Navy Ships Swarmed By Drones, Not UFOs, Defense Officials Confirm (thedrive.com) 103
The Drive's Adam Kehoe noticed something during this week's UFO hearings in the U.S. Congress. "After intense public speculation, stacks of official documents obtained via the Freedom Of Information Act, ambiguous statements from top officials, and an avalanche of media attention, it has now been made clear that the mysterious swarming of U.S. Navy ships off the Southern California coast in 2019 was caused by drones, not otherworldly UFOs or other mysterious craft.
"Raising even more questions, a similar drone swarm event has occurred off another coast, as well." These revelations came from top Department of Defense officials during a recent and much-anticipated house hearing on UFOs, which you can read all about here.
The strange series of events in question unfolded around California's Channel Islands in July of 2019. On multiple evenings, swarms of unidentified drones were spotted operating around U.S. Navy vessels. In numerous instances, the drones flew within close proximity to ships, even crossing directly over their decks. The behavior provoked defensive reactions from the ships, including the deployment of emergency security teams... Deck logs demonstrate that the Navy appears to have drilled and implemented a variety of counter-drone techniques in response to these incidents. This eventually included the deployment of Northrop Grumman's Drone Restricted Access Using Known EW (DRAKE) platform. The DRAKE system is a man-portable backpack that allows sailors to use radio frequency signals to interrupt the control links of drones. The DRAKE system appears to have been actually deployed in one of the incidents....
It is entirely unclear where the drones were operating from, how they were controlled, or who was controlling them. Still, the Navy could identify the objects as drones without those questions being fully answered at this time.... The Department of Defense's open acknowledgment of these drone swarm events just off U.S. shores shows that the threat is not theoretical. It is also not a future threat. Significant drone swarm events have occurred in the last three years, unknown to the public, and evidently unresolved by defense authorities. Judging by what is known to date about the 2019 incident, it is clear that the United States is not well-positioned to detect, identify and neutralize such threats. It remains to be seen what level of priority these issues will receive by lawmakers in relation to more speculative questions surrounding UAP.
If anything else, top confirmation that adversaries are operating swarms among America's most powerful weapons in training areas where their most sensitive capabilities are put to use should make national headlines, but because it was buried in sensationalism around UFOs, it clearly did not.
"Raising even more questions, a similar drone swarm event has occurred off another coast, as well." These revelations came from top Department of Defense officials during a recent and much-anticipated house hearing on UFOs, which you can read all about here.
The strange series of events in question unfolded around California's Channel Islands in July of 2019. On multiple evenings, swarms of unidentified drones were spotted operating around U.S. Navy vessels. In numerous instances, the drones flew within close proximity to ships, even crossing directly over their decks. The behavior provoked defensive reactions from the ships, including the deployment of emergency security teams... Deck logs demonstrate that the Navy appears to have drilled and implemented a variety of counter-drone techniques in response to these incidents. This eventually included the deployment of Northrop Grumman's Drone Restricted Access Using Known EW (DRAKE) platform. The DRAKE system is a man-portable backpack that allows sailors to use radio frequency signals to interrupt the control links of drones. The DRAKE system appears to have been actually deployed in one of the incidents....
It is entirely unclear where the drones were operating from, how they were controlled, or who was controlling them. Still, the Navy could identify the objects as drones without those questions being fully answered at this time.... The Department of Defense's open acknowledgment of these drone swarm events just off U.S. shores shows that the threat is not theoretical. It is also not a future threat. Significant drone swarm events have occurred in the last three years, unknown to the public, and evidently unresolved by defense authorities. Judging by what is known to date about the 2019 incident, it is clear that the United States is not well-positioned to detect, identify and neutralize such threats. It remains to be seen what level of priority these issues will receive by lawmakers in relation to more speculative questions surrounding UAP.
