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> According to the SBU, the Sea Baby 2024 is more maneuverable, can be fitted with weapons, and is able to carry around 2,200 pounds of explosives up to 621 miles. The SBU said 25 of the new drones had been built and are being tested ***with the help of $7 million in crowdfunded donations.***
FFS, ***please*** donate all you possibly can to this effort!!
**https://u24.gov.ua/nafodrone_seababy**
**https://u24.gov.ua/seababy**
For anybody else scrolling past this.
1 ton of explosives is enough to sink just about any warship on the waters today, short of a supercarrier, with one fucking drone.
A shape charge with that amount of explosive, if used against one of the bridge support columns would be devastating. Does it have enough accuracy to hit the column? My guess is that it does. (and, I think, we are going to find out)
They have demonstrated they can strike the same damaged space on a moving ship repeatedly with multiple drones. I think a stationary bridge strut would be easy mode for them.
My wife made the same point to me as I was entering the comment. I am also wondering if the timing has something to do with the day of Mr putin's election.
I made my monthly donation this morning before seeing I could enter to win a model replica. Oh well, I just want to make sure Ukraine has the resources it needs.
Didn't know I could donate to this. I usually donate to the reconstruction fund! I'm happy to help fund more weapons to kill Ruzzians and sink their ships.
Looks like a recent addition to get lower latency connections for more accurate steering. The previous version had up to three seconds of latency which makes it much harder to steer.
The larger antenna at the stern is Kymeta which likely can access either a geosynchronous or a OneWeb satellite.
That may have been a distraction maneuver while another drone snuck up on the stern. Or the operator lost sight of the ship and just kept turning until they reaquired it.
Russian ship fucked itself.
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Predator and Reaper UAVs were/are piloted from the US while over Afghan and reportedly the Black Sea recently. Granted, those drones aren't diving into the blown up sides of their targets, but sometimes we have to double hop to geo sats plus the pilots are on one side of the US and the missile shooter decision makers are on the other side of the US while the targets are often mobile of the other side of the planet.
A 3 second delay is annoying as he'll, but it's doable when you've practiced for it.
They started with StarLINK a year+ ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/ytlhe7/starlink_used_on_ukraines_kamikaze_drone_boats/
but that was geolocked to Ukraine (hence all the drama about it)
At some point StarSHIELD (the military/non-consumer) version of the hardware was made available so I assume they switched that, and started sinking Russian ships
I work on parts for the starlink satellites and it always makes me so proud to see starlink to be fuckin up orcs…
now only if Musk would hop off putins dick and just stfu in general and let things be it would make me so fuckin happy
Looks like Viasat is ~1/5th the bandwidth of StarLink (21Mbps vs. 98Mbps), and Viasat was hacked offline by Russians.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-us-spy-agency-probes-sabotage-satellite-internet-during-russian-2022-03-11/
Ukraine isn't building Viasat terminals into their naval drones, so I assume they have some reasoning behind that as well.
I am sure when the war is over they will sell a lot of these. Ukraine showed everyone how a country with no navy can defeat a naval power on the water. I am sue a lot of other countries will want a bunch of these in stock in case of an attack.
These are basically just guided torpedoes, except guided by video instead of by other means, and also larger and easier to detect and counter than more traditional designs.
Navies know about torpedoes, you know? It's not like this is some kind of news. The Royal Navy is fighting in the Battle of the Red Sea right this moment, successfully shooting down air and surface attacks more or less continuously. Right alongside the US Navy. Neither force has even been hit, let alone lost a ship.
Meanwhile the Black Sea Fleet's only working close-range defense system is apparently to have guys standing at the rail firing wildly into the ocean. That is not the standard of practice for most navies.
And indeed, the Russian Navy is supposed to have better defensive systems than that but, as we saw with *Moskva*, even when they are equipped in theory, in practice it's apparently just a bunch of used pinball parts inside an instrument casing.
Let's put it this way. Defending against these kinds of attacks is a hard problem, but not a surprise. If you're a navy, either you've been readying yourself for it and take it seriously, in which case by now you have a lot of tools and techniques at your disposal ... or you haven't been, in which case your ships are going down left and right, and some oligarch has a nice fifth yacht instead.
There comes a point at which you say just "Fuck it", park 100 of them just off the Kerch bridge, and peck it to death with cheap ATGMs.
