Category Archives: Drones-UAV-UAS

5-inchers got a Lot more use than you’d expect in the Red Sea (and an LCS got in on it)

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As detailed by the head of Naval Surface Forces, VADM Brendan McLane, during the annual Surface Navy Association conference this week, warships expended some 400 pieces of ordnance in defense against incoming threats from Iranian/Houthi rebels over the past 15 months.

  • 120 SM-2 missiles.
  • 80 SM-6 missiles.
  • 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles.
  • 160 rounds from destroyers and cruisers’ five-inch main guns.

The last one is great news, as the anti-air capability of the MK 45 5″/54 and 5″/62— especially when using proximity (VTF and IR) rounds– has been often overlooked. I mean they have a published effective AA range of 23,000 feet and can fire 20 rounds in the first minute of going hot.

Datasheets inbound: 

LCS Combat!

One interesting tidbit not included in the above table is that an LCS has been bloodied in battle as well, with the USS Indianapolis (LCS 17) recently earning a Combat Action Ribbon and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, the first for her type, “after shooting down Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea.”

Indy, a Freedom-variant littoral combat ship, just completed an 18-month deployment, which included two exchanges of command between LCS Crew 112 and LCS Crew 118.

While traveling as a Surface Action Group with the destroyers USS Spruance and USS Stockdale through the Red Sea, the ships “successfully detected and defeated a combined 23 Ballistic and Anti-Ship Cruise missiles and one-way attack drones fired from Houthi Rebels in Yemen” across three days from 23-25 September.

Now, unclear is if Indy got in shots on said incoming vampires, and if so was it from her 57mm gun, her Sea-Ram, or her embarked MH-60 from HSC 28. It was also recently detailed that a Seahawk downed a Houthi drone via its 7.62mm door gun last month, so that’s a possibility.

“What this team of amazing Americans achieved over the course of this deployment will pay dividends in the maintenance planning and tactics development arenas for years to come,” said Cmdr. Matthew Arndt, USS Indianapolis’ Commanding Officer. “As the workhorse of the Arabian Gulf, Indy executed the lower tier missions necessary to maintaining good diplomatic relations in the Middle East which allowed Standard Missile shooters to reposition to deal with bad actors in the Red Sea. I think it’s pretty special that we were able to provide the 5th Fleet commander with more tools and options to aid in the free flow of commerce through a contested waterway.”

More on Carney’s Red Sea Getaway

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The guided-missile destroyer USS Carney launches land-attack missiles while operating in the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command area of responsibility, Feb. 3, 2024. The Carney was deployed as part of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to support maritime security and stability in the Middle East. U.S. Navy Photo 240203-N-GF955-1012

The early Flight I Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Carney (DDG 64) is not a young warship. Commissioned in 1996, the Navy has frequently deep-sixed younger greyhounds over the years.

Her epic 235-day October 2023-May 2024 deployment to the Red Sea to keep the area open in the face of Houthi attacks earned her a Navy Unit Commendation (her third) and she took part in a staggering 51 engagements against a high-low mix of everything from cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles to swarms of much simpler prop-driven one-way attack drones.

She also made the first publicly acknowledged SM-6 combat intercept, downed air-to-air targets with her 5-inch gun (!), and launched retaliatory TLAM strikes against targets ashore.

Her entire crew earned the Navy’s Combat Action Ribbon while her skipper picked up a Bronze Star and other key members of the crew received Meritorious Service Medals, Navy Commendation Medals, and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals– well deserved as the ship had the highest anti-air op-tempo that the U.S. Navy has seen since 1945.

An excellent 10-minute Navy film, USS Carney: A Destroyer at War, dives deeper with crew interviews:

UAVs and USVs you may not know the U.S. operates

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Uncrewed systems employed by assorted American maritime agencies almost never get any love, from Big Navy on down.

Almost.

It should be of interest these two recent videos from NOAA and the USCG on, respectively, the 25-foot-long DriX uncrewed surface vehicle, and the latter’s Operation Demonstration Coquí which has been working with 26 RDC, a RIB-based USV (including the use of a hand-launched RQ-20B Puma UAV), as well as a neat little VTOL UAV, the FVR-90.

 

The Coast Guard’s Short Range Unmanned Aerial System (SR-UAS) program, founded in 2023, has qualified nearly 500 Coast Guard pilots from various backgrounds and rates who have supported over 75 units. The USCG fields two small in-house drones– the Skydio X2D and the Parrot Anafi– while contractors have been shipping out with Insitu ScanEagles on blue water cutter deployments.

