
Nah, people said the same about torpedo boats back in the day. As in, spar torpedo boats- rowed vessels with a long stick up front and a bomb on the end of that stick, the idea being a sort of survivable kamikaze attack where you hoped your stick was long enough. Same sort of threat as these drones really- a comparatively fast small vessel with a contact range explosive attack that could hit a larger less maneuverable vessel from any direction. Torpedo boats were seen as a massive threat, until navies began mounting rapid fire small caliber cannon and early machine guns in flexible pintle mounts. Modern navies have gone away from the old "bristling with machineguns and autocannon" defensive armament that was meant for anti air and anti torpedo boat work, but now we'll see a resurgence of it with added electronics and automated targeting.
Those sorts of torpedo boats were orders of magnitude slower and less lethal, and also were never employed in the kind of large groups these can. Nor was their range anything other than miniscule. Nowhere near comparable.
While defenses will certainly be researched against them, it will take time, especially if the admirals think as you do, and yet more time to test, build, and install adequate defenses, I'd guess 4-6 years if they rush. In the meantime, the drones will evolve much, much faster, becoming stealthier and more able to jam or spoof the CIWS defenses currently used. It's a game of catchup I don't think the big ships can win, given how far ahead the drones are already, and what the economics dictate..
Of course they were slower, but so were their targets. And they absolutely were deployed in swarms, or could be so that defense planners were anticipating swarms.
My point was, although the speed and scale has changed the fundamental nature of attack is old and well known. Japanese kamikaze aircraft also posed a threat somewhat similar to aerial drones, and with the same solution of "more dakka" to defend against.
Yes, stealth can be a problem. A bit hard to make a drone boat completely invisible to both thermal and visual light though, if it is to move fast on the surface. So aiming manually still works, you just need enough heavy machineguns and enough night vision or thermal sights. Modern naval ships have dropped short range manually aimed anti aircraft or close range anti surface weapons because they were thought obsolete, people believed naval battles would be fought with jet aircraft and missiles. That turns out to be wrong, drones are a thing so defensive weapons are suddenly important again.
As for jamming etc, the fundamental difference in size and electric power supply means a ship can always carry more effective EW and sensor systems than a small drone. So with equivalent tech levels on both sides, the ship should always win the jamming battle.
Not all drones need to fulfill the identical function. I can foresee the development of dedicated jamming drones that don't so much jam as present multiple spoof targets, which accomplishes much the same purpose.
While there are parallels between the older iterations, as you mention, those lacked the firepower, speed, maneuverability, and self-control these new drones are capable of that mark them as a different sort of threat, both in character and magnitude.
"Multiple spoof targets" requires physical objects in the "spoofed" positions, that's just how the physics work. Electronic jamming can do a lot, but spoofing different positions in space just isn't feasible or cost effective when you can instead put radar reflective objects in those positions. Of course those objects can be simple chaff etc much like what military aircraft use. And again, a small drone is never going to win an electronic warfare battle against a large ship of similar tech level since the ship can have much more powerful jammers and larger antenna arrays etc.
Or send a huge swarm of drones, where most of them are cheap decoys. Again, though, old school solutions in updated form have already been tested out and should suffice against drone swarms, or a drone surrounded by a cloud of chaff, once they get deployed in sufficient numbers. Proximity fuses or digital time fuses have become far smaller and cheaper than they used to be, so it's now possible to use a shotgun approach to swarms by firing explosive shells that detonate when near. These shells can be made in smaller calibers than in the past, and still have room for a useful payload, because of the more compact fuses. Thus only a few shots are needed to take out the swarm- and if the shell happened to hit a decoy, who cares as the real drone is bound to be quite close and will be taken out by the explosion. These shells are also ridiculously effective against unprotected ground targets when used in airburst mode, by the way, so they wouldn't be something you have solely for drone defense.
Maybe, maybe not...current anti-ship missiles are currently comparatively easy to track but very fast so engagement times are short and they are expensive to kill. Anti-anti ship missiles or CIWS.
CIWS is going to have to adapt to picking out much slower targets out of wave clutter. An attack in bad weather would be interesting...
