DARPA Hydra: An Unmanned Sub Mothership to Deploy Drones 78
garymortimer tips more news about the rise of our robotic overlords. DARPA is now investigating military drone submarines as launch platforms for UAVs. Quoting John Keller at Military & Aerospace Electronics: "The Hydra program will develop and demonstrate an unmanned undersea system with a new kind of unmanned-vehicle delivery system that inserts UAVs and UUVs stealthily into operational environments to respond quickly to situations around the world without putting U.S. military personnel at risk. The Hydra large UUV is to use modular payloads inside a standardized enclosure to deploy a mix of UAVs and UUVs, depending on the military situation. Hydra will integrate existing and emerging technologies in new ways to create an alternate means of delivering a variety of payloads close to where they're needed, DARPA officials say."
Video games are real!! Only this ones kill. (Score:3, Funny)
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WE have seen SkyNet, and they are us.
Japanese Subs (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminds me during WW2 Japenese developed subs that could surface and open a tiny hangar which launched 1-3 small planes. Sometimes scouts, sometimes bombers. The planes could land on water next to the sub, which had a crane to lift the plane back into the hangar.
Re:Japanese Subs (Score:4, Informative)
This reminds me during WW2 Japenese developed subs that could surface and open a tiny hangar which launched 1-3 small planes. Sometimes scouts, sometimes bombers. The planes could land on water next to the sub, which had a crane to lift the plane back into the hangar.
they were intended to drop incendiary bombs on forests.
Re:Japanese Subs (Score:4, Informative)
they were intended to drop incendiary bombs on forests.
There was also a plan to attack the Panama Canal. One of the airplanes is preserved at the National Air & Space Museum.
Re:Japanese Subs (Score:5, Informative)
There was a good story told at the National Air & Space Museum about that plane. One of the Japanese pilots came to the museum and looked the plane over. He was asked about the "optional" floats that would allow the plane to land. The researchers of the plane did not understand where the floats would be stored on the submarine, as the submarine was pretty small and packed very tightly. The pilot replied that they never took floats and that the plane was never supposed to ever come back.
Pretty sobering. I believe the example that's in the National museum was recovered from a factory just after the war.
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the plane was never supposed to ever come back.
Well, in principle, the pilot could fly back to the boat and bail out.
The Brits did something like that on a trial basis in WW1: An airplane would be catapulted off a ship, fly a recon mission, then ditch in the water and the pilot would be fished out. Since the price of an airplane in those days was about the same as one 14-inch shell for a battleship, the economics weren't that bad.
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That Japanese submarine would be the I-400 class [wikipedia.org]. I do not see a recovery mechanism working properly on a submersible carrier without using VTOL craft. It would be a lot more practical for the UCAVs to be drone helicopters. The ideal situation would be if you could launch and recover the drones while submerged much like you can launch missiles while submerged.
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One of them was used in a successful reconnaissance flight over Sydney before Sydney was attacked with midget submarines in 1942
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Sydney_Harbour#Prelude
Quote "The aircraft was damaged or destroyed on landing, although its two crew survived"
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they were used to drop incendiary bombs on forests.
FIFY. The purpose of those planes was primarily for recon. They could do ground attacks, but Japan was really desperate to use them for burning forests.
Air drop of fleas infected with bubonic plague ... (Score:2)
This reminds me during WW2 Japenese developed subs that could surface and open a tiny hangar which launched 1-3 small planes. Sometimes scouts, sometimes bombers. The planes could land on water next to the sub, which had a crane to lift the plane back into the hangar.
they were intended to drop incendiary bombs on forests.
There was also a plan to drop fleas infected with bubonic plague on U.S. cities. Test bombings were conducted on the Chinese cities of Ningbo and Changde by Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Japanese Subs (Score:4, Interesting)
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Jalapeño subs? Wow. I've been settling for pepperocini on mine!
Not any more...
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Except those subs were probably fairly autonomous.
This looks like something being invented that will only be useful against very low tech enemies (good luck sending control signals without giving away your location).
If perhaps it was able to get into a general area autonomously (or only receiving signals), and launch payloads that then themselves connected to the remote pilot it could work, but as I see it, it's going to be a sub shouting "I am here", which kind of defeats the purpose.
Yes, with perhaps 50%
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(good luck sending control signals without giving away your location).
What, they stopped using satellites for that?
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Submarine aircraft carrier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_aircraft_carrier [wikipedia.org]
Proof! (Score:3, Funny)
Proof that the US government truly has gone evil: They've named their latest drone carrier after the terrorist organization in GI Joe.