Coast Guard Cutter James, returning from an East Pac deployment, seen at Port Everglades, Florida, Oct 26, 2023, including four Scan Eagle UAV contractors and one of their drones. 231026-G-FH885-1002

Pumas have been seen as well.

Coast Guard Cutter Oliver Henry (WPC 1140) in the Philippine Sea, lobbing a RQ-20B Puma UAS drone from the deck of the 158-foot Sentinel class color while on CTF75 taskings

Kevin Vollbrecht, an engineering development technician with Aerovironment Inc., launches a PUMA AE unmanned aircraft system from the flight deck of Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star during Operation Deep Freeze 2016 in the Southern Ocean Jan. 3, 2016. The UAS will play a role in selecting the optimal route through pack ice as the cutter transits to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Grant DeVuyst)

As for NOAA, they also have Saildrones– which capture amazing footage inside hurricanes, and swimming Ocean Gliders, which don’t get enough attention. 

Secret Space Plane & Aerobraking

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The tiny USAF/USSF unmanned space shuttle that has quietly been breaking records across seven lengthy deployments (up to 900 days on orbit per trip) since 2010, is set to perform some very next-level maneuvers.

Powered by Gallium Arsenide Solar Cells with lithium-ion batteries, the X-37 is just over nine feet tall and 29 feet long with a wingspan of just under 15 feet. For reference, the Space Shuttle Orbiter was 122 feet long and had a wingspan of 78 feet, making it several times larger.

The pint-sized X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, as detailed by the USSF, “will begin executing a series of novel maneuvers, called aerobraking, to change its orbit around Earth and safely dispose of its service module components in accordance with recognized standards for space debris mitigation.”

Artist rendering of the X-37B conducting an aerobraking maneuver using the drag of Earth’s atmosphere. (Courtesy graphic by Boeing Space). 241010-F-FA999-0011

This is the first time the U.S. Space Force and the X-37B have attempted to carry out this dynamic aerobraking maneuver leveraging six successful missions of operating the space plane safely, as well as decades of general lessons learned from the scientific community conducting Moon and Mars missions.

Boeing, eager to point out they can get some stuff right when it comes to off-planet ops, has released an interesting reel including depictions of releasing payloads and some of the X-37’s declassified records.

First of the Dash Cans

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Official caption, 65 years ago this month: “U.S. Navy s First Helicopter Destroyer Conducts Exercises. USS Hazelwood is the Navy’s first anti-submarine helicopter destroyer, steams off the Atlantic coast near Newport, Rhode Island.”

Photograph released on 1 September 1959. 428-GX-USN 710543

Attached to Destroyer Development Group Two, Hazelwood is undergoing extensive training exercises to acquaint her crew with air operations. Her flight deck is designed to accommodate the DSN-1 Drone Helicopter (OH-50) scheduled for delivery from Gyrodnye Company of America, Inc. Soon, an HTK Drone Helicopter with a safety pilot, developed by the Kaman Aircraft Company, is being used for training exercises until the DSN-1 Drone becomes available. Through the use of a drone helicopter and homing torpedo, Hazelwood will possess an anti-submarine warfare kill potential at a much greater range than conventional destroyers.

A hard-charging Fletcher-class tin can, USS Hazelwood (DD-531) was built at Bethlehem’s San Francisco yard and joined the Pacific fleet in WWII.

Hazelwood in WWII, wearing Measure 32, Design 6d.

As part of her wartime service that saw her earn 10 battle stars, she caught a kamikaze off Okinawa in April 1945.

USS Hazelwood (DD-531) after being hit by a kamikaze off Okinawa, 29 April 1945. 80-G-187592

Hazelwood, all guns blazing, maneuvered to avoid two of the Zeros. A third screamed out of the clouds from astern. Although hit by Hazelwood’s fire, the enemy plane careened past the superstructure. It hit #2 stack on the port side, smashed into the bridge, and exploded. Flaming gasoline spilled over the decks and bulkheads as the mast toppled and the forward guns were put out of action. Ten officers and 67 men were killed, including the Commanding Officer, Comdr. V. P. Douw, and 35 were missing. Hazelwood’s engineering officer, Lt. (j.g.) C. M. Locke, took command and directed her crew in fighting the flames and aiding the wounded.

Suffering terrible damage, she was patched up enough at Ulithi to return to San Francisco under her own steam, albeit in an almost unrecognizable condition.

These photos by LIFE’s Thomas McAvoy as she steamed under the Golden Gate in June 1945, headed to Mare Island NSY for a rebuild:

After reconstruction and a spell in mothballs, Hazelwood served in the Med during the Suez Crisis, and, between 1958 and 1965, following another rebuild, would serve as a trials ship for DASH and the Shipboard Landing Assist Device (SLAD).

