Multiple US Navy destroyers swarmed by mysterious 'drones' off California coast
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Another article revealing that a Turkish company has developed military "suicide" drone swarms and some opinions on how poorly equipped the US DoD is for these types of low cost drone swarms. Technology that's readily available and affordable to just about anyone with deep enough pockets, not just poor state adversaries like North Korea but also drug cartels etc.
Really concerning that with all the tax dollars spent on defense research, these types of activities can take place en masse with no real strategy for countering them
And you see the same old characters saying "certainly this is a covert project from another branch/country." That argument seems quite nebulous and plausible if you watch a lot of Marvel movies, but if you know the defense industry, and consider how long that argument has been used (since the Foo fighters of WW2), it falls apart. The US gov is behind the private sector in computing software and hardware by over a decade (and has been for a while), and really anything making a lot of money these days commercially is well ahead of the defense counterpart (small drones, rockets, etc.) Look to the pay rates for engineers working on TS projects and you can see why. The talent has been going to SV since the early 90's. The other countries with significantly smaller budgets? I doubt we'll find anyone from a contender country that can speak to the efficiency of their research on HN, but projecting from the much better funded and more advanced US and the efficiency of bureaucracies in general, it seems unlikely there's anything from China or Russia that can sneak up on us so easily, let alone do maneuvers described in some other incidents going back 70+ years.
Looks like an unashemed intimidation operation, given that there is nowhere in Guam a civilian can bring a car sized quadcopter, and island's tiny population.
It pretty much screams of somebody trying to say "we can fly our foo-drones over your missile battereys, and ship any time"
Of all countries, there is only one on record with car sized, gas powered quadcopters.
https://dronemadness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Gas-Powe...
And the secon possible is the Unihawk family from Efy Tech
https://www.efy-tech.com/en/file/upload/2019/06/11/156040236...
Also not sure how they were confident enough to deduce it was a drone. Clearly it was like 1000-1500 feet above them in dark.
We just chose to call a UFO a UAV. That's what I learned from the article.
Or.
May be it was just a test. They wanted to see how people would handle a situation like that.
"intimidate a power like US" is what China, and Russia are doing with monthly regularity around the world with zero pushback.
The only time ever USA gave a direct response was this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham and even that was made more out of fear than a deliberate pushback, despite it sending kremlin into weeks long stupor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...
First and most of all, you're assuming that this is a high-tech, difficult to mount operation. While the article does mention a few details in this direction (the speed and flight time, the number of drones), they only suggest that this would be a problem for consumer-level drones, not something that would be difficult for a military or commercial drone.
You're also conflating these reports with unspecified other reports going back 70 years to try to paint a more mysterious picture. This does not follow in any way.
There isn't enough info on this incident to make a meaningful conclusion, or to rule out that it is a group of sophisticated CalTech students launching their drone swarming research project from a research vessel with no idea the consequences of what they're doing. But there's a pattern of these incidents, and some (such as the incident in the same area with the Tic-Tac described by Commandor Fravor) don't have such an easy out.
> First and most of all, you're assuming that this is a high-tech, difficult to mount operation.
I think you overestimate how far consumer drones can fly or underestimate the radar capabilities of destroyers. The fact that a launch source was not identified is significant, whether we assume it came from domestic researchers or a hostile submarine in a US military training area outside of major civilian/military centers.
I'm surprised there was no message left behind, in a bottle, saying "Thanks for all the selfies."
Isn't an accident NoVA, Southern MD, and the greater DC area are tech hubs.
Entirely a separate discussion from if the US DoD can handle drone swarms. They've spent the last 2 decades occupying two middle eastern countries and have been hemorrhaging money away in the process. That money could have gone towards civilian needs, but even if it didn't and the $$$ stayed with the military, the opportunity cost of going hard on counter-insurgency as a national strategy for 20 years is now clear.
I assume you are actually fully in the armchair, and have no idea what you're talking about.
> Why even have classified programs if they're DECADES behind?
