| >Who needs brave pilots in fighter seats when you can get the same results with slightly less brave drone operators? Primarily because we can't get the same results with slightly less brave drone operators. High-performance UAS are significantly more expensive and still far less capable than their manned counterparts in contested airspace; their primary advantage is in loiter time because they don't require a pilot and can be optimized for efficient flight in low-airspeed regimes (at the cost of their medium and high airspeed performance). "Like a manned aircraft, but with more latency (or autonomous controls and planning techniques we don't yet know how to implement well against an opponent actively attempting to make your life difficult), a bigger price tag, and a kill chain enormously vulnerable to electronic warfare" is not a good selling point. Your arsenal ship idea isn't a bad one (except for the bit where it renders all civilian shipping a valid target in times of war and is also a war crime, though without knowing that I can see why it would be appealing :), but those ships already exist. Those shipping containers are called VLS cells, and the autonomous expendable relatively inexpensive point-and-click drones that accept sensor and targeting input from external platforms are the missiles that go in them. E-2D and F-35 CEC already exists and has been demonstrated with midflight SM-6 guidance handover to strike OTH targets; man-out-of-the-loop sensor fusion has been a part of the USN's ABM program for a while now, and they've been launching SM-3s with cueing from external platforms for years and years. The USN quad-packs ESSMs, too, though ESSM is purpose-built point defense against super and hypersonic maneuvering targets, not an AAW tool. >Drone operators can control entire formations of combat drones (no need to actually fly these things — point and click interface should be enough with modern tech). Autonomous refueling, sensor fusion, battlespace mapping — the only need for humans in the loop is giving "go / no go" for kill requests. This largely ties into the USN's view of the future (cf. various whitepapers), except that the USN views it as a sensor/shooter divide where the drones are extremely LO sensor platforms datalinking target information to arsenal platforms capable of engaging at extreme range with huge numbers of weapons. >numerous uniform modular cheaper vessels instead of a few big expensive carriers surrounded by combat support Small ships are awful. No, really: they're horribly inefficient, because as soon as you run up against their tiny volume, weight, or power generation limits, you need to build another copy of them with all of the same supporting crew and systems to get more capability. That means a ton of inefficient small turbines generating power for duplicated systems, significantly more crew (who are actually far and away the most expensive part of operating a ship across its lifetime), and significantly less capable individual combatants. Compare the Sachsen-class (5800t displacement) with 32 VLS cells (each cell representing one missile to use for offense and defense) to the Arleigh Burke-class (up to 9800t displacement), which has 96 VLS cells, each storing one missile for offensive purposes (SM-6 in anti-air or anti-surface mode) or four for defensive purposes (quad-packed ESSM). The three Sachsen-class ships you need to purchase to have the same offensive and defensive capabilities of the Burke (minus ABM capability, which the Sachsen lacks) cost $3.18 billion to acquire, vs. the $1.8 billion for a Burke. You're also paying, training, and feeding 729 crew members for the Sachsens, but only 329 in a Burke. Additionally, groups of smaller ships are much more vulnerable to attrition in saturation attacks unless they're sitting right on top of one another, as you can defeat any given one of them by engaging it with slightly more missiles than it's capable of taking out (i.e. 1 to 3 + 32 anti-ship weapons, assuming your Sachsen has a perfect defense), whereas to sink one Burke you need to strike it with 1 to 3 + up to a hypothetical maximum of 384 missiles, if you've quad-packed every VLS cell and have a perfect defense. Smaller ships are just not worth it. If you're willing to spend the money it takes to have a world-class navy, you're better off taking the far more efficient route by building arsenal ships with hundreds of extremely long range weapons and networking them with sensor platforms. >Every ship can (and should) be fitted with ECC and offensive electronic warfare options, which prevents attacking electronic support first This is already the case. >Try to jam 200 small ships simultaneously while they are constantly on the move in the large area — nearly impossible That's simply not really how electronic warfare works. 200 small ships facing a one-axis attack are no less vulnerable to noise jamming than one ship. If you want to force your enemy to expend a lot of emitters on various more advanced techniques, the most efficient way to do that is by simply having more of your own emitters to jam, and the most efficient way to do THAT is not to build a bunch of ships with them, but by putting them on aircraft or in large quantities on larger ships. >No designated C&C ships — all battlegroup members can take multiple roles as needed, including command and control. This is desired irl, but the training overhead is difficult (not everyone is good at C3) and it tends to rely on the assumption that your opponent is not capable of messing with your datalinks (which is not a safe assumption to make). |
Regarding datalinks — AFAIK, modern platforms streaming realtime and sensor feeds for humans in the loop, and bandwidth requirements for these are huge. If most non-combat decisions are taken autonomously, you can downstream only basic telemetry and go / no go requests. In serious jamming conditions, getting even 1 bit of information through can be beneficial ("proceed with mission plan A" / "proceed with mission plan B").