We aren't talking about a tank that may move through thick brush and complex terrain that could mask threats anywhere, we are talking about a large boat in the water which by definition is a large expanse.

I mean yes whatever works works, but it is undeniably pathetic and a direct admission that the russian navy barely exists as a serious concept the way we typically think about navies.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't think you understand the scale or complexity of drone swarms. They aren't stopping a flying or submerged drone, they are often fighting dozens of them at once. Even the US is having issues with drones against Iran. Nearly every navy in the world is still learning to combat drones.

Would you have made similar statements a few decades ago about how any navy that gets hit by torpedoes shouldn't have any business being a navy?

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

long response also see subcomments with examples of how The Battle Of Lake Eyrie and the St. Nazaire Raid relate directly to this moment

Why do Drones make people's brains go to mush about swarms?

What the hell do you think Dive Bombers in WW2 attacking ships were?

What do you think the dense formations of level bombers in WW2 were?

What do you think the military strategy of China has been for awhile now since before drones even proliferated?

No, this isn't the same thing as torpodoes. Torpodoes are very high value precison guided munitions.

Yes, the threat of the "swarm" is always real, but the idea of naval power since before any of these technologies ever came into being was already in consideration of this force you claim is new. Naval power is about extending organized power over vast distances, with resiliency, duration and unimpeded ability to expedition.

The force of resistance a power such as this will encounter will always take the form of a "swarm" coming from some littoral context, and thus the question of fighting drones with naval ships isn't really a new one though it may seem to be.

Even before drones proliferated, most military analysts foresaw a conflict in the Strait Of Hormuz would involve Iran swarming with lots of independent, highly mobile "cheap" agents to overwhelm the US military. I don't point that out to negate the reality of the threat, but to emphasize that this isn't some radical new consideration but rather an acceleration of an old tactic.

[2002]

Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, simulating using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper simulated using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications in the model.

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships: one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of Blue's six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.

...

**After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. [The Following "Virtual Cope Cages" Were Implemented-->] Among other rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and during a combined parachute assault by the 82nd Airborne Division and Marines air assaulting on the then new and still controversial MV-22, Van Riper's forces were ordered not to shoot down any of the approaching aircraft.[8][9] Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered the location of Red Force units to be revealed.[10] The postmortem JFCOM report on MC02 would say "As the exercise progressed, the OPFOR free-play was eventually constrained to the point where the end state was scripted. This scripting ensured a blue team operational victory and established conditions in the exercise for transition operations."[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

"Cope Cages" aren't a new concept, it is just in the past they weren't usually so literal.

A Naval ship with a cage around the wheelhouse is not projecting power, it is a target, if somebody was in charge who was actually well versed in Naval Strategy on the russian side they would know that you have to set the conditions to build a Navy before you can do so. If you cannot defend your own littoral waterways and high value ports against small unit enemy incursions and sabotage, you have not set the conditions to build a Navy. It does not matter if you already possess ships and submarines, you still have not set the proper strategic conditions to begin to build a Navy and thus those vessels are worse than useless as they will distract the public into thinking they possess a Navy when they do not.

This has been true since navies used Triremes, it is just reflected into a new context journalists like to hallucinate as new instead of as part of a long developing story that was ignored by some until they had no choice but to learn it the hard way.

Contrast this with Ukraine acquiring Minesweepers as a very intentional choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkmaar-class_minehunter

A note on "swarms" and how they won the Battle Of Midway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_SBD_Dauntless

At the Battle of Midway, Marine Corps SBDs were not as effective. One squadron, VMSB-241, flying from Midway Atoll, was not trained in the techniques of dive bombing with their new Dauntlesses (having just partially converted from the SB2U Vindicator).[13] Its pilots resorted to the slower but easier glide bombing technique. This led to many of the SBDs being shot down during their glide, although one survivor from these attacks, now on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum, is the last surviving aircraft to have flown in the battle. The carrier-borne squadrons were effective, especially when they were escorted by Grumman F4F Wildcats.[14] The success of dive bombing resulted from one important factor,

