Category Archives: Drones
India Looks to Prevent Another Mumbai Attack With UAVs
India’s growing unmanned aerial vehicle fleet is being put through its paces in defending against a future Mumbai-style complex terrorist attack. During a 48-hour-long exercise, Gemini-2, UAVs from the Navy’s 342 Air Squadron cued patrol boats and coastal police to thwart mock terrorists attempting to infiltrate Southern India’s shoreline from the sea. The first iteration [...]
Read MoreEvaluating China’s Anti-Ship Drone Swarms
The Project 2049 Institute recently released a report on People’s Republic of China (PRC) UAV advances, with a focus on how those capabilities could be used to threaten U.S. Navy carrier strike groups. China’s expanding land- and sea-based UAV inventory runs the range from small tactical systems to medium-ranged Predator-class to unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) still under [...]
Read MoreA Relay Race: Communication Relay Drones
Much of the conversation surrounding the advent of naval drone warfare has focused on those platforms performing the more ‘kinetic’ types of warfare – anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, air warfare – and those of the voyeuristic surveillance variety. However, a quick look at the composition of the carrier air wings of the U.S. Navy or the dispersed [...]
Read MoreTactical Employment of Drone Motherships
As discussed in an earlier post, dynamics between unmanned naval systems and the platforms that carry them are changing rapidly to accommodate new technologies and tactics. Arguably, various types of drone motherships have the potential to transform mine countermeasures more than any other warfare area, and the evolution in mine-countermeasures tactics towards the mothership-unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) [...]
Read MoreFuture Airwing Composition: Unmanned ISR
According to Defense News, the U.S. Navy’s inventory of manned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms - land-based P-3 Orion and EP-3 Aries - will be cut by more than a quarter over the next few years. The current consolidations are not the first time in recent history the Navy has trimmed ISR capability. As late as the 1990s, a typical carrier air wing deployed with a [...]
Read MoreDrones of the Navy SEALs
The mystique of Navy SEALs has been heavily celebrated in the media and films due to recent real-world exploits. Yet Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Sailors have been heavily engaged in combat operations for more than 11 consecutive years. Warfare is still a decidedly human endeavor, and America’s naval special warriors are quick to embrace the truth that “humans are [...]
Read MoreOn the Wings of the Sun? Harnessing Solar Power for Aviation
A few months back we had a guest post from NavalDrones on the site discussing power needs for drones, focusing on the advantages of batteries compared to today’s combustion engines. Engines are noisy, limiting drones’ stealthiness, and both engines and batteries require refueling/recharging. Thus, lengthy, days-long on-station operations aren’t in the cards for today’s drones. (For [...]
Read MoreArmed USVs: A Deeper Dive
The U.S. Navy’s recent testing of a Protector unmanned surface vessel (USV) with the Precision Engagement Module (PEM) weapons system warrants deeper analysis than provided by news reporting. The project is sponsored by the Chief of Naval Operation’s Expeditionary Warfare Division (N95) and the Naval Sea Systems Command’s Naval Special Warfare Program Office. To understand the ramifications of this testing, [...]
Read More