If anything else, top confirmation that adversaries are operating swarms among America's most powerful weapons in training areas where their most sensitive capabilities are put to use should make national headlines, but because it was buried in sensationalism around UFOs, it clearly did not.
As Ukraine has demonstrated (Score:3)
The only good response to drones overhead is to shoot them down with whatever you have. AKs, AA guns, manpads, mobile missile systems and yes, electronic devices. With the weaponry U.S. naval ships have, taking out drones shouldn't be that difficult except for the small target which doesn't show up well on radar.
Re:As Ukraine has demonstrated (Score:4, Funny)
Breaking: footage of naval officers tracking and shooting a drone on a warship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Radar will take down a hobby drone (Score:4, Interesting)
Turning on the ship's radar will take down hobby drones within a few hundred yards. I learned this the hard way. Those things are sending out MEGAwatts of RF power. Enough to cause any unshielded MCUs in the area to instantly go into reset loop.
Re:Radar will take down a hobby drone (Score:4, Interesting)
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At work in the early 90s, navy dockyard, one day I could hear a rattling sound at regular intervals. It was the metal siding on the building as far as I could determine, but why? Then I noticed a search radar rotating, and the rattling noise happened every time it was pointing at us. A call was made, the reply was that they weren't transmitting. The rattling stopped right away though. Weren't transmitting my ass.
Re: As Ukraine has demonstrated (Score:4, Interesting)
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Need to have software capable of doing that.
Too many targets among birds (Score:1)
True, that's where AI or AI-like capabilities are needed. But enemy drones will eventually learn to mimic birds using AI also. So it's now a cat and mouse game. We may need reconnaissance drones which have the narrow job of spotting some up close. They can be faster than the enemy because they don't have weapons and don't need to fly far. Maybe they can have disposable rocket engines to get up fast and save fuel, sort of like a drone-head instead of a war-head.
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It's likely not a huge problem on the ocean miles from land given the small range of drones, but the US has stealth drones that don't get picked up on radar, so I guess even AI is ultimately useless in that case.
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alternatives to radar are coming online due to stealth tech.
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Attempts at alternatives to radar are coming online due to stealth tech.
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They're getting better over time.
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Would their maneuverability be that different? Birds, especially large birds, any distance off shore will spend a lot of time simply gliding, often in circles.
Could always throw out some herring or such, birds will change their maneuvering then.
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Wouldn't filtering help? I imagine that as long as you can track targets, the maneuvering of birds and drones will be different, even if they have comparable Doppler shifts and radar return strengths (just like horses move very differently from cars).
If this was all it took to confuse a radar system, I would just program my drones to only maneuver like birds.
Also, search radars would give different returns compared to tracking radars. Imagine you are in a totally dark warehouse, sitting on a swivel chair. With a search radar, you have a flood light and as you spin around you can see what is around you as you rotate in a complete circle, but you can't tell if something has moved until you rotate back to that same direction. With a tracking radar, you
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If this was all it took to confuse a radar system, I would just program my drones to only maneuver like birds.
I imagine that this might work with small drones, but I suspect that military vessels are not dealing with very small drones, at least not on high seas. If you find a way to make a half tonne aircraft maneuver like a bird, you might be eligible for some kind of aeronautical award.
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If you find a way to make a half tonne aircraft maneuver like a bird, you might be eligible for some kind of aeronautical award.
True. When you mentioned filtering to differentiate between birds and drones, I was thinking of "drones" as a synonym for small quad-copter UAVs. I hadn't thought about half-ton UAVs being confused with birds, but I was thinking of individual returns instead of a the return from a larger group of individuals like a flock.
To be honest, the term "drone" encompasses so many different flying vehicles, and "birds" could mean anything from a hummingbird to a flock of ravens, we would have to define much more co
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What's really scary about this is the fact that at least some of the weapons systems on those ships are Internet-connected, including WiFi. Our country uses (some) US-made naval weapons and the first thing we did was turn off the WiFi, because, you know, a hostile foreign power might decide to ignore the "Authorised access only" banner message and access them anyway. Remember the scene from Star Wars where they turn the deck gun around and start firing into the deck of the barge? That was the scenario gi
Two options on UFOs (Score:2)
1. (the actual reality) They are not real.
