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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

Brett327 said:
If you look at the relevant planning documents, a lot of thought has gone into this topic.
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Edit: my post above was basically reading newest email first. Anyway, I certainly believe they thought about it. I know we did on a number of other planning events I participated in. But I also see it as potentially missing the forest for the trees. Definitely at the operational level (where my "events" tended to get capped), but also I'd submit at the strategic level. I kinda view this like I view "counterforce" thinking of the 1980s, and the idea of a protracted nuclear conflict. Great ideas in a very technical, scientific analysis. That also fail to stink check with human nature. IMO of course. I could be wrong about those topics too, obviously we have been fortunate enough to have never "found out", at least thus far.
 
Lawman said:
In fairness, if we’re talking about some of the close/terminal laser defense systems being tested and soon fielded, the generation power required fits in a Stryker.

MShorad style weapons fitted aboard a ship won’t eat the power necessary to be a nuclear only option. That said, those same weapons won’t provide any sort of mutual defense coverage at the ranges you would see in a surface action group. They are meant for mutual bubbles measured in single digit kilometers.
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They're likely going to need to be bigger for the exact reasons you describe, though given the 'theater' of the whole proposal they would likely slap any laser on there and call it good. That is if it ever came to fruition, which it likely won't.
 
BigRed389 said:
Going to be interesting to see what they do with it. It won’t fit a VLS or even the 40ft container launcher. That said, maybe they come up with some interesting unmanned payloads to play around with. Those are the main things that have made real progress from the LCS days.

As a typical frigate though, this is pretty anemic. Maybe they start planning for a hull extension to accommodate a real missile launcher or something in a few years down from the first few ships.
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Me and one of my buddies from the civilian side of the navy thought that maybe the idea is we load this thing down with a swarm of drones and use it like a mobile launch platform for them. Could work, might be a good use case for such a light ship
 
Gaburieru said:
Me and one of my buddies from the civilian side of the navy thought that maybe the idea is we load this thing down with a swarm of drones and use it like a mobile launch platform for them. Could work, might be a good use case for such a light ship
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We have 122 one way attack drones (in the form of TLAMs) on our cruisers.

Anytime you want to include drones you have to have a way to control them. If you're controlling a swarm of drones you're giving the enemy a really easy way to target you.
 
Swanee said:
Anytime you want to include drones you have to have a way to control them. If you're controlling a swarm of drones you're giving the enemy a really easy way to target you.
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You mean to tell me that fiber-optic controlled drones have a limited range?!

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Gaburieru said:
load this thing down with a swarm of drones
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Not to pick on you per se, but the recent obsession with "drone swarm" as the be-all/end-all of modern warfare has got to stop. It has become this trope that is being used increasingly in online discussions... "F-35? Obsolete... drone swarm. Aircraft carriers? Obsolete... drone swarm." New FFG? Platform for drone swarm."

It's exhausting, and most people haven't thought through the basics of how any of it would work - especially at sea, or at 35,000 ft.
 
Eh, maybe the ELINT and EW limitations can be hardened and the range limitations overcome by the smart people over at Raytheon, or Lockheed. While I do think a lot of people are way out over their skis on the whole drone thing, it's not impossible that it has some logistical and cost advantages even if it's not the $25 TEMU terror that all of the opinionmakers want us to think it'll be. It's certainly not going to make any current tech obsolete, though. I was really just trying to guess how someone might make the most out of the funny coastie boat
 
Gaburieru said:
Eh, maybe the ELINT and EW limitations can be hardened and the range limitations overcome by the smart people over at Raytheon, or Lockheed. While I do think a lot of people are way out over their skis on the whole drone thing, it's not impossible that it has some logistical and cost advantages even if it's not the $25 TEMU terror that all of the opinionmakers want us to think it'll be. It's certainly not going to make any current tech obsolete, though. I was really just trying to guess how someone might make the most out of the funny coastie boat
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I hear you, but what I think keeps us grounded when talking about capabilities is a requirements based approach. What capability gaps are being filled by a lightly defended ship that deploys a swarm of short range drones carrying a 2kg warhead in a SCS scenario where the major combatants are 1000 nm apart? Requirements keeps us from grasping at each shiny new hammer that comes out of Silicon Valley.

We twist ourselves in knots figuring out how to shoehorn a drone swarm into a USV that will stealthily close with the PLAN fleet to unleash what amounts to a harassment package for a Renhai or Luyang, when we could have just used a couple MK-48s to do the job properly.
 
Swanee said:
It doesn't matter how "hard" your network is. If you turn a flashlight on in a dim room you're telling everyone where you are.
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I have no way of knowing but I would like to think that whatever we're deploying - especially the one way stuff - is autonomous for most of the way to the target, if not the whole way.
 
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