In Naval drone combat footage I've noticed one problem. In rougher waters, the small boat drones have a tough time pushing trough the waves and the waves make it difficult to stay straight and on target, loosing speed to course corrections. The splashing around making extra wakes and white water also makes them more visible in day and night. Adding hydrofoils would pretty much solve all these problems. Crappy eddited pic related, I believe a similar hydrofoil naval drone with dual electric motors would be worth while building and testing on the battlefield. A hydrofoil would greatly help the small drones cut through and ride above the waves allowing the drone to keep a fast and straight pace. Smaller wake also makes the drone harder to spot. What do you guys think? Do you think Hydrofoil drones would be worth a look into or do you disagree and why if you do?
Solid idea for dealing with high seas but they need to be able to pull the bullshit turns we have seen to remain hard to hit.
PID controlled fins on the legs would work but it greatly increases complexity.
Great idea for rich nations, might add too much cost for poorer nations.
For fast turning in my design I was thinking that the two electric prop motors on the bottom of the rear hydrofoils being able to freely and quickly turn and aim their prop thrust 180 degrees or even 360 if desired. I don't believe this design would require too much extra engineering on top of the added hydrofoil including not needing any extra control fins. Another idea is to make the hydrofoils somehow foldable to make transport storage and deployment easier.
That would work and yeah having the fins either fold or quickly attach / detach would help.
I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen it tried out already unless I missed it. If anyone knows if they have already tested similar designs for naval drones pleas let me know.
Ukraine is in a state of total war so they aren't going to like experimenting with new designs when they can mass produce designs they know work.
It'll be interesting to see what other nations come up with as everyone is going to be investing in suicide boats after seeing the Black Sea.
That is true, and we will see in time. I honestly think most navy's are going to move away from larger ships and focus on having a higher number of smaller densely armed ships packed with long range missles and drones combined with plenty of drone and missle countermeasures.
Hydrofoils can actually turn tighter and harder than boats sitting low in the water. The real problem with hydrofoils is that they have a speed limit of around 40-50 knots because they still need to move through water which is much denser than air. You can try to reduce the friction between the boundary layer and the water by making the surfaces hydrophobic but that introduces other issues and those coatings tend to wear off in high flow applications.
I would just make hydrofoil torpedoes.
Haha, that's a good one. While torpedo/submarine style naval drone is ideal the complexity and cost is much much more than boat style naval drone. And since it's completely submerged it will experience much more drag than a surface vessel, greatly reducing both speed and range. In this war you really need both. I see my hydrofoil design as a boat naval drone +1 with the extra cost being offset by the extra benefits gained.
Underwater vessels actually experience less drag than surface vessels due to not creating wave action.
I countermeasure with underwater hydrofoil torpedoes, check fricking mate, you filthy slob.
Sorry to burst your bubble here.
I have some experience operating high speed craft with and without hydrofoils. And it is exactly in rough seas that hydrofoils add the least benefit and actually compromise the steering stability of the vessel. Hydrofoils are about reducing drag for higher cruising speeds, absolutely not improving general course stability. And to plane with hydrofoils the craft has to expend quite a bit of power/fuel at the cost of range. Have a nice day. Best regards from Skipper Pete.
Very nice info Pete. I knew there had to be some hiccups somewhere. I hope that those shortcoming you told me are just because the vessels you drive are much heavier I assume than the naval drones that weigh usually 1000kg or less would be less negative effects if any, hopefully, anyway.
Ok, then do it.
>well, I just mean...
go build one. you know everything and aren't talking out your ass, right? go build one and demonstrate its seakeeping.
I've worked on navel drones
Specifically low power submarine bouy following units
Basically a solar powered boat with a big passive bouy and other devices on it to follow around subs.
It's made to be extremely light to ride over waves
I can answer questions to some extent but knowing neo /k/ it will be the most schizophrenic shit possible
What roles do your solar drones do?