So your enemy doesn't know what you have. Same as it has always been? In areas where the private sector cannot profit outside selling to the military (e.g. missiles/radar), then obviously the government is ahead because nobody else is really working on them. But perhaps you've watched too many sci-fi movies. We don't have a SHIELD with flying aircraft carriers.
Half of the US population wished it was in the capitol, too. /s
Fine. Let him. When he does so, he quits being anonymous. Then assassinate him and restore the previous government. Bonus style points if you assassinate him with a drone.
Does he? Nothing stopping him from staying anonymous.
Regardless, a slamfire shotgun only requires two pipes and a nail. Ammo is still an issue, but it's a start.
In 10 years it is not even going to be considered a threat. How are drones worse than mortar shells?
However it's quite possible and indeed not that hard to build a long range, autonomous RC plane. You just need to use the sensors typically found in any smartphone: GPS, camera (for ground imaging), accelerometer, magnetometer and so on, add inexpensive barometers and ultrasound or optical sensors for altitude, and mix all that up with the proper algorithms to end up with really accurate positioning. In fact you can even have accurate positioning when losing GPS.
If you're not concerned about speed, a simple and cheap powered model sailplane made of styrofoam could easily be made to fly for hours on battery. Cost: a few hundred dollars worth of parts.
They're not worse. They're about the same.
From a pro-authoriatairian POV they're worse because the powers that be aren't seriously trying to keep them out of the hands of the commoners. The powers that be aren't doing that because nobody there are serious economic arguments against doing so and the danger to them is currently hypothetical. There's perceived risk that someday drones might someday help the BadGuys(TM) force a concession or topple a government.
Frankly, I don't see the big deal. The more asymmetric weapons systems and warfare techniques proliferate the more reason people have to be on good terms with each other. It's harder to bully people who can drone you or hack your power plant.
Ukraine and Syria taught us that you still need a standing army and money to handle conflicts which involve a bunch of different armed ideological groups, foreign sponsored fighters and local terrorists/rebels. Azerbajan, Syria, most African countries and Russia are paying mercenaries to not have their names on certain conflicts and not lose nationals.
And the Armenia vs Azerbajan conflict was interesting because it is one of the first nation vs nation, army vs army war. Since both had decent Air defence systems, very few aircraft were directly used to fight or drop any bombs. Instead, they used missles, drones and suicide drones, which were more accurate then missles and cheaper than actual drones.
None of these conflicts so far really touched on the use of a Navy, because the conflicts were all local or in neighboring countries. So maybe its telling that navies are only useful with how China employs them, to enforce and scare of fishermen in their own waters or deterr other navies (like the Phillapines vs China sea debacle). And to transport troops across continents.
All us this + cyberwarfare and propoganda is this new era.
If you are at all interested in how conflicts are going to proceed in the early 21st century, reading up on this war is essential:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict
One thing that was mentioned is suicide drones. The umbrella term is 'loitering munitions', as they describe a wider range of platforms with similar intents. You can read more about them here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition
For reference: The US has the Switchblase 600, a man-portable anti-armor drone/missile with a ~50mi range and ~40min of loiter time total, with a 'dash' speed of 115mph. It's controlled via touchscreen.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/18/heres-new-mar...
This was a bit novel in that they strapped a wheeled MADIS (an anti-drone "gun" on a humvee chassis more or less) to the deck of a naval ship and used it successfully to take down a potentially hostile drone. I know that the US Marine Corps and US Army take counter-UAV operations very seriously via electro-optical (laser), microwave, and various "other" electronic means to disrupt / destroy drone operations.
The army selected eight systems to fit the bill: https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2020/06/26/army-selects-ei...
I think a comeback is unlikely though. The travel time of shells combined with the agility and size of drones would make them very hard to hit. They work really well on large targets because (like a grenade launcher), anything close is "close enough". They were a good counter tactic for the relatively slow and lumbering B17's; they're easy to lead and there are important components everywhere. Drones are tiny and fast; the important bits on a B17 are much larger.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see something akin to a flak cannon that fires EMP shells, though. Flak cannons reduce their coverage over range as a matter of expansion. EMPs do not, and are only limited by the amount of energy we can pack into a shell/rocket. Rockets are honestly probably a better choice, because they can "track" the swarm if it tries to take evasive maneuvers. Shells don't really have that option.
