
China Launches an Autonomous Mothership Full of Autonomous Drones (newatlas.com) 84
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: China christened a remarkable new 290-foot ship last week -- the world's first semi-autonomous drone carrier. It'll carry, launch, recover and co-ordinate the actions of more than 50 other autonomous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. The Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard began construction on the Zhu Hai Yun last July in Guangzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, it's the first carrier of its kind, a self-contained autonomous platform that will roll out with everything necessary to perform a fully integrated operation including drone aircraft, boats and submersibles. [...] Zhu Hai Yun will run on remote control until it's out in the open water, and then its self-driving systems will take over to execute whatever mission it's running.
It's kitted out with everything it needs to deploy its own boats, subs and aircraft, communicate with them, and run co-ordinated missions, including conducting "task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional views of specific targets," according to the shipbuilding company. The aerial drones can land back on its deck, and it stands ready to retrieve the boats and subs once they've made their rounds. While it's mainly pitched as an ocean research platform, the SCMP also reports that it has "military capability to intercept and expel invasive targets," a capability at the forefront of many autonomous marine projects. "Please note that Beijing went from laying down a new class of ship to christening in less than a year," adds the reader.
It's kitted out with everything it needs to deploy its own boats, subs and aircraft, communicate with them, and run co-ordinated missions, including conducting "task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional views of specific targets," according to the shipbuilding company. The aerial drones can land back on its deck, and it stands ready to retrieve the boats and subs once they've made their rounds. While it's mainly pitched as an ocean research platform, the SCMP also reports that it has "military capability to intercept and expel invasive targets," a capability at the forefront of many autonomous marine projects. "Please note that Beijing went from laying down a new class of ship to christening in less than a year," adds the reader.
More money for military industrial complex (Score:4, Funny)
Quick! The US DOD must ask Congress to give them a few more billions of dollars to catch up!
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The continuous failures since WWII of the serious military actions in south eastern Asia and the Middle East...
Assuming you're talking about US military actions, you are incorrect. The Korean War was a dramatic success. The first Gulf War was a dramatic success. The second Gulf War, though ultimately launched on false pretenses, was a military success and has at least led to a modicum of a functioning democracy. The campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria was also a success.
The Afghanistan and Vietnam War were both utter failures. But that is not the whole of US military action over the last 80 years.
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Just buy it from China (Score:2)
Re: Just buy it from China (Score:2)
Yeah right (Score:2)
Because during a war china will happily keep on supplying the weapons and parts to an enemy, right? Not to mention that they'd almost certainly have kill switches built in.
Were you born this dumb or did it take years of practice?
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Personally, I was suspecting sarcasm. I'm not sure, of course, but the GP didn't really sound serious.
Re: Yeah right (Score:2)
It's hard to tell anymore on here anymore more.
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While "Soviet" era weapons are used extensively by Ukrainians, most of them were upgraded (or even their upgrades were upgraded). After all, the Soviet Union broke about 30 years ago.
Also, Ukraine is not beating Russia - as the Russian occupy quite a lot (and very important) Ukrainian land, and at this moment it seems the Russians are the ones advancing (Ukraine has had quite a lot of successes, but they are very far from beating Russia).
A small EMP device - Its KAPUT (Score:2)
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This is why the MOD has a fleet of Morris Minors mothballed and ready for use in just such a scenario. It's also the reason Russia still has aircraft which use valve technology.
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Obviously I know nothing about this ship, but military hardware is typically shielded against EMPs. It's possible this ship is as well.
Re:A small EMP device - Its KAPUT. (Score:2)
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Yeah I don't see the aerial drones being shielded at all, but losing those would be less of a problem than the whole ship.
Metal Storm (Score:2)
The perfect use case for Metal Storm [youtube.com].
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The DOD is usually fighting the last war.
Considering that Russia has been recently fighting the war several wars before the last one, US DoD seems to be sufficiently advanced so far. Now China seems to be pretending to be fighting the next one, but that's what Russia did, too, so one has to wonder.
Re: The future appears. (Score:1)
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Re: The future appears. (Score:2)
The DoD produces ever more sophisticated systems to fight variations of WW I, II, and a land war with Russia. As far as I know, America lost its ability to fight asymmetrically shortly after the War of 1812.
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I think it was really towards the end of the 1860's, or perhaps during the early 1870's. And it was intentional.
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the US dollar called, it would like you to reconsider.
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And you base this on what? Korea maybe. Vietnam? We used smart weapons and then proceeded to develop them after the War. Iraq and Afghanistan were no match, the U.S. lost the cultural war though. Ukraine? Last we heard the Russians were getting their ass kicked while using their WWII military to destroy a good part of Ukraine. The U.S. Military has plenty of programs developing weapons you've never seen. The only thing that will sink them is the politicians.
This article sounds like another propaganda piece
Surely this will have a crew or support craft (Score:4, Interesting)
Ships are notoriously maintenance-heavy operations. Do they have robots that can fix everything that will inevitably go wrong?
Reads like a PR stunt to me but who knows.
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It also says that it's under remote control while it's in dense shipping lines, and automated once it gets to the open sea. Nothing there about maintenance.
OTOH, the is a PR release about a military development. I'd be surprised if it gave more than very superficial coverage about anything technical.
Re: Surely this will have a crew or support craft (Score:2)
Of course it will have a crew. Are aircraft carriers or sub tenders crewless? Even if the aircraft or subs are drones, there is no reason to think their support ship will also be a drone.
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"The Intelligent, unmanned ship is a beautiful new 'marine species' that will bring revolutionary changes for ocean observation," said Professor Dake Chen of the Chinese Academy of Science's School of Oceanography.