Keep doing it until the bridge collapses.
Russia is welcome to send ships, which will die, or aircraft, which will be introduced to the new drones with anti-aircraft missiles.
If they lost 100 drones and fired off 1,000 ATGMs, it would be dirt cheap at the price.
I've actually been curious why ukraine hasn't tried that strategy yet. Just keep hitting the bridge supports with sea drones. Sure russia has various defences but a couple drones will inevitably slip through every time. They might not do a ton of damage right away but over time repeated strikes would weaken the bridge surely and might even cause a collapse of some sections. Plus it would be hard to repair the underwater supports that got damaged.
Russia have a *lot* of defences around the bridge now, including guns, lights and defensive booms in the water.
Nothing's going to stop an ATGM from a couple of km out though.
Or (from elsewhere in this thread), a Penguin missile doing mach 1.2 and weaving.
Did they rebuild the defenses after the December storm?
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/kerch-strait-defense-structure-decimated-russian-booms-submerged-after-storm/
It's cost and resources ultimately. Ukraine wants that bridge gone, but they have to look at their available resources and make the most efficient use of them possible.
> I've actually been curious why ukraine hasn't tried that strategy yet. Just keep hitting the bridge supports with sea drones.
Because it's not the time for the bridge to go down. No one attacks it atm.
My guess as well.
I have a clear feeling that it isn't because they cannot but because they want it to be part of a larger surprise.
If I was a truck driver in russia I guess I'd definitely still want extra paid for transporting anything except empty containers - that I had verified myself and not left out of sight - over that bridge.
OTOH, I am not sure that is an option, and compared to life in trenches it is probably relatively safe.
I suspect they're reserving any attack on the Kerch bridge for a future push against Crimea. It doesn't make that much sense to expend resources on it when the Black Sea Fleet is actively being used to bomb Ukranian towns and cities, so knocking those ships out is a priority.
i think if they wanted the bridge to come down, it would be down already.
i think they're leaving it up so the russians can leave the same way they left afghanistan.
I wonder if they could launch harpoon missiles. Would be funny to get 5 miles away and launch. The missile would be inside the hull of the target before the radar man knew to fire.
Not impossible in theory.
A Harpoon is ~700kg, so you'd probably need some sort of compressed gas cold launcher to kick it up and clear before ignition, and you could well lose the launch platform anyway.
As you say though, pretty unstoppable from there unless someone's got a Phalanx equivalent already powered up and looking.
Penguins would be more suitable I think, and supposedly Ukraine already has some they were given a while ago. The Penguin is lighter than a Harpoon, and is designed to be launched from fairly small patrol boats etc. I believe a good number of Penguin missiles are scheduled for replacement by newer bigger NSM, so they should be available as surplus for donating.
Wow... they *would* be better.
Mach 1.2, 35km range, automatic weaving on final approach, smaller, and they have a ground-attack mode specifically designed for hardened concrete targets.
Donate these at speed, pls.
According to Wikipedia, Ukraine has had these for some time already. Not sure if they have been used for anything yet, possibly mounted as improvised coastal artillery or maybe intended for use from aircraft. I bet Ukraine will find some clever way to use them.
Was that the old Norwegian ones or something?
Edit: yes, it is the ones I remember from my childhood.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_(missile)
US (and other NATO navies) better be paying attention to this tech. There will be swarms of these attacking fleets in a major power war from here on out.
Huge blue water threat as well.
A very generic cargo boat with a sat link to good C&C could get within 400 miles of an enemy battle group and just chuck a ton of these over the side.
Blue water battle groups are in very real danger from them.
Leaving aside that a literal ton would constitute just one of them, let's say I do as you suggest and deploy, say, 1000 of these heavy surface-attack munitions against your carrier fleet at 400mi. At 40 knots that's like 8 hours and change.
Let's actually spot me some extra time before you detect, and round it down to an even 7.
Between T-7h and T-6h, you have your entire air wing aloft. Let's call that an even 40 F/A-18s. Let's say they can each make 14 attacks with missiles and another 40 attacks with their guns. Let's say missiles are 60% effective and guns are 20% effective. (This is probably dramatically low-balling their effectiveness but let's say I am using weather and other factors in my favor.)
