"And if communication between the unmanned boats and the sailor overseeing them were ever broken, the boat would automatically shut down."
Isn't this a major vulnerability ?
Along those lines, I was wondering what additional countermeasures were added, to ensure the boats are not more easily captured than a manned boat. And is there a "kill switch" in the event the boat is lost?
Yeah, that would go fine with first two boats, and then you'd have to explain yourself to a SEAL team that would come on the third one. Or, if they were especially lazy, you'd quickly learn about Anti-Radiation Missiles.
Yes and no. Due to the nature of radio, it'll be pretty hard to pull this off without painting a giant target on your own vessel.
Additionally, you can design the radio link system with varying degrees of jam resistance. In this case, you probably can't 100% prevent jamming from happening, but you can require your adversary to emit a signal that is more than loud enough to do radio direction finding on.
They didn't mention how powerful a signal they were using to communicate with the boat. My guess is that, in a combat situation, they won't have to adhere to FCC (or whatever the local regulator agency is) regulations.
With enough power, and anti-jamming technology, both of which I'm sure they have an excess of, it's not going to be particularly easy to disrupt comms.
I'm unconvinced. More patrol boats are clearly a good thing for protecting a high-value ship. But not having a sailor on board seems pointless. It makes the patrol boat More unreliable (if communications are lost the boat shuts down). It doesn't save manpower because sailors monitor the boat 1-on-1 to prevent tragedies. Why not just have that sailor on the boat? And the boat shown doesn't seem any cheaper - its a regular patrol boat with robotic systems installed - still has manual controls, seats, cargo space as if it were to be manned.
And what can a patrol boat do? It can't board another boat, take over its controls and redirect it. It can only choose to shoot it (with onboard remote-control gun) or not. Very much limited in mission capability.
Whereas a very-much-cheaper drone boat of 1-2 meters in size would be harder for other combatants to detect, could travel in novel ways (submersible? High-speed hydrofoil?), and could act as a torpedo if needed to disable another combatant. Kind of like quad-coptors vs full-sized helicopters.
I don't disagree with you that looking into alternative form factors would be a good idea. A great one in fact!
What's the #1 reason to not just put a sailor on the patrol boat? Loss of life.
While this is not the ideal solution to the problem, it's cheap ($2000 to retrofit existing boats? That's cheap!) It's similar enough to the existing technology that it's not going to be looked at as some new untested revolutionary thing, it's going to be looked at as an incremental upgrade to the patrol boat. It saves lives and it opens up the gates for more revolutionary designs in the future, as people get more comfortable with the idea.
The arc of development is clear. This is only a small beginning step.
Existing boats are an easy low risk low cost platform to develop on. Expect air, submersible, and larger surface units with the same capabilities within time.
Thought no sexy, the same sort of technology will be used in logistics. Some argue the truck and the liberty ship won world war II. Automated over the beach resupply without paying for air assets would be a large cost savings and allow resupply of larger and heavier inventory items like bulk fuel, food, aircraft parts and tanks.
>Automated over the beach resupply without paying for air assets would be a large cost savings and allow resupply of larger and heavier inventory items like bulk fuel, food, aircraft parts and tanks.
Awesome, now al we need is a world war and we can try out our new, efficient, automated toys!!
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Consider: I could put a jammer on my boat, and go out shutting down, harvesting Navy robot boats and selling them for scrap!
Additionally, you can design the radio link system with varying degrees of jam resistance. In this case, you probably can't 100% prevent jamming from happening, but you can require your adversary to emit a signal that is more than loud enough to do radio direction finding on.
Also... Rf seeking weapons are not a new concept: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM
With enough power, and anti-jamming technology, both of which I'm sure they have an excess of, it's not going to be particularly easy to disrupt comms.
Whereas a very-much-cheaper drone boat of 1-2 meters in size would be harder for other combatants to detect, could travel in novel ways (submersible? High-speed hydrofoil?), and could act as a torpedo if needed to disable another combatant. Kind of like quad-coptors vs full-sized helicopters.
What's the #1 reason to not just put a sailor on the patrol boat? Loss of life.
While this is not the ideal solution to the problem, it's cheap ($2000 to retrofit existing boats? That's cheap!) It's similar enough to the existing technology that it's not going to be looked at as some new untested revolutionary thing, it's going to be looked at as an incremental upgrade to the patrol boat. It saves lives and it opens up the gates for more revolutionary designs in the future, as people get more comfortable with the idea.
Seems like wins all over to me.
Existing boats are an easy low risk low cost platform to develop on. Expect air, submersible, and larger surface units with the same capabilities within time.
Thought no sexy, the same sort of technology will be used in logistics. Some argue the truck and the liberty ship won world war II. Automated over the beach resupply without paying for air assets would be a large cost savings and allow resupply of larger and heavier inventory items like bulk fuel, food, aircraft parts and tanks.
Awesome, now al we need is a world war and we can try out our new, efficient, automated toys!!
Its a great time to be alive.