Worst case scenario, nukes can be used as an EMP. We did make nuclear artillery shells for a time, though I'm not aware of an anti-aircraft EMP variant.
I'm getting UFO crank vibes from both authors social media. Also no mention of request for comment from any official in the reporting. Just building a narrative from a selective release of FIOA requests.
My money is on <other unit/branch/ally> was doing it and failed to notify or something.
Somebody probably got an ass chewing/punishment and that was the end of it as far as the navy was concerned.
If the drones are quad copters then they would need to be released released pretty close to the target (under 10 miles say). If they are winged drones then they are most likely military in origin.
The story of the drones over Colorado seems to have sunk beneath the seas. However there were so many drones and so many sightings who ever was behind that would certainly have anticipated that the drones would be detected by civilians.
The fact that none of these drones have been captured (just shoot at the lights) leads me to belief these are all military in origin war gaming drone warfare 2.0.
Also just an aside, I was on that cruise ship that was in the vicinity a month before this. I went out onto the deck (the bow) late at night. We were way out offshore near the military operating area. It was pitch black out there and creepy as fuck.
Maybe that was meant as intimidation?
It's a small object emitting a bright light. Trying to take a picture or identify the craft becomes impossible.
The US Navy is a professional organization, not some scared cops who shoot first and ask questions later.
Edit: I'm done here, but please stop all the military fantasy where everything is a threat and needs to be shot. This was like 50 miles from the coast of the USA, not Iran or NK.
Can you please point me to the thread where you justify this (otherwise unbearably arrogant) response with your credentials?
(Seriously, how did this comment not get yanked as an obvious ad hom troll?)
Don't know if that last part has always been true.
Not defending this event, those sailors should have been court martialed, but your snarky comment didn't add anything.
(Also, this is the US military messing with itself. Someone in some skunk works hanger in Nevada has some secret weapon and they want to test it out on a real navy.)
Yes.
> Is this the same thing?
Unfortunately the article doesn't have any details like what shape they had or how big they were so at this point it's anyone's guess.
This would seem to be a pretty likely explanation (near-infinitely more likely than ETs, at least). It'd also perfectly explain David Fravor's story of spotting strange vehicles during a Navy training exercise (e.g. how the craft seemed to have advance knowledge of a Navy meeting spot, and the reaction from his superiors).
He thinks it couldn't be US military, but if it's some covert/intelligence thing, doesn't seem too implausible that they may try to do a realistic, unannounced red team exercise during a routine training exercise. That wouldn't explain his claims of it performing gravity-defying maneuvers, but there's no evidence of that besides his and some of his colleagues' testimonies, though.
> This calls into question the “drone” designation. Was there ever even a hard description of these craft beyond lights in the sky?
Second time sounds like they weren't prepared to respond quick enough.
No one is going be the CO the opens fire on a non combatant drone on the USA coast, as you'd lose your command pretty fast.
Edit: I can't post faster, so here's a response to a reply:
I didn't peruse the logs myself, so I don't know the situation, but the rules of engagement are pretty strict, and also they may not have even had ordnance onboard for the weapons needed to take out one of these things. Not every ship carries live rounds all the time, and near the USA coast we pretty much never wanted to have loaded guns.
Like I said elsewhere, the US Navy isn't a bunch of untrained psychos looking to shoot stuff. Officers and enlisted are trained to put our lives on the line, not get scared and shoot everything that looks weird or threatening.
I don't get the bloodlust shown in here!
What you are referring to is choosing to blow something up based on a systematic approach that follows the laws of armed conflict, with frequent legal oversight, separate after action review, in a system that strongly punishes failure to follow process. This system is fully endorsed by the US Congress, representing the citizenry.
So if some civilians get blown up, 9/10 it was a deliberate decision.
