The U.S. Navy’s efforts to build a fleet of unmanned vessels are faltering because the Pentagon remains wedded to big shipbuilding projects, according to some officials and company executives, exposing a weakness as sea drones reshape naval warfare.
The U.S. Navy’s efforts to build a fleet of unmanned vessels are faltering because the Pentagon remains wedded to big shipbuilding projects, according to some officials and company executives, exposing a weakness as sea drones reshape naval warfare.
That was the through before Ukraine managed to use sea drones effectively to sink multiple non-patrol ships. That just shows that tests and theoretical analyses only goes so far. Real life situations where stakes are real are great motivators.
You’re forgetting two key things. This is the Russian Navy. They have a ship that routinely tries to sink itself. And they can’t get their heads around proper training. They lost the Moskva because they were operating under enemy missile range with their air defense turned off.
And we don’t have the luxury of operating from a nearby friendly cost line. This is the entire reason the Navy wanted a modular mission system in the LCS. One of the missions was explicitly to act as a drone launch and recovery ship.
To illustrate the difference between capabilities, check out the low visibility drug runner boats the Cost Guard routinely catches in the Caribbean. We actually have years of experience catching exactly these kind of low visibility boats.
Look nobody is saying drones are a dead end. Just that this is a sensationalist article. The Navy is absolutely on board with drones.
That’s my point. Sea drone capabilities were never tested in an active war before, and US is not actively investing them because it’s against their current modus operandi. They even booted one of the top navy admiral because he wanted to change that. Ignoring the title, the article talks about budgeting and slow paper heavy approval processes and focus on big carriers, cruisers, frigates, and destroyers. Comparing Coast Guard’s experience where adversaries goal is to avoid instead of actively attack is not even close to being the same.
This might change now that Ukraine showed the effectiveness, but US is behind its adversaries in this area and falling more behind with current budget being already approved.
That’s just not true. The Navy has been working with drones for years now. Reuters is usually pretty reliable but they let industry reps highly exaggerate the situation.
Where does the article, or I state that US has 0 sea drones? They have around 100 as of now and a plan to double it with $500 million program, but it’s small numbers in comparison to the other countries that are investing heavily into them. You keep misconstruing what was reported.
Dude, we sent Ukraine 700 loitering munition drones. We do not have “100 drones”. We have 100 USVs and UUVs which are generally larger and more logistically complex than a Switchblade or Predator. The idea that we’ve been sleeping on this is ridiculous, there are articles going back years about testing drones. And who has a lot of drones? Which Navy specifically is investing heavier than the US Navy in drones right now?