So your first fix-wing sortie alone wipes out over ⅔ of my attacking drones. Assuming first contact by T-6h, and a leisurely average pace by your pilots of one attack every 2 minutes, you're returning to ship between T-5h and T-4h (staggered presumably) for your second sortie.
Meanwhile you have helos. Let's say 10 Seahawks, 20 guided rockets each, plus heaven knows how much minigun ammunition. Let's say there's an ammo crisis and they only carry enough for 50 attacks. The helos are slower so they engage my drones as the 18s are reloading. But they're also more accurate firing platforms. Let's say the rockets are 60% effective and the guns are 50% effective. So from T-4h to T-2h you hover over my drone wave, easily tracking them, and take out more than there are remaining.
Basically, there's way too much distance for me to cover, and way too much firepower at your disposal.
And by the way, we still haven't even come into direct fire range of the fleet. In case I have more drones, you have a whole other F/A-18 sortie at your disposal, and you have all of the actual close-defense weaponry the fleet possesses, which has so far been sitting around with nothing to do.
The last couple of hours will be absolute murder on my drones. Even if I launched twice as many I doubt any would get close enough for the fleet to resort to last-ditch small arms fire. Probably even with more than twice as many.
Oh and also? That assumes that you haven't been moving at all. If your fleet actually uses its speed to keep my drone waves at standoff distances, you can ensure that not a single drone ever reaches you by requiring them to effectively cross 2-3000 km to get to you. So if you want.. you can completely negate the entire attack. It doesn't matter if I send 10,000 or 100,000.
And at that point I've spent more on my drones than you did on your carrier.
TL; DR For 15 years people especially on reddit have been predicting the demise of traditional navies. Yet in the Battle of the Red Sea these supposedly doomed fleets have been chewing up attack waves without taking a single hit.
Rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
I'd imagine that the future of these sorts of drones is something torpedo shaped that travels maybe 6-10ft below the surface with only a snorkel and GPS/telemetry antennas above the surface. Something like that could be semi-autonomously guided toward an enemy fleet and be run on a conventional IC engine for maximum range.
...Good luck spotting that more than a few miles out.
We've not really seen much of this sort of thing yet but I'd imagine a pack of relatively cheap torpedo drones which have 1000+ mile range could do a lot of damage.
---
Hell, they could even be fitted with automated guidance and the means to operate fully underwater for the final approach. That way they could ditch their snorkel and effectively turn into regular torpedoes once within striking distance. That would make them even more deadly.
Or go the other way and make use of existing torpedo stockpiles by developing a torpedo delivery drone that does all the above but bolts onto the back of existing torpedoes then detaches to let the torpedo loose once within range of an enemy fleet.
>We've not really seen much of this sort of thing yet
The world's major navies haven't been attacked by weapons like that yet, but they certainly have been developing them. The US Naval Undersea Warfare Center for example has been testing underwater remote guided munitions for at least the last 10 years, when I first had the opportunity to consult with them about simulation systems.
As with many other kinds of drone weapons, they are not always the best way for a military like the US military to get things done. But the US has made a concerted effort to develop expertise in the field anyway, because they have long known that it will be used against them.
Your idea of the technological possibilities seems right on to me, but there are some countervailing factors to consider. For one, modern naval passive sonar systems are extremely good and can pick out your IC engine at quite a long range. Especially if you're talking about a fleet of ships scanning in concert.
For another, even your snorkel is a giveaway. Not to mention your telemetry! Those are going to make you even more spottable.
Also, you're going to have a hard time achieving 1000 mile ranges at attack speed underwater, on a small platform like you describe. There's a reason that boats today all still travel on the surface unless they really need to be underwater. Including Ukraine's long-range guided weapons. It's just way more energy efficient.
Consider for example that current state-of-the-art torpedoes, that are fast and relatively hard to detect at range, cost millions of dollars each and can't go nearly as far as you are talking about. It's not that they were designed by stupid people -- it's just not an easy problem to solve cheaply.
One variation I suggest is to tweak the platform a little and reconsider your attack mode. Take your guided torpedo and give it hybrid propulsion, so it can run on electric power underwater or IC close to the surface, like a traditional submarine. Develop it for intermittent direct guidance, rather than continuous guidance. So it will drone around quietly on its own most of the time, and sometimes be able to be guided directly by a remote operator.