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable_car_disaster_(1...
repeated incidents where US killed citizens of other countries with impunity and no repercussions for the perps
There aren't any details in the article on the size of the drones or their distance but I think a destroyer would have a wide range of weapons available from which to choose the appropriate level of response.
Doing nothing and hoping it goes away doesn't seem like the wisest response to this type of incident.
The other comments speak to various factors why it was more complicated, and just affirming that decision wouldn't have enabled action, TL;DR: you don't start throwing $500K missiles at lights 1,000 feet above deck when you're right off the coast of the US, and also we don't have nearly all the info here, just a subset of a subset of docs that got through via FOIA two years ago, you can safely assume that would have been considered at the time
It reminds me of 9/11. Everyone knew that crashing commercial aircraft could cause a great deal of destruction but somehow we could never prepare for such a scenario until it actually happened.
Are we prepared for that today?
> The crash was caused deliberately by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared "unfit to work" by his doctor. Lubitz kept this information from his employer and instead reported for duty. Shortly after reaching cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, he locked the cockpit door and initiated a controlled descent that continued until the aircraft impacted a mountainside.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
It's gonna suck to see the end of outdoor music shows in our life time. :-/
The saving grace here is that people who want to terrorise often aren't the same with these skills IMO. If you have the skill/knowledge to make a drone swarm you probably have other valuable skills, have a good job and live comfortably. Lower chances of radicalisation.
This is how untrained people think. This particular group (the people who frequent this site) would probably want to know, quite strongly, what the craft are trying to do, and who was piloting them.
It was probably russia fucking with us from a submarine nearby.
https://www.scribd.com/document/426438895/Etude-du-Centre-de...
It's intellectual curiosity. Nobody would be harmed by blasting one and figuring out what it is and who it belongs to.
That negates the possibility of misidentifying a plane as a drone, or hitting anything unintended, or of any risk of taking down a plane at all.
There's a wide gulf of responses between that and firing off an anti-aircraft missile in a "using a bazooka as a flyswatter" kind of application.
I have seen a consumer DJI drone forced into return to home mode with an old satellite TV dish and bits out of a microwave oven. They don’t cope well with 900-ish watts of semi directed 2.4GHz noise. That guy says he eventually got that to work at over 1km range. It never “fried the electronics” though, even at short ranges.
(Yes, I have some strange friends and acquaintances...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Rogers_III
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#Post-tour_...
Do those things have the capability to attack such tiny targets that are already close in? We're talking about something the size and speed of a bird. By the time you realize it's not a bird it's probably already on top of you. Moreover, they're small enough that they wouldn't represent a substantial threat to a ship in and of themselves (as compared to, say, an explosive-laden dinghy), and so perhaps not necessarily the kind of target that would've been specified for these weapons systems. I would imagine defenses for such small UAVs would be more in the vein of electronic countermeasures.
1) Why would a Carnival cruise ship feel the need to disclaim involvement for anything except a small, COTS drone? (IOW, presumably they at least believed they could have been such small drones.)
2) 4+ were spotted together. Wouldn't those be audible, especially if much larger than COTS drones?
3) The lights ("white light", "red flashing light") suggests COTS drones, especially because the cruise ship also noticed them. If they were special purpose military or intelligence drones, why keep the lights on?
Granted, the supposed distances involved suggest otherwise, but the article never establishes why they believed the drones were necessarily flown such distances. Rather, it seems those distances are based on the presumption that the drones were flown from one of the ships with active AIS. But that's a rather dubious assumption in the context of someone buzzing military ships w/ multiple drones.
Also, the Navy's recent history of situational awareness isn't the greatest. See, e.g., https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crash...
A shaped charge hitting the EOSS, the radar dome, or parts of the Aegis system’s sensor array could potentially cripple the ship’s ability to defend itself.
That being said, I’d imagine being on the receiving end of 500 1 lbs explosives is still a very bad day.
Yes
> We're talking about something the size and speed of a bird
Birds have nothing on stealthy, supersonic anti-ship missiles.