USS Hazelwood (DD 531) off Patiuxent, November 1960. She is shown with the prototype DASH hangar, landing area, and refueling system

In August 1963, Hazelwood logged more than 1,000 DASH landings on her deck. That’s almost carrier-level numbers.

“DASH” (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter) the U.S. Navy’s new long-range anti-submarine weapon system, “DASH”, hovers in free flight over the flight deck of the USS HAZELWOOD (DD-531). Suspended under the drone’s body is a homing torpedo, the mainstay of the DASH system. The drone produced by Gyrodyne Co. of America, Inc., of Long Island, New York, is designated model DSN-1. It made the world’s first free flight of a completely unmanned drone heli. At the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, MA. In August, 1960. March 22, 1961. KN-1814

As detailed by a 1970s Navy report:

(U) While initial feasibility tests of the helicopter-destroyer concept were successfully conducted aboard Manley (DD 940) with a drone version of the HTK-1 helicopter in February 1959, Hazelwood (DD 531) was the first destroyer to be completed with the installation of a drone helicopter facility (hangar, flight deck, and aviation fuel system). Initially, COMOPDEVFOR was scheduled to begin evaluation of the Hazelwood installation in July 1959.*

Delays in the development of the final drone helicopter, however, meant that initial tests of the DSN-1** would not begin before March 1960. This program, one of the Navy’s largest commitments, certainly in terms of numbers of ships, to an unproven concept was eventually to prove less than completely successful and, in fact, delayed the introduction of the manned helicopter into the Navy’s destroyer-sized vessels for nearly ten years. Nevertheless, it represented the beginning of the destroyer-helicopter team concept which was to receive growing emphasis throughout the sixties and seventies.

* In the Pacific one prototype FRAM started conversion at the same time, Thomason (DD 760).

** Single Boeing jet engine, gross weight 2,200 pounds, rotor diameter twenty feet.

Hazelwood decommissioned 19 March 1965, entered mothballs with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet for a decade, then was stricken and sold for scrap in 1976.

As for the QH-50, some 755 were produced in the 1960s and it was fielded through the 1970s on over a hundred U.S. destroyers, destroyer escorts, destroyer tenders, cruisers, and at least one battleship (New Jersey off Vietnam) as well as seven Japanese ships during the Cold War. While it didn’t live up to its potential, had there been no DASH program, there wouldn’t be the vibrant UAV fleet that is currently fielded.

Drone CVEs and CVLs abound (except in the US)

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I know you guys are together and bathe regularly and don’t need me to point stuff like this out, but drone carriers are seriously becoming a thing.

In the past couple of years, Turkey has decided to turn Anadolu, their 25,000-ton/762-foot variant of the Spanish LHA Juan Carlos I, into a floating airdrome for their domestically-produced UCAVs such as the Bayraktar TB-3, an aircraft roughly equivalent to a late model General Atomics MQ-1 Predator.

Plans have shown the ‘phib with 40 TB3s on deck, not counting those that could be stored below deck.

Then came news from Thailand that the small 1990s-built ski-jump equipped 11,500-ton HTMS Chakri Naruebet, long stripped of its working second-hand AV-8S Harriers, is to be upcycled to operate drones.

HTMS Chakri Naruebet with locally made MARCUS drone

Further, the Portuguese Navy is in the design phase of a 10,000-ton multifunctional LPH that can carry UAVs as its principal air wing.

The fixed-wing UAVs are launched via a ski jump. Portuguese Navy image.

The mothership is shown with two notional fixed-wing UAVs on deck (they look like MQ-1C Grey Eagle but the new MQ-9B STOL may be a better fit) as well as 6 quad-copter UAVs and one NH90 helicopter. The design seems to lack an aviation hangar. Below decks is a modular area to launch and recover AUV, UUV, and USV. Portuguese Navy image.

Speaking to adversarial countries, Iran has shown off a one-way drone carrier made from a converted coaster, and China built a pair of small catamaran “drone mini-carriers.”

Iran’s budget “drone carrier”

Chinese catamaran drone mini-carrier, with five VTOL spots

Now it seems the PLAN has gone the distance and is close to completing a much larger, 300-foot, drone carrier catamaran.

Via Naval New. The previously unreported drone carrier (A) is longer but narrower than two drone motherships (C, D) built in the same yard. There are also several high-tech target barges (B, F), including one miming an aircraft carrier (E).

