It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about anything you want that isn't culture war.
The RTW2 game has gotten to the point where writing it up and particularly pulling screenshots isn't really fun any more. I'm planning on posting March 1933 (already played) and then doing an epilogue where I play through 1950 and report what happened at a high level. After that, I'm considering doing something with Aurora, which nicely sidesteps the illustration problem because I can just upload the database and anyone who wants to check the game can install Aurora and open the database themselves.
But Aurora being free opens up other options. We could do a succession game, set in an unstable nation where the government is often replaced, and pass the database from player to player. I don't expect competent play from most people, but it will be amusing. Or we could try something else that I haven't thought of.
2018 overhauls are Secondary Armament Part 4, Going back to Iowa, The Washington Naval Treaty, Survivability - Flooding, my review of LA maritime sites and Falklands Part 7. 2019 overhauls are Riverine Warfare - China Parts two and three, my picture post on Iowa's officer quarters and JDAM.
Comments
So I remember - but can't find - a discussion about current supersonic transport projects (can't remember if it was here or SSC).
I only have a vague memory of who our experts said to take seriously, but I thought they were fairly down on Boom, who have just released an official rollout video for their XB-1 demonstrator aircraft. My thoughts: * Wow, do they ever have a polished marketing effort * Airplane looks good. Put me down for one. * Their approach seems relatively realistic - the XB-1 is an effort to build up their body of design and manufacturing experience, and I suspect having an actual flying airplane does a lot to boost their credibility with potential customers and investors.
That was on SSC. I'm not sold on Boom, as they seem to be sorely lacking in the expertise necessary to turn a plane into an airliner. Aerion is a better bet, as they're building a smaller plane, and have better connections to people who can handle the regulatory side.
@Bean what do you use for taking screenshots? You're on a windows machine, right?
I've bound a couple shortcuts which have dramatically reduced the annoyance of this for my own purposes. I'm on linux, but I could make up a windows version.
I'm using the built-in snipping tool, which is a lot easier than print screen. It's not just the taking of the images. It's going in, pulling up the screens, framing the shot, saving it with the right name, then uploading it and dropping it into the post. While I do appreciate the offer, that's not the big issue.
I've seen some commentary on the recent fracas in Nagorno-Karabakh and the importance of cheap drones there, including loitering munitions which I had never head of. It looks like the smaller powers are avidly developing those. I even saw a (non-military) commentator claiming that those would be a revolution compared to the introduction of tanks to the battlefield.
How do you think the availability of cheap unmanned vehicles will affect naval affairs and ship design in the coming decades? For example: -Can one imagine a major surface (or subsurface, come to think of it) ship designed strictly as a drone carrier? -Can one imagine subsurface loitering ammunition that drift in tight sea passages but can avoid mine-sweepers and launch a torpedo when they "hear" a surface combatant? Kinda like a smart mine? -Is the whole drone swarm thing an exaggeration by click-seeking journos?
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts and theories.
Naval warfare has had unmanned vehicles for 150 years.
Sarcasm aside, this is overhyped. So far as cheaper electronics are leading to revolution, it's already happened. JDAM is the best example. It's cheap and it's very precise. But it's not as sexy as teh drones, so we get articles about those. Also, the capability is somewhat easier to get these days, so it's showing up in places that aren't the US military.
I need to look more into what they're actually trying to do with unmanned systems. But that's a fairly major project, and not one I'm going to tackle right now.
This is basically a CAPTOR mine, which we had back in the 80s. Yes, it was fixed instead of drifting, and mostly targeted at submarines, but in practice, nothing we couldn't have done a couple decades ago.
Thanks! I figured that might be the answer.
I imagine the transformative aspects of drones will be less in what we (as in the US and peers) do with drones than with drones giving non-peers limited versions of the observational and delivery capabilities that the US already possesses, in a way that is hard to counter.