2. They are real and don't wish to be discovered. In which case it might be a good idea to suppress one's urge to say "OMG, a UFO" to the world. That's what makes me think UFOlogists aren't very logical or let their emotional needs get in the way of their logic and objectiveness.
Anyway, what societal benefit can come about from believing in aliens without any solid proof and nothing but some grainy pictures that could be anything? "Aliens did it," like religion can
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But like pretty much any scam, if you're morally inclined to exploit other people that way, there's a lot of suckers that may throw their hard earned money at you.
Re: Two options on UFOs (Score:2)
Or become the next "Heaven's Gate". :-\
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It's not about societal benefit. It's about "Haha, I know something that the experts don't".
Re: Two options on UFOs (Score:2)
The ones living in multimillion dollar mansions and driving around in nice cars typically don't have this mindset for some reason.
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Compared to what?
The only thing we actually know is that out of the millions of species that we know about, the only one that has risen to the level of technological intelligence is exactly as violent as us.
The idea that violence is contra-intelligence or contra-survival is wild speculation, foisted off on us by bad SciFi.
Re:Two options on UFOs (Score:4, Informative)
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One, we are a violent species.
Compared to what? What a load of emotional hippie nonsense. A basic knowledge of evolution and society will show that complete pacifism is unsustainable. A little game theory shows it ends very badly. But most of the world is very peaceful. Fewer people die violent deaths than any other generation in history. And certainly less violent than prehistoric times, based on archaeological evidence.
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We might offer a veterinarian. There was a story about that in Analog, decades ago; the aliens (many races) had set up a zoo on some planet, and they needed a veterinarian familiar with Earth's animals to help them set it up. He was not well liked on return to Earth.
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"we are a violent species"
I'd propose that we (humans) are actually the LEAST violent species that has ever existed. What % of humans die and/or are victims of violence compared to every other species on Earth?
How many people grow up and get old and die without ever experiencing violence?
How many wolves/giraffes/spiders/eagles/ants grow up and get old and die without ever experiencing violence?
How many species always resort to violence when choosing a mate, food, territory, etc. Yet, most humans don't resor
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Worth mentioning, if your reflex when seeing an unidentified object is to claim it's an alien, then something is wrong with you. No need to jump to conclusions like that.
Re: Two options on UFOs (Score:2)
Exactly what the people ordered to testify were saying over and over.
Unidentified means unidentified. Unexplained means unexplained. Asking for the person to identify or explain it was pointless, yet many questions were variations on explaining it over, and over, and over again.
Too many people have their mind made up in advance. For some it means foreign aircraft or spaceships. In sci-fi it may mean human-like aliens. For others it is time travel and government conspiracy. For UAP observations it merely m
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Exactly, a lot of fools think if something is unidentified or unknown it means it was aliens, instead of the fact that there are a ton of more plausible explanations. It's like if I asked you what color somebody's car is and you tell me you don't know .. I will conclude it must be purple with polka dots.
Re: Two options on UFOs (Score:2)
I've seen plastic bags float up on high in the wind that looked like something that people would think was a UFO.
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You missed an option: they are a new kind of life-form, perhaps a kind of plasma animal.
> Anyway, what societal benefit can come about from...
If UFOs are a legitimate mystery beyond mistaken identity, then they are one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time.
What do you expect. (Score:2, Troll)
You float a huge death machine around in the ocean and you don't expect people to want to take a look?
What idiot wouldn't make the drones autonomous so they can't be interrupted by taking out the RF?
An enthusiastic hobbyist could make a drone swarm to do this with the resources available today.
The military should get used to being observed, just like the rest of us.