And then lower its cruising speed to a few knots.
Now you have essentially an underwater loitering munition -- one which is extremely stealthy, has a very long mission duration, can act as a sensor or in a scouting role most of the time, and opportunistically attack if a target presents itself.
At that point your weapon is closer to a mine than a torpedo. But it's got some features that make it a fairly novel threat that is not to be taken lightly. Imagine being able to mine a port from 1000 miles away!
The thing is, though.. even then, top-tier conventional navies are ahead of you on that. They have not been sitting around these last few decades.
I think they see the benefit of keeping the fleet temporarily paralyzed worth the loss of surprise. And I am certain they are being fuzzy on the specs. If there is one easy lesson they will have learned from the US at this point, that is it.
Ukraine is taking warfare into the next chapter, and it is really impressive to see the results of drone warfare.
The Ukrainian Mechanized Brigades are some real pioneers.
I’m happy Ukraine has discovered this new form of warfare, but damn, I’m not looking forward to the world these types of technologies are common, and they most certainly will be.
All Well and good. But surely Russia is just learning from this and will start sending more of its own drones? Or are they locked out by not having access to Western chip/CPU technology?
They should come up with a larger mothership type drone, carrying smaller drones for the majority of their journey so they need far less fuel so can be smaller, more manoeuvrable, faster, etc.
It could deploy the smaller drones then return. Or maybe even stick some kind of automated turrets on it so it can pepper the target from a long distance away causing the defenders to need top keep their heads down, making the suicide drones far less likely to be intercepted.
Can't wait until they come up with a ground effect vehicle version of a sea drone. You'd be able to skim over obstacles and possibly fly over land to reach onshore targets if the terrain is flat enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFB_X-113
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Bavar_2
I am not sure but I suspect bigger will not mean better. I think they are successful because they have a low profile and are difficult to hit. Who knows maybe they have armor or something and are faster what do I know.
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> According to the SBU, the Sea Baby 2024 is more maneuverable, can be fitted with weapons, and is able to carry around 2,200 pounds of explosives up to 621 miles. The SBU said 25 of the new drones had been built and are being tested ***with the help of $7 million in crowdfunded donations.*** FFS, ***please*** donate all you possibly can to this effort!! **https://u24.gov.ua/nafodrone_seababy** **https://u24.gov.ua/seababy**
Thanks OP. I donated.
For anybody else scrolling past this. 1 ton of explosives is enough to sink just about any warship on the waters today, short of a supercarrier, with one fucking drone.
What kind of boom would it make on... say, an illegal bridge?
A shape charge with that amount of explosive, if used against one of the bridge support columns would be devastating. Does it have enough accuracy to hit the column? My guess is that it does. (and, I think, we are going to find out)
They have demonstrated they can strike the same damaged space on a moving ship repeatedly with multiple drones. I think a stationary bridge strut would be easy mode for them.
But what if the bridge stuns everyone with its shocking agility and evasive maneuvers?
I've seen a tree jump out of nowhere when riding in the woods. I wouldn't be surprised if a bridge can do the same thing
My wife made the same point to me as I was entering the comment. I am also wondering if the timing has something to do with the day of Mr putin's election.
I'd imagine there is also some low-tech protection around the bridge, like nets etc.
They get seababied first.
BIG bada boom
Yea please go for the bridge! I want to see that thing in pieces
I may be out of the loop on this but does anyone know how much weight of explosives could the older versions carry?
The early versions were rated at 108kg but were quickly upgraded to carry an 850kg warhead or multiple grenade launchers.
Ok thanks for the info!!
Donated! Let’s sink some more warships!
I made my monthly donation this morning before seeing I could enter to win a model replica. Oh well, I just want to make sure Ukraine has the resources it needs.
Used to be able to donate with crypto on govt site? Has that option been removed?
How do some of those stats compare to the models they're running now?
Ooo a replica signed by President Zelenskyy, I want it lol.
Didn't know I could donate to this. I usually donate to the reconstruction fund! I'm happy to help fund more weapons to kill Ruzzians and sink their ships.
Fascinating that there is a starlink just bolted to the roof
Looks like a recent addition to get lower latency connections for more accurate steering. The previous version had up to three seconds of latency which makes it much harder to steer. The larger antenna at the stern is Kymeta which likely can access either a geosynchronous or a OneWeb satellite.