Re:Proof! (Score:5, Informative)
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Paging Joss Whedon...
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I am so glad you corrected the OP. I am really sick and tired of people getting facts about fake things wrong! ./sarcasm-off.sh
Re:Proof! (Score:5, Funny)
You must not have bash installed on your computer. My sarcasm-off.sh script generally compiles and informs users that sarcasm is no longer being used. Are you running a ksh system?
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You must not have bash installed on your computer. My sarcasm-off.sh script generally compiles and informs users that sarcasm is no longer being used. Are you running a ksh system?
Disabling sarcasm requires recompiling the kernel. I don't want to reset my uptime just so I can run mod_nohumor.so
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I'm also glad he corrected the OP. It's like the war between Vulcan and Endor*, never ending.
* I know what I did.
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Ouch, now my head hurts. Nerd-aneurysm!
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M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
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The terrorist organization in GI Joe is Cobra. Hydra is a terrorist organization in the Marvel Universe fighting SHIELD and Captain America.
Well... it's been awhile since I watched cartoons.
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Yes. Hydra featured prominently in the Captain America movie. The Nazis weren't evil enough, so they had a sub-group called Hydra, which was headed by Hugo Weaving/The Red Skull.
"Heil Hydra!!!"
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Proof that the US government truly has gone evil: They've named their latest drone carrier after the terrorist organization in GI Joe.
Either that or a small predatory water anima. Hydra [wikipedia.org]
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That should be: small predatory water animal.
Or was it a Jungian slip?
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Best joke of the day. Thank you, Sir!
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I was tired of my lady
We'd been together too long
Like a worn-out recording
Of a favorite song
So while she lay there sleeping
I read the paper in bed
And in the personal columns
There was this letter I read
If you like Pina Coladas
And getting caught in the rain
If you're not into yoga
If you have half a brain
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes on the Cape
Then I'm the love that you've looked for
Write to me and escape.
I didn't think about my lady
I know that sounds kind of mean
But me and my old lady
Have
The military likes the classics ... (Score:2)
Proof that the US government truly has gone evil: They've named their latest drone carrier after the terrorist organization in GI Joe.
Either that or a small predatory water anima. Hydra [wikipedia.org]
Both the DARPA project and this critter are named after the mythological water beast with many heads, a beast the Hercules battled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra [wikipedia.org]
If only (Score:5, Funny)
Does it require 25 minerals to build these smaller drones? And can I set the "underwater carrier" to auto-build them?
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Great, now I've got that noise from the drones being launched stuck in my head for the next 10 years.
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lazy (Score:2, Funny)
Now you can't even be bothered to show up to your own wars.
Re:Hail Hydra (Score:4, Insightful)
Tired of this use of my taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to get back to uses of taxes that will have some benefit rather than projects to aid in killing people whose leaders are not currently popular with us.
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Sorry, "Ooh! Shiny!" appears to be more important to some loser with mod points.
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I'd like to get back to uses of taxes that will have some benefit rather than projects to aid in killing people whose leaders are not currently popular with us.
they're also used in killing people who's leader is unpopular in his land but popular in limited USA circles.. I mean really, how popular was Saleh in USA anyways?
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Submersible drones are used almost entirely for mine clearing. There are much cheaper ways to destroy ships.
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They can be used to detect other subs which could destabilize MAD.
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Don't remember Benghazi or Fast and Furious. Remeber Obama's son, Trayvon.
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It does. Right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system...
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Great a Single Point of failure and a single target to destroy.
Nobody seems to feel that way about a sub that's carrying enough ICBMs to vaporise a dozen good-sized cities.
One word... (Score:2)
CobrAAAAAAAAAA!
Paraphrasing Orwell (Score:5, Insightful)
Where will it land? (Score:1)
The UAV portion launched from this can not land on it, so it's disposable?
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Anyone else terrified by this idea? (Score:1)
Former US Navy submariner here,
So imagine that we build 100,000 of these things and they all come with solar cells on top. We deploy them all over the world, along every coast line, and they just sit there, for years, waiting for us to need them. We could deploy them locally from our submarines or launch them from our bases in Guam, Hawaii, or the East Coast and let them swim to their destinations. Some of them are for surveillance, armed with UAVs, and some of them, like current aeria
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Wrong crop.
How long before... (Score:1)
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I, for one, welcome our future robotic overlords.
Carrier Command (Score:2)
Let me be, hopefully, the first to say.. (Score:2)
Carrier has arrived!