Still-Unidentified Flying Drones Harassed Multiple US Navy Destroyers in 2019 (thedrive.com) 207
Slashdot reader alaskana98 shared this report from The Drive:
In July of 2019, a truly bizarre series of events unfolded around California's Channel Islands. Over a number of days, groups of unidentified aircraft, which the U.S. Navy simply refers to as 'drones' or 'UAVs,' pursued that service's vessels, prompting a high-level investigation. During the evening encounters, as many as six aircraft were reported swarming around the ships at once.
The drones were described as flying for prolonged periods in low-visibility conditions, and performing brazen maneuvers over the Navy warships near a sensitive military training range less than 100 miles off Los Angeles. The ensuing investigation included elements of the Navy, Coast Guard, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
One drone on the first night even "managed to match the destroyer's speed with the craft moving at 16 knots in order to maintain a hovering position over the ship's helicopter landing pad... By this point, the encounter had lasted over 90 minutes — significantly longer than what commercially available drones can typically sustain... If the drones were not operated by the American military, these incidents represent a highly significant security breach."
In a follow-up, they report that America's chief of naval operations was asked Monday if the Navy had positively identified any of the aircraft involved, and responded "No, we have not. I am aware of those sightings and as it's been reported there have been other sightings by aviators in the air and by other ships not only of the United States, but other nations — and of course other elements within the U.S. joint force."
The chief of naval operations was also asked if there was any suspicion that the drones were "extraterrestrial." He replied, "No, I can't speak to that — I have no indications at all of that."
The drones were described as flying for prolonged periods in low-visibility conditions, and performing brazen maneuvers over the Navy warships near a sensitive military training range less than 100 miles off Los Angeles. The ensuing investigation included elements of the Navy, Coast Guard, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
One drone on the first night even "managed to match the destroyer's speed with the craft moving at 16 knots in order to maintain a hovering position over the ship's helicopter landing pad... By this point, the encounter had lasted over 90 minutes — significantly longer than what commercially available drones can typically sustain... If the drones were not operated by the American military, these incidents represent a highly significant security breach."
In a follow-up, they report that America's chief of naval operations was asked Monday if the Navy had positively identified any of the aircraft involved, and responded "No, we have not. I am aware of those sightings and as it's been reported there have been other sightings by aviators in the air and by other ships not only of the United States, but other nations — and of course other elements within the U.S. joint force."
The chief of naval operations was also asked if there was any suspicion that the drones were "extraterrestrial." He replied, "No, I can't speak to that — I have no indications at all of that."
In other news (Score:2)
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You would have to detect the incoming projectiles and perform extreme evasive maneuvers that would otherwise also drain battery more strenuously. There are probably better solutions but just using shotguns is decent at first and I don't necessary know of any immediate issue with it. I am not even sure if bird shot fired directly upward is really much of a threat to people under it, unlike other ammos which have more aerodynamics.
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Bolas rounds entangle rotors (Score:2)
yeh because shotguns really have a chance.
They do, with bird shot or a special round the US military developed that is sort of like a bolas and entangles the drone's rotors.
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If you knew even a little bit about shotguns, you'd know the maximum range of a 12 gauge would be 70-80 yards.
I'd say your estimate is a bit too long, more like 50 yards with birdshot. You did notice the article said a drone was hovering over the helicopter landing pad. That sounds like shotgun range.
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You did notice the article said a drone was hovering over the helicopter landing pad. That sounds like shotgun range.
"Above" does not necessarily mean "near".
A geosynchronous satellite hovers over a single spot on the Earth's surface, but it would take quite a shotgun to bring it down.
Re:Bolas rounds entangle rotors (Score:4, Funny)
Hey Americans. This guy says we cannot shoot down satellites with shotguns... Lets prove him wrong.
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the bullet to dead taliban rate in afghan of 250k bullets
That's a fair few warning shots, to be sure.
But I think you posted your comment in the wrong thread. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with what we're discussing here.
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In other news, U.S. Navy now stocking up on shotguns.
Actually long barreled hunting shotguns are being evaluated by the military for anti-drone use.
They are also looking at special ammo that will entangle rotors.
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You mean the gun massacres every weekend in Chicago?
What donâ(TM)t they just shoot it down? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even if they do have the technology to easily target and destroy a drone, do you really want to demonstrate its capability or do you want its abilities kept secret? It is very useful for the enemy to know at what range their drones can be shot down, and at what range they can be targeted and detected. If they know this, they can also use it to build a better drone for using specifically against known anti-drone systems, and develop operational routines that keep their drones from being intercepted.
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Depending on the size of the drone, the technology you're talking about is called a SAM (Surface to Air Missile). We've been using them for longer than most of us have been alive.
While it's a safe bet that the SAMs currently in use can fly faster and farther than Jane's say they can, if the drones were within 50km or so of the ship, shooting th
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A tomahawk or SAM *is* an explosive drone.