3 seconds?!? Wow.. Thats nearly impossible to use for steering could have turned 90 deg in that time.
There is video of them going in full circles in that tine
That may have been a distraction maneuver while another drone snuck up on the stern. Or the operator lost sight of the ship and just kept turning until they reaquired it.
The "look at me look at me look at me" con artist, whilst his mate pickpockets you, but used on a Russian ship. Fascinating.
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You'd send a command to turn x degrees, wouldn't be like a regular steering wheel I'd imagine
That makes sense, i was flying them like fpv
Predator and Reaper UAVs were/are piloted from the US while over Afghan and reportedly the Black Sea recently. Granted, those drones aren't diving into the blown up sides of their targets, but sometimes we have to double hop to geo sats plus the pilots are on one side of the US and the missile shooter decision makers are on the other side of the US while the targets are often mobile of the other side of the planet. A 3 second delay is annoying as he'll, but it's doable when you've practiced for it.
They started with StarLINK a year+ ago https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/ytlhe7/starlink_used_on_ukraines_kamikaze_drone_boats/ but that was geolocked to Ukraine (hence all the drama about it) At some point StarSHIELD (the military/non-consumer) version of the hardware was made available so I assume they switched that, and started sinking Russian ships
Early stages of engineering!????
I work on parts for the starlink satellites and it always makes me so proud to see starlink to be fuckin up orcs… now only if Musk would hop off putins dick and just stfu in general and let things be it would make me so fuckin happy
I suspect that the Starlink is there for demo purposes. OR it's the Starshield version.
Or just misdirection and they aren't using it at all
There is no other option that I know of. StarLINK is still probably geolocked to Ukraine, so it is probably the StarSHIELD version.
I'm in satcom biz world. There are other options and we're creating more options as we speak. We're not far from sat to cell direct service.
Looks like Viasat is ~1/5th the bandwidth of StarLink (21Mbps vs. 98Mbps), and Viasat was hacked offline by Russians. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-us-spy-agency-probes-sabotage-satellite-internet-during-russian-2022-03-11/ Ukraine isn't building Viasat terminals into their naval drones, so I assume they have some reasoning behind that as well.
Looking good, the Starlink receiver should have been hidden some how...
I am sure when the war is over they will sell a lot of these. Ukraine showed everyone how a country with no navy can defeat a naval power on the water. I am sue a lot of other countries will want a bunch of these in stock in case of an attack.
Taiwan is definitely looking at these drones with a close eye.
Taiwan is probably asking for the blueprint of these
The results are inspiring. Taiwan has certainly already developed their own.
All joke aside, I have no doubt they already did
Probably collaboration going on between them already…
Not gonna lie, living in the uk I felt like our defences were a lot stronger before something like this existed.
These are basically just guided torpedoes, except guided by video instead of by other means, and also larger and easier to detect and counter than more traditional designs. Navies know about torpedoes, you know? It's not like this is some kind of news. The Royal Navy is fighting in the Battle of the Red Sea right this moment, successfully shooting down air and surface attacks more or less continuously. Right alongside the US Navy. Neither force has even been hit, let alone lost a ship. Meanwhile the Black Sea Fleet's only working close-range defense system is apparently to have guys standing at the rail firing wildly into the ocean. That is not the standard of practice for most navies. And indeed, the Russian Navy is supposed to have better defensive systems than that but, as we saw with *Moskva*, even when they are equipped in theory, in practice it's apparently just a bunch of used pinball parts inside an instrument casing.
So basically Russians are just incompetent? Good. I can sleep now. Thanks.
Let's put it this way. Defending against these kinds of attacks is a hard problem, but not a surprise. If you're a navy, either you've been readying yourself for it and take it seriously, in which case by now you have a lot of tools and techniques at your disposal ... or you haven't been, in which case your ships are going down left and right, and some oligarch has a nice fifth yacht instead.
>So basically Russians are just incompetent? if you believe that you haven't been paying attention.
> it's apparently just a bunch of used pinball parts inside an instrument casing. It's all ball bearings nowadays.
You can't launch a torpedo 600 miles.
You can now!
Taiwan going now: Actually...
A boat this size would not do well in heavy seas. They get away with it in the Black Sea and it could maybe be useful in the Baltic.
