>The Office of Naval Research (ONR)'s Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vessel, Sea Hunter, has become the first ship to successfully autonomously navigate from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and back without crew onboard
Drone ships are the technology of the now. Why aren't the chinks competing?
maritime-executive.com
Give them three months and they'll have their copy.
That clearly looks manned
That's a file photo, not the actual test chang.
It's also the US's latest venture into quantum crews :^)
Has to be with just an observer. China has been known to just steal unmanned items right out of the water.
Needs to be armed so Chang can’t just tow it back home.
>unmanned aircraft has existed for decades
>unmanned watercraft is still prototype tech
Seems counterintuitive. What's the big issue to solve for ships that planes don't have?
youtube.com
For those wondering what the point of it is, the idea is to use it to track submarines and once it has a fix it will be able to follow them around for long periods of time without need for resupply.
Distance.
Drone subs are the future
Speed, waves, salt water, etc.. Air units miss out on a lot of the fun. Would rather those ships be equipped for 5 man crew, 1 can run it, 4 are just extra. Still allow for control remotely and 1 is along for the ride in case of complications. 4 others if something needs to be done type deal.
I find it interesting that there still seems to be a cabin. Is that just because this is a prototype? Or is a crew sometimes necessary?
The hull certainly looks like an efficient design, I'm sure it can go quite a while without refueling. Interesting that they added outriggers, probably to keep a reasonable amount of stability while poor conditions and still having minimal draft.
Steel is cheap, so why not have a tiny wheelhouse if you want to put humans onboard for repairs or piloting into a harbour.
>She is fitted with quicKutter shaft protection rope/line cutters from quickwater marine in Perth, these devices protect the vessel from damage caused by rope or net caught by the propellers, without effecting the vessels performance.
interesting It automatically cuts lines/nets that get tangled under it
>She is expected to undergo two years of testing before being placed in service with the U.S. Navy. If tests are successful, future such craft may be armed and used for anti-submarine and counter-mine duties, operating at a small fraction of the cost of operating a destroyer, $15,000-$20,000 per day compared to $700,000 per day
How the fuck does the government manage to blow $20,000 a day operating a fuel efficient autonomous drone
>A removable operator control station is installed during the testing period "for safety and backup" until it can be determined to reliably operate on her own. Operationally, computers will drive and control the ship, with a human always observing and taking charge if necessary in a concept called Sparse Supervisory Control, meaning a person is in control, but not "joy sticking" the vessel around.
>The ship has a host of non-standard features because of her lack of crew, including an internal layout that offers enough room for maintenance to be performed but not for any people to be permanently present.
Source
Impressive. What does China have? Lol nothing, those gooks are BTFO, let's see the chink shill try to damage control this
Speaking as a boater: shit is constantly breaking down somehow.
>How the fuck does the government manage to blow $20,000 a day operating a fuel efficient autonomous drone
It doesn't actually cost 20,000 per day, but when an expensive part needs to be refurbished/replace it averages out
>How the fuck does the government manage to blow $20,000 a day operating a fuel efficient autonomous drone
Cost of operations is measured per day deployed, but includes cost of maintenance and storage between deployments. Kinda like how the F35 is absurdly expensive per-airframe because the cost of development is averaged over a small run of planes.
well that's fucking cool. keep forgetting the squids make shit like this, I need to get into ships
Unmanned planes: several days flight, then back to a maintenance bay.
Unmanned boats: half a year at sea, then back to a maintenance bay.
Mostly it's because there was a need for aerial drones earlier than unmanned boats.
That's asking for pirates or wetbacks to just hi jack it. Until it has some sort of point defense to prevent boarding
Outrigger? surely it could sail half way of the earth from Madagascar to Hawaiian island
Chang thought: Our unmanned boats are so quantum, they don't exist in this reality. China win again.
>'hi, is this the navy? yeah, my name is user, and i'm a bored civilian in his mid 20's. yessir, saw those new roboboats you're sailing around and i just wanted to know if it would be cool if i just sort of camped out on one for a few weeks. i mean i have a 400 dollar AR from walmart and i could dress up like a cop or something if you wanted, i'm just worried somebody's going to try and board it. no, i'm completely serious. hello? Hello?
>without effecting the vessels performance
>effecting
They should stop hiring nogs as editors
>You will never aimlessly drift through the Sargasso on your own personal Sea Hunter as the last surviving man after the great nuclear conflagration.
>You will never hunt Albatross for sustenance off the back deck with your trusty MA-1 survival rifle chambered in .22 Hornet.
The PLA never reveals anything unless operational and can BFTO mutts but you mutts are all circumcised so premature ejaculation is
to be expected.
Well, in order for it to be of use, it needs to be transmitting data to a person located somewhere who can make use of that data.
So, you still have personnel costs, satellite bandwidth costs, etc. Plus, if that amount includes amortization, that would be most of it right there.
oh hey, it's Winnie the Pooh
What happens if the vessel is damaged? What prevents it from being hijacked? What safeguards are in place to prevent capture and reverse engineering?
Welcome to one year ago mutts
>Muh drones! Future of warfare!
[jams your signal with 20th century technology]
Have fun finding and destroying every jammer as more are constantly deployed and some are even autonomously relocating. What are you going to do, build kill bots that don't need human supervision or input? Enjoy those war crimes.
Wow that really reminds me of the
1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre 六四事件 八九民运
Considering it almost certainly just pilots itself by GPS, how are you planning on jamming something in the middle of the ocean? Following it around? Wow looks like you are wasting your time following around a drone ship with another ship. Almost like that was the point.
the controls have a four digit pin number dweeb
Amusingly, this honestly isn't incredibly reliant on communications. It's designed to sit in port and take an initial report of a submarine spotting before sprinting out to that location, finding the submarine with its onboard sonar, and then following it like a dog. It'll be transmitting the sub's location all the while, but it doesn't need more instructions.
>Requires “mothership” to control the drone ships
Sink the mothership and all your drone ships are fucking useless and going around aimlessly.
>just like my SC2 games
>trainsmitting the subs location
Couldn't subs then just be fitted to jam said transmitions? Or is that far harder said then done? Yes I know my spelling sucks
Cute toy american dog pig
Theoretically, but it'd be worse than useless. So the thing with jamming is that in order to jam something, you're spraying massive amounts of energy into the sky. Now, that amount of energy can easily be seen and tracked very easily. For something like radar jamming, it also makes it a bit difficult to pin down where exactly you are, but this isn't radar jamming, but radio. So now, the USV isn't the one that's transmitting your location, but rather you're the one that is. And you're going to be much more precisely seen, and on the surface when doing so.
Long story short, no, they wouldn't be.
It's called a torpedo