(12-02-2021 01:19 PM)bobdizole Wrote:  

(12-02-2021 12:50 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(12-02-2021 11:42 AM)ODU BBALL Wrote:  

(12-02-2021 09:46 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(11-18-2021 11:37 PM)BigTigerMike Wrote:  

China has a much healthier economy that the Soviets did, at least on the surface. But there are huge problems underneath. Historically, China has seldom been a unified country because it's basically a bunch of people who don't like each other. The warlike Han in the north don't get along well with the commercial/industrial Shanghai and the Yangtze Valley, and neither of them like or are liked by the secessionist south, not to mention Tibet and the Uyghurs in the west. So what they do is export a lot of cheap consumer goods and use the cash flow to finance a bunch of make-work projects with little or no economic utility (remember the empty cities) to keep the peons too busy to revolt. So their banks have massive loans out to deals that will never generate a nickel of revenue. And the whole thing depends on imported oil from the Mideast, that has to come by sea through Malacca/Sunda, and PLAN (the Chinese navy) may be huge in numbers, but it is not a blue-water navy that can protect that shipping. We do that for them now. Pull the USN out of the Indian Ocean, and let pirates start hijacking tankers bound for China, and the whole thing collapses--their economy dies and their people starve to death. We hold all the cards, but we refuse to play them.

The problem there is that pirates don't tend to discriminate about who they attack. Other nations (including some allies) would be subject to having their shipping disrupted as well.

We need a Navy large enough to defend both of our "ocean moats" that protect the US. Any blue water navy that can do that wont have much issue with pirates attacking its shipping.

How difficult would it be to build a large relatively cheap stealthy autonomous VSTOL drone capable of carrying an anti-ship missile or a recon pod? How difficult would it be to build a quiet relatively long range underwater drone capable of effectively locating enemy vessels. It would be nice if the underwater drone could fire missiles and torpedoes---but even if it cant---it would still be a game changer.

Frankly, my concern is either of the above two development would make a large expensive manned conventional fleet extremely vulnerable. A cheap long range stealth drone that can fire missiles and can land on a small combatant like a frigate of LCS would be a game changer. An extremely quiet underwater drone than can hunt enemy ships and subs autonomously would be a game changer. I dont think the development of either of those potential threats are that far away and they need to be part of the calculus deciding what of any future Navy would look like a decade or two from now.

That drone would have to be much bigger than what we have now. A missile large enough to be a threat to a surface ship is a lot bigger than the hellfires the MQs carry now(almost 4-to-1 ratio). And a single missile fired would not pose much a threat to modern missile defense systems.

I think you are spot on with developing underwater drones though. The navy is currently working on one for EW purposes, but can't imagine it would be a challenge to add a couple torpedo tubes to them eventually. The question becomes how do you control them. Subs rely on stealth and any wireless communication would give away it's presence. I think the MK-48s use a fiber optic to control the torpedo while the sub maneuvers away from the launch point.

Snakehead: USN's largest UUV

Yes the drone aircraft would have to be bigger to do what I propose. A first step could be an off the shelf item like the Bell-247 that has the range and lift to carry a pod and weapons but lacks stealth. Still---it would extend the range and utility of smaller Navy vessels like the LCS and coming frigate. The big steps forward with the 247 is its big enough to carry a real anti-ship payload, has a range of over 2500 miles, is almost twice as fast as a helicopter, its wings swivel fold to have the same flootprint as a MH-60 helicopter, and it can operate completely autonomously if need be. Frankly, it seems to me it should not be that hard to merge the VTOL technology of the F35B with the the current MQ-24 tanker drone (which is somewhat stealthy). Another option would be just to scale down the F-35B to create a smaller drone version of itself. That would be ideal. The tech exists. Its just a matter of building a stealth VTOL drone with autonomous capability. I think we are going to need that long range autonomous capability because I think satellite capability may be an early casualty of any peer level conflict. If that happens---the process of locating enemy vessels is going to have as much in common with 1943 as it has with 2021.

Bell 247
https://www.bellflight.com/products/bell-v-247