What you're really saying is that the US navy has lots of very expensive explosive drones, and lacks cheap and plentiful ones to effectively deal with the cheap and plentiful ones lots of other people have. This is fairly typical of large-state armed forces, which tend to go for excellent and expensive.
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And retrieve the drone.
They are near commercial traffic. They were asking nearby cruise liners and cargo ships if the drone originated from them. Not the sort of environment where you open up with a Phalanx CIWS. Maybe after they bring a few hunting shotguns aboard.
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Not the sort of environment where you open up with a Phalanx CIWS.
Or an Aegis RIM-66 Standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Although maybe the US Navy is more respectful of civilian lives near the coast of California than it is in the Persian Gulf.
Re:What donâ(TM)t they just shoot it down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the sort of environment where you open up with a Phalanx CIWS.
Or an Aegis RIM-66 Standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Although maybe the US Navy is more respectful of civilian lives near the coast of California than it is in the Persian Gulf.
Or maybe California isn't chanting "death to America" while attacking commercial shipping, having the Highway Patrol fire at the ship's helicopter, and flights out of LAX don't ignore 10 radio messages from the USN. Creating an environment where a tragic accident becomes more likely.
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With what? A shotgun? It could be 1000ft away and a shotgun does nothing at that range. A sniper rifle? Good luck hitting a target that can move in three axis.
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Directional EMP?
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How about just HERF? You don't need a whole EMP to take down a drone. Just scramble its brains with that funky high-frequency radio noise shit that turns poorly designed electronics into unwitting multi-band radio receivers. Man-portability isn't practical, but we're talking about ships. How do they not have some kind of drone defense yet?
Or then there's always just jamming likely frequencies [droneshield.com], although that is even less likely to work on a high quality drone
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Imaginary weapon.
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With what? A shotgun? It could be 1000ft away and a shotgun does nothing at that range.
The article mentions hovering over the helicopter deck. That suggests a shotgun's effective range.
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> With what? A shotgun? It could be 1000ft away and a shotgun does nothing at that range. A sniper rifle? Good luck hitting a target that can move in three axis.
Navy ships (some) have anti-aircraft railgun arrays on board. They can fire a grid of projectiles at a target with computerized targeting and rapid repeating.
It's something like a a 40x40 grid of 1cm-round projectiles, but don't quote me on the numbers. If the drones are getting as close as the helipad, they're in range. Biggest risk is the dro
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Railgun arrays? I don't think so.
Don't think that would be legal (Score:2)
Re: What donâ(TM)t they just shoot it down? (Score:2)
> What donÃ(TM)t they just } ©®} Ã;;Ã} ®©
There. Fixed that for you.
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The rules that everyone plays with didn't take drones into account. Look at how the FAA is struggling to write up rules that can effectively cover them.
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What happens if you shoot it down, and a foreign government says "Yes, it was ours, it was flying in international air space, and was not acting in a threatening manner. You will publicly acknowledge that you acted recklessly and without provocation and pay us reparations".
FTFS:
Navy warships near a sensitive military training range less than 100 miles off Los Angeles.
Not only were they clearly within our territorial airspace, but they were in a sensitive military training range as well. We have every right to engage in what could very well be spy drones with little to now fear of retaliation.
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No. In peacetime armed forces, at least those of civilized nations, typically take a very cautious approach to using deadly force. Buzzing someone else's ships and aircraft isn't terribly unusual.
Example:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/pol... [cnn.com]
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No. In peacetime armed forces, at least those of civilized nations, typically take a very cautious approach to using deadly force. Buzzing someone else's ships and aircraft isn't terribly unusual.
Example: https://www.cnn.com/videos/pol... [cnn.com]
Yes, and those manned aircraft are usually detected well before they get anywhere near our ships giving plenty of time to hide or shutdown any sensitive gear and operations, and are met with an escort well outside of visual range. These were unmanned drones sneaking up on us to spy. The fact they came up undetected means they're small lightweight drones, and my concern is where they came from. It can't be too far away, and that means an unauthorized someone is fairly close to our vessels while they're tr
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Didn't watch the video hey?
What makes you think the drones weren't detected? These naval ships were near Los Angeles, one of the busiest ports in the world. Of course there are lots of other boats around, none of them "unauthorized." Why do people get so weird whenever the military is involved?
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Yes I did watch the video. It was what looked like three incidents, at most, with a group of ships with no aircraft other than a helicopter or two. I spent 20 years as an Aviation Electronics Technician in the Navy and witnessed countless flybys while on deployment. Perhaps I put the word "usually" in the wrong place in my statement and should have worded it "Yes, and those manned aircraft are detected well before they get anywhere near our ships giving plenty of time to hide or shutdown any sensitive ge
It's people playing with toys (Score:4, Funny)
Hey Bill, we just got some of those new barely-legal-for-civilian-use drones at work and we're allowed to play with them until they need them in two weeks. What do you think we should do with them?