The other thing to watch out for with drones is that a lot of commentators have been saying that drones render tanks suddenly obsolete. I wouldn't be too sure about that. One of the characteristics of both Nagorno-Karabakh and Syria is the relative dearth of anti-aircraft (and especially air-to-air anti-aircraft) assets on the battlefield. My opinion is that these two conflicts prove that drones can be effective when the other side isn't shooting back. But, then again, when the other side isn't shooting back, any weapon is effective.
Especially in Nagorno-Karabakh, where there have been anti-air units integrated with armored units (especially short-ranged anti-air, like the Pantsir system), drones have been much less effective.
Pro-swarm commentators have a tendency to ignore the cases where scaling laws are adverse to dividing a capability between more, smaller units. There are quite a few.
Having lots of small, relatively cheap platforms that can host sensors or effectors is useful, and I don't doubt it will allow for novel tactical and operational approaches. I think this is especially the case on land, where small size and low power (and thus signature) lets you hide among terrain and vegetation. As with any burgeoning military technology, though, advocates overstate the effect and fail to foresee counteracting innovations.
For a long time the trend in anti-aircraft technology was toward heavier guns and bigger missiles, to kill tough, armored attack helicopters and fast, high-flying attack jets. I imagine now we'll see the bottom-end of light-AA fill out again, with quick-reacting, computer-controlled light guns, microwave beams, and lasers coupled with smarter pattern-recognition to pick the annoying flies out of the clutter.
"Naval warfare has had unmanned vehicles for 150 years"
I'm not sure exactly what you're thinking of here, but fire ships have existed for over 2,000.
I think that loitering munitions are a great way of keeping ground forces pinned down (e.g. the ALARM - https://www.navalgazing.net/Anti-Radiation-Missiles) but ships can't hide in terrain in the same way. They could be a very interesting option for tomahawks and the like, however, potentially even enabling them to be used against mobile land targets.
I am pretty sure it was a mine/torpedo joke.
@Alexander
I was talking about mines. Fireships are a good call there, though.
Re tanks in particular, those have been "rendered obsolete" pretty frequently over the last 60+ years. They're still around.
@Alexander ships can’t hide in terrain
Isn't that a submarine?
@Doctorpat There might be a role for some sort of loitering weapon that could patrol the last known position of a submarine, but I expect it would have to be some sort of underwater (or perhaps surface?) drone, as a cruise missile would be hard pressed to detect a submarine at all. With SSKs being able to hide almost silently on the sea floor, I think that some sort of smart torpedo that you could leave near its last known position to keep it trapped could be very handy. Then again, as bean said, that sounds a lot like a CAPTOR. I was thinking more that aerial loitering munitions might not be particularly useful in naval warfare (except for attacks on the shore).
That's more or less what they're planning to do with Sea Hunter, actually. At the moment, I think the plan is for it to be track-only, and they'll call in someone else if they need to kill it.
I hear the Azeris have been doing the equivalent of tying a brick to the gas pedal of their old AN-2 utility biplanes and flying them into Artsakh. This forces Armenian AA assets to open fire, revealing their positions.
I do think recent technological developments will make a bigger difference for small and irregular forces, especially in low-intensity conflicts. The trend seems to be for things to be getting much cheaper. Off-the-shelf civilian technology can be jury-rigged for military use e.g. mobile phone IEDs.
I wonder what the implications of cheap software-defined radios will be for people trying to counter the Great Powers' highly networked forces. And what are the odds that both Armenia and Azerbeijan are using Planetlabs as an outsourced spysat programme?
@quanticle: The "relative dearth of anti-aircraft assets on the battlefield" may have something to do with the bit where Azeri (or maybe Turkish/Israeli) drones keep blowing up Armenian air defense systems up to and including multiple S-300 sites. That's been reported by enough credible observers, with imagery, that I'm pretty sure it's real. And while it's debatable whether the Armenians brought as much air defense capability to the field as they should have, the bit where enemy drones are loitering directly over the core air defense assets they did bring is a bad sign.