We need American CVE-Qs

It seems that a quick program to rapidly construct a series of navalized drone-carrying jeep carriers should be pushed through.

Think this but with UAVs: 

USS Altamaha (CVE-18) transporting Army P-51 Mustang fighters off San Francisco, California on 16 July 1943. NH 106575

Commercial hull. Perhaps even taken up from the glut of vessels already for sale at just above scrap value. Minimal conversion reconstruction while resisting the desire to add all sorts of gee-whiz gear and weapons. Could even go supersized and use converted VLCCs and supertankers. 

Minimally manned (15-20 vessel crew, 20-30 UAV techs and operators). Expendable vessel if push comes to shove, with the crew given ready access to a couple of quick-release free-fall lifeboats.

Fill it with a few dozen MQ-9B STOLs until something more advanced comes along. 

This General Atomics rendering shows it running from an LHA, but surely a smaller and more dedicated CVE-style vessel could work. Note the underwing armament

DARPA is working on its Ancillary Program of six different design concepts for a low-weight, large-payload, long-endurance VTOL uncrewed X-plane to operate with the fleet, so the idea of an all-UAS Carrier Air Wing is just over the horizon. 

ANCILLARY design concept renderings from all six performers, clockwise from lower left: Sikorsky, Karem Aircraft, Griffon Aerospace, Method Aeronautics, AeroVironment, Northrop Grumman.

Add a couple of CVEQs to a DDG (commodore and AAW commander) and LCS (Surface Warfare commander) for an instant sea control group.

The ghosts of Kaiser and Zumwalt would approve.

Red Sea Update (spoiler: it is not as quiet as it seems)

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With the undeclared asymmetric naval war in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden stretching into its eighth month (and Operation Prosperity Guardian into its sixth), it has largely fallen from Page 1 of the mainstream media to more like Page 25.

So what’s going on?

The official news has been limited, but CENTCOM continues to put out terse almost daily reports of engagements against anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM), uncrewed surface vessels (USV), uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), and one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) fired by Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

These attacks seem to come mostly in the late night or early mornings, often under the cover of darkness, and, gratefully, are almost always anticlimactic, with coalition assets easily able to counter/destroy them through a usually undisclosed mix of soft and hard kill systems employed by both airborne and afloat assets with no damage or casualties to report.

Gone are the cumulative tracking announcements from CENTCOM (e.g. “this is the 29th attack) as, well, the numbers probably got too high.

Take the following pressers into account just for the first week of May:

May 2: “At approximately 2:00 p.m. (Sanaa time) on May 2, 2024, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) forces successfully engaged and destroyed three uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) in an Iranian-backed Houthi-controlled area of Yemen.”

May 6: “At approximately 10:47 a.m. (Sanaa time) on May 6, 2024, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) forces successfully engaged and destroyed one uncrewed aerial system (UAS) launched by Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists over the Red Sea.

Between approximately 11:02 p.m. and 11:48 p.m. (Sanaa time) on May 6, Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists launched three uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) over the Gulf of Aden from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen. A coalition ship successfully engaged one UAS, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) forces successfully engaged the second UAS, and the final UAS crashed in the Gulf of Aden.”

May 7: “At approximately 5:02 a.m. (Sanaa time) on May 7, Iran-backed Houthi terrorists launched an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) over the Gulf of Aden.”

The most hectic day in recent memory was the swarm attack of 9 March that saw “28 uncrewed aerial vehicles between 4:00 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. (Sanaa time).”

Acknowledging the ongoing combat operations– keep in mind that Carrier Strike Group 2 (USS Dwight D. Eisenhower with Carrier Air Wing 3 embarked, cruiser USS Philippine Sea, and Burkes USS Gravely, USS Laboon, and USS Mason) have been in the Red Sea since 4 November 2023– the SECNAV on 24 April authorized Combat Awards and Devices for those in the Red Sea Area “effective from 19 October 2023 to a date to be determined.”

However, immanent danger pay is not authorized. Whomp, whomp.

A U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet flies over the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) on Dec. 13, 2023. Deployed as part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (IKECSG), the Philippine Sea is ready to respond to a range of contingencies in support of national security priorities. IKECSG is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations to help ensure maritime security and stability in the Middle East Region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Keith Nowak) 231213-N-PS818-1001

Hopefully, the supply of precious (and expensive) SM-2s and AMRAAMs, which took decades to stockpile, is not emptying as fast as a fat kid with a big gulp. Word is that aerial gun systems (including helicopter door gunners) have been very effective against a lot of these low-speed targets. The French Navy, for one, has confirmed such a shootdown with video. 

