DRONES...not just for the Air Force...Navy has them for underwater use! [1/2] - An artist's conception of Lockheed Martin's Orca proposal.png (1/1)

....for some weird reason, it never occurred to me that they could be used as
mine laying subs/drones and go for months remotely...interesting read

Boeing Is Building Big Orca Drone Subs For The Navy To Hunt And Lay Mines And
More

https://youtu.be/UWgvaDutsQ4

more at
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone...mines-and-more

The U.S. Navy has hired Boeing to build four Orca extra-large unmanned undersea
vehicles, or XLUUVs. The service plans to use the Orcas to explore and refine
future concepts of operation for underwater drones of this size, which could
include gathering intelligence, emplacing or clearing naval mines, attacking
other ships or submarines, conducting stand-off strikes, and more.

The Pentagon announced that the Navy had awarded Boeing the contract for the
Orcas, worth $43 million, in its daily service-wide contracting announcement on
Feb. 13, 2019. Separately, the Chicago-headquartered defense contractor said it
is partnering with shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls on the project in a Tweet on
Feb. 15, 2019.

......

The diesel-electric Echo Voyager has a maximum speed of around nine miles per
hour underwater and can dive to depths up to 11,000 feet deep. Its batteries
give it range of more than 150 miles at a speed of around 3 miles per hour,
before it needs to surface and use its air-breathing diesel generator to
recharge.

Boeing has said that Echo Voyager could carry enough fuel to allow it to operate
autonomously for up to six months at a time, covering total ranges of around
7,500 miles. With just one fuel module in its modular payload bays, it would
still have a full range of more than 6,500 miles. It has its own sonar-enabled
obstacle avoidance system, as well as an inertial navigation system.

Orca may also leverage experience Huntington Ingalls gained while working on its
own large unmanned undersea vehicle project, called Proteus, in cooperation with
Bluefin Robotics and Battelle. Proteus is a significantly smaller vehicle,
though, at around 25 feet long, and is limited capability-wise compared to
Echo-Voyager

......

This could include seeding mines in rivers and canals, as well. This kind of
distributed mine warfare could only hamper the free movement of hostile naval
forces, disrupt maritime logistics chains, and otherwise force an opponent to
diverse limited resources to protecting rear areas.

These same qualities also open up the potential for a far greater array of
missions in the future. If Orca can slip into enemy territory to plant mines, it
can also do so to gather intelligence, already a well-established mission for
larger manned submarines. It might also be able to act as a decoy, mimicking the
signature of larger ships or submarines. The Navy has expressed an interest in
finding a way for XLUUVs to carry electronic warfare packages to otherwise blind
enemy sensors to incoming threats, but it is hard to see how this would work
unless they're while running on the surface or very close to the surface.

Beyond that, there’s the possibility that the Orcas, or a follow-on XLUUV
design, could carry weapons themselves to carry out attacks on surface ships or
submarines. The Echo Voyager’s payload bay was already large enough to
accommodate light and heavyweight torpedoes and Boeing says that design could
accept external payloads, as well.

Combined with their autonomous capability and long range, packs of future XLUUVs
networked together might also be able to persistently monitor and track
potential threats, such as increasingly advanced Russia or Chinese submarines,
holding them perpetually at risk across a broad region, such the Pacific. This
is a mission the Navy has also envisioned for its future fleets of unmanned
surface vessels. The service would require an underwater drone that could travel
much faster than Orca to adequately perform this particular mission, though.

Lastly, Orcas might even eventually be able to launch strikes against targets
ashore using stand-off cruise missiles. The Navy has described the ability for
underwater drones to rapidly and discreetly position themselves close to a
crisis area could make them valuable for time-sensitive strikes. It has also
said that in the past that this particular mission set is a relatively low
priority for XLUUVs.


more at
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone...mines-and-more




*