>I can answer questions to some extent
I have a question. Why in Star Wars do the Imperials all have British accents when they're in outer space and there is no Britain?
Because that is the standard accent for most core world planets.
Likewise Corellians/The Outer-Rim have American accents, Twi’lek’s have French accents, Neimodians have Japanese accents and Trandoshans have israeli accents
That's pretty cool, when you say extremely light how light do you mean? And how fast do they go? And finally, how long can they last by themselves in the ocean before having to be recovered for maintenance. I'd assume being solar powered they would be pretty light weight, like less than 300kg, but slow and able to stay out for weeks if not months at a time. I can definitely see them being a great tool for navy's to use in mass for detection, observation, and probably a lot of other shit I can't think of.
Unsure about weight not my department
Their range is potentially infinite and speed is also not something I can disclose but obviously they are fast enough to follow a sub at flank speed.
Because it's ww2/medieval knights in space.
>Smaller wake also makes the drone harder to spot
Visually, yes. But making the drone stick up higher above the surface of the water makes it MUCH more visible to radar.
I don't think having the boat on hydrofoils is going to decrease or increase the sonar and radar footprints in any significant manner. I mean I guess you could make the hull more stealth shape to help with radar but sonar is still gonna hear it coming if the sonar crew ain't sleeping. Same with thermal and just normal visual footprint, I don't see it being much of a difference between the two from the top of a ship besides possibly the less wake and general movement from the hydrofoil might help keep it from being noticed as soon as a regular boat drone making big waves and jumping up and down in the ocean.
I'm not sure what they're using on the Ukraine naval drones, but I think they're waterjets based out of the jetski engines and the like.
If that gets a bit much to deal with, it might be time to bring back a monster from the Black Sea- ground effect craft
>ekronoplan drones to remain under radar but move at greater speed
Imagine if they made an antiship cruise missle like that. Would be wild.
I made a thread a month ago discussing the possibility of Ekrano-drones but everyone called me a homosexual moron 🙁
those unpredictable interactions with waves make them harder to hit tho...
The ability to close the gap quicker would greatly outweigh all if any benefits that bobbing up and down in the ocean has for the drone. I'd rather my drone be faster and smoother ro drive so that it not only is easier to drive, dodge, and aim the drone, but the enemy has much less time to react to and engage the drones before impact than a slower drone that while maybe slightly harder to hit gives the enemy more time to react and engage the craft. Increasing the chance of successful counter fire.
TLDR I got the need for speed.
why not go the narco sub way? do they use sonar?
>sub
>semi submersible boat
pic one
no. either. both.
My only experience with hydrofoils is toy boats and renting a foil equipped sail board once, but none of the ones I used like a sea-state that was higher than the height of their foils. Even if the waves are just kissing your displacement hull, the friction from intermittent contact makes regulating the foils really hard and if you aren't successful at this, then you can start to porpoise or worse yet, just completely stuff the bow and go flying off the board.
Since maneuvering also makes regulating the angle of attach more complex, I can't imagine that a foiling drone would be better at maneuvering on foil than a displacement or planing drone would be on plane or at displacement speeds.
It would make them faster, though. Probably it wouldn't be worth it overall.
I am disappointed that helicopters have made it so that there's no real niche in a modern navy for a >50 foot fiberglass gas turbine foil-craft that could dash to drop depth charges/sonobouys/Mk54s or fire smaller missiles at other small craft.
Non bouyant hydrofoil/submarine with heavy armor.
Hydrofoils are turbo based but a big part of the threat from the naval drones is that they are almost undetectable for surface search radar even in terminal phase since they are so low in the water. You can manually lay the CIWS and main gun optically but that's a lot sketchier than letting the AEGIS black magic do it for you. I think that much earlier detection, much higher CIWS pk, and lower terminal manueverability would make this a non-starter although in general I think hydrofoils are overlooked since the admin shit show of the Pegasus class.