But of course, this is just the latest swing in the offense vs. defense arms race. We’ve been doing this for thousands of years now.
Hell, armored knights were kings of the battlefield, until we invented guns. Then guns ruled the field, up to the invention of the machine gun, which made WWI such a mess. But then we invented the tank, which changed the game back. We’ve moved back and forth on tanks vs tank-killers for over a century now, and we’re back into the tank-killers being ascendant phase.
I’m sure at some point we’ll come up with something new to swing things back. And then wash, rinse and repeat.
Concerning the future of navies in general, I feel confident in saying that a century from now the only type of vessels that we’ll still see in operation by then will be submersible.
Seems implausible. There are lots of useful things navies do that subs just can’t. And the ocean is increasingly transparent. Anti-sub drones are a thing.
In a real shooting war, yes, subs are going to tear the hell out of surface fleets. and themselves be torn all to hell by the enemy.
But how much of that will be devolved onto Coast Guards as a less-costly option? Customs blockages and the like are still needed in a non-war situation, and surface vessels will be both more functional and cheaper in that role, but then, they also don’t need state-of-the-art weapon systems. Not many super-tankers are going to put up a fight even against a small cannon. Piracy suppression might need more guns, but probably not missile defenses.
The modern Navy’s role is to project power. You can’t stage aircraft, provide significant firepower into a remote area, or provide logistics and manpower to a remote battlefield using an enhanced Cost Guard.
The problem for the future fleet isn’t what Ukraine can accomplish against the Russian Navy, it’s how well China can prevent the projection of power in a future conflict. Without significant upgrade in weapons and tactics, the US Navy is looking at 2030+ conflict scenarios where the fleet has to project power from almost 800 miles away from the battlefield, if the fight is over Taiwan, for example.
But how much of that can be done by submarines? Another aspect of al this is that the days of manned aircraft are probably also coming to an end.
Sub-launched cruise missiles and the like can already hit lots of targets far inland. Figure out how to launch a drone from a sub, and you can have something loitering over the battlefield for close air support. Manpower is harder, but then, when was the last time we had a really significant amphibious landing anywhere? You’re not going to be sending in massive troop ships if you know the sea lanes are full of subs.
How will hypersonic missiles change the situation for surface ships? It’s one thing to shoot down a drone, but how will a navy defend against a warhead coming in at 2 kilometers per second ?
I guess you either improve your lasers fast or you put up a perimeter of exploding A-bombs at a “safe” distance and keep it up as long as the threat is perceived or your A-bomb supply lasts. That may jam your communications and ruin the environment, but it would be a hell of a show.
The so called hypersonic missiles seem to be vaporware thus far. But they do seem to be getting close. Some of the Russian “hypersonic missiles” were actually shot down. But reports are those weren’t actual “hypersonic missiles”.
Eventually lasers will be able to counter them and from apparently even Patriot missiles can knock them out. The CIWS-Phalanx guns I mentioned early can also shoot them down.
They’ve been saying the same thing about tanks for what… nearly 70 years now, since ATGMs became common?
It’s the eternal round of measure/countermeasure that’s always been in naval warfare. Tactics and ship designs may change, but it’s not like we’re going to get rid of ships.
The swarms of cheap semi-expendable torpedo boats in the 1890s threatened to make battleships obsolete, but it prompted the appearance of torpedo-boat-destroyers which kept them in business for another 40 years.
And what have been the great successes of tanks in those 70 years?
And yeah, we can’t get rid of ships entirely. But we can get rid of expensive ships. If you’re going to field something that can be destroyed by a cheap munition, at least make it cheap, too.
e.g. in WW2 when towards the end the fleets were bolting a 20mm Oerlikon on every piece of deck of a major ship near the rails, that was not already used for something more important, and a 40mm mount with proximity-fused rounds where there was a large piece of deck or something you could spare removing. As I am told the kids say: “MOAR DAKKA!!!”
Right – you can’t shoot down what you don’t shoot at, As Horatius mentioned, you may need some sophisticated fast-analysis tools to deal with “swarming” or non-obvious attacks (yet at the same time avoid Vincennes-type f***-ups)
As it is, a majority of the world’s navies are for all intents and purposes expanded coast guards (as in the U.S. Coast Guard military form and role, rather than those of countries where it’s just a shipping-support and rescue outfit) aren’t they. Just a relative handful of “blue water” navies remain, and of those basically the US Navy for the past generation has stood just ridiculously off the curve (though for how long…)
I suppose the question is what do navies use to take over the various roles performed by “big expensive platforms” such as aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, and large offensive gun/missile boats?
The role of an aircraft carrier is easy to take over. You take over the role of an aircraft carrier with a land-based airstrip in the territory you’re defending.
And you replace large amphibious assault ships and large missile boats with small ones.
Specifics? It’s classified. Broad strokes? By arranging sensors and maneuvering the ships together in a way to maximize protection. Speed in particular can be very helpful for detecting and evading small surface vessels and submarines of all sizes. Even if the opposing forces can nominally match or exceed a larger ships speed, doing so will often make detection much easier, whether on the surface (larger wake and sea spray can be more easily detected) or under water (going fast underwater generates a lot of noise, which can be detected on sonar).
Looking at the video for this specific attack, the Russian ship seems to have been going very slow, or possibly not moving at all. It also appears to have been operating within sight of land (and allowing themselves to be *silhouetted against lights ashore—a danger the US and doubtless other powers recognized during WWII, resulting in enforced blackouts of coastal cities to make it harder for U-boats to pick out merchant vessels at night). These two things together suggests they didn’t contemplate, or at least did not adequately prepare to defend against, a drone attack of this sort.
Had they been alert to the possibility and taken appropriate precautions (such as maintaining a greater stand off distance from land and maintaining speed through the water, particularly at night) I see no reason why the Ukrainians should have been successful.
In this respect, it seems very similar to the attack on the Russian cruiser last year: Russian complacency opened the door for a Ukraine to succeed with an attack that should have easily been either detected/defeated or at least avoided.
That is true, but also not something that has slipped thenUS Navy’s notice. “Swarm” attacks of have been on the Navy’s radar are something to develop countermeasures against for some time.
*ETA: Actually it’s worse than that. The Russian ship seems to have actually had its own lights on. Which would be standard in peacetime, but further indicates they were not contemplating any kind of threat like this.
Well, boomers have those lovely vertical launch tubes, one could come to the surface, pop a couple open and launch vertically out of them, think of a more or less remote control harrier jump jet sort of drone, helicopters up, rotates wings and wafts off. I don’t know, just sort of thinking out loud. But I can not see why it can not be done. Heck if Mythbusters were still around they would give it a whirl just to see something blow up =)