Speaking of coalition partners (and those coalition-adjacent), both Denmark (the frigate Iver Huitfeldt) and Germany (frigate Hessen) are learning from post-deployment follies to the Red Sea suffered from a variety of missile mishaps, ammo snags, and training problems showing themselves. As a silver lining, this is surely a good development as no casualties were suffered and everyone is taking a hard look at how to fix the problems moving forward.

This comes as the Portsmouth-based Type 45 destroyer HMS Diamond, now on her second deployment to the region, has been bagging ASBMs with her, thus far very successful, Sea Viper missile system. 

And, just because why not, the Maritime Security Centre – Horn of Africa (MSCHOA) has reported that piracy is back in style off the Somali Coast, with no less than 28 documented incidents since last November including 3 vessels assaulted and 2 reporting suspicious approaches in just the past 30 days.

We’re living in the age of real comic books: Enter the Manta

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Out of nowhere, DARPA and Northrop Grumman this week debuted the Manta of the deep sea.

No, not quite the above, but possibly cooler:

(Photo: Northrop Grumman)

As noted by DARPA:

The Manta Ray prototype uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) built by performer Northrop Grumman completed full-scale, in-water testing off the coast of Southern California in February and March 2024. Testing demonstrated at-sea hydrodynamic performance, including submerged operations using all the vehicle’s modes of propulsion and steering: buoyancy, propellers, and control surfaces.

Manta Ray aims to develop and demonstrate a new class of long-duration, long-range, payload-capable UUVs ready for persistent operations in dynamic maritime environments. DARPA is engaging with the U.S. Navy on the next steps for testing and transition of this technology.

(Photo: Northrop Grumman)

And at that, drink in this very relevant recent video commentary by Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, U.S. Navy (Retired) from the USNI on sea-going ocean drones.

Kyiv Counter-UAV Unit Manned by…Judges?

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I saw this interesting short on DW about administrative and criminal law judges in the Ukraine capital who, barred from front-line service due to the need to keep them on the job, ditch their robes and moonlight (literally) as members of an AAA battery that runs vintage Maxim PM M1910 machine guns from the city’s rooftops.

Keep in mind that Maxims, joined in twin and quad mounts, were the original ZPU in the 1930s and was used against aircraft arguably faster and more maneuverable than many of today’s UAVs

If you have a few minutes, it is a cool story.

USMC Mini Seaplane Tenders?

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You’ve heard of amphibious drones, yes? Like the land-locked cousins but a sea-based variety.

Some are simple, like the 10-pound Aeromapper Talon made by Canadian UAV manufacturer Aeromao.

Using an electric motor, the Talon can stay aloft for 90 minutes with a cruising speed of about 30 knots and, if needed, can make a water landing for recovery.

Yup. It floats. It is in production and has been available for the past four years.

They are being looked at as a low-cost coastal patrol and SAR asset, for instance, in Belize.

However, there are much cooler floatplane UAVs out there as well. 
 
 
Developed two years ago by Space Entertainment Laboratory Co., Ltd. in Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, it can automatically take off and land on the water even offshore with 10-foot swells, and, alternatively, can sail on water like a USV. It is small, with a wingspan of 11 feet, and an all-up weight of about 50 pounds, but can fly for approximately 120 minutes at a cruising speed of 30 knots and can operate within a range of approximately 10 nm. 
 
 
A larger version is under works that will be able to centrally carry a 660-pound payload
 

The larger Hamadori in the works has a cruising range of 350 nm and the ability to continue flying for about 8 hours– which is very interesting.

 
In that vein, read this great speculative piece by Matthew Cosner in this month’s Proceedings entitled, “How Uncrewed Seaplanes Can Support EABO.” 
 
Cosner, an operations research analyst with the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Patuxent, theorizes Marine Littoral Regiments operating in conjunction with an uncrewed seaplane squadron. 
 
A Marine uncrewed seaplane squadron (VMU[S]) would be equipped with approximately 18 small seaplane UAVs, organized into three detachments of six UAVs, each with one or more portable mission control systems. Each detachment would comprise perhaps eight to ten Marines with the skills to support, operate, and maintain their assigned vehicles and systems. The detachment would travel in small craft similar to the Navy’s former 53-foot riverine command boats. These would function as miniature seaplane tenders, moving frequently throughout the region.
 
The Marine Corps has identified seven principal tasks for its aviation units: electronic and cyber warfare; offensive air support; air surveillance and reconnaissance; multidomain command and control; antiair warfare; assault support; and aviation ground support. VMU(S) detachments would be capable of swapping mission payloads to support the first four.
More here. 
 
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