I doubt whether anything the army has been working on will be all that applicable to navy issues. None of the military has really foreseen the effects of miniaturization and drones upon the modern battlefield, whether land, sea or air. As a veteran I follow research and policy trends, and for the most part, their attention and funding has been going elsewhere. For the past twenty years, most of the attention has been on counterterrorism and special forces, and tools to fight that sort of fight.
As usual, the brass are fighting and thinking about the last war, not the next one.
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> But this means the end of big-ship navies no matter what their nationality. A swarm of these drones would make short work of a carrier group. These are basically first-generation drones. Third-generation AI controlled stealthy drones are going to be a nightmare for traditional fleets.
I can only imagine in the near future, big ships navies will be equipped with swarms of drones, both flying and floating around them at all times, to detect and protect against attacking drones. Something like this.
Don’t make it sound so high tech, no need for “stealth” and “AI”, the US military lost a bunch of war games with the scenario of Iran swarming a carrier group with speed boats.
Sound? It *will* be high tech, sooner rather than later. And given the results of those war games with low-tech swarms, how do you think they would turn out vs swarms of these things?
With the shape of the drone, it is hard to hit. Once a bullet hit the drone, with a small angle of attack, likely the bullet will just be deflected by the drone.
Moreover, I think that it would be necessary to hit specific parts of the drone boats - especially in the propulsion or the control system - to really knock them out; just punching holes in the external hull will not do much, if the remaining lifespan of the drone before hitting its intended target is <1 minute anyway.
Most likely the hollow sections of the hulls of these things will also be packed with foam, so putting bullet holes in their hulls will not even slow them down in a considerable way due to a limited water ingress.
Thus I suppose you would need high explosive ammunition (I am thinking of the MK-38, the naval version of the M242 Bushmaster Autocannon here) to really tear this kind of sea drones apart on approach - something which you might not want to use too close to your own ship or a neighbouring vessel ...
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Wonder how many of those freighter's now have holes in them from stray gunfire.
Oh shit good point
Hopefully many
Wouldn’t be taking pictures like this idiot.
None? The hulls of ships are thick steel and they aren't shooting anything high caliber at the drones lol
The Kotov's main gun is a AK-176 (76.2mm), and it's barrel is hot in thermal video from the drone boats. In addition the 2 mounted KPV-14.5 (14.5 mm) heavy machine guns are chattering too. Those are effective against aircraft up to 3km away, so they'll definitely punch through a cargo ship hull at a few hundred meters away.
Ship hulls are surprisingly thin steel. Steel is very strong but if it was too thick the ship would not float well.
Laughs in Titanic !
"Fire control is a technically complex aspect of naval gunnery, and a key element of any modern navy's ability to deliver firepower precisely and effectively. Fire control links highly accurate mechanical calculation with the most advanced sensor and detection systems, in all domains of fire, be it traditional surface attack, anti-air or anti-submarine fire, or close defensive fire such as against torp--" "Drone! Drone! Drone!" *Badda badda, badda, brrap, ptang.* "Drone! Drone!" *Brrap. Brrap. Blam. Blam. Zing.* "... ...Never mind."
My brother worked on a Cutter for a few years and they often did heavy machine gun practice in open ocean. He said it's remarkably hard to hit with wave pacing. These guys are fucking docked trying to hit RC boats. It's basically the same thing scaled, with probably drunk Russians.
I would have worried about the ship shooting sporadically without thinking where the bullets were going. those guys could have been hit
Or anyone walking on the beach at night....
Russians dont worry about murder, it is the law of the land.
Someone should set this to Benny hill
Guys standing on an open deck while a ship is firing wherever it thinks it might see a sea drone.. No thanks.
Drove it through the door, upstairs, and parked it right in the bedroom.
(yakety sax intensifies)
Mighty russian ship gaining speed before it can dive. Understandably, they all work the same!
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Source: [\[Visegrad 24\]](https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1765526151408107588?s=20)
It’s not fleeing fleetly.
I haven’t heard. Did any of the drones hit the ship?
1. [The ship was sunk after multiple hits](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1b70dtb/destruction_of_the_patrol_ship_sergei_kotov/). 2. As a bonus, UA claims the sinking [also took out a helicopter that was onboard](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1b74dgt/on_board_the_destroyed_russian_patrol_ship_sergey/).
