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Automatic Retard posted:Are those drones heavily armoured? How the gently caress do they get through that metal storm I was a gunner on my first ship and the captain of one of the 25mm mounts, the largest weapon we had onboard. We inflated a big target one day for practice - a giant floating ball. The 25s fired HEIT rounds, High Explosive, Incendiary Tracers. about 180 rounds per minute if I remember correctly (this was in 92-93). It was HARD to hit them, much to the delight of the rest of the crew watching. I felt vindicated when no one could actually hit to sink it. Part of it was the fact that these big rear end rounds weren't really penetrating the bouncy ball, but also on the ocean the waves and sea state have an appreciable impact on small targets. I watched those guys trying to shoot as their own ship was also being affected by the sea state and felt bad for them until I remembered who I was watching and then I felt better about the end result. We eventually had to break out the .50 cals to deflate the target, in case none of you were wondering.
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Mar 8, 2024 21:51
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Yup, sounds about right. Everything is moving with waves getting in the way. It's why going over board is a death sentence as well. Nobody is going to find you unless it's absolutely clear with little wind. The best defense against drones is to just move fast.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:33
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A.o.D. posted:it's meant to be disposable, while being immune to EM interference, and protecting the operator from being traced, assuming the operator is able to control the drone via the cable. I don't think they care about it working for very long. I think what he's trying to say is the first piece of debris it gets caught on might put a crimp in it and all of a sudden you're not getting the signal to the drone anymore. Not a cable expert.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:11
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Also you can’t really maneuver with it like an untethered drone. Great for observation but as a weapon platform that’s not just going fast in one direction seems lacking.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:18
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Flyinglemur posted:I was a gunner on my first ship and the captain of one of the 25mm mounts, the largest weapon we had onboard. We inflated a big target one day for practice - a giant floating ball. The 25s fired HEIT rounds, High Explosive, Incendiary Tracers. about 180 rounds per minute if I remember correctly (this was in 92-93). It was HARD to hit them, much to the delight of the rest of the crew watching. I felt vindicated when no one could actually hit to sink it. Part of it was the fact that these big rear end rounds weren't really penetrating the bouncy ball, but also on the ocean the waves and sea state have an appreciable impact on small targets. I watched those guys trying to shoot as their own ship was also being affected by the sea state and felt bad for them until I remembered who I was watching and then I felt better about the end result. I was stationed on an amphib for three years and it was endlessly hilarious at how bad everyone was at hitting anything but water with the .50 cals and 240s onboard. I was the USMC liaison and we’d sometimes pair our machine gunners with sailors to improve accuracy but it was even difficult for marine gunners if the ocean wasn’t calm.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:28
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Yeah, hitting something on the water at anything above a glass calm sea state is loving brutal. Your platform is moving, their platform is moving, even if you're rock steady you're talking about feet of movement up/down/side to side every couple seconds. One of our big concerns with small suicide boat attacks was that unless we were shooting at the small boats with a computer-aided platform, we just weren't going to hit them at the rate they were moving. Also, if you hit them, what the gently caress good would it do? Short of taking out exposed crew if it is a manned vessel, you're not going to disable the vessel except by hitting the engine block somehow, and that's a small fucker in something moving very fast. orange juche fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 00:51
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A.o.D. posted:Fiber optic cable is shockingly cheap. Cheaper than comparable copper network cable. I work in the field. Unclad fiber optic cable is disposably cheap. What's expensive is the installation, termination, and testing of the stuff. Lookin for some scantily-clad fiber, aww yeah
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Mar 9, 2024 02:05
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Flyinglemur posted:I was a gunner on my first ship and the captain of one of the 25mm mounts, the largest weapon we had onboard. We inflated a big target one day for practice - a giant floating ball. The 25s fired HEIT rounds, High Explosive, Incendiary Tracers. about 180 rounds per minute if I remember correctly (this was in 92-93). It was HARD to hit them, much to the delight of the rest of the crew watching. I felt vindicated when no one could actually hit to sink it. Part of it was the fact that these big rear end rounds weren't really penetrating the bouncy ball, but also on the ocean the waves and sea state have an appreciable impact on small targets. I watched those guys trying to shoot as their own ship was also being affected by the sea state and felt bad for them until I remembered who I was watching and then I felt better about the end result. Yeah makes sense. Someone else said that bullets only make tiny holes too, and now that I think of it, every space on those things that isn’t bomb or electronics is probably full of buoyant foam. They’re probably impossible to sink unless you set the explosives off.
