- Houthi rebels are threatening US warships and shipping using naval drones, a new report said.
- The commander of a US Navy carrier strike group says these weapons are among the more frightening.
- The use of cheap sea drones has been pioneered, to considerable success, by Ukraine.
The carrier strike group still has its planes and sensors and so on. Drones are more like upgraded missiles. Powerful missiles made ships vulnerable, but they didn’t obsolete navies.
the point is largely about the price to performance of these equipment.
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The big picture challenge to this view is that for a couple of hundred dollars or even thousand dollars, a Houthi rebel group can go challenge a strike group. If it only takes one drone to reach its target, the Houthis can deploy 10, 20 ,100? all at once. A 50 caliber round can penetrate the waters surface, but are basically ineffective after 10-20 feet of water. Then how do you go after something you have no underwater answer for? Even on the waters surface these would be incredibly hard to track, below the waters surface, in the chop, there is no way you are tracking those targets. And even then, what do you respond to them with?
What use is enough fire power to vaporize a nation when barely enough firepower to vaporize a starbucks can shut it down? This is asymmetry of power on display. Strike groups work against an equally powered and technically capable force with the same standards around whats acceptable or not regarding tech. Strike groups are appearing very weak against much poorly equipped, less technically capable forces who don’t have the same standards or limitations around their strategic thinking.
Strike groups are incredibly costly to build, crew, maintain. If you can stop one with a couple 3d printers, some alibaba grade parts, and some grit, ingenuity, and willingness to do things differently… Who is going to be more successful in that conflict?
The military industrial complex we’ve been told we should rely on to provide these answers is built around spending billions to come up with solutions to what the future of warfare will look like. Their answers are very expensive, single solution products, because that is what makes their industry the most money. But its emerging that there is an alternative way to approach these problems. Simple quad copters with an xbox controller and a head, a small quantity of C4 explosive might only be 1/20th as effective as a predator drone. But if its 1/1000th the cost?
Underwater drone is just a fancy name for torpedo.
An underwater drone in the same class as a Mark-48, not even remotely close.
A single Mark-48 costs around 6 million dollars. One. Only one. You can’t fire it without a billion dollar submarine or anti-sub surface vessel, and crews to crew to man them.
How many underwater drones can you make for that price? Say its 5k for an extremely high quality one? One that can carry enough charge to put a hole in air craft carrier? You get 1200 underwater drones for the price of one Mark48. Which is exactly the point I’m making.
Asymmetry wins and the military industrial complex has fundamentally misunderstood what the future of warfare would look like. The multi decade process that countries like the US take to get a weapon like the f35 from concept to deployment simply can not content with much more basic, cheaper, less mission critical iteration that this asymmetric scaling allows for.
The carriers are designed to survive actual torpedos.( Mk 48 wahead: 650 lbs of military explosives)
It would take many drones to breech.
And yes, the capital acquisition cycle is multi decade but the upgrade programs are more responsive.
These threats are not unlike previously seen threats.
That’s a fair stance to take. Its not one I agree with, but its a fine stance. We are seeing vessels being lost, vessels from a roughly equivalent scale nation state, with at least on paper a roughly equivalent development program, not to 6 million dollar, but to much much cheaper and easier to deploy equipment. I’m not saying its a coffin nail to traditional approaches to these kinds of programs, but at least in one case, the only one we have data for, asymmetry seems to be working.
We have seen the Russian army training and discipline was not up to par, im doubting their navy was much better. Also, many attacks were litoral or in base where better escort capabilities are always key.
This is the debut of drones in a sustained “real war” scenario. They are effective but new, the pendulum of innovation will swing back soon.
Capital assets will need more space to operate freely, so tactics will evolve to safely creep the line forward. Stand off weapons and guidance systems behind fences.
Machine guns, water cannons, microwave/laser attacks, counter drone drones, nets, etc. will all get reinvented and integrated every year.
Its just a matter of program structures, a (more) graduated arsenal of systems, and enough battlefield communication.
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Well which is it? Are they there to vaporize an island or are they for show?
First off, you are trivializing your opponent, which is always a symptom of a losing strategy. Second, we treated the Afghanis’ as petty barbarians in caves… and we basically lost that war. We got nothing for it, held no permanent territory, have no long term strategic partners developed as a result, and burned a cool couple trillion in the process. Thats neat thing about lower tech asymmetric engagement. If you vaporize one island, another 3d printer, and parts from Alibaba are just a couple grand and an amazon prime shipment away. Increasing the amount of force you use against it does basically nothing. Can it project force thousands of miles away? No, but its not intending to do so. The asymmetric low tech approach is for dealing with occupying forces, and the modern military industrial complex approach has no answer for it.
How long before we lose a vessel? A week? A month? A year?
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So whats the plan then? Can the US just no longer go anywhere with pirates? The fuck do you think they’re going to do?
If any one with a 3d printer or 2 day shipping can stop a carrier group, what good are carrier groups? Ukraine just took out a modern vessel with a drone thats at least a ROM equivalent of what the Houthis are using. My whole point is that through the advising of the millitary industrial complex, the US and other nationstates are pot-commited to a weapons strategy that appears to be well countered by an asymmetric approach.
What good is a strike group if a couple pirates cans top them or prevent them projecting force?
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And my point is that the purpose of a carrier strike group isn’t just to blow enemy ships up. Subs and missile are already much better at that and we haven’t replaced our entire navy with them.