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TheDJZ t1_ja8re9k wrote

Reply to comment by adam_demamps_wingman in Anti-war partisans in Belarus claim to have damaged Russian plane | Belarus by Caratteraccio

The warhead needed to sink something in that tonnage is pretty hefty. You’re gonna need a drone with a lot of payload and kinetic energy to do serious damage. Not to mention CIWS and other defensive countermeasures.

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theaviationhistorian t1_ja90gsx wrote

Exactly, something the size of a speedboat. It's why Ukraine launched a raid at the Sevastopol port at night when the Russian guard is down. An ongoing vessel will be constantly on guard and will need to spam the defenses to get even one hit in. And that one hit isn't guaranteed to be lethal to the ship (as seen with the Tanker War & the USS Cole) unless it's fire retention, crew training, & maintenance has been god awful as it was on the Moskva.

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guspaz t1_ja8uotx wrote

That's why you use naval drones to take out ships, not aerial drones. They're much harder to detect, much harder to hit, have very long range and loitering capabilities, and can easily carry a payload big enough to cause major damage to a warship.

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TheDJZ t1_ja8wh8w wrote

Ah that’s my mistake I thought they meant a drone swarm as in the switchblades kamikaze drones. I’m not too familiar with naval drones but from my understanding it’s a bit like a waterborne VBIED almost right?

Maybe I’m ignorant of their capabilities but I feel like CIWS should be able to engage it in addition to other weapons systems such as missiles and energy weapons. Would love to read more about these kind of drones either way.

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guspaz t1_ja95l0q wrote

CIWS wasn't able to do much with them until block 1B in 2016 added FLIR to help target small surface craft. Even then, it's a challenge, they're harder to see/detect, they're harder to hit, they can be armoured, and you'd probably swarm them.

However, I'd imagine swarms of small missile boats are probably a bigger problem. It's a very cheap way to get a lot of anti-ship missiles in the air to saturate defenses.

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thetasigma_1355 t1_jaahhws wrote

Somehow it never occurred to me that underwater drones were a possibility even as I’ve literally watched underwater robots do things.

Probably a hell of a lot easier to build and don’t have nearly the same weight challenges as it doesn’t have to, you know, fly.

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guspaz t1_jaaocoj wrote

I was referring more to small stealthy surface drones, like Ukraine's can carry a 200kg warhead and have a one-way range of 800km, but underwater drones... I mean, that's pretty much the literal definition of a torpedo, no? A modern Mark 48 torpedo has an estimated max range of 38 km at 55 kt or 50 km at 40 kt, probably even farther if you ran it slower... or if you weren't trying to fit it into a 21-inch-wide tube.

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