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Mar 9, 2024 07:26
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wonder if russian boats are gonna get cope floats
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Mar 9, 2024 08:27
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orange juche posted:Yeah, hitting something on the water at anything above a glass calm sea state is loving brutal. Your platform is moving, their platform is moving, even if you're rock steady you're talking about feet of movement up/down/side to side every couple seconds. Would it make sense to hit these drone boats with some kind of guided missile? If they're within say 5 km of the big ship, that seems like a possible range for something like a TOW. The boat is (maybe? not sure) visible with a heat detector sensor so should be targetable; a bunch of high explosive might work better than bullets. Don't know how accurate any of that is, just thinking out loud. Ukraine's drone boats seem to cost about $200-250k USD according to random googling, TOW missiles apparently are $100k each, Javelins twice that. Hmm
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Mar 9, 2024 09:46
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I imagine the boats cost less since they manufacture them personally. Or at least their MIC would upcharge less
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Mar 9, 2024 09:49
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jaete posted:Would it make sense to hit these drone boats with some kind of guided missile? If they're within say 5 km of the big ship, that seems like a possible range for something like a TOW. The boat is (maybe? not sure) visible with a heat detector sensor so should be targetable; a bunch of high explosive might work better than bullets. Don't know how accurate any of that is, just thinking out loud. I imagine detection is a problem because of their small size, and they likely don't have a lot of electronics creating a ton of heat(would the engine create enough to make it easily stand out?) or any kind of radar that makes them more obvious. And if someone's going to aim and fire that missile visually, you get back to a lot of the previous problem of "waves make hitting small things at sea real loving hard" but now your projectiles are a lot more expensive. Maybe what you need is something like ye olde flak cannon, projectiles that explode in proximity to the drone and just throw shrapnel everywhere hoping to put a hole in the explosives or one of the few sensitive components, or enough damage to the hull to actually sink it outright. Rheinmetall makes one of those(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_30) intended for use against flying drones, if you made a version that let you depress the cannon enough it might make short work of seaborne drones, too.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:33
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I assume they use modern explosives that won't detonate if hit by bullets or shrapnel. Would need to hit them with high explosive right next to the warhead. Best option is probably to hit the engine with at least .50 cal. The cameras and sensors are exposed, but destroying them may not be enough, the onboard computer could be programmed to just continue straight ahead for a minute and see if it hits anything. The computer should be too small and well armoured.
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Mar 9, 2024 11:17
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Just raise the boats so maritime drones can't reach 'em!
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Mar 9, 2024 12:36
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I would put SMART or BONUS like projectiles into dispensers akin to smoke dispensers. On a signal the round ejects on a highly parabolic arc towards the drone boat, then sends an EFP down. That way you avoid dealing with waves, and I don't care what your boat is made out of, an EFP has enough kinetic energy to gently caress it up.
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Mar 9, 2024 12:46
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you idiots are trying to solve a problem that was solved hundreds of years ago
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Mar 9, 2024 13:00
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Antigravitas posted:I would put SMART or BONUS like projectiles into dispensers akin to smoke dispensers. On a signal the round ejects on a highly parabolic arc towards the drone boat, then sends an EFP down. That way you avoid dealing with waves, and I don't care what your boat is made out of, an EFP has enough kinetic energy to gently caress it up. You want lots of Hedgehog Launchers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_(weapon) and set it up for surface targets instead of subs. 