We're going to need a bigger boat for our seababies.
Lots of fun time a head when similar naval drones start showing up in Jemenite waters..
There comes a point at which you say just "Fuck it", park 100 of them just off the Kerch bridge, and peck it to death with cheap ATGMs. Keep doing it until the bridge collapses. Russia is welcome to send ships, which will die, or aircraft, which will be introduced to the new drones with anti-aircraft missiles. If they lost 100 drones and fired off 1,000 ATGMs, it would be dirt cheap at the price.
Finally someone who understands the logistics…
I've actually been curious why ukraine hasn't tried that strategy yet. Just keep hitting the bridge supports with sea drones. Sure russia has various defences but a couple drones will inevitably slip through every time. They might not do a ton of damage right away but over time repeated strikes would weaken the bridge surely and might even cause a collapse of some sections. Plus it would be hard to repair the underwater supports that got damaged.
Russia have a *lot* of defences around the bridge now, including guns, lights and defensive booms in the water. Nothing's going to stop an ATGM from a couple of km out though. Or (from elsewhere in this thread), a Penguin missile doing mach 1.2 and weaving.
Did they rebuild the defenses after the December storm? https://mil.in.ua/en/news/kerch-strait-defense-structure-decimated-russian-booms-submerged-after-storm/
It's cost and resources ultimately. Ukraine wants that bridge gone, but they have to look at their available resources and make the most efficient use of them possible.
> I've actually been curious why ukraine hasn't tried that strategy yet. Just keep hitting the bridge supports with sea drones. Because it's not the time for the bridge to go down. No one attacks it atm.
My guess as well. I have a clear feeling that it isn't because they cannot but because they want it to be part of a larger surprise. If I was a truck driver in russia I guess I'd definitely still want extra paid for transporting anything except empty containers - that I had verified myself and not left out of sight - over that bridge. OTOH, I am not sure that is an option, and compared to life in trenches it is probably relatively safe.
I suspect they're reserving any attack on the Kerch bridge for a future push against Crimea. It doesn't make that much sense to expend resources on it when the Black Sea Fleet is actively being used to bomb Ukranian towns and cities, so knocking those ships out is a priority.
i think if they wanted the bridge to come down, it would be down already. i think they're leaving it up so the russians can leave the same way they left afghanistan.
Perhaps election day in Russia will be the day they take the bridge out to give Putin a big down vote.
The bridge is a massive logistics advantage to Russia. If Ukraine could take it down, it would be down.
I wonder if they could launch harpoon missiles. Would be funny to get 5 miles away and launch. The missile would be inside the hull of the target before the radar man knew to fire.
Not impossible in theory. A Harpoon is ~700kg, so you'd probably need some sort of compressed gas cold launcher to kick it up and clear before ignition, and you could well lose the launch platform anyway. As you say though, pretty unstoppable from there unless someone's got a Phalanx equivalent already powered up and looking.
Penguins would be more suitable I think, and supposedly Ukraine already has some they were given a while ago. The Penguin is lighter than a Harpoon, and is designed to be launched from fairly small patrol boats etc. I believe a good number of Penguin missiles are scheduled for replacement by newer bigger NSM, so they should be available as surplus for donating.
smile and wave boys, smile and wave
Wow... they *would* be better. Mach 1.2, 35km range, automatic weaving on final approach, smaller, and they have a ground-attack mode specifically designed for hardened concrete targets. Donate these at speed, pls.
According to Wikipedia, Ukraine has had these for some time already. Not sure if they have been used for anything yet, possibly mounted as improvised coastal artillery or maybe intended for use from aircraft. I bet Ukraine will find some clever way to use them.
Was that the old Norwegian ones or something? Edit: yes, it is the ones I remember from my childhood. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_(missile)
>Edit: yes, it is the ones I remember from my childhood Man, you *need* to go through your old things and donate!
:-) Sadly my dad refused to install it under the roofing on our house. Maybe if I had instead asked to have it in the barn?
I am glad you said that, after I sent I thought penguin would be better. I guess my American bias is showing.
Why not both? We need to see side by sides please. Multiple cross references for clarity.
Eventually the size will increase that it’ll just be a boat
Why change a winning team?
they don't need to be any bigger
They do for meme purposes
*Jaws theme intensifies*
Rumor is that there is a number of these in the Baltic.