Though the photo (render?) on the article clearly shows people on the ship.
Of course its a PR stunt (Score:2)
Dictatorships almost always over promise and under deliver with weapony. Look at russia with its "hypersonic" missiles and cutting edge ships. Yeah, they've worked so well in ukraine. And north korea with its ballistic missiles that crash or blow up half the time.
For these sorts of countries defense posturing is just another way for the psychopath in charge to inflate his ego.
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SDI?
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Might make more sense to give it extra redundancy. They already saved a lot of space and expensive equipment by not having to keep a human crew comfortable.
I read the first line as... (Score:1)
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2002: "there are no girls on the internet"
2022: "there are no humans on the internet"
If this is real: I'm going to laugh my ass off.. (Score:3)
But of course it's China, so this is all bullshit.
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..when some hacker(s) take control of the whole thing and do something hilarious with it. But of course it's China, so this is all bullshit.
I think someone should take it over and rebrand it as a Cylon invasion. Then it sinks itself. That would be freaking hilarious.
Re:Its pretty cool though (Score:1)
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Perhaps not practical for combat. It might be great for intelligence gathering, or some other special missions.
OTOH, compare the price of one of these to the price of an aircraft carrier. You could probably afford 1000 times as many of these. They're differently capable, however, so you couldn't use them the same way. Even so...
Why autonomous ?! (Score:2)
Don't they have enough soldiers ? Or is the real point to have military power that can be fully commanded by the dictator. Even against own rebellion soldiers.
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Drone Gun (Score:2)
Applications (Score:2)
From the article:
"While it's mainly pitched as an ocean research platform, the SCMP also reports that it has 'military capability to intercept and expel invasive targets," "
Research (Score:2)
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There's no way. Near land? Sure, you can hit it with thousands of land-based missiles.
Out on the high seas? A US carrier group is invincible.
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China has a hypersonic missile that can travel 2000km. So you have to be near the first island chain. Not exactly open sea, but ok, let's work with that.
If a hypersonic missile comes towards a carrier, do you think it will be noticed? Of course. So that means it won't have to just target the carrier, it will have to get past the CIWS. Can it do that? No.
Second is the payload size. Second is the payload size. A single missile isn't going to destroy a carrier, even if it somehow manages to get through the cou
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Ah. Payload size.. see, the kinetic energy is enough to go through a ship, any ship... so yeah, a single hypersonic missile is a big problem.
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Not to mention using a large mass kinetic energy weapon dropped from orbit ("mass driver"). Nothing's going to stop that.
Plus you could launch a hypersonic missile at a carrier from a reasonably short range using a stealth sub. Possibly also an autonomously controlled "pack" of subs.
Carriers are far from invincible. Very well defended yes, but invincible ? There's no such thing - unless you include trying to fight the gravitional pull of a black hole (assuming our current model of their behaviour is cor
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"Out on the high seas? A US carrier group is invincible."
Some would beg to differ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L26RZdmQ2nE [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcTZZUu5awQ [youtube.com]
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Yeah, the Chinese "surprised" the carrier. What did you want them to do, sink the submarine?
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The Swedish sub also surprised them. In fact, it came and went at will so often the US forces tasked with defending against it got discouraged.
Still, you're probably right. We all know that in wartime, enemies never launch surprise attacks. And they would certainly never consider a suicide mission. That's never happened before, either.
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US carriers have been sunk in war games by diesel subs, and Soviet doctrine was to overwhelm the anti-air defences with massed missiles.
You have to be lucky (subs), spend a lot of money (missiles) or be crazy (nukes) to take out a carrier, but it's certainly possible.
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the real invincibility stems from the consequences of such actions.
Should be interesting (Score:3)
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Autonomous? The ship has a bridge and cabins ... (Score:3)
... so there will be people embarked. Maybe autonomous refers only to the embarked drones? And there are no autonomous ships on this scale and likely never will be. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep a ship running. Plus:
1. military capability is zero. Big target, limited drone range, hard to figure what this would threaten except maybe small fishing vessels? ... during a pandemic ... just saying
2. didn't actually see the thing in the water. Maybe this is just a mock-up? The ship was put together pretty quickly by any standard
No idea why the Chinese or anyone might put out something like this.
Only one thing to say (Score:2)
"Carrier has arrived." Just remember, you want to shoot the Carrier, not the damn drones.
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You are proposing, for instance, to land a large expeditionary force on some territory, after a long channel crossing. You propose a fleet of these things, running swarms of drones, to provide intelligence and to do swarming attacks on defenders. To protect your landings and to take out defensive positions and vehicles including tanks.
Its true the ships would be exposed to anti-ship missiles like the rest of your landing fleet as they move into range of the coast. But maybe you have plans to take out the
Now they (Score:2)
Just need to paint it yellow and make it float in the air
Do you want...? (Score:2)
And The WW3 Nuclear War Extinction Clock Ticks (Score:2)
no people on board? (Score:2)
no people on board? blow it out of the water.
Hard to see it as anti-carrier weapon (Score:2)
Hard to see it as anti-carrier weapon. A swarm of drones might be very effective impeding takeoff and landing from a carrier, but how would you get the mothership close enough unnoticed?
I am no expert, but hypersonic missiles, launched in quantity, would seem to be the decisive weapon against carriers and may do what the shoulder launched anti-tank weapons have done to tanks in the Ukraine. And the Middle East.
You can perhaps imagine it being very effective in a coastal landing invasion as long as the att
Connections to Navy Ship Attack? (Score:2)
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Came here to say exactly this. It seems putting 2 + 2 together is getting a little tough for the Slashdot crowd these days.