Just Another Lurker fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 13:07
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just make your boat a hydrofoil if it's damaged it becomes a regular boat, so simple
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Mar 9, 2024 13:21
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Perhaps we could have dedicated ships to destroy these torpedo-boat hybrids. And as a matter of doctrine, to ensure sufficient concentration of them when needed, they should probably be formed into their own dedicated units rather than dispersed broadly. That's my take on torpedo-boat destroyer doctrine. E: Oh right this isn't the milhist thread.
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Mar 9, 2024 13:31
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Antigravitas posted:I would put SMART or BONUS like projectiles into dispensers akin to smoke dispensers. On a signal the round ejects on a highly parabolic arc towards the drone boat, then sends an EFP down. That way you avoid dealing with waves, and I don't care what your boat is made out of, an EFP has enough kinetic energy to gently caress it up. How much would each round cost? The boats will be moving kinda swiftly, how does that impact accuracy? Need to get the round exactly above the boat, then would the EFP have to like lead it a bit, or?
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Mar 9, 2024 14:50
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EFPs move at a few km/s. If the round gets shot to ~200m height there's no leading necessary. I'd imagine you could simplify the sensors as well, a small vessel sticks out when seen from above against the water. No idea about cost, but I will graciously accept 10% of the revenue made from my OC idea (do not steal)
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Mar 9, 2024 15:11
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What's the engagement range, though? I imagine that due to the semi submersible nature of the drones, their small size, and the fact that they mostly come out at night (mostly) they're not going to be detected until they're in something like a danger close situation. Most systems that use efp's need some distance to get a good trajectory, and they're assuming that the relative distance to target at the point of engagement is going to be a known thing. In the case of engaging one of these drones, the target could be several feet closer or further away from your weapon system just based on the vertical displacement of the waves. You also have to account for the fact that the target may or may not be partially underwater when engaged. Finally there's the fact that an efp won't be a panacea even if it hits. Sure, it'll neutralize the drone if it hits the control board or propulsion system, but putting a neat, superheated hole in some bouyant foam will be about as effective as anything else that puts a hole in foam. Really, the only sure kill is a decent amount of high explosive on target, which has been demonstrated as being a tall order. Edit: a ciws designed for the task might work pretty well, too. A.o.D. fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 15:21
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jaete posted:Would it make sense to hit these drone boats with some kind of guided missile? If they're within say 5 km of the big ship, that seems like a possible range for something like a TOW. The boat is (maybe? not sure) visible with a heat detector sensor so should be targetable; a bunch of high explosive might work better than bullets. Don't know how accurate any of that is, just thinking out loud. I think Brimstone (and it's variants) are designed for this scenario - they're small, cheap (comparably) and fast. They're dual mode (land attack and ship attack) capable - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsZG1-MnMvc I don't know if they're actually deployed on any ships at the moment, but I figure that drone boats like these could be mitigated with something like this and a suitably configured CIWS. Brimstone is actually in operation in Ukraine, used for land attack.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:02
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Alan Smithee posted:just make your boat a hydrofoil 
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Mar 9, 2024 16:53
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ded posted:you idiots are trying to solve a problem that was solved hundreds of years ago One of those pre-dreadnaught battleships that look like a wedding cake festooned with gun ports.
