Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Russia Working on New 'Cephalopod' Underwater Attack Drone
via Popular Mechanics.
Russia is working on a new armed underwater drone designed to kill enemy submarines. The unmanned Cephalopod drone packs small, lightweight torpedoes capable of fatally wounding enemy submarines on the high pressure, underwater battlefield.Story here.
According to undersea warfare expert HI Sutton, Russia has been working on the Cephalopod “killer underwater drone” since 2015, when its existence was revealed alongside the Poseidon nuclear apocalypse torpedo. Cephalopod was understandably overshadowed by the 100 megaton weapon, but in its own way is a threat to Western military might.
“We've known of the Cephalopod program since 2015 but until recently we didn't know much about it,“ Sutton, the authority behind the Covert Shores submarine blog and the World Submarine Recognition Guide, told Popular Mechanics. “Slowly a picture is emerging that Cephalopod is a submarine-killing undersea drone.”
My thinking.
We're facing a two headed monster of our own making.
On one hand we have the Chinese that are building almost a mirror force to our own only bigger. They are seeking to meet us in a straight up fight using tactics and technology that we developed to destroy us.
On the other hand we have the Russians that see over two dozen nations aligned against them and deciding to build a defensive force, yet one that is capable of winning against us in an asymmetric fashion.
We (including me) got dazzled by the new armor concepts that they pushed. At some point in time the Russians decided to ditch trying to match/overmatch our capabilities and settled on being able to fight us in ways that would maximize our weakness while delivering measurable effects on the battlefield that we could not counter.
The unmanned combat vehicles, upgraded tanks and aircraft, the new nuclear missiles, electronic warfare on the battlefield and cyber warfare on a strategic, tactical and information level will be the new keys to the kingdom.
They already have formidable anti-ship missiles that have much more throw weight than anything found in the West (remember they built missiles that were designed to hit and cripple aircraft carriers much less anything smaller) so that leaves one thing.
How do they counter our sub force?
I think this gives clues on their thinking. Once again they're not coming straight at us to field newer, faster, deeper diving subs. Instead they're focusing on drones that they can send out and hunt our vaunted force. If they can go deep enough (and they should), fast enough (they should) and are quiet enough (should be) then our sub drivers might be facing a huge threat.
This is one realm where I never considered drones to be useful but considering the life support requirements of a manned crew, it becomes obvious.
This could be the future of undersea warfare. Not scouts but attackers.
USN History photo essay on the USS Enterprise (CVN-65)
Tom Clancy was an awesome military fiction writer (sorry to see the genre fad from the scenes) that was so good at his craft you never knew what was real and what he pulled out of his behind to make a good story.
I think I recall a story where an aircraft carrier was moving so fast that the Russian Akula Class could barely keep up and they had to stack subs in its path to try and get firing solutions on it.
Real? I have no idea. To this very day the actual speed of a nuclear aircraft carrier is classified. I would bet they can do north of 40 knots though. Sound obscene? On builders trials I think an LHD got close to 30 (or that's the rumor) so I don't think its out of the realm of possibilities.
845 Naval Air Squadron practise low level navigation & confined area landings on Salisbury Plain
I've heard so many Royal Marines talking about Salisbury Plain being pure suckage but it looks like some nice terrain. Wonder what gives and why they bitch about it?
Scorpion and the Frog fable! Manchester bomber Salman Abedi and his brother were rescued by the Royal Navy from Libya chaos
I just saw this headline and didn't dig into the actual story but my instant reaction was the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog...via Wikipedia...
A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so.Almost every culture has a variation on this story.
Unknown to most today, fables of old were often dark, ended horrifically and were designed to warn children of the dangers of the world...in short they warned that acts of kindness could often lead to the death of not only yourself but your loved ones.
The Royal Navy performed an act of kindness and because of it the British people suffered.
If this doesn't mirror the fable then nothing does.
Blast from the past. New Wars Blog...another visionary that doesn't get enough credit...
Another guy named Mike that ran the NEW WARS blog.
He stopped blogging in 2010 and the military blogging community has been diminished because of it. Don't know what he's up to but the guy was solid, well researched, could back up his assertions with facts and was just about the closest thing to a military Nostradamus that I can find.
Check it out...
https://newwars.wordpress.com/
http://newwars.blogspot.com/
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