> By the time you realize it's not a bird it's probably already on top of you
In a war scenario all wildlife gets shot first. Modern systems developed in the past ten years also commonly have the capability to discern bird wings from propellers for this scenario. Hurray cheaper compute, everybody can run a SVM classifier in real-time now. Without spending too much money on your radar (40k USD? parts only) you can classify birds at about 0.5-1km away, who knows the exact capability of people with money to spend on the problem.
> I would imagine defenses for such small UAVs would be more in the vein of electronic countermeasures.
?Porque no los dos?
Citation: personal experience with those sensor systems.
Tracking millions of entities in your general space in real-time is definitely possible today. I have little reason to believe the US Navy cannot do it too.
i don't think the officers in charge of protecting the ship generally factor the material costs of doing so in to their decisions. they've got standing orders from above, and somewhere far up the chain, somebody traded off costs, lives, reputation, etc, etc. dude at the bottom has a set of rules.
Not sure about mid ranking officers, but captains who are in charge of ships think about such things.
Often times military cost per unit factors in a fixed R&D cost. It doesn't necessarily mean it literally cost 1 million in parts and labor to assemble the single missile.
Additionally, each of those Destroyers have 7 (if I recall correctly) .50 caliber machine gun mounts around the perimeter of the ship, which could also probably handle the drones.
I’d like to understand the rules of engagement- it seems a bit odd we’d just stand around watching them.
My honest guess is it was staged, to “help” congress approve the new drone defense budget (which is probably not a terrible idea).
Next!
And then the only other thing to risk might be to relay “anything in this sector is with our boys, wink wink” to one person in command locally, who will know not to engage, and who will never ask any questions.
Matter of fact, they could get away with just reading and maybe temporarily “influencing” the rules of engagement for drones, and then allowing them to be amended “in light of the incident”.
Or it could have been highly compartmentalized within the Navy[0]. Or it could have been foreigners or pranksters! I have some “grip” on all of those possibilities, and I don’t claim to know what happened.
Anyway, the possibility it was staged is not as ridiculous as you assume, even before considering precedent.
The types of military organizations that would be involved in something like this don't have to worry about prosecution. The CIA, for example, runs a global network of torture prisons, and hacked congressional computers to destroy evidence when investigated about it, got caught, lied about it, and nothing happened. (The torture prisons are still operating.)
A single person could do it... if they had the time and money.
It’s easy — for the typical HN poster — to make a drone. But, it’s tedious and expensive to make several dozen of them.
A raspberry PI with a GPS module, a few bulky brushless motors, and a hefty LiPo pack and you could probably make something with an autonomous range of 100 miles. The only limiting factor is money, time, and a wife who won’t mind you wasting money and time.
What if it was a legit training exercise and the side effect is some drone scare that also helps get a budget approved.
https://wimflyc.blogspot.com/2021/03/foo-fighters.html seems like a similar phenomenon; maybe there weren't any drones in the first place.
This was obviously an exercise between friendlies.
This was happening at sea, and apparently at night. The parts probably would have been blown into the ocean and sank or floated away before anyone could find them.
EDIT: probably better to add "...in 2019" based on the correction below
Not sure how I missed that... guess it's time to go to bed.
I do think the headline has an urgent undertone that makes it seem like this just happened. Not sure if intentional or not
While the article does make this clear first thing, it may be worth having the title reflect this is a past event.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/indago-vtol-ua...
Maybe save you a click if you were looking for any kind of resolution.
- "Hacker in his garage" A highly qualified amateur who built/modded drones to play a prank or showcase his products to potential customers.
- The drones were launched from the coast by a secret Russian/Chinese military cell to test new technology and spook the US military.
I think that’s well within the bounds of possibility. I know at least 8 or 10 people who could pull this off if they tried, I’d give myself maybe a 70% chance of doing so on my own given a low-mid 5 figure budget. I’d suspect there are many many people on diydrones or rcgroups forums who could do it.
Ardupilot, gps waypoint navigation remotely reset using satphone data/telemetry channels, initially guided using public ais coords of the ships.
