This quiet thread may resurge with this NewScientist (18 September 2021, paywall) report of A US military robot ship has fired a large missile for the first time:
The US Department of Defense has released footage of an uncrewed ship firing a large missile, in a demonstration of its Ghost Fleet Overlord programme, an initiative to develop robot vessels that can operate alongside crewed warships.
Previous Ghost Fleet operations have focused on endurance missions without human assistance, including the first uncrewed transit of the Panama Canal, but the firing is the first indication that the vessels will be armed.
The SM-6 weapon used in the demonstration is a 1500-kilogram missile travelling at Mach 3.5 with a range of over 240 kilometres, fired from a modular launcher on the ship, the USV Ranger. Although the missile was launched without a human on board, US policy requires that the target selection and order to fire would be controlled by a person. The demonstration isn’t the first launch of a missile from a robot boat, but the SM-6 is about 100 times larger than the missile used in an Israeli test in 2017.
Here’s that video:
See the game-changing, cross-domain, cross-service concepts the Strategic Capabilities Office and @USNavy are rapidly developing: an SM-6 launched from a modular launcher off of USV Ranger. Such innovation drives the future of joint capabilities. #DoDInnovates pic.twitter.com/yCG57lFcNW
— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) September 3, 2021
An analyst suggests a possible weakness:
[Sidharth Kaushal of Royal United Services Institute] notes that, given current limitations of sensors and artificial intelligence, the new vessels will work with rather than replace crewed vessels, but he says there could be a greater risk of them being attacked in peacetime.
“They may become targets for sub-threshold aggression, given that damaging or destroying them involves no loss of life,” says Kaushal. He points to a 2016 incident in which China seized a small US unmanned underwater research craft.
More provocations – are they more dangerous, or are they a relatively safe way for the Big Powers to poke at each other and evaluate responses? The Cold War was notorious for such tactics, but with live people in the planes and ships; if lives are not at risk, this may be a good thing.
Maybe.
