Mystery drones hovered over Navy destroyers off California, report says
The drones were many miles from the mainland and were able to stay aloft more than 90 minutes, longer than commercially available drones.
Several drones repeatedly swarmed Navy destroyers off the California coast in July 2019, and it remains unclear who was behind the brazen nighttime flights, according to a report on the website The Drive, quoting ship logs.
As many as six drones flew around the warships at a time in often low-visibility conditions near Southern California’s Channel Islands over a number of days, with the drones flashing lights and prompting security precautions onboard, according to the report.
Excuse my ignorance but isn’t that the perfect time for the CWIS to go “Brrrrrrt.”
Why are we letting unknown drones buzz our ships at sea?
This should be an absolute no-no.
The next time this happens, put them in the drink with the 20mm and do a forensic analysis of the wreckage to determine who sent them.
Then do a forensic analysis to see who excised the brains and balls from our Navy.
We have never been more vulnerable.
Internally.
Externally.
Both.
Clearly the sane ROE for drones is “shoot the moment they get too close”. With potentially manned planes the ROE may want to be somewhat more cautious, but even there, “buzzing” a Navy ship seems like a good time to be removed from the gene pool.
Just to point out: ‘what goes up, must come down’. And really, unless it’s a bona fide attack, heaven help the ship’s captain if that 20mm fire comes down anywhere near a manned craft.
Too close to shore. Current CIWS too massive for drones. No way to target something that small. Too agile.
The security and .mil trade magazines are all full of RFPs for drone detection and interdiction, and adverts for same… No one has a good working solution that I can see, and of the options out there, as far as I can tell, none are deployed shipboard.
FWIW, if you have any novel ideas along these lines, there is a SHITTON of money to be made if you can make it work.
Most of the current systems use EW against the drones, essentially microwaving them to death. Just detecting them can be really hard, which is probably why they called in the visual id guys. Most of the detection systems seem to use EW again, looking for emissions, especially 2.4ghz control and video transmission.
also fwiw, the article calling them ‘drones’ repeatedly despite their observed actions being FAR outside the performance envelop for any known existing ‘drone’, seems to be a bit disingenuous. Why would a hostile actor with outstanding tech tip their hand in this way? Nothing about this makes sense except the least likely scenario.
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If I remember my training (from ~30 years ago) correctly, the drones were outside of the envelope for CIWS:
1 Must be in the air
2 Must be within 2000 yards
3 Must be moving directly towards the ship
3 is the killer here. CIWS won’t engage.
I am seeing false flag here. As noted, the operation of these drones was WAY out of the normal parameters of anything commercially available.
Would not be surprised if they claim NK or Israel (more likely the latter) was behind it.
In fact, I would not be surprised if there is an effort to claim MAGA people were behind it.
Not the first time drone swarms have flown over our assets:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36085/troubling-drone-incursions-have-occurred-over-guams-thaad-anti-ballistic-missile-battery
If it’s an AEGIS ship, just use the radar to zap the little bugs.
Considering that the Navy has the ability to do the same to pilots within a 20 mile radius.
Anyone notice that when the government gets more egregiously egregious than usual, out come the aliens?