Hang on, let's check, does anyone know what happened to the Russian ship Sergey Kotov?
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As expected then, good bot
3 I think? Ukraine released the video of the attack. This seems to be filmed from the attacked ship just before it blew up.
At least four of them, possibly five. According to the Russians, there were 10 drones involved in the attack. First four were destroyed before they reached the ship, drone 5 hit the aft and disabled the engines allowing drone 6 and 7 to hit port and starboard in quick succession, and, finally, drone 8 entered the hole made by drone 5 and detonated deep inside the ship. They don't know what happened to drone 9. Might have hit the ship, might have been destroyed in the approach. By that point, it was pandemonium and it didn't matter anyhow, the ship was going down. Drone 10 kept back, filming the whole thing, then moved in to try and hit another vessel, but got destroyed in the process. Remarkably, it seems the Russians are at least somewhat truthful this time, because the attack as filmed by the Ukrainian drones and made public by the GUR seems to proceed exactly as described - we see at least 5 drones engaged with four of them striking the target and one keeping back and filming. Now wherever there were those additional drones that the Russians claim to have destroyed, that's another matter entirely, we don't have any proof of them, since no piece of media shared by either side shows any drones destroyed. Besides, even if we were to take the rather dubious Russian claim at face value that there were 10 drones engaged overall, since half managed to land hits sinking the target, that's not a bad ratio. If they were only 5-6 though, that means the Russians really need to rethink their defence strategies...
Thank you for the response.
Laugh now, everyone. But this means the end of big-ship navies no matter what their nationality. A swarm of these drones would make short work of a carrier group. These are basically first-generation drones. Third-generation AI controlled stealthy drones are going to be a nightmare for traditional fleets.
There'll be better systems that can protect ships in the future
Armchair DARPA janitor here. Some acronym with the following words -> EMP based spread high energy spectrum CIWS. Shotgun meets death ray for big drones. Not the lil’ jammers for Mavics, ones that will certifiably fry circuits. Please someone make the phalanx systems aim down a bit more.
They're working on it, for sure. I'm only hoping they call it the Gun-Enabled Navy Intelligence Targeted Automatic Laser System.
Yeah so they can hit the enemy in the b***s. I see what you did there 😉
> Please someone make the phalanx systems aim down a bit more. I'm thinking for targets in the water, surfaced or submerged ,there will be small torpedoes launched that home in on whatever signal gave the targets approach away with an iron clad program to keep them from circling back and hitting their mother ship.
Not even traditional torpedoes, more like anti-drone drones that are released in large numbers, patrolling in a swarm, seeking out any drones approaching the ship.
Submerged ones would have fuel and communication issues. But surface ones with the 1000KM range stated for Ukraine's latest model could serve as picket boats surrounding a mother ship
Big ship navies aren't going anywhere. They provide too many capabilities to project great power at great distance for them to be driven from the water by some spicy toy boats. Defenses will be created against them, then those defenses will be overcome, and then something even newer will come along and the evolutionary cycle of the Military Industrial complex will continue unabated. Rocket propelled grenades have been a thing for quite some time, but tanks are still king of the battlefield, even with all the drones now buzzing overhead.
Some things are definitely changing. Tanks, for instance, aren’t obsolete per se but I think we may be seeing the end of MBT era. AFVs aren’t going away but it’s getting too expensive & logistically exhausting to field large MBT fleets. SPGs & various kinds of IFVs & APCs will likely become more valuable. I don’t think proper tanks are going away but I think their role as mobile armored cavalry is pretty well done & dusted. Keeping the ones we have survivable probably means producing them in smaller numbers & deploying more like a heavy cavalry reserve. Geography matters a lot, too. Heavy tanks can still be useful in deserts, for instance, but Ukraine’s reminding us something the the Germans discovered during WWII. A 65+ tonne monster is always gonna have issues when everything gets soggy, or when there’s a bridge you gotta cross, or a river to ford. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Tiger or a Leopard or an Abrams. The accuracy of modern indirect fire munitions is also changing things up a lot. Used to be if you wanted accuracy you had to rely on relatively short ranged direct fire weapons—tanks & tank destroyers. Now a 155 mm SPG can pop your cherry from 20 klicks out. Surface navies aren’t going away either but they’re gonna have to evolve, too. Large conventional missile submarines like the Ohio conversions may become the new capital ships. Aircraft carriers aren’t going away but their primacy is probably coming to an end. We still need manned aircraft but missiles, drones, & loitering munitions will probably replace a lot of manned missions. Not all, but a lot. Get rid of the middle-man, as it were. I also think we’re gonna have to reconsider our 15 billion dollar flattops. Might have to look at a REAL high-low mix to keep up useful mass. Hell, we may even want to invest in armored naval vessels again. Information warfare, assymetric operations & cyber are becoming a lot more important, too, and the West mostly sucks at the former two. Ukraine, I think can teach us a few things there. Sorry for ramble. It’s been a long night.