Armed drones do have the potential for e.g. "making tanks obsolete", rather like allied air power did in 1944/45 only more so. Talk to a German armored commander from that war about how useful tanks are when the enemy owns the sky. Except, it's much easier to maintain a 24/7 presence with Reapers than it is with P-47s (or even A-10s), and the Reaper is more likely to hard-kill any tank that tries to move under its gaze.
The unanswered question until now was whether this only applied when fighting pathethic third-rate armies without serious air defenses. The S-300 is a pretty serious air defense system, as are Armenia's shorter-ranged systems. They're not cutting it against modern drones, intelligently used.
If there's still any doubt, it's what might happen if people start deploying more specialized counter-drone systems. But even the United States is behind the curve on that one, and Team Drone hasn't fully explored the trade space for increasing their own survivability.
John, I think you're probably overstating the case a bit. There's a couple reasons why the Armenians could be having so much trouble that aren't just because of how good drones are. First, there's the possibility that the S-300 isn't as good as we thought it was, which now that I say it out loud and remember that it's a Russian system they've been aggressively trying to sell, seems obvious. (Particularly because Armenia's are listed by Wiki as S-300PS, which was introduced in 1985. There's a distinct possibility that they were inherited from the Red Army and not upgraded in the last 30 years.) Then there's the fact that the system is only as good as the people using it, and it's very possible that the operators are just not that good.
It's also worth pointing out that the "drone" in question is an Israeli anti-radiation missile. Yes, it looks different from most ARMs and can loiter for longer, but it's still a specialized piece of hardware built by a major defense contractor. Those are usually pretty effective, but I don't think this is a sea change compared to what, say, HARM is capable of doing.
Is this just Israeli-made hardware that they sold, or is it believed/suspected that Israel is actively aiding the Azerbaijanis? If the latter, what's their motivation? I'm not familiar with the full web of alliances in the area.
I don't know. They're too far from the ocean for me to really be paying attention.
I've not heard any allegations that Israel is doing more than selling arms to Azerbaijan.
The accusations about sending combatants tend to be directed at Turkey and Syrians (not sure if they're pro-assad Syrians or anti-assad or mercenaries).
John's link has some of those missiles (drones?) crossing the border into Iran. Probably for the best if the Israelis keep that mess at arms length.
Yes, the Israelis are selling drones to Turkey which is providing them to Azerbaijan, and maybe selling some directly to Azerbaijan. But if there are any foreign "advisors" operating the drones, those are almost certainly Turkish rather than Israeli.
Armed drones do have the potential for e.g. “making tanks obsolete”
Though... we just got an article on how aircraft carriers didn't really make battleships obsolete. Well not after a multi-decade period in which battleships were fast, armoured, AA platforms that could also be used as battleships and gunboats.
So, could we see tanks turn into fast, armoured, AA platforms that could also be used as
battleshipstanks andgunboatsartillery?The big reason why I wouldn't expect to see that from tanks, is that tanks are fairly small and compact. Battleships had lots of room, and it wasn't hard to turn the secondary anti-ship armament they already carried into something that doubles as heavy AA. They also had lots of deck space to bolt light and medium AA guns to. Tanks don't - even putting a single pintle-mounted 20mm cannon on a tank could be a trick, and any SAMs beyond one or two MANPADS-type things would require a dedicated chassis.
Also, tank guns are generally smoothbore weapons designed for direct-lay shots, while artillery guns are generally rifled and designed for ballistic trajectories, so you're not real likely to see tanks that usefully do double-duty as arty unless the state of the art in tank guns radically changes.
That said, drones probably won't make tanks obsolete any more than manned aircraft did, unless they're so much cheaper that nobody can afford to defend against them. That seems like a reach to me - you're likely to hit the limit of how many drones you can usefully field and/or how much anti-tank ordnance you can give them somewhere in there.
It might mean, though, that you can't use tanks well unless you control the skies, which was almost the case already.