Re: What do you expect. (Score:3, Insightful)
That huge "death machine" might one say save you and your families lives from an enemy. If you're some pacifist type go explain your views to some Ukrainians and see how well they go down,
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You confuse human nature with how the world is. I suggested they get used to it because that's how the world is. It has no bearing on what I think about the utility of huge death machines - which is of course a double edged sword and circumstances can make a lot of difference.
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Death machine? Not really. Over 99% of the time they are doing reconnaissance. Reconnaissance prevents surprises and helps keep those nice Chinese and Russians a bit more honest than is their nature.
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The same could be said for the drones.
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"You confuse human nature with how the world is." Well, yes, I do. Not sure what the confusion is.
Re: What do you expect. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it shouldn't be insulting to call Navy warships "huge death machines". That's exactly what they are. They're designed to break things and kill people with extreme prejudice.
It would be a better world if we didn't need huge death machines, but... well, Putin, Pooh... there are foreign leaders who would happily subjugate others if we didn't protect ourselves and our allies' interests.
Re: What do you expect. (Score:3)
Technically it's the jets and missiles that are the death machines, the ship is just a floating runway. However its perjorative terminology that says a lot about the poster. They could equally be called peace machines as trouble tends to stop when they show up.
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Carriers have at least got some missiles, but you can think of the aircraft as the carrier's primary armaments...
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"Technically" the bullet is the weapon, the gun is just a runway.
"Technically" falling from great heights is harmless, rough landings are the problem.
"Technically", statements starting with "technically" are often "technically" useless.
"Huge death machine" was first used here to illustrate in a fun way that an object with the military capabilities of a warship is something worth observing, and that this should surprise noone. Reading ideological agendas into that does say a lot about the poster.
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I'm guessing you think a toyota pickup is a death machine too. Don't know what I'm talking about? Not so smart then are you.
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Dude, you sound dumber than the shit i took today.
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LOL :) And people who start a sentence with "dude" come across as real intellectuals :) Thank you for giving me a laugh.
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1) I never claimed i am an intellectual and i didn't write my post with the intention of suggesting i am one.
2) The use of the word 'dude' signifies the level i selected for communicating to you specifically. I don't normally use that word, but your posts seem to justify using it nevertheless.
3) Whether a toyota pickup can be classified as a death machine is decided by its use, intended or otherwise. So yes, there are contexts where toyota pickups can be viewed as death machines.
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1) Don't worry, I don't think anyone ever thought you were.
2) Of course you did sonny, of course you did. Perhaps you might persuade mummy to believe you but no one else will.
3) Similarly my laptop is too if I hit someone in the hyoid with it.
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1) Well, then why did you mention it, huh?
2) Your shrink doesn't like it when you paraphrase her.
3) In a diminished use of the term, sure. Tho ideally you'd want to commit quite some murders with it to justify the use of the words 'death machine'. Also, there is the thing about killing efficiency. The words 'death machine' suggest a certain aptness in the killing. Your laptops capabilities in this respect are rudimentary.
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>"Huge death machine" was first used here to illustrate in a fun way that an object with the military capabilities of a warship is something worth observing,
That is exactly the sense in which I meant it. It is a perspective someone or something might have, whether individual or government, which would lead them to use currently available technology to take a look. The point being that it is going to happen and they should get used to it.
Re: What do you expect. (Score:2)
Anyone could make a drone or buy one these days. Clearly, the navy hasn't gotten with the times.
They have been lucky so far that none of them had dropped a payload of dog shit on the deck yet.
Drone swarms helped to sink the Moskva (Score:1)
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Re:Drone swarms helped to sink the Moskva (Score:5, Interesting)
Not exactly. It's easy to look up the report, and according to one source, there was a single Bayraktar. This served two purposes. It provided precise location data allowing the missiles to leave their tracking radar off until right before striking, which avoided alarms that would have given the crew time to respond. It also provided a distraction, with the crew focused on the Bayraktar so that they didn't notice the missiles on radar in time to apply countermeasures.