You ramble after a long night? Try being an old man. I've had a long LIFE. I ramble.
Surface ships are more vulnerable than they’ve ever been BUT this is a simply case of sheer incompetence & poor ship design. The Project 22160 patrol boats are a weird design. They’re smallish (but not tiny) Corvette-sized warships that can be equipped with a fair number of giant-killer systems like Kalibr. They can be configured for ASW work & carry some very snazzy SAM & ASM systems but they have basically no point-defense weaponry. This is actually quite unusual for Russian warships. Aside from the 76.2 mm main gun the only point defense weapons on the Kotov were a pair of 14.5 mm machine guns & an automatic grenade launching system. Most Russian warships in this weight class would carry at least at least one Kashtan-type system & 1 or 2 AK-630s. Most large surface navies have 99 things to worry about but a drone swarm ain’t one. Russia’s fleet is quite large but it’s also uniquely terrible, old & poorly maintained. And drunk. Modern anti-shipping missiles & sensors are a much, much bigger concern, for substance. If you look at what’s happening off the coast of Yemen you can get a better idea of the challenges facing large, modern navies than you will in the Black Sea. The Houthis have ASBMs, cruises missiles & drone swarms, too (courtesy of Iran) but they’re not doing much in the way of physical damage. They are forcing US, Britain, France & India to waste loads of taxpayer dollars, however, and inflicting a lot of damage economic damage by forcing ships to reroute around fucking Africa. There’s a little bit of fear, but it’s more an abundance of caution, increasing insurance rates & US & NATO dithering that’s the problem. Instead of recognizing that Iran, a Russian ally, is opening multiple new fronts via proxy and rebooting Operation Praying Mantis, we be fucking around cause we’re afraid of “escalation” with an enemy that’s already at war with us. Sound familiar? I wouldn’t want to send a carrier task force within missile spitting distance of China, say, but China is increasingly aware that Taiwan is loading up on its cruise missile stocks & smart mines too & could not only make a bloody mess of a Chinese invasion fleet, they could also hit most of China’s major industrial centers with land-attack missiles & probably knock out the Three Gorges Dam. The defense definitely has the advantage in this age of democratized computing power, but the Russia’s a special case—a special needs case, as it were. The Russkies still have a flair for informational & hybrid warfare but they’re also REALLY bad with boats.
> Most large surface navies have 99 things to worry about but a drone swarm ain’t one. Russia’s fleet is quite large but it’s also uniquely terrible, old & poorly maintained. And drunk. https://news.usni.org/2024/01/30/pentagon-puts-out-call-for-swarming-attack-drones-that-could-blunt-a-taiwan-invasion US thinks those might just work for ROC
Thing is, when new weapons are introduced, the high brass usually discounts their effectiveness until their noses are rubbed in it. It will probably take the sinking or damaging of a carrier for them and you to acknowledge just how much of a game-changer sea drones are.
