Imagine a swarm of these
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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I imagine that's precisely the idea there. A sub is fairly limited in the amount of torpedoes it can carry, so a big enough swarm of drones becomes literally impossible to stop.
It's kind of odd how every hardkill system seems to have the fatal flaw of "well what if there's a bit more of the stuff you're supposed to stop"
The US designed it's fleet based around one big heavy attacking another big heavy. It's in their nature to want a big threatening bully of a ship. It also helps that big heavy threatening things are magnitudes more expensive than smaller more effective things. The whole navy is this way. Its why we have so many carriers and why they get their shit pushed in in simulation after simulation by a force that instead uses a whole bunch of smaller ships.
Well actually also it's designed around one big heavy bullying a few smaller under equipped ships and or attacking smaller nations that aren't capable of defending themselves.
If that's true then the last advantage of US Navy, their huge nuclear submarine fleet, would be in great danger.
Aren't there 11 US aircraft carriers each of which can topple a small nation? IDK if id say nuclear subs are the last advantage lol
Yes, they can topple small nations (though not really, it never actually happened), that's what they have been designed to do, to work as the XX-XXI century gunboat diplomacy, not to actually strike alone but to make terror threats of destruction.
But their usefulness is currently around zero in a peer combat against Russia or China, hypersonic missiles are hard counter for them. And note that US is even reluctant to post them nearby Iran because Iran also have some dangerous to them weapons like supercavitating torpedoes.
US Navy surface fleet is therefore pretty vulnerable to PLAN which got close to force parity in defence scenario, but nearly all PLAN ships are more modern and will have advantage in defense because being on the other side of Pacific.
So the only real and big advantage US Navy have is their submarine fleet which is much bigger than Chinese and make exclusively of nuclear submarines which in itself is advantage especially on area as huge as Pacific. No wonder China put some serious money and brainpower to this research.
US Navy surface fleet is therefore pretty vulnerable to PLAN which got close to force parity in defence scenario, but nearly all PLAN ships are more modern and will have advantage in defense because being on the other side of Pacific.
Also consider that in a fight with China over Taiwan or the West Pacific the US surface fleet will have to also deal with shore based aviation and ballistic missiles.
The old adage that a ship should never try to fight a shore battery probably holds true to this day.
Indeed, also the whole AUKUS thing that's estimated at a third of a trillion dollars at the start, and reaching the working capacity of “blocking China’s sea with submarines” by 2040, turns out to be stillborn. By 2040, these ancient huge submarines will be easily detectable, and will be destroyed by a swarm of underwater drones.
This is a similar situation to how vulnerable tanks are to FPV drones. US clearly didn't consider the impact this sort of tech will have on the future of warfare, and doesn't have any clear response at the moment. Funny part is that US is now starting to fall behind technologically, so they don't have symmetric capability to detect Chinese or Russian subs.
Indeed, also the whole AUKUS thing that's estimated at a third of a trillion dollars at the start, and reaching the working capacity of “blocking China’s sea with submarines” by 2040, turns out to be stillborn.
Only if the purpose of the fleet is to win wars. That's 16 years of purchase orders. Look at the F-35.
I don't actually know anything about AUKUS but I don't see the problem.
Oh yeah, US will fleece the shit out of Australia with this project.
The real military capabilities were the profits we made along the way.
"But it's cheap! That means it's bad! They need to give at least several billion to the CEOs of big military development companies before a sonar system can work, everybody knows that!"
I still love this Sullivan talk where he admits that the whole free market bullshit they’ve been promoting can’t actually compete with what China is doing https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/04/27/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-on-renewing-american-economic-leadership-at-the-brookings-institution/
A big part of becoming a leftist for me was when I was an adolescent car guy and figured out 8 companies simultaneously developing the same sensible 1,6L 4-Banger is a colossal fucking waste of ressources
Yeah, once you realize how much duplication happens when companies just keep reinventing the same thing over and over, it becomes hard to swallow the whole capitalism is efficient narrative.
Wow, your downvoter is really punctual today, not even 4 minutes after you posted that one.
Haha, you gotta admire the dedication.