OK, we've been hovering over sunbathing chicks all afternoon and the power is only down 20%, what else could we do?
Hand me another beer and the controls...
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It could be someone's experiments. After all what better to test against.
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If you purposefully hover steady over the armed forces, it is very purposeful experiment. Shooting down seems as a first resort, except when it is over the water, would you certainly get it.
Re: It's people playing with toys (Score:2)
Not as badly as if it were a military organisation... Maybe
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the law clearly prohibits anyone from giving water to anyone in any part of the line of voters. See line 1813-1814 in the actual law prohibits food, water, or drink to an elector. within 25 feet of *any voter* standing in line.
1811 a) No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any
1812 person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give,
1813 or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, f
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the link you have in your post is the *old law* I posted the relevant text of the *new law* in Georgia that everyone is talking about.
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I know its par for the course that nobody reads the story. The drones stayed in flight much longer than any commercial drones are capable of.
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Okay, but what if those drones were refitted with hydrogen fuel cells [ballard.com]?
And what does "commercial" mean anyway? Something I can buy off a shelf, or something I can order off the internets?
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90 minutes isn't special. You can find any number of videos on YouTube with random hobbyists doing flights much longer than that.
Obsolete (Score:3)
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This is why the US ships of today are all obsolete against the China of tomorrow.
And vice versa.
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I have been ranting for years about how literal toy technology is the next frontier in warfare.
Hundreds of thousands of toy drones are made every year, as well as hundreds of thousands of commercial drones as well, and almost all of them are made in China (with possible final assembly elsewhere.)
If they converted their production capacity from toys to flying grenades, you'd see warfare change literally overnight. And it's China we discuss because China has the production capacity, and for no other reason ot
Obsolete-desktop wars. (Score:2)
History simply tells us that someone is always trying to do it.
Open-source taking over the desktop in..oh, well.
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I had a discussion last year (or was it two years ago) about people using drones to attack aircraft carriers in port and people tried to laugh me out of the room. All you need is one drone to fly a hand grenade into the ammo dump or fuel farm of an aircraft carrier and the carrier is has and expl
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Man, those carriers are floating bombs, just waiting to go off! Can you imagine what would happen if one was struck by a shell or missile?
Oh, brother (Score:2)
"The chief of naval operations was also asked if there was any suspicion that the drones were "extraterrestrial."
Ladies and gentlemen, we have found the idiot in the room.
Re:Oh, brother (Score:5, Funny)
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Not somebody else. Of course, it is of interest if constructional qualities of the drone do suggest its specific build.
What a fail report this is... (Score:2)
There are so many unanswered questions.
If a drone matches speed with a vessel then it is not moving... why wasn't it captured / shot / had electronic counter measures fired at it / checked for communications emissions.
It isn't an act of war to collect a drone hovering over your vessel.
The best question a journo can come up with - is it extraterrestrial? If you can't do anything else, become a journo.
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Re: What a fail report this is... (Score:2)
> The US is not at war with anyone,
Wow. Really? Since when?
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> The US is not at war with anyone,
Wow. Really? Since when?
Since 1945
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Re: What a fail report this is... (Score:2)
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If this is U.S. territory, off domestic ground, there must be rules for the flights over there. Flying there may not mean war, but may mean intrusion and must obey regulations.
Then, if crafted device is surveying military equipment, it must be getting into another regulation - one of protection from the military surveillance. Flying near, for the purpose of being close to the military equipment at a remote itself place, most probably carrying tools for watching and reporting (as for being controlled for the
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What counter measures do you suggest? Can the military jam GPS signals while in commercial space? I'm pretty sure whoever designs these drones has already thought of that. What the hell is "electronic counter measure fired at it" even mean? You think EMP weapons are real? The drone could be following the ship but still moving in random patterns, they have three axis control...
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Now they know (Score:4, Insightful)
how civilians in Afghanistan feel.
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Luxemburg?
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Try again:
https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1165616.html [today.rtl.lu]
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Cracks me up that you are singling out "Western" forces. It's like the hoi polloi who like to rant on twitter about "white men" to make the distinction clear who it is they hate.
Because after all, we all know it's only "Western" forces they've had issues with, right? [wikipedia.org]
Well I expect the navy will start taking these mor (Score:2)
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The russians have been using disposable drones in their war with the ukrainians to good effect
The USA has been using disposable drones "to good effect" since the 1960s [wikipedia.org].
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The Russian Orlan-10 costs a tenth that, has a 16 hour endurance and has a variety of other tricks, like laser designation for artillery.
