XV Excalibur hailed as first US or UK underwater drone to let one off in tests:
A British uncrewed submarine has test-fired a torpedo for the first time, demonstrating the ability of undersea drones to attack targets as well as perform reconnaissance and surveillance roles.
The XV Excalibur, a 12 meter (40 ft) experimental uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV), was unveiled last year as the Royal Navy's first large submarine drone as part of Project CETUS.
According to the Prime Minister's Office, the test firing was part of the AUKUS program, a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and America. It involved the Excalibur launching a heavyweight torpedo "jointly developed by the US and Australia," which implies it was the Mk 48 torpedo currently carried by all US Navy submarines.
Also according to Downing Street, this was the first time either the US or UK has launched a torpedo from an underwater drone, rather than a crewed submarine.
The Register understands that Excalibur navigated autonomously to its launch position and carried out a pre-programmed launch sequence, but was not responsible for detecting or tracking the target, as target data was provided through external systems.
As noted by defense site Navy Lookout, the Excalibur has no torpedo tubes, and its payload bay in the midships section of the hull is too small to accommodate a large torpedo, so it is possible the weapon was carried via some sort of cradle attached to the underside of the sub.
[...] While Excalibur is currently an experimental vehicle, it is expected to inform requirements for future UUVs that the Royal Navy wants to help patrol the North Atlantic and protect against expected Russian sabotage of undersea cables and other infrastructure in the event of hostilities breaking out.
The Excalibur tests come as UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is expected to confirm the UK and US are working together in an AI and Autonomy partnership. This - so we are told - will help Britain protect critical national infrastructure, from sea lanes to air space, providing the means to detect threats and deter adversaries using the latest AI technology developed on both sides of the Atlantic.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29, @12:16PM (3 children)
They can't even properly defend the fucking English Channel, by which, have now crossed in eminently sinkable fucking rubber boats and the suchlike, more 'fighting age' male illegal immigrants from fucking active/recently active warzones than there are active members of His Majesty's armed forces. (The scuttlebut is also that the RN command dread the thought of being asked to take action as they know that would anger the French and escalate and, on current strengths, the French navy would hand them their arses without even breaking a sweat...).
It's fucking cute the way the UK thinks, acts and talks like it's still a 'World Power' when in reality those days passed in the 1950s and since then it's increasingly becoming a third world shithole.
it's just like a wee yappy dog.
(Score: 4, Funny) by epitaxial on Tuesday September 29, @01:00PM (1 child)
Are you sure? I was told exiting the EU would prevent all the brown people from entering the country?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29, @01:44PM
No, you see they need to exit the commie UN and relocate to Mars to preserve the light of consciousness for the sake of
humanitythe rugged individual.(Score: 4, Informative) by Username on Tuesday September 29, @04:51PM
>eminently sinkable fucking rubber boats
Those boats are REALLY hard to sink. It's basically a giant pool noodle covered in rubber with about 2psi of pressure. Even if you stab every square inch, it will not sink. It just won't hold as much weight above the surface. When it goes below the surface too far it flips and comes back up. It's like trying to sink an iceberg.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @05:18PM
Three options.
1) They stole the explosives from the fake Fairford attackers and turned the entire sub into a torpedo. No crew and its pretty small.
2) They used "virtual explosives" just like the vicious Fairford terror attack.
3) They tried to intimidate the other side into giving up by declaring they have an unlicensed kitchen knife in the galley. This would probably make the French raise the white flag, but probably wouldn't work on the rest of the world.
Lately, it seems like every story out of the UK has been designed to make people laugh at them, especially when they're trying to be serious. I would not be surprised if it was situation #2.
Probably the craziest part of the story is the public stories explain the sub has no tracking ability it was fed tracking data from the surface. And they have no weapon. So... the exercise was they went to some coordinates and came back, pretty much. Um OK, I guess.
The thing about drone ops either air or ground or water is you can pack more computing power per volume than ever before, so our "guided missiles from the 1960s" are getting REALLY smart in the 2020s. Getting larger too, although still a lot smaller than 1960s ICBMs. But computing power can't beat the surface area to volume ratio. "little weapons" are always going to be shorter range/duration than larger things under all external circumstances and situations. 688 attack subs are vaguely 110 meters long, someone will eventually make an AI driven sub that long and it'll have acceptable range etc at that point. And you CAN do a lot of missions with really short range weapons. But a lot of "drone" weapons are pretty weak compared to real weapons.
There's also maintainability issues where every vehicle that ever went anywhere has X failures per mile and humans can fix or work around or adapt but there's been little work on having drone-type-things maintain themselves then carry on and complete the mission. Thats a topic where "Star Trek" did a huge disservice where putting a starship under computer control was always seen as an issue for morals and ethics, which OK whatever if that floats your boat, run with it. But the REAL problem of putting The Starship Enterprise under computer control is there's no Scotty and every other episode was the ship was going to explode if it weren't for Scotty and the damage control team(s). (Oh and the disposable red shirts but thats a whole nother issue)