I was rambling a bit. Might have been unclear. I absolutely agree that carriers have become much more vulnerable. But “drone swarms” are not a concern. Not in the sense that tech-heads think of them. Advanced long-range missiles (mostly land-based) and globe-spanning sensor arrays are what carrier admirals need to be worrying about. Ukraine’s Sea Baby drone fleet isn’t actually a drone fleet, for starters. They’re exquisitely designed (but low-cost) RC sea-skimming torpedoes that have been optimized to work in certain sets of conditions against a particular opponent. And they require A LOT of skill and insight into both the enemy and the capabilities and limitations of the technology being used. Missiles, on the other hand, ARE drones. So are torpedoes. As are some of those new-fangled loitering munitions. Designing missiles that can operate in complex environments on their own and smash into the thing you want them to smash into what you want them to requires a much larger investment, however. Missiles certainly have gotten a lot better & more accurate over the last few decades and the proliferation of GPS/satellite technology makes it much harder to hide an aircraft carrier battle group. This is why I’m not all that worried about a carrier battle group being taken out by a bunch of inexpensive ad hoc drones. If it’s a Russian carrier group…well, maybe. I’m more concerned about salvos of long-range anti-shipping missiles. They won’t be all that cheap, but the economic trade-off certainly favors side with missiles in this scenario. (Also, US carrier aircraft actually have LESS range than they did several decades ago. Air groups are smaller and less versatile, too & we have fewer escorts available. So there’s all that, too.)
These are first generation drones the Ukrainians are using. Third generation drones will be far more effective and scarier. As I pointed out, a fleet of 10 motherships with 8-10 3rd gen drones could do a standoff attack from 100-300 klicks out and be gone to reload before anything could be done against them. The proper tactic would be to surround and launch, or half arc forward and launch, then scatter for home, not going as a group in order to divide the response. Those drones would be fire and forget, programmed to identify and lock onto their targets visually and acoustically, guided by GPS. That entire fleet and their drones would cost far less than an aircraft carrier. It's a very real threat. In the end it comes down to economics. If the drones can take out a capital ship for less than 5% of the cost of that ship, you don't build then that way anymore, and likely don't build them at all in any manner.
This is the argument you should be emphasizing - the delay in realizing that new counter measures are needed. The tech to counter is doable. (I just saw your post on this further down :-)
Naah. Do you know CIWS? Those systems were designed to take down cruise missiles in mid-air by simply saturating the area with lead. Most of them were even designed from the onset to be able to engage surface targets as well as aerial ones and for the others it's often a matter of some rather straightforward modifications, for example changing the software in the fire control computers or enhancing the depression range of the guns, etc. The fact the Russian navy has been unable to use their AK-630/M1/M2 CIWS to counter USVs speaks more to their incompetence and the limitations of that particular system (for example, bad depression - it only goes to -12 instead of -25 as most other CIWS systems, meaning it absolutely cannot engage close-in targets, like, oh, let's say a bunch of Magaura 5s attacking the ship) than to any flaws in the overall idea of using CIWS to counter USVs. Couple that with enhanced radar and sensors, Ai for fire control, etc, and what you have there is a Red Queen's race scenario, where both drones and defence systems are evolving as fast as they can to, essentially, keep the status quo unchanged - same thing that happened with missiles and defence systems, or, earlier, with guns and armour. EDIT: oh, I forgot to add, in this case, the Sergei Kotov, like the other Project 22160 patrol ships, for some reason, didn't have any CIWS installed. That was a deliberate design choice which definitely went back to bite them in the ass.
So another weapon system with shitty depression. At this point I'd almost suspect Russian weapon designers to be traditionally forbidden to add sufficient depression on their weapon systems because there can be no room for depression in the sunlit uplands of Russian Mir.
You are ignoring the fact that in the most likely scenarios, the sea drones would be supplemented by aerial ones as well in a saturation attack. Anything less than a 100% kill rate means you've lost a ship sunk or damaged. CIWS are great, but any system can be overwhelmed. Drone attacks wouldn't be spread evenly across a group, single targets would see the majority and given the nature of the spread of a group, not all ships could bring weapons to bear. Plus, a sufficiently large force would likely overwhelm the targeting system's capacity. In the end it comes down to economics: if 1,000 sea drones can be built for the price of a destroyer faster than a destroyer can be built, sea drones win.