That said, there's no reason a swarm of drones couldn't serve the same roles, possibly even more effectively. And, of course, there's no reason the drones can't be armed like Switchblades.
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That's the difference between a well-trained crew and a not-so-well-trained crew. You're right, that the drone should have heightened their alertness. The report I read online put forth the distraction theory as well as the targeting. Without any reports from people involved on the ship, we'll never know if there was a distraction problem.
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Alertness does not really help.
The Neptuns are a bit like Exocets. They fly pretty low, if sea conditions allow, below 10m - even down to 4m. A normal radar would not see them, IR sensors probably would. Then: you need a weapon able to be aimed at them. Looking from the pictures, it seems the Moskwa only had one cannon at the bow.
If they had helicopters flying, perhaps an air to air missile had worked. But to give you an idea about the math, take meters as yards, if you really need feet, then multiply by 3.
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Sure... Alien Drones (Score:2)
Re: Sure... Alien Drones (Score:2)
It doesnt have to outfly it, it just has to get near enough to it in order to detonate or get in it's way without the pilot noticing and physics does the rest.
Or secret (Score:3)
It could well have been a secret operation by the US Navy both to test crew response and to evaluate the effectiveness of the swarms. Enough information was already public that revealing that it was a drone swarm wasn't a big deal, but they don't have any need to tell people that it was our swarm.
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What makes you think the confusion was intentional? The rest of your screed is bollocks, although the former alleged president's pals in authoritarian countries will be sure to take notice.
IF its an UNKNOWN DRONE, ITS A UFO (Score:3)
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I realize pedantry is common here on Slashdot - I've engaged in it numerous times myself. But while you are technically correct (the best kind of correct)... "UFO" carries a specific connotation to the average person, and that definition does not include drones of a terrestrial origin.
It's one of the reasons the military chooses to use the term "UAP" (unidentified aerial phenomena) rather than UFO - there's simply less baggage.
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You're technically correct, of course, but it's not the way language usually works.
You see an object in the air and you can't identify it. Is it a UFO? Technically, yes. But how specific do you need to be before it's "identified"? If you're calling it an "unidentified object", that usually means you can't tell even the general class of objects it could be. If you could tell it was a bird but you didn't know the species, it would be an "unidentified bird". If you could tell it was a drone but can't tell
Another military division performing testing... (Score:2)
These are other military divisions performing testing against the current technologies and operating procedures to understand how to better defend (and improve offensive) of their drone platforms.
Only real explanation. That's what I would do - Probably submarine launched.
Armed Drone Swarms (Score:2)
So unless we develop good countermeasures, a swarm of armed drones could be a serious threat to ships. Imagine if they have capabilities like the anti-armor Switchblade drones. The drones are programmed ahead of time to attack a given suspected weak point on a ship (munitions, fuel, aircraft hangar, etc.). They shut off their radio when they see the target, so RF defenses are useless, using optics/IR to hit the target. Even if the armor is far better than a single drone can pierce, if you have a hundred
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War is ever changing as new technologies allow new tactics which require new countermeasures.
Yeah, I am assuming various countries' militaries are currently taking notes regarding how well Ukraine is making use of drones and whatnot. And they may also be having some "Oh Sh**" discussions, especially with regards to ships.
Re:Armed Drone Swarms (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. Lots of military planners like to compare the cost to attack vs. defend. If your enemy is lobbing rockets at you for $1000 each, an your system for stopping them costs $100,000 per anti-missile missile, you've got a big problem. For sustainable warfare, you always want to be spending less than the enemy. Using cheap drones to attack puts a big new item in the cheap attack column, and everyone has seen this. Lots of militaries, both large and small, will be investing heavily into combat drones, so larger countries will be likewise researching and investing in countermeasures.
