Consider this: https://newatlas.com/military/liberty-class-autonomous-naval-ship-production/
Now, think about designing in solar panels, small wind turbines, and even wave power and suddenly you have a loitering sensor array with the potential for weaponization. They could build and launch thousands of the things. Schedule them for maintenance once a year (scrape the hull, paint, assess the internals etc etc)
Essentially this could be an element of the surface version of the "Loyal Wingman" program for the skies. I would probably suggest that each vessel carry a habitat on the deck for a few humans so that the vessels can be used in search and rescue ops. I suppose they might as well include a container with ~20 launch able UAVs.
With no crew, the design elements that make Navy ships (barely) suitable for human habitation are largely gone. No galley or mess decks, minimal or no water desalination or purification, HVAC sufficient to maintain operating range temps for the sensors and weapons systems, no berthing spaces.
Waaaaaaaay less expensive to build. Waaaaaaay less expensive to crew (what with their being no crew and all). No breaks for anything except maintenance and/or repair. Seems like we should have had this already.
No comments:
Post a Comment