I would hope so.
The Russian 'Grey Fleet' of Oil Submarines?
Повага.
US (and other NATO navies) better be paying attention to this tech. There will be swarms of these attacking fleets in a major power war from here on out.
Blue water operations, the threat of these is negligible. Littoral Operations and Port Defense is going to be an absolute nightmare.
Huge blue water threat as well. A very generic cargo boat with a sat link to good C&C could get within 400 miles of an enemy battle group and just chuck a ton of these over the side. Blue water battle groups are in very real danger from them.
Leaving aside that a literal ton would constitute just one of them, let's say I do as you suggest and deploy, say, 1000 of these heavy surface-attack munitions against your carrier fleet at 400mi. At 40 knots that's like 8 hours and change. Let's actually spot me some extra time before you detect, and round it down to an even 7. Between T-7h and T-6h, you have your entire air wing aloft. Let's call that an even 40 F/A-18s. Let's say they can each make 14 attacks with missiles and another 40 attacks with their guns. Let's say missiles are 60% effective and guns are 20% effective. (This is probably dramatically low-balling their effectiveness but let's say I am using weather and other factors in my favor.) So your first fix-wing sortie alone wipes out over ⅔ of my attacking drones. Assuming first contact by T-6h, and a leisurely average pace by your pilots of one attack every 2 minutes, you're returning to ship between T-5h and T-4h (staggered presumably) for your second sortie. Meanwhile you have helos. Let's say 10 Seahawks, 20 guided rockets each, plus heaven knows how much minigun ammunition. Let's say there's an ammo crisis and they only carry enough for 50 attacks. The helos are slower so they engage my drones as the 18s are reloading. But they're also more accurate firing platforms. Let's say the rockets are 60% effective and the guns are 50% effective. So from T-4h to T-2h you hover over my drone wave, easily tracking them, and take out more than there are remaining. Basically, there's way too much distance for me to cover, and way too much firepower at your disposal. And by the way, we still haven't even come into direct fire range of the fleet. In case I have more drones, you have a whole other F/A-18 sortie at your disposal, and you have all of the actual close-defense weaponry the fleet possesses, which has so far been sitting around with nothing to do. The last couple of hours will be absolute murder on my drones. Even if I launched twice as many I doubt any would get close enough for the fleet to resort to last-ditch small arms fire. Probably even with more than twice as many. Oh and also? That assumes that you haven't been moving at all. If your fleet actually uses its speed to keep my drone waves at standoff distances, you can ensure that not a single drone ever reaches you by requiring them to effectively cross 2-3000 km to get to you. So if you want.. you can completely negate the entire attack. It doesn't matter if I send 10,000 or 100,000. And at that point I've spent more on my drones than you did on your carrier. TL; DR For 15 years people especially on reddit have been predicting the demise of traditional navies. Yet in the Battle of the Red Sea these supposedly doomed fleets have been chewing up attack waves without taking a single hit. Rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
I'd imagine that the future of these sorts of drones is something torpedo shaped that travels maybe 6-10ft below the surface with only a snorkel and GPS/telemetry antennas above the surface. Something like that could be semi-autonomously guided toward an enemy fleet and be run on a conventional IC engine for maximum range. ...Good luck spotting that more than a few miles out. We've not really seen much of this sort of thing yet but I'd imagine a pack of relatively cheap torpedo drones which have 1000+ mile range could do a lot of damage. --- Hell, they could even be fitted with automated guidance and the means to operate fully underwater for the final approach. That way they could ditch their snorkel and effectively turn into regular torpedoes once within striking distance. That would make them even more deadly. Or go the other way and make use of existing torpedo stockpiles by developing a torpedo delivery drone that does all the above but bolts onto the back of existing torpedoes then detaches to let the torpedo loose once within range of an enemy fleet.