I’d probably go with a consumer grade fixed wing rc glider to get the range/duration required (that wouldn’t hover over the helipad, but would be much easier to get 90+ mins duration and 100+ mile range that a multi rotor). If I could get a non ais equipped boat near by I’d consider LoRa radios instead of a sat phone (which might end up leaving payment/identity/location data behind) but would have trouble getting much past 100km line of sight range. Also very low bandwidth at long range, so even sending back still images to use for setting new gps waypoints would be a challenge over LoRa.
(For the record, I’m on the other side of the planet, and was at the time of these sightings too...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Nicolas_Island
Where else are they going to test, Patuxant?
Thinking of how one might deploy a test drone against an adversary in a way that is undetectable seems remarkably easy these days - they could have a container fall off a cargo ship and deploy a vehicle sized drone from that after floating in a shipping lane for a week or two at a safe depth.
I'm surprised the Marines on board weren't authorized to shoot them out of the sky. Perhaps it's time to develop some high power EM weapons to take them out, big magnetrons are cheap, and there is a lot of electrical power available onboard.
I'm willing to help develop countermeasures.
There's a youtuber that has a multi-hour autonomous drone, but it's solar powered and this was at night.
https://dronelife.com/2021/03/18/skyfront-gas-electric-hybri...
That could almost had done what’s reported from land, and easily from a small boat 50 miles away from the ships (which is well over the horizon).
Here it were international waters and no any weapons trained toward the ships - and even trained weapons isn't enough actually to start shooting.
During the cold war drones were huge, noisy, expensive, and had relatively short endurance. They weren't used in waves like drones can be now.
Zone denial seems like a reasonable response to today's threat environment.
But it's a fair point that shooting down an unmanned drone is a lot less aggressive than shooting down a manned one.
Of course, not starting a war with aliens that don't shoot seems wise.
They were 1000 feet in the air. Maybe read the article first.
https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message-editor%2F16165352...
It seems surprising that they took no action other than observing. The US Navy seems to get upset when other boats come near them, yet were tolerant of a UAV over their helipad?
Perhaps USN ships need better sensors that extend to scientific observation purposes?
Just thought about something, you know always when foreign airplane, ship or any other vehicle invades foreign territory anywhere in the world, immediately it is in headlines. Full footage, there is even a satellite recording, everything is wide open and fully transparent. But in case of these events there is nothing or enough to be misleading. So, why to hide it from public? Maybe because it is US tech. Reason which says it would cause panic, does not add up because after pandemic, global warming and amounts of lies and fear mongering people are indifferent toward everything.
I've seen the original video but the audio is clearly some sort of rental property ad
Also the laser is far more scalable than rockets but still easily overwhelmed and susceptible to the same attack because it cannot distinguish between decoy drones and payload drones
Yes, the Navy operates two of the channel islands which are both relatively large. They each have a sizeable runway, plenty of radar, etc. A lot of training activities seem to occur in that area too.
First, begin with light incursions. Test the response. What does the United States do about a little annoyance? Nothing?
Next, wait a bit then increase the stimulus. What if we have multiple drones doing tricks. No response? Do they have guns to shoot these down?
Next, we add different types of drones. Some large enough to carry bombs. Others with scanners.
Next, they come in flocks of 40-50. Too many to shoot down.
Let’s be honest: China has drone superiority to America, probably by a lot. We have no idea.
We have been running incursions near Taiwan for years. This would be a natural response.
It can also be denied. That is the key point. If it were giant red drones with CCP emblems the United States press and public would get pissed off and a larger response would follow.
Little innocuous drones? Enough to get on your nerves, can be denied, threatening and menacing yet nothing to react to.
Classic Sun Tzu.
With this much drone engineering talent in China, you have to wonder what they are keeping under wraps, developing for the military and intelligence instead...
Edit: as a reply, since I can't post faster:
CIWS, in certain modes, do indeed track a target and fire at it, which could be considered a "random direction" when considering the maneuverability of the target.