Not totally crazy. I think the most likely scenario is that we start to see active protection systems sprout up everywhere - they can already shoot down anti-tank missiles, so extending that to shooting down kamikaze drones isn't much of a stretch. Which I guess is sort of the equivalent of "all the battleships go into the yards and come out with AA turrets crammed in wherever they can fit."
But the cooler, more speculative idea is that we combine it with that story from last month about artillery being used to shoot down cruise missiles, and basically merge tanks, artillery, and AA into "Big armored box with a big high-angle gun", which can be used for any of those roles depending on what ammo you load it with.
(I don't know about "fast," but the Abrams can do 45 mph on a paved road, which I think is pretty impressive for a tank.)
Artillery shooting down cruise missiles isn't totally surprising to me - that's been semi-standard in Naval circles for quite a while. (At the very least, our drills against subsonic cruise missile attack on a Burke included banging away with the 5", which is "artillery" by any reasonable definition.)
I can see drones essentially filling the role of semi-persistent cluster bombs. I'm imagining a swarm of small drones carrying something like a BLU-97/B, which is about 4 lbs. Individually, they are easy to shoot down (maybe), but you deploy them 20 or 30 at a time, they fly to the target area, and then they just meander around at treetop level looking for targets.
What's the current operating procedure for these "land denial" drones? Are they programmed before launch with a general area to patrol and act fully autonomously, or do they require at least permission to attack from a human ground controller? If the latter, might not the communication link be more vulnerable than the drone itself?
Aren't there advantages in differentiating between things that should avoid coming under fire and things that expect to get shot at? Beyond armor thickness, I mean.
@Chuck You know what that makes me think of? 1992 sci-fi movie Screamers. The intrigue was based on autonomous underground robots that would detect and attack anyone moving within their radius. (ok, they were self-replicating too, which complicated matters a bit)
In general, there's a prohibition against weapons that are autonomous and attack targets without a human in the loop. Mines are a partial exception, but even those aren't in great favor these days. Something which gets told "kill anything in this box that looks like a target" is going to look really bad to the media/public, even though it's probably better than just destroying the entire box, which is the traditional answer. I definitely don't think the position on this is philosophically sound and/or consistent.
If you aren't using them in an urban area I don't think that the risk would be excessive. Anyone have any idea how discriminating Strix mortar rounds are? I'd expect a modern system to be able to distinguish between a MBT and a car.
IFVs often mount autocannon (and sometimes missiles) that can threaten helicopters, so with good sensors might be able to help protect the tanks. Failing that, more dedicated SPAAG/CRAM vehicles could be required.
Depending on the drones' control systems and/or missile guidance systems, dedicated ECM escort vehicles might make sense too.
The biggest problem I see with the concept of autonomous loiter drones, is that, in an actual war, there would turn up clever ways to trick them into attacking decoys or empty scenery, or simply flying into the ground.
@AlexT: That's where loitering drones have the edge over basically every other weapons system ever. The loiter phase allows a human observer to carefully observe the intended target before expending ordnance, and without the pressure of "I have to kill them before they kill me!" amped by adrenaline.
If the effective counter to drones against tanks is the introduction of active protection systems, I wonder if this will expand the "capability trap" see discussion here regarding Guatemala. Thinking about many countries still operating tanks multiple generations behind (coughcough, everyone still operating T-54s or so), where if they decide they have to throw a few trillion Bongo Bucks (actual price: a few million dollars) to keep their T-54s competitive against a someone even as low down the scale as them (because even they can get some support from someone who get them some decently armed drones)...eh, maybe they don't even worry about it and quietly phase out the Mechanized Division and replace them as the Dictator's elite troops with some SOF like guys).
Said more simply, if your vision of why you need to keep your older (but still capable in the right circumstances) tanks are to counter your not-entirely friendly neighbor's also older (but still capable in the right circumstances) tanks...might be able to save a few trillion Bongo bucks just to dump in your pocket to pay for hookers and blow and bribes to the police to keep them from noticing your hookers and blow.
