Unmanned Ships and the Future of Deterrence

[rangerrebew]

Unmanned Ships and the Future of Deterrence
By James Wirtz
July 2021
Proceedings
Vol. 147/7/1,421
 

Although the origins of contemporary naval strategy are often shrouded in the mists of time, the notion of a “bimodal” Navy, whereby the fleet is divided into one force specializing in sea control and the other in sea denial, can be traced to a 2007 article published by retired Navy Captain Wayne Hughes in the Naval War College Review. In his essay, Hughes mostly concentrated on explaining how the U.S. Navy contributed to the Cold War strategy of containment; nevertheless, his analysis eventually turned to the prospect of great power competition looming on the strategic horizon and what that competition would mean for the fleet:

The existing Navy comprises large, efficient ships to project power ashore, principally in the form of air strikes, missiles, and Marine Corps elements. Against China, the need to threaten air and missile strikes will not change, but China has developed the means to attack large ships at sea. The Navy must now explore building a more distributed fleet that is offensively disposed yet can suffer losses and fight on, for no defense at sea can be perfect against a skilled opponent.1

Hughes suggested that not only budgetary considerations, but also the physics governing the behavior of floating objects had driven the Navy to pack ever more capability into a shrinking number of large vessels, placing “too many eggs in too few baskets,” so to speak. This was fine in a permissive environment in which the Navy faced few threats, allowing it to project power ashore with relative impunity. If those same ships faced a credible threat, however, even the loss of a few vessels would represent an alarmingly high reduction of U.S. naval capability, especially because only a few warships are operating forward at any given time. For Hughes, the solution to the “too many eggs in too few baskets” conundrum was to build a force that could absorb significant but less-than-catastrophic losses while still retaining the firepower to hold the opponent’s fleet at risk.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/july/unmanned-ships-and-future-deterrence

[rangerrebew]

I would think the key to unmanned would be the highest quality maintenance.  At least in my experience, they were not world leaders.  Little things, like going dead in the water with planes waiting to land; fires in the mains; the members of a motor whaleboat rescue team going in the drink because the lowering wires were crossed.  Little things.  What will be done when something important goes wrong on an unmanned ship, as they surely will?  Will they have an escort ship with people who can repair everything that can go wrong?

[AARguy]

Unmanned ships launching unmanned aircraft is a system of subsystems which are largely expendable. Even now, unmanned aerial vehicle costs are usually overshadowed by the much more expensive "Mission Packages" they carry. The signal monitors, reconnaissance equipment, weapons systems, etc are the REAL cost drivers of UxV's.