Please state the ways.
Chinese USV Development Thread
- Thread starter Dfangsaur
- Start date
Please state the ways.
I don’t think this is right, even an unpowered glider bomb can travel 100km if launched from altitude. I think a Juntian launched drone can travel 1000km not 100km.
What loitering drone could you be referring to that will travel 1000km? I mean from the graphic you yourself posted, it depicts the Jiutian launching your smaller, typical-sized loitering drones, that at best probably have a 30-50km range like FH-901. If there's any "loitering drone" being launched from this with a 1000km range, at that point it just sounds more like an air-launched cruise missile, and will very likely be much larger that it can't fit anywhere as many inside its modules as depicted in this video.
You are right. I searched the range of loitering munitions launched from the ground. I didn't take that into account.
But I still have doubts about it. The munitions of the size shown in the video should have a ground launch range of 40-60km, and the glide bomb you mentioned requires the carrier aircraft itself to have enough speed, which Jiutian don't have. My optimistic estimation is still 100km.
Container ships(webway), USVs are obvious ones as they're already a thing in a war.
UUVs haven't happened yet, but there's 0 reason they won't.
Aircraft (UAV motherships or, say, airlifters) can absolutely do the same by staying below the horizon. Note that frigate is a ship meant to often operate by itself or among similar/lesser ships; OtH networked targeting can't be guaranteed.
Finally, while not an unexpected threat per se, for the US, the GBU-54 (SDB-II) is now their standard stand-in strike munition. Swarms of munitions attacking ships were to be a thing even without affordable flight.
All those things can also launch a similar amount of regular missiles. That's the issue really, a long range drone is similar in size to a missile, and a warship is a high value target so that it's worthwhile to use massed missiles rather than massed long range. drones. It's not like an electrical substation where you're choosing between a few $5k drones vs a few $500k missiles to destroy a $1 million site.
UUV/USV can launch right outside of horizon (or even within, if behind obstacle), i.e. normie 9-11" FPV frames already make it perfectly fine.
Flyers under horizon will launch much further, but those 30-40 miles is still switchblade size(even without benefit of air launch).
Missiles certainly can be (I honestly don't think there's a distinctive border), the problem is it can be dozens, if not hundreds of small ones. Until now it was unrealistic.
At 30 miles you can just fire torpedoes. Even hundreds of switchblade type drones can't sink a frigate, a single torpedo can. I just don't think massed drones is a good option for combat in the open ocean. Even over land when say the Russians really want to hit something well protected and of higher value, they use missiles. If drone swarms are used, it's probably better to use swarms of larger drones to deliver missiles. Swarms of smaller drones are probably still better used for littoral combat.
The Type 054B's upgrades over the Type 054A appears mainly to make it a better ocean-going vessel, so I don't think it's appropriate to dedicate too much resources to fighting small drones. I think that job should be left to more dedicated littoral vessels, maybe a 056 successor.
Torpedo is a traditional threat from someone with a torpedo. It's something everyone knows for well over a century.
Generalized Drones (more unmanned vessels in general, enabled by cheap flight controllers, connectivity, and AI) are a non-traditional threat that anyone (literally, I believe there are a few engineers on this forum who can, in principle) can create, which no one is really prepared for.
Yes, it won't sink a frigate - but at a sufficient number it'll incapacitate it, and it will set alight your LNG tanker.
You can't skip them just because the other side can use a torpedo. You also can't skip them b/c they're some other guys' problem - Russian navy did that, and you see how it turned out. Ukraine is now pitching know-how left and right, and it isn't exactly friendly to China.
Threats happen when they happen, not where you want them to happen. See Arctic Metagaz.
Drone threat is quite ubiquitous; it goes from port calls in foreign nations(when all your normal sensors are off and there's only limited power onboard) to the high seas in the middle of nowhere.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
You are going down the rabbit hole a little.
Drones are giving the Russians a headache because they don’t have the right tools in sufficient numbers for the job sure, but also because geography and political reality is really not their friend in Ukraine and the Black Sea.
In open waters combat environments, especially out in the deep oceans, trying to corner naval warships with drones is just playing lottery odds and you really need opfor to screw up or actively screw themselves for your drones to have any reasonable chances of success.
If you are trying to hunt for enemy warships in the open oceans, without active sensors, what are the actual odds that an enemy warship will cruise by your drone close enough for your drone to passively detect and launch an attack? Because your drone launch platforms will sure as hell not have the speed or endurance to go chasing down warships. If your drone is actively emitting to try to find targets, there goes your element of surprise and any hope to getting within attack range before.
Take out the geographical limitations of the Black Sea and NATO assets operating as the majority of the kill chain and Ukrainian naval drones will have minimal to zero chances of successful finding, never mind attacking Russian warships.
The only realistic scenario where modern warships might expect to have to deal with the kind of drones you mentioned is when they are on patrol to defend coastal areas and critical infrastructure/installations from such drone attack. That means those warships can load up accordingly to focus on drones over more traditional threats and be backed up with appropriate supporting and enabling assets, chief of which will be friendly UCAVs that should be doing the loin share of the patrolling and engagement aspects, with the warships operating as sweepers to mop up leakers instead of trying to tank the brunt of such attacks as the Russians were doing.
You are going down the wrong path at a conceptual level trying to argue for the creation of a superflexible wonder-ship that can handle all possible threats at all possible times. That’s the line of thinking that led the USN down its problematic dead-end path of all Burkes and heavier all purpose super expensive fleet that then didn’t have the numbers to cover all operational requirements and ended up being over worked and run into the ground.
The key design principle for Frigates is to have a good enough platform that you can build in large numbers to support heavier warships and to fulfil less demanding and dangers combat operations themselves.
The key to countering emerging and next gen threats is to add appropriate supporting assets to your force structure rather than trying to shoehorn existing assets and platforms into counters. If you have a drone swarm problem, far better to send your own UCAVs out to catch and kill the launch platforms before they can get within launch range than trying to intercept all the drones as they are diving down for attack.
For the 054B and any other warship, the best defence against being overwhelmed by cheap drone swarms is to not put yourself in that position in the first place. Use other assets and procedures to identify and engage the threat at range before they can effectively attack you. The same principle as the best defence against attackers seeking to sneak up close to clack off a suicide belt isn’t to issue bomb disposal suits to all your line troops but to make sure those bombers don’t get close enough to start with.