Unlike American squadrons that attacked shortly before one at a time, allowing defending Japanese Zero fighters to concentrate on each squadron to shoot them down or drive them away from the carriers, three squadrons totaling 47 SBDs (VS-6, VB-6, and VB-3), one squadron of 12 TBD torpedo aircraft (VT-3), and six F4F fighters (from VF-3) all arrived simultaneously, with two of the SBD squadrons (VS-6 and VB-6) arriving from a different direction from the other squadrons. Without central fighter direction, the approximately 40 Zeros concentrated on the TBDs, with some fighting the F4Fs covering the TBDs, leaving the SBDs unhindered by fighter opposition in their approach and attack (although most of the TBDs were shot down).[15]

The concept of The Swarm is not new....

[–] imrighthere@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you can't physically keep a fat orange clown in diapers from destroying your country you shouldn't be in the business of having a country lol.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

Can't argue with that.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

another example from military history with The Battle Of Lake Eyrie

Here is another good example of how a Naval War always involves setting the conditions to build a Navy first. If the British could have sent a random yahoo in to burn the ships being assembled on the Great Lakes the question would not have been how to defend the ships better against people but rather where the failure to properly set the conditions to build a Navy happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Erie

Nevertheless, the Americans lacked any counter to the British armed vessels. The only American warship on Lake Erie, the brig Adams, was not ready for service at the start of the war, and when the American army of Brigadier General William Hull abandoned its invasion of Canada, Adams was pinned down in Detroit by the British batteries at Sandwich on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. The British Major-General Isaac Brock used his control of the lake to defeat Hull's army at the Siege of Detroit, by cutting the American supply lines and rapidly transferring himself and some reinforcements to Amherstburg from where they launched a successful landing on the American side of the Detroit River.

The British took Adams when Detroit was surrendered, renaming her Detroit. Together with the brig Caledonia, which had been commandeered from the Canadian North West Company, she was boarded and captured near Fort Erie on 9 October, by American sailors and soldiers led by Lieutenant Jesse Elliott. Detroit ran aground on an island in the middle of the Niagara River and was set on fire to prevent her being recaptured. Caledonia was taken to the navy yard at Black Rock and commissioned into the United States Navy.[4] Also present at Black Rock were the schooners Somers and Ohio and the sloop-rigged Trippe, which had all been purchased by the United States Navy and were being converted into gunboats.[5] While the British held Fort Erie and the nearby batteries which dominated the Niagara River, all these vessels were pinned down and unable to leave Black Rock.

This is the most analagous point for russia here in the Battle Of Lake Erie, they have had their ability to concentrate and deploy Naval power utterly shattered and what remains of their Navy is atomized into protected strongholds unable to manuever.

In January 1813, William Jones (who had replaced Hamilton as the United States Secretary of the Navy) ordered the construction of two brig-rigged corvettes at Presque Isle, and transferred shipwright Noah Brown there from Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario to take charge of construction. Other than their rig and crude construction (such as using wooden pegs instead of nails because of shortages of the latter), the two brigs were close copies of the contemporary USS Hornet. The heaviest armament for the ships came from foundries on Chesapeake Bay, and were moved to Presque Isle only with great difficulty. (The Americans were fortunate in that some of their largest cannon had been dispatched shortly before raiding parties under Rear-Admiral George Cockburn destroyed a foundry at Frenchtown on the eastern seaboard.)[9] [Note, the British ALMOST destroyed the necessary conditions for the US to build a Navy, but the raid came too late.]. However, the Americans could get other materials and fittings from Pittsburgh, which was expanding as a manufacturing center, and smaller guns were borrowed from the Army.

^ The above step is where russia is stuck. If the US could not protect their shipyards that could release a Naval force onto the Great Lakes, the problem would not have been a lack of protection from human attack by the ships themselves, it would have been in a failure to adequately set the conditions to build a Navy.

