Anti-bridge, pontoon and ferry suicide drone.

Would it be feasible to develop an underwater based drone to target river crossing logistics?

I'm thinking of something that can be deployed a fair distance upstream or downstream of the targeted river crossing. The drone would need to carry a fairly significant payload for a serious bridge but pontoons and ferries would go down easy and you could always deploy multiple to work as one to target a specific point on a bridges structure to bring it down. It would have to be able to traverse shallow waters and be as undetectable as possible.

I think a crude version could be made by Ukraine even if it has to be piloted until the last stretch instead of autonomous. If mexican cartels can make submersible coke transporters I think Ukraine could pull it off. Thoughts?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It’s so sad we didn’t get to the Ukrains spec ops dolphins planting C4 on this thing

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Seems they can't into frogmen. Sad.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    you mean a guided torpedo?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Mount a MK48 ADCAP control system on a truck
      >Add sound library of vehicles crossing pontoon bridges
      >Wire up to torpedo
      >Toss in river
      >Guide upstream to crossing zone
      >Turn on passive sonar
      >ADCAP guides itself right under BMP
      >BOOOOOSHhhhhhh

      I dig it.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Wouldn't you need visual contact with to torpedo to be able to guide it.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Not strictly. Torpedoes essentially have 2 modes: on and off the wire. On the wire, their sensor data is relayed back to the weapons officer, and he can manually direct the torpedo. Off the wire, it will go hunting on its own without further input. For on-the-wire guidance within a river, you have 2 options. Option 1 is to use the torpedo's active sonar as a terrain scanner to avoid bottoming out or hitting the banks. Option 2 is that if you have good enough maps, you can run it essentially on the surface and track the torpedo's path against your known starting point to guide it by dead reckoning. Terminal guidance would probably happen after taking the last bend towards the crossing, at which point you set it to hunt, cut the wire, and it will seek a target sound, move under it, and detonate.

          And if you really wanted to be cheeky, you might even be able to do the latter approach with a mobile mine, which will settle at the bottom and wait for a target sound, then launch a torpedo at it, so you can set it up when there's nobody home or in anticipation of the enemy setting up a crossing there.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You can't dig water honey

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Something like that but you cant really deploy a guided torpedo into a winding river from a trailer attached to a pickup, which is what I had more in mind. The crossings are in enemy territory but 100km or more upstream or downstream may be a different story.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You could probably terrain scan with the active sensor and just fly-by-wire it, at least until the Russians catch on and start deploying sonobuoys and torpedo nets.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Would be great to build a disposable drone to house an existing torpedo system. The drone can ferry the torpedo down the river to a launch point. Can existing torpedos be used to target bridge supports?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Disclaimer: not dolphin
            Eh, maybe? Bridge struts don't do any of the things ships do that torpedoes look for, so if you were going to do it unmodified, you'd need to do it with wire guidance, a contact fuze, and while hammering away on the active sonar to get a picture of the target, and hope you don't hit a rock instead. If you modded one with a camera and still ran it by wire, then you could probably make it more feasible, but that's still a very expensive weapon system being used far out of role. If it requires manual guidance, then I'd rather run with something along the lines of an underwater demolition drone that plants thermite charges, so you can recover and reuse it.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              Not strictly. Torpedoes essentially have 2 modes: on and off the wire. On the wire, their sensor data is relayed back to the weapons officer, and he can manually direct the torpedo. Off the wire, it will go hunting on its own without further input. For on-the-wire guidance within a river, you have 2 options. Option 1 is to use the torpedo's active sonar as a terrain scanner to avoid bottoming out or hitting the banks. Option 2 is that if you have good enough maps, you can run it essentially on the surface and track the torpedo's path against your known starting point to guide it by dead reckoning. Terminal guidance would probably happen after taking the last bend towards the crossing, at which point you set it to hunt, cut the wire, and it will seek a target sound, move under it, and detonate.

              And if you really wanted to be cheeky, you might even be able to do the latter approach with a mobile mine, which will settle at the bottom and wait for a target sound, then launch a torpedo at it, so you can set it up when there's nobody home or in anticipation of the enemy setting up a crossing there.

              This is probably the only time the MK48 will see combat, why not give ukies a few to tinker with. US can afford to give them all this other stuff that actually had a use.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Torpedo warheads don't exist. The mk 48 is 20% explosive, and it's actually a primer and not a real explosive.
      Now PrepHole is legitimate morons, and will disagree, but torpedoes have never sunk anything, Belgrano took a 1920s torpedo. There were only two ships ever sunk postwar and modern torpedoes are completely useless.
      It's pathetic this forum defends subs when actually their warheads are not even explosive, they are TMETN, which is like using matches to make a fire because you don't have wood. 80% of the warhead is aluminum.
      Artillery warheads work as they are 0% aluminum and then rdx and tnt. Torpedoes require a bigger warhead which is harder to make. So they don't and they just use primer.
      Battleships are indestructible.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I love this pasta

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Now you have me curious, what pasta is it? Is it mutated or was it originally about torpedoes?

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    a river submarine seems kind of autistic. could see a small speedboat drone with explosives work out.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Like a drone x torpedo crossover? Could work, and it would really just be a modernization of earlier weapons.
    Such tricks are age-old, the austrians tried it against napoleon at Aspern-Essling. The habsburgs had retreated over the danube and napoleon followed them, having his engineers construct bridges. The austrians allowed the crossing, aiming at drawing in a major part of the french forces. After that, they started floating small suicide boats down the danube with the aim of destroying the bridges and cutting napoleons forces in two/ cutting off his retreat. It was decently-ish succesful, with aspern-essling being napoleons first major defeat.

    The dutch attempted something similar, using bomb-boats to break the river blockade on the scheldt during the the siege of antwerp in the 80 years war. It failed and antwerp eventually fell iirc.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    NOOOOOO

    HOW AM I GONNA PONTOON NOW

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Depending on how deep the water is maybe the drone can have legs and walk along the riverbed to it's intended target. Of course, how strong the flow is and where you release it would be a big consideration.

    That or maybe a boogie board that is camoflaged and flat on top to stay afloat like a crocodile while the under bits have the explosives and the propellers.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Is it even possible to communicate without a wire?

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    You would need frogmen. which is a waste to use on some shitty ferry

    Maybe Elon Musk can make you a self driving torpedo. but he still working on cars atm.

    MLRS is probably easier

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    how would it counter net technology?

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >ukrainian sees civilian transport
    >immediately tries to think of a way to sink it
    No wonder Russians hate you

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Leonardo, the same guys behind the vulcano 80km range ammo, have developed a mini torpedo drone (or remotely guided torpedo) that can be deployed by UAV. Carries about 3Kg of explosives and has something like 40min of operational time at 12knots.

    So if you have a drone with 80km range you can likely hit a poontoon or ship or mini submarine 100km away without exposing the drone directly.

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Just use a mine.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Did it really take /k/ this long to get the right answer?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      stuff some explosives, trigger and a big magnet into some water wings. Just dump a frickton of them in upstream. or you know just

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It would just make torpedo nets a thing again

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Neuter Nets

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The US has had fully autonomous submarine drones since before 2009.

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