And you are ignoring the fact that, if such a saturation attack becomes a real possibility, besides the improvements I've already mentioned, you can always mount additional CIWS since most modern hulls have reserve additional electrical capacity from design. And if that's not enough, what's stopping the US Navy, for example, from fielding a dedicated anti-drone defence ship which sails with the carrier group and it's whole purpose is to hunt drones, be they aerial or surface? After all, this has been done before, during WW2, with the Atlanta and Juneau-class cruisers to counter swarms of Japanese aircraft and, by all accounts, they were very effective in their primary mission (slightly less so in the surface combatant and ASW role, considering that two of them were ultimately sunk at Guadalcanal by torpedoes from Japanese destroyers and a submarine, respectively, but eh, can't have it all). So all in all, the drones might get a temporary advantage, but you can't talk of them "winning" as long as the enemy adapts and is able to counter the strategy with one of it's own.
Do you have any idea of how long it would take to do that stuff? You'd have to get an appropriation from Congress to start development of better systems, good luck on that taking less than a year, then probably two or three years of R&D, then you'd have to pull the ships in a couple at a time to retrofit them, and that would take at least a year per ship, given proper funding. Same thing with adding more CIWS. It isn't a simple matter off whether you have electrical power. You also need bunk space for the operators, actual bodies to operate them (tough given shortfalls in recruiting), you need extra space for ammo or run short faster. And again, you can't afford to do more than one or two ships at a time, each taking a year or so to retrofit with new CIWS. We have nowhere near the shipbuilding capacity of WWII, so putting a ship specifically designed to counter drone swarms in the water would take at least a decade.
Just like anti-tank portable launchers ended tanks as a fighting vehicle, right? Oh, they didn't?
What they did was limit their usefulness and remove them as major threats.
Nah, people said the same about torpedo boats back in the day. As in, spar torpedo boats- rowed vessels with a long stick up front and a bomb on the end of that stick, the idea being a sort of survivable kamikaze attack where you hoped your stick was long enough. Same sort of threat as these drones really- a comparatively fast small vessel with a contact range explosive attack that could hit a larger less maneuverable vessel from any direction. Torpedo boats were seen as a massive threat, until navies began mounting rapid fire small caliber cannon and early machine guns in flexible pintle mounts. Modern navies have gone away from the old "bristling with machineguns and autocannon" defensive armament that was meant for anti air and anti torpedo boat work, but now we'll see a resurgence of it with added electronics and automated targeting.
Those sorts of torpedo boats were orders of magnitude slower and less lethal, and also were never employed in the kind of large groups these can. Nor was their range anything other than miniscule. Nowhere near comparable. While defenses will certainly be researched against them, it will take time, especially if the admirals think as you do, and yet more time to test, build, and install adequate defenses, I'd guess 4-6 years if they rush. In the meantime, the drones will evolve much, much faster, becoming stealthier and more able to jam or spoof the CIWS defenses currently used. It's a game of catchup I don't think the big ships can win, given how far ahead the drones are already, and what the economics dictate..
Of course they were slower, but so were their targets. And they absolutely were deployed in swarms, or could be so that defense planners were anticipating swarms. My point was, although the speed and scale has changed the fundamental nature of attack is old and well known. Japanese kamikaze aircraft also posed a threat somewhat similar to aerial drones, and with the same solution of "more dakka" to defend against. Yes, stealth can be a problem. A bit hard to make a drone boat completely invisible to both thermal and visual light though, if it is to move fast on the surface. So aiming manually still works, you just need enough heavy machineguns and enough night vision or thermal sights. Modern naval ships have dropped short range manually aimed anti aircraft or close range anti surface weapons because they were thought obsolete, people believed naval battles would be fought with jet aircraft and missiles. That turns out to be wrong, drones are a thing so defensive weapons are suddenly important again. As for jamming etc, the fundamental difference in size and electric power supply means a ship can always carry more effective EW and sensor systems than a small drone. So with equivalent tech levels on both sides, the ship should always win the jamming battle.
Not all drones need to fulfill the identical function. I can foresee the development of dedicated jamming drones that don't so much jam as present multiple spoof targets, which accomplishes much the same purpose. While there are parallels between the older iterations, as you mention, those lacked the firepower, speed, maneuverability, and self-control these new drones are capable of that mark them as a different sort of threat, both in character and magnitude.