To put it another way, my entire point is that russia is admitting they are stuck at this step by putting Cope Cages on their warships while they still awkwardly have left over ships from when they could more credibly claim they posessed a true Navy and so they are still stuck pretending they do.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Another example from WW2 where what became the British Commandos purposefully destroyed the only repair base large enough for the German Terpitz Battleship to be repaired if she was damaged in battle (which is always going to happen eventually) through a small unit incursion/sabotage raid that was unfortunately mostly a one way ticket for many British.

Germany believed they had an Atlantic Surface Navy in WW2 and what Britain did here was point out Germany had not properly set the conditions to build a Navy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid

St Nazaire was attacked because the loss of its dry dock would force Germany's largest battleship, Tirpitz, to return to home waters if she were damaged. This would expose her to attack by British forces including the Home Fleet in the English Channel or the North Sea.

The obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown, accompanied by 18 smaller craft, crossed the English Channel to the Atlantic coast of France and rammed into the Normandie dry dock south gate. The ship had been packed with delayed-action explosives, well hidden within a steel and concrete case, that detonated later that day, putting the dock out of service until 1948.[4]

...

The battleship Tirpitz never entered the Atlantic. She remained in Norwegian fjords to threaten Allied shipping until she was destroyed by the RAF in Operation Catechism on 12 November 1944.[82]

The image of the Tirpitz cowering amid towering Fjord walls and a bristle of anti-aircraft gun nests and troop emplacements until her final moment of annihilation is the exact same one as the image posted at the top of this article of russia's warship with a Cope Cage around the wheelhouse, just reflected backwards in time into a different context of fascism.

False, Childish Power...

[–] Promethiel@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I just want to say thank you for the thorough and deeply sourced commentary.

Your grasp on the military history involved, the nuanced literal meaning of the requirements to possess the requisite strategic position to fit a literal definition of a navy, and your balanced point of view on the whole swarms topic (I too agree that a human piloted swarm that is effectively controlled is terrifying, and thankfully not yet quite on display for all that the swarm behavior itself is a well established norm in warfare), and really the whole thing was a joy to read and clear to grasp once the time was devoted to digest your comments throughout the thread.

Thank you for helping make the fediverse a worthwhile place to enjoy even just lurking.

[–] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But the lack of manpower constraints has increased scale massively. Before swarms required risk of life. Now it requires dudes on remote controls sitting "safely".

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't agree with this, you need a massive amount of ground crews to distribute shaheds and launch them.

Further, there is a big topic of discussion in unmanned vehicle design about how to manage more than a small number of drones as a human overseer. You can say "make it all automated" and wave your hands but those weapons are going to be stiff, unreactive and easily flankable along infinite dimensions by actual human pilots using FPV drones and such.

A swarm of HUMAN PILOTED drones is terrifying, but that is in large part because you brought together a bunch of highly trained human beings who are all extremely motivated to accomplish an objective together.

I am not saying the point you are making is totally wrong, I am saying it is nuanced and the failure of the russian navy here is far deeper than just failing to properly protect against drones.

[–] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wasn't Ukraine blocking drones with nets?

Warfare is evolving. If you have anti-defense for 20, they'll send 30. If 30, they'll send 40. Sometimes you need something as a "safety net" just in case. It is better to have it than not. Russia militarily is a joke in many ways. Disliking them doesn't mean everything they do is stupid.

Most of the threats now need to be adapted for by even leading military powers. What defends now won't in 2 years. Adaptability is the main advantage now.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah protect your roads with drone nets, sure.

Protect your howitzers with drone nets too sure.

Heck, place cages on your armored vehicles, just make sure to do it in a way that isn't overly bulky and defeats the purpose (i.e. why Turtle "Tanks" are a failure).

Placing a cage on a naval ship around the wheelhouse? That is an admission you don't have a warship but a target.