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Comment by dkga | Hacker News Reader

One aspect of drone wars that I have been observing also is the importance of naval drones. For example, Ukraine successfully used it to scare away the bulk of the Black Sea Fleet; now drug lords in Colombia are already using them to send drugs to Europe.[0]

A plausible next step would be, if not already done, to have a fleet of small but powerful naval drones that act as sea buoys to sweep the sea for submarines - this would have the potential to complete change submarine deployment strategy.

Especially for countries with massive borders, including maritime borders, a fleet of aerial and naval drones will seem indispensable if nothing else for deterrence.

[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drone-narco-sub-seized-first-ti...

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If they’re that deep then they need to be autonomous because I don’t think there’s any way to reliably get a signal sub marine.

Long distance communication with submarines is difficult but not impossible, there are four extra low frequency transmitters in the world to send signals in nuclear doomsday scenarios.

For shorter distances, there are acoustic and optical devices, and near surface some low frequency radios can be used.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarine...

“Communication” does not mean “can be used for command of a remote device”. The bandwidth is so low as to make it impractical (bytes per second or minute (in the case of ELF)), in addition to being one-way comm. You’re not remotely driving a boat with that.

You'd be amazed to learn what we do with spaceships then!

I’d be amazed if the use case were exactly the same, such that low bandwidth communication were equally useful in both cases, yes. Beside the fact that Voyager 1's 160 bits/s would be luxury for an underwater craft using VLF or ELF.

And it apparently bears repeating: communication with a submarine using VLF/ELF is one-way. Such is not the case with a spacecraft, even if the latency sucks.

Lots of folks forget the challenges of attenuation in a given medium... e.x. light doesnt go `c` in fiber....

> For shorter distances, there are acoustic and optical devices, and near surface some low frequency radios can be used.

So, not in any way an answer to the problem of controlling deep drone submarines?

I can't wait to see when the narcosubs are driven via long fiberoptic cables with an occasional surfacing for GPS lock. The sea floor between caches is just going to be littered.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueWhale_(UUV)

A network of underwater sensors are already a thing.

Otherwise sure, drones will be everywhere soon. And since radio can and will be jammed, they already can autonomous find and kill their targets. Or whatever the AI classifies as enemy. Autonomous killer drones in our life time, yeah.

Wide-band spread spectrum communications (CDMA) can't really be jammed.

Since the basis of this is in every smart-phone, its odd it isn't used in military UAVs.

Of course they can be jammed, it's just harder and needs more power.

In the military cat and mouse game I don't think it will be an issue. Maybe that is why fibre was adopted instead.

It absolutely can be jammed, the same way other frequency hopping radios and systems can and do get jammed.

Civilian telecoms are absolutely used in military UAVs. Ukraine and Russia both use their opponents SIM cards in long range strike drones. And I’m pretty sure that attack vector would work well anywhere, including the US.

Ukraine has tried multiple times to blow up the Kerch bridge with underwater drones and have now largely given up.

Underwater drones are not anywhere near as relevant in this war as airborne drones.

It's not just about the bridge, and the drones aren't necessarily underwater. Some are basically jet skis. Ukraine has used them to blow up several large Russian ships, and denied Russian access to much of the Black Sea.

Id take Ukrainian claims of disabling the black sea fleet with a large grain of salt, especially since theyre also claiming to be routinely shooting down black sea fleet fired kalibr missiles.

US DoD confirmed that Ukraine struck the Moskva and sank it. It was the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva

"Russia's Ministry of Defence said the large landing ship Novocherkassk was struck by Ukrainian aircraft carrying guided missiles....After a missile strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol last September, satellite images showed that the Russian navy had moved much of its Black Sea fleet away from Crimea to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk," which is southeast of Crimea.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67821515

At the end of 2023, UK's defense minister said Russia had lost 20% of its Black Sea fleet in the prior four months.

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-lost-fifth-black-sea-...

None of this implies that Russia's fleet has been entirely disabled. They are still firing missiles. But Ukraine has done them serious damage. (Some of that was by more conventional weapons though.)

>US DoD confirmed that Ukraine struck the Moskva and sank it

This is kind of like saying that the Japanese dominated the Pacific in WW2 because they sunk the Lexington.

>At the end of 2023, UK's defense minister said Russia had lost 20% of its Black Sea fleet in the prior four months.

The UK have been coming up with ever more creative ways to declare that Russia is losing this war, each straining more credulity than the last.

They were the source of the rather famous "Ukraine faces off against poorly trained demoralized soldiers armed just with shovels" intelligence briefing from 2022.

In the case of the black sea fleet they made a huge a deal out of the destruction of fleet HQ while neglecting to mention that it was a poorly defended historic site rather than an operational hq and nerve center.

Which is to say, if they announce 20% you can probably safely assume the internal estimate is 10% with an upper bound of 20%.

>None of this implies that Russia's fleet has been entirely disabled.

Nothing of what I said implied that Ukraine didnt sink any ships in this war or that Russia hasnt sustained black eyes.

The idea that Ukraine has done such serious damage that it "denied" the black sea fleet the ability to operate is errs more on the side of shovel-flavored cope rather than trenchant analysis, however.

Even 10% in four months is pretty stout. But I suspect the UK has fairly precise bounds on their "estimates" of the size of the Russian fleet, and their losses.

In any case, maybe you could post sources?

From a quick google, Russia lost at least several other large ships, include troop ships and missile launchers. I don't know whether Ukraine destroyed them as they claimed, but if not, then Russia has rather serious maintenance issues.

From afar, all this might seem like minor issue, but over the past few decades the US has gone through several wars without losing any ships to enemy action, and I think the national freak-out if that changed would be pretty dramatic.

> The idea that Ukraine has done such serious damage that it "denied" the black sea fleet the ability to operate is errs more on the side of shovel-flavored cope rather than trenchant analysis, however.

You are ignoring the fact, that Russian Black Sea Fleet is not based in Sevastopol anymore, but in Novorossiysk, which is on eastern part of Black Sea. They have essentially vacated half of the Black Sea.

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-withdraws-black-sea-fleet-v...

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