NAVAL DRONES

This article was submitted by guest author Michael Glynn for CIMSEC’s Distributed Lethality week.  Reprinted with permission from the Center for International Maritime Security. The Navy’s surface warfare community is committed to remedying its lack of anti-surface warfare (ASuW) punch with Distributed Lethality. “If it floats, it fights,” is the rallying cry.[1] Dispersed forces operating together pose challenges for an adversary, but also create targeting difficulties we must solve. The detection range of shipboard sensors is limited by their height above the waterline and the curvature of the earth. Since it appears doubtful leaders would call on a ship to steam into visual range of adversaries, airborne assets are most likely to provide over the horizon (OTH) targeting. In a January 2015 article in Proceedings, Vice Admiral Rowden, Rear Admiral Gumataotao, and Rear Admiral Fanta reference “persistent organic” air assets as key enablers of Distributed Lethality.[2]...

Chinese UAV imagery of Senkakus More than one war has started over the control of a group of isolated rocks in the middle of the ocean.  Tensions over disputed East China Sea islands called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan could someday precipitate skirmishes on or over the sea, if not a larger conflict.  It may very well possible that the first shots fired in any sort of combat over these islands will involve growing number of maritime unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying in the area.  Late in 2013, China established an  air defense zone  (ADIZ) over portions of the East China Sea.  Further south, near the disputed Spratlys, similar issues exists. To help enforce their claims over these areas, China is building a string of 11 drone bases along its coast by 2015. China has operated what is likely a variant of the S-100  rotary wing UAV off PLA(N) ships. China's Coast Guard, which is really the PRC's first line of defense ...