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Obviously you use the tools you have when you need to use them, even if you're spending way more than your opponent. I think the idea is more about the long term. If your opponent can keep buying rockets for $1000, they'll bankrupt you if they can force you to pay $100,000 to shoot each one down. So you find a better way of countering the attacks.
The example I'm thinking of is Israeli defense. (Let's ignore the sides, politics, and who is right for now.) The numbers were something like the above, so Is
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"Even if the armor is far better than a single drone can pierce" Ships are not armored, haven't been since the last battleship was built in 1944.
That said, and speaking from experience (on a ship hit by an artillery shell), it would take a lot of drones to seriously damage a modern navy ship like a destroyer or cruiser, and even more to significantly damage a carrier (unless you could fly it into the hanger deck). It could however be done if you had a hundred drones hit in close proximity, as you suggest.
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You underestimate the explosive power of modern explosives.
I suggest to read up about Exocet missiles and/or modern torpedos.
A drone big enough to carry 5kg or so in explosives most likely can sink anything.
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Ships are not armored, haven't been since the last battleship was built in 1944.
Warships are not armored in the same way but still incorporate armor (steel, and kevlar).
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What about blinding the ship so it can't effectively use it's weapons - e.g. damaging radar or optical sensors? If that is possible, you don't need to physically destroy the ship, just render its weapons ineffective. Or you could go after any crew who come up on deck, making it difficult and dangerous to perform maintenance.
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"computerized M5 rifles with computerized optical or radar targeting to take out drones": there are already computerized gattling guns, intended to take out incoming aircraft. The Moskva had them; it's unclear whether they were used.
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The drones are programmed ahead of time to attack a given suspected weak point on a ship (munitions, fuel, aircraft hangar, etc.).
CIWS like Phalanx and Goaltender would be prime targets, as well as radars. Take those out and bigger weapons could easily finish the job.
Kehoe/Keyhoe (Score:3)
In an interesting bit of UFO historical synchronicity, this story was written by Adam Kehoe, and the Marine Corps aviator and researcher who led the drive in the last half of the 20th century leading to government research into UFOs was Donald Keyhoe. I wonder if they're related.
I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, but it wouldn't be the first time that the government recycled names to spread disinformation about UFOs.
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it wouldn't be the first time that the government recycled names to spread disinformation about UFOs.
What?
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OK, if you must know, this gets into some deep dark conspiracy-theory rabbit holes.
The two I'm thinking of are James Shelby Downard and Charles "Angel of Death" Hayes. Now understand, I'm not cosigning any of these wild conspiracy theories, but they're out there. You won't find what you're looking for in any Wikipedia entries, either. You'd need to look at the Penny Royal, or The Farm podcasts. It gets deep real fast.
I don't want you to think I buy into any of this stuff. See, I find that listenin
Joeda (Score:2)
"Begun, The Drone Wars Has"
Duh... (Score:2)
This was obvious to anybody not off with the fairies. Doesn't make for as good media ratings though.
No shit. (Score:2)
May 22, 1949 James Forrestal (Score:1)
Who's drones? (Score:2)
Perhaps they're alien drones?
ALL surface naval ships now obsolete? (Score:2)
Various rumours about Chinese submarines breaching US fleet manoeuvres have raise this question before, but this story makes it even more clear; defending surface ships in a war is going to be very hard and maybe impossible.
We've been here before; WWII demonstrated that battleships were now useless against serious aerial attack. However the absence of a serious war between first world level equipped armed forces means that we've not seen where the new issues are. If, as has been speculated in the thread, th
There is no defense against drone swarms (Score:2)
I think the navy wants us to think about UFOs, not drone swarms which are ultimately something no large ship can defend against. If the navy admitted this, then the concept of large manned ships would have to disappear, the navy would have to completely retool and (here's the big one), virtually every ship officer would lose their jobs, to be replaced with computer jockeys as modern fleets of unmanned floating and flying drones became the norm.