Two Sailors Injured When Drone Crashes Into US Navy Guided Missile Cruiser 109
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that two sailors were hurt when a drone malfunctioned and crashed into the Chancellorsville, a 567-foot Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, as the ship operated off the Point Mugu area of Southern California in an area where BQM-74E aerial targets are widely used. The drone was being used to test the ship's radar tracking when it malfunctioned, veered out of control and struck the cruiser. 'No sailors were seriously injured, but two sailors were treated for minor burns,' the Navy said in a statement. 'The ship remains capable of operations. However, it did sustain some damage and will return to its homeport of San Diego to have the damage assessed. The Navy is investigating the cause of the malfunction.' Chancellorsville has one of the most advanced air defense systems in the Navy, and the ship regularly tests missiles off Southern California. In late August, Chancellorsville successfully used an SM-6 missile to hit a target drone off Point Mugu. The cruiser stocks a variety of missiles, including Tomahawks."
Re:It damaged a warship? (Score:4, Informative)
They are recoverable, remote controlled, subsonic aerial target, capable of speeds up to Mach 0.86...
This ain't no Predator, that's one fast sucker. No wonder it was able to put some hurt on that ship.
Re:Hold on here! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually - the drone was NOT being controlled by anyone aboard the ship. At least one article that I read specified that the drone was operated from a shore station. TFA doesn't make mention of that fact.
To put things in perspective - the ship's capability to detect and intercept stealth aircraft was being put to the test. The cruiser didn't have control of the drone, because that would have been "cheating". Instead, another command activity was responsible for the drone, ensuring that the cruiser's personnel had to do the actual work of spotting it, and calculating "kill" shots on it. Standard routine for ship's gunnery and missile exercises since long before I served.
Re:It damaged a warship? (Score:5, Informative)
Define "armored". Then, refer to Jane's or any other listing of combat ships you might think of. You will note that we no longer have "armored" ships. No "pocket battleships", no "heavy cruisers", nothing of the sort. We're discussing a "guided missile cruiser" here, not a WWII heavy combat ship.
Naval doctrine dropped armor in exchange for speed and stealth well before I was born, in the latter 50's. The Marines have more armor on an Abrams tank than any ship of the line has.
Re:It damaged a warship? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It damaged a warship? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a 3 ton low speed aircraft crashing into an armored cruiser by definition designed to be shot at with things like shells and missiles and bombs and torpedoes. Surpising.
The BQM-74E has a gross weight of 549 pounds, not 3 tons, and it can fly around 600mph. I am certainly not a physicist, but even I can remember p=mv. If the mass is 249kg, and the velocity is 260 m/s, then the momentum is around 65,000 Netwons per second. In comparison, a bullet will typically carry less than 1 Newton per second of momentum. So yeah, if you get by 65 kilonewtons per second, there's going to be some damage.
A 3-ton object moving at the same speed would have over 700 kilonewtons per second of momentum.
Educational Post (Score:3, Informative)
Hi folks, anonymous Fire Control education available here.
A little research will show that the Chancellorsville received an Aegis Modernization upgrade last year, and earlier this year also had their combat system software patched again.
The ship was likely involved in a Detect-to-Engage scenario with the BQM-74 drone acting in an anti-ship missile profile, or enhanced to provide a radar return like a strike aircraft (Source: wikipedia)
In this sort of scenario, whether off the California or Hawaiian coasts, the ship's weapons systems are SAFED. The firing inhibt keys are in place. The ship cannot actually fire. There are scenarios where the drone would be fired upon, but generally with dummy munitions, and the telemetry would be recovered from the drone to indicate if the ship would have had a successful hit.
Given that I've done these particular exercises before in my (previous) career, it sounds like the first scenario. They were testing the newest software to ensure that the combat system internally processed the drone's attack profile correctly and the ship was able to successfully send engagement and targeting data to the weapons systems, without actually releasing any munitions.
Having served on an identical guided missile cruiser to the Chancellorsville, I can also discuss conjecture about ship's armor. We're not really armored like people think of anymore. The superstructure on modern ships contains a lot of aluminium, to save weight. (this also causes significant corrosion problems in older ships) Especially in the case of the top-heavy deckhouses of an Aegis Cruiser. The critical spaces in the superstructure DO have armor, but this is more to ensure that blast fragments don't penetrate. A direct hit on a critical equipment room would still cause significant damage.
http://www.10news.com/news/military/malfunctioning-drone-hits-san-diego-based-navy-ship-uss-chancellorsville-while-training-2-injured
This link contains video showing the puncture from the drone striking the ship. It punctured like this because you're looking at a thin bulkhead; there's a covered exterior passageway right there through the deckhouse on both port and starboard side. Interior to that are a couple of gear lockers; again, inconsequential and unarmored. Deeper in than that you would find some armored spaces.
Likely the fuel from the drone ignited, causing a small fire and damaging these gear lockers and assorted deck equipment kept within. My ship kept the small skiff used for painting the hull inport stored there, along with rope and other lines.
I'm interested in how/why Point Mugu lost control of the drone.