Jack Linthicum wrote:
wrote:
Jack Linthicum wrote:

snip
It is easy to imagine a swarm of UAVs used as very sheap relatively
slow (200km/h) flying cruise missiles with small warheads, designed to
attack radars and similar on-ship targets that can be seriously damaged
with a small warhead (spray a shotgun of darts with wavy aluminium
tails into that phased array and see what it can do afterwards).

A swarm of UAVs requires a swarm of controllers and a swarm of secure
frequencies to accomplish that control. I wonder if a follow-on to a
Shrike or ALARM would bother to hit the transmitting antennas and
instead have a large enough warhead to take out the whole controlling
facility.
A swarm of current generation UAVs requires a swarm of controllers.

A swarm of highly autonomous UAVs (perhaps better viewed as a swarm of
ultra cheap cruise missiles accompanied by some stealthy UAVs with good
sensor suites) launched on a 'kill everything that floats and
resembles a warship'' need not. The swarm flies silently (no
communication) to the designated target area, contacts the controllers
when it sees the target (or does not find it), the controller just
tells them "move to X,Y" or "20% attack this ship, 20% attack that ship
and the rest presses on to X,Y". One/few controllers, intermittent, low
bandwidth, frequency agile, tough to intercept/jam communication. Of
course, the tough part is the autonomous acting - but as I said, it you
need it to work only in fair weather, out of ground clutter, in "kill
all that is floating" mode, your task is much easier then what the US
requires from its UAVs. The assymetric warfare thing...