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Mar 9, 2024 17:32
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Alan Smithee posted:just make your boat a hydrofoil And further damage upgrades it to a submarine, truly a jack of all trades.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:04
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Russia seems to be having some luck going after the really fancy Ukrainian hardware, there's a video circulating of what is likely a Patriot battery getting destroyed in eastern Ukraine, probably the one used to shoot down all those Su-34s and A-50s lately. e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2cEiw1Z5D8 Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 18:13
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Nuclear Tourist posted:Russia seems to be having some luck going after the really fancy Ukrainian hardware, there's a video circulating of what is likely a Patriot battery getting destroyed in eastern Ukraine, probably the one used to shoot down all those Su-34s and A-50s lately. Something has changed. First HIMARS, and now a Patriot battery on the move have been hit with cruise missiles. They've gotten better at hitting mobile targets. I'm betting this is indicative of a structural change streamlining the pipeline between target identification and fires authorization. The Russians are getting more competent.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:30
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Murgos posted:One of those pre-dreadnaught battleships that look like a wedding cake festooned with gun ports. The Great Lakes Campaign in the War of 1812 was magical. edit is not post, goddamnit.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:31
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A.o.D. posted:Something has changed. First HIMARS, and now a Patriot battery on the move have been hit with cruise missiles. They've gotten better at hitting mobile targets. I'm betting this is indicative of a structural change streamlining the pipeline between target identification and fires authorization. The Russians are getting more competent. These systems are extremely small in number and unlikely to be replaced in the current political climate, correct? Everyone seems to be side stepping the issue but it looks like Russia is going to win this war. Maybe a pyrrhic victory but still one where Putin gets away with it and Ukraine is diminished or removed.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:34
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Kraftwerk posted:These systems are extremely small in number and unlikely to be replaced in the current political climate, correct? Eh.....Ukraine was never going to 'win' this war with just their manpower available, but I don't think there's a scenario where Russia fully gets the offensive back. They are just so bad at at it and have refused to learn any lessons from their losses. These equipment losses don't really mean much in the grand scale of things for Ukraine, manpower remains the bigger limiting factor to a Ukrainian victory.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:36
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CommieGIR posted:Eh.....Ukraine was never going to 'win' this war with just their manpower available, but I don't think there's a scenario where Russia fully gets the offensive back. They are just so bad at at it and have refused to learn any lessons from their losses. You could fix the manpower issue if Ukraine just had more force multipliers and supplies. But the west sprinkled that in slowly enough for the Russians to destroy it or ignore it.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:45
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Kraftwerk posted:Everyone seems to be side stepping the issue but it looks like Russia is going to win this war. lol
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Mar 9, 2024 18:54
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Kraftwerk posted:These systems are extremely small in number and unlikely to be replaced in the current political climate, correct? And, while Ukraine's backers have a serious challenge of political will, Russia has a serious problem of material inability—the rate at which they can replace and repair their dwindling hardware is poor and cannibalizing the Soviet legacy has a hard limit. The West, meanwhile, is just having trouble finding the motivation to harness its economic potential. The motivation problem is serious, but it's a problem Putin is envious of and looking to exacerbate at every turn.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:56
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They got the himars the Abrams and the patriot It’s so joever
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Mar 9, 2024 19:06
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Kraftwerk posted:These systems are extremely small in number and unlikely to be replaced in the current political climate, correct? It is probably going to end up a frozen conflict or some sort of cease fire along the current lines. Ukrainian counteroffensive failed, but I don’t see how Russians can take much more as all of their offensives for small cities cost them ten of thousands of casualties.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:23
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On the cost issue: comparing the cost of missile vs. drone isn't a useful metric. Comparing the cost of the missile vs. the cost of repairing the damage done by a detonating drone is what you want to look at. edit: And of course sometimes the "cost" isn't just in money, or lives, but time.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:24
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I'd agree that Ukraine is on the back foot, but the collapse of both armies has been predicted since the first tank crossed the border. This is just Russia learning that they have better uses of their resources than doing WWI creeping barrages and hitting targets of dubious military value when they throw a tantrum Also elections season and the weird political tornado around funding the war in Ukraine. Even if it's a single weapons system that could actually be repaired, looking at a video of millions of dollars set on fire has to move the needle for some people who aren't paying much attention otherwise
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Mar 9, 2024 19:37
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The Door Frame posted:looking at a video of millions of dollars set on fire has to move the needle for some people who aren't paying much attention otherwise it sure doesn't seem to for Russia!
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Mar 10, 2024 02:31
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Would the crew have been killed in that attack, or just the equipment? It occurs to me that even if we were willing to airlift a new Patriot system to them tonight (lmao imagine having that kind of political will), if they don’t have another crew for it, wouldn’t it be months before they can restore that part of their capability?
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Mar 10, 2024 02:31
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