And while it has been confirmed that the russians used drones to destroy ukrainian ammo dumps with thermite grenades, it isn't known what kind of drone that was. It was noted that the ammo dump was 60 miles behind the front lines, so either the drone was launched by
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Yes. Technology has improved to the point where it's fairly easy to improvise cheap cruise missiles that might be effective against certain soft targets.
State armed forces have pretty much always been vulnerable to cheap and dangerous guerrilla tactics. That's why guerrillas use them.
They better figure out counter strategies (Score:2)
...because drones keep getting cheaper and better. The problem will otherwise get worse.
One has to wonder... (Score:3)
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Maybe you could get your personal take checked. The military is unlikely to buzz their own ship and then issue a press release complaining about it.
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Maybe you could get your personal take checked. The military is unlikely to buzz their own ship and then issue a press release complaining about it.
Unless the goal is to advertise that we now have stealth drones that can trivially come out of nowhere, surround ships, and threaten them autonomously, and they're good enough that they work on our ships so what chance does anyone else have? There are lies, damned lies, and press releases.
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Maybe you could get your personal take checked. The military is unlikely to buzz their own ship and then issue a press release complaining about it.
Unless the goal is to advertise that we now have stealth drones that can trivially come out of nowhere, surround ships, and threaten them autonomously, and they're good enough that they work on our ships so what chance does anyone else have? There are lies, damned lies, and press releases.
We would just come out and say it in that case. You act like we've never shown off a weapons system before.
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"...I mean, what better way to test your tech than to test it on the best military force in the world."
I mean, what better way to test your tech than to test it on the BIGGEST military force in the world.
Fixed that for you.
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"...I mean, what better way to test your tech than to test it on the best military force in the world."
I mean, what better way to test your tech than to test it on the BIGGEST military force in the world.
Fixed that for you.
That's not true. The US doesn't have the biggest military by number of soldiers, number of planes or number of ships. It does have the most expensive military. And it has the ability to consistently achieve 5:1 or 10:1 kill ratios, which means if you go one on one with them you will lose badly. All time the US air force has a 12:1 kill ratio. Means for every US plane that is shot down, there are 12 enemy planes that are shot down. Similar ratios for ground forces, tank combat and naval encounters. Th
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No Such Agency (Score:2)
Build a bigger drone (Score:2)
Sounds like a great time! (Score:2)
Must have been painted white. (Score:2)
Two explanations (Score:2)
I'm certain it's SPAWAR, an R&D unit of US Nav (Score:3)
Oh, this sounds so familiar.
SPAWAR (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, recently renamed to NAVWARSYSCOM, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Information_Warfare_Systems_Command) are pioneering developers of autonomous vehicles and systems, and have been for several decades. They are, in fact, pioneers of many key technologies, techniques and components, including things like ROS (the Robot Operating System). Their work spans many domains, including land, sea, air, space, communications, data analysis and more.
They essentially are a one-stop shop in this area, though they also participate in a large number of collaborations. I have been involved in a couple such collaborations.
Why would you want a swarm of unarmed drones, and how would you test it?
One possible reason (unrelated to any work I've done): Many cruise missiles use radar and optical cameras to identify and target their prey. The processing systems need a library of accurate target models. Drones can take scans and video that may be post-processed using photogrammetry to generate highly detailed 3D models. These models can be so accurate as to enable a surprising amount of reverse-engineering.
Beyond this, it is also important to understand how well a particular target can maneuver to avoid incoming cruise missiles, another job drones can do by closely monitoring ships during warfare training and exercises.
What could make my hypothesis likely? The simple fact that the presence of the drones did not trigger the launch of Navy helicopters or fighters to investigate. I am almost certain that, at most, only the ship's Commanding Officer knew of the drones. Independent of which, and such requests were likely blocked to let the drones do their thing, and see what the ship would do in response.
So, just another fun day for SPAWAR. Uh, I mean "NAVWARSYSCOM".
Why should you believe me? I'm also a US Navy veteran, and I served aboard ships that were involved in testing new technologies including satellite communications, radar and self-defense systems, both aboard the ship I was on, and as a ship monitoring such exercises. Even when such an exercise was not at all hidden, the folks conducting it often inserted unexpected and unplanned activities.
That's what this whole thing feels like.
Getting cool Drone Ads for this (Score:2)
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For military grade equipment see Penguin C Mk2 MIL
https://uavfactory.com/en/peng... [uavfactory.com]
Re: Questions nobody has asked (Score:2)
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The specific video link you provided has some reasonable non-alien explanation behind it though. A triangular aperture on the night-vision camera setup, possibly meant to improve focus, results in a triangular bokeh [wikipedia.org] if the object is still out of focus.
The flashing frequency corresponds to the brighter 1.5 second anti-collision strobe and dimmer 1.25 second wingtip strobe of standard airplane navigation lights.
Full explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Thank you for that.