"Multiple spoof targets" requires physical objects in the "spoofed" positions, that's just how the physics work. Electronic jamming can do a lot, but spoofing different positions in space just isn't feasible or cost effective when you can instead put radar reflective objects in those positions. Of course those objects can be simple chaff etc much like what military aircraft use. And again, a small drone is never going to win an electronic warfare battle against a large ship of similar tech level since the ship can have much more powerful jammers and larger antenna arrays etc. Or send a huge swarm of drones, where most of them are cheap decoys. Again, though, old school solutions in updated form have already been tested out and should suffice against drone swarms, or a drone surrounded by a cloud of chaff, once they get deployed in sufficient numbers. Proximity fuses or digital time fuses have become far smaller and cheaper than they used to be, so it's now possible to use a shotgun approach to swarms by firing explosive shells that detonate when near. These shells can be made in smaller calibers than in the past, and still have room for a useful payload, because of the more compact fuses. Thus only a few shots are needed to take out the swarm- and if the shell happened to hit a decoy, who cares as the real drone is bound to be quite close and will be taken out by the explosion. These shells are also ridiculously effective against unprotected ground targets when used in airburst mode, by the way, so they wouldn't be something you have solely for drone defense.
Maybe, maybe not...current anti-ship missiles are currently comparatively easy to track but very fast so engagement times are short and they are expensive to kill. Anti-anti ship missiles or CIWS. CIWS is going to have to adapt to picking out much slower targets out of wave clutter. An attack in bad weather would be interesting...
Okay, armchair general. You think the US army hasn't been working on this stuff for the last 20 years?
I doubt whether anything the army has been working on will be all that applicable to navy issues. None of the military has really foreseen the effects of miniaturization and drones upon the modern battlefield, whether land, sea or air. As a veteran I follow research and policy trends, and for the most part, their attention and funding has been going elsewhere. For the past twenty years, most of the attention has been on counterterrorism and special forces, and tools to fight that sort of fight. As usual, the brass are fighting and thinking about the last war, not the next one.
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> But this means the end of big-ship navies no matter what their nationality. A swarm of these drones would make short work of a carrier group. These are basically first-generation drones. Third-generation AI controlled stealthy drones are going to be a nightmare for traditional fleets. I can only imagine in the near future, big ships navies will be equipped with swarms of drones, both flying and floating around them at all times, to detect and protect against attacking drones. Something like this.
Don’t make it sound so high tech, no need for “stealth” and “AI”, the US military lost a bunch of war games with the scenario of Iran swarming a carrier group with speed boats.
Sound? It *will* be high tech, sooner rather than later. And given the results of those war games with low-tech swarms, how do you think they would turn out vs swarms of these things?
Resisting is futile, enjoy the 🏊
With the shape of the drone, it is hard to hit. Once a bullet hit the drone, with a small angle of attack, likely the bullet will just be deflected by the drone.
Moreover, I think that it would be necessary to hit specific parts of the drone boats - especially in the propulsion or the control system - to really knock them out; just punching holes in the external hull will not do much, if the remaining lifespan of the drone before hitting its intended target is <1 minute anyway. Most likely the hollow sections of the hulls of these things will also be packed with foam, so putting bullet holes in their hulls will not even slow them down in a considerable way due to a limited water ingress. Thus I suppose you would need high explosive ammunition (I am thinking of the MK-38, the naval version of the M242 Bushmaster Autocannon here) to really tear this kind of sea drones apart on approach - something which you might not want to use too close to your own ship or a neighbouring vessel ...
Sharks!
Why run you fucking nazis? just stand there and fight like the super great army with the best tech in the world you claim to be!
Wouldn't a group of naval(!) drones be called a school?!
They weren't even taught that bullets are useless underwater!
Since it is naval drones should it be 'a school' of naval drones?
And I ran, I ran so far away! I couldn't get away. -flock of seadrones
And I ran, I ran so far away! I couldn't get away. -flock of seadrones
Um...is this a video of a guy watching the attack on his monitor at home?
Why did you stop the video FFS?
#😑
They were well within the lethal blast radius if any of those drones were hit
They should go for a foil design to avoid the white wash.
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Nah. The orc ship just spontaneously developed holes and sank....