Granting that tanks are actually fairly easy to upgrade and there are lots of companies and countries out there that do a good business in upgrading older tanks to keep them semi-competitive.
https://babylonbee.com/news/with-moon-water-announcement-trump-proposes-space-navy
Apparently I spend too much time here because the first thing I thought reading this was : Why did he take french planes to the moon?
Is it weird that the first thing I thought of on reading that was "Oh, so now we get Space Battleship Wisconsin instead?"
If a US SSBN vanished without a trace while on patrol, how quickly would the Navy know about it? Also, how quickly would the disappearance leak, and when would the Navy confirm it?
I presume 'without trace' means no rescue buoy or similar? Because otherwise potentially the Navy would know within minutes.
Right. The sub is just plain gone, as far as anyone can tell.
I was actually starting to like SecNav Braithwaite before his latest speech. Notable highlights include support for the CVL program, which he justifies on the grounds that "we won the battle of the Atlantic with CVLs and we face a similar situation today". Which is not true on several levels. We won the Atlantic with CVEs, which are different than CVLs, and they were mostly there to fill a role that is now covered by helicopters. He is also proposing turning FFG(X) into a "Join Strike Frigate" on the model of the Joint Strike Fighter, which has issues on several levels. First, is that really a program you want to use as a model? Second, he is not the first person to come up with the idea of a NATO common frigate, to put it nicely. Because ships are not airplanes, it makes a lot more sense to let people roll their own and just sell them the combat system. Which is more or less what we've been doing.
Does NATO really matter anymore? In a war with China, would NATO bother to show up?
I don't know when the Navy would know, only that they would know eventually. Presumably SSBNs come up to periscope depth at some interval in order to check in, and if a submarine missed its scheduled check-in (and especially if it missed more than one) the Navy would know. But how soon that would occur is determined entirely by the frequency of check-ins, which is probably classified for good reason.
As for when the news would start to leak out, I don't think the Navy would be able to hush things up for more than about 100 days or so. According to this site a deployment on a nuclear submarine is between 60 and 80 days. Then the submarine returns home and the next crew boards and takes the boat out to sea. If a submarine were out much longer than that without explanation, the family of the crew would start asking questions. Given that a submarine has about 150 crewmembers, that's a lot of people shoreside who are going to be missing friends and loved ones if the boat just disappears. You can only string people along so far before they start going to the press, saying, "The Navy won't tell me where my husband/wife, son/daughter, etc is."
At that point, the Navy would basically be forced into admitting that the submarine was at least missing, even if they aren't willing or able to admit that it was lost with all hands.
Of course, all this presumes peacetime operations. During wartime, I would imagine that things would be far more chaotic, and submarines might be lost for months without anyone really noticing because of enemy activity. Even then, though, I would imagine that the US Navy would eventually realize. Submarines don't carry a lot of food, and if a sub hasn't come ashore somewhere to resupply after a few months, then you can guess that the boat went down somewhere, even if you don't know precisely where or when.
@bobbert
I say NATO because that's where the common warship design efforts have come from in the past. Some NATO members would definitely be involved in a conflict with China (definitely Britain, probably others) but the dynamics of international defense procurement aren't going to change just because we're in the Pacific instead of the Atlantic.
My guess is the time it would take an SSBN to be noticed as missing would be measured in days. In today's world, the time it would take for it to be leaked out to the press (after that) would be measured in hours.
Also, on the subject of NATO involvement in the future US-China war, I suspect there would be a range of reactions, and frankly, I expect the best to get from anyone in NATO to be "cautiously supportive statements" towards the US with lots of calls for both sides to de-escalate and lots of opposition against the US. A few NATO members will actively be stymieing US efforts, which will be awesome
I think NATO is actually in that dangerous world of alliances pre-WW1 where they are written to support a threat that doesn't exist anymore and then slewed to deal with what threats a few groups think they should, even if they aren't the best fit for the actual threats.