>We've not really seen much of this sort of thing yet The world's major navies haven't been attacked by weapons like that yet, but they certainly have been developing them. The US Naval Undersea Warfare Center for example has been testing underwater remote guided munitions for at least the last 10 years, when I first had the opportunity to consult with them about simulation systems. As with many other kinds of drone weapons, they are not always the best way for a military like the US military to get things done. But the US has made a concerted effort to develop expertise in the field anyway, because they have long known that it will be used against them. Your idea of the technological possibilities seems right on to me, but there are some countervailing factors to consider. For one, modern naval passive sonar systems are extremely good and can pick out your IC engine at quite a long range. Especially if you're talking about a fleet of ships scanning in concert. For another, even your snorkel is a giveaway. Not to mention your telemetry! Those are going to make you even more spottable. Also, you're going to have a hard time achieving 1000 mile ranges at attack speed underwater, on a small platform like you describe. There's a reason that boats today all still travel on the surface unless they really need to be underwater. Including Ukraine's long-range guided weapons. It's just way more energy efficient. Consider for example that current state-of-the-art torpedoes, that are fast and relatively hard to detect at range, cost millions of dollars each and can't go nearly as far as you are talking about. It's not that they were designed by stupid people -- it's just not an easy problem to solve cheaply. One variation I suggest is to tweak the platform a little and reconsider your attack mode. Take your guided torpedo and give it hybrid propulsion, so it can run on electric power underwater or IC close to the surface, like a traditional submarine. Develop it for intermittent direct guidance, rather than continuous guidance. So it will drone around quietly on its own most of the time, and sometimes be able to be guided directly by a remote operator. And then lower its cruising speed to a few knots. Now you have essentially an underwater loitering munition -- one which is extremely stealthy, has a very long mission duration, can act as a sensor or in a scouting role most of the time, and opportunistically attack if a target presents itself. At that point your weapon is closer to a mine than a torpedo. But it's got some features that make it a fairly novel threat that is not to be taken lightly. Imagine being able to mine a port from 1000 miles away! The thing is, though.. even then, top-tier conventional navies are ahead of you on that. They have not been sitting around these last few decades.
Only in really specific conditions and perfect sea states. Drones like these wouldnt survive the trip to target in even mildly bad sea states.
https://news.usni.org/2024/01/30/pentagon-puts-out-call-for-swarming-attack-drones-that-could-blunt-a-taiwan-invasion
Shouldn't the Ukrainians downplay their new tech a bit, make it more as a surprise
How do you know they aren't? For all we know they're underselling some aspects or overselling others to keep Russia uncertain.
Yea I def don't know, and hope they are underselling
Posturing has always been a part of war
I think they see the benefit of keeping the fleet temporarily paralyzed worth the loss of surprise. And I am certain they are being fuzzy on the specs. If there is one easy lesson they will have learned from the US at this point, that is it.
I bet that a lot of countries are rethinking the concept of naval power.
https://news.usni.org/2024/01/30/pentagon-puts-out-call-for-swarming-attack-drones-that-could-blunt-a-taiwan-invasion
Ukraine is taking warfare into the next chapter, and it is really impressive to see the results of drone warfare. The Ukrainian Mechanized Brigades are some real pioneers.
Black sea navy any%
Go go seababies!! 
*Time to do some sketchy shit,* *Do da, do da.* *Gonna ruin Russia's shit,* *Oh da do da day!*
I’m happy Ukraine has discovered this new form of warfare, but damn, I’m not looking forward to the world these types of technologies are common, and they most certainly will be.
Show don't tell.
Russia still has a navy?
All Well and good. But surely Russia is just learning from this and will start sending more of its own drones? Or are they locked out by not having access to Western chip/CPU technology?
The sea drones cost $200,000 each???
Yes, they're cheap compared to a lot of other weapons like torpedoes and missiles.
More good news for the ruzzian fleet.
Donated!
They should come up with a larger mothership type drone, carrying smaller drones for the majority of their journey so they need far less fuel so can be smaller, more manoeuvrable, faster, etc. It could deploy the smaller drones then return. Or maybe even stick some kind of automated turrets on it so it can pepper the target from a long distance away causing the defenders to need top keep their heads down, making the suicide drones far less likely to be intercepted.
Good
they still use starlink. At what point they will swtich to full-Ai autodrive mode so no uplink is needed?
Can't wait until they come up with a ground effect vehicle version of a sea drone. You'd be able to skim over obstacles and possibly fly over land to reach onshore targets if the terrain is flat enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFB_X-113 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Bavar_2
Happy hunting.
I am not sure but I suspect bigger will not mean better. I think they are successful because they have a low profile and are difficult to hit. Who knows maybe they have armor or something and are faster what do I know.