Northrop Grummans Manta Ray has conducted initial trials at sea.
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-05-01
https://x.com/darpa/status/1785671213160825071?s=46&t=ySaWSLoZU6lwZ7u03-FcBQ
Northrop Manta Ray
Northrop Grummans Manta Ray has conducted initial trials at sea.
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-05-01
https://x.com/darpa/status/1785671213160825071?s=46&t=ySaWSLoZU6lwZ7u03-FcBQ
The Manta Ray prototype uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) built by performer Northrop Grumman completed full-scale, in-water testing off the coast of Southern California in February and March 2024. Testing demonstrated at-sea hydrodynamic performance, including submerged operations using all the vehicle’s modes of propulsion and steering: buoyancy, propellers, and control surfaces.
“Our successful, full-scale Manta Ray testing validates the vehicle’s readiness to advance toward real-world operations after being rapidly assembled in the field from modular subsections,” said Dr. Kyle Woerner, DARPA program manager for Manta Ray. “The combination of cross-country modular transportation, in-field assembly, and subsequent deployment demonstrates a first-of-kind capability for an extra-large UUV.”
An unmanned metal gear?
Surprise, nobody in this thread, picked up on the fact that this was put together in the field from subsections. This is apparently meant to be deployed by soldiers, sitting at the edge of the water…, for what reason I cannot imagine.
Send it down the coast to scout.
Send it out to see if there's anything lurking over there in that secluded cove/thick reed cover on the other bank.
Join in the search for that enemy submarine that is suspected in this area.
Launch a torpedo from the beach against that enemy submarine that was just found.
Depending on what you can put in the payload bay, there's lots of options.
Most of that you could do through the air with drones.
This allows a stealth approach through water. Approaching ships unaware (reconnaissance?) or perhaps seeking submarines. The long loiter time would benefit the latter. It’s something you can’t do from air… loiter on sea floor or surface.
I think it's more part of the military's goal of palletizing the navy to allow for prompt deployment, quicker to air drop one of these in the pacific instead of waiting a week~ for a real sub to show up, depends on armament though.
>palletizing the navy to allow for prompt deployment, quicker to air drop one of these in the pacific
Could mesh well with the USMC's pivot to island campaigning. You could have a marine outpost somewhere with a bunch of pallets, using these to patrol around their island or sending them on to other targets when ordered.
>Join in the search for that enemy submarine that is suspected in this area
They certainly make for a much more dangerous kind of sonar buoy, mobile and closing in on you and able to launch if it makes a positive hit.
And if they don't find anything at first, they can be summoned to the combat zone when something is found or told to return to the flotilla.
>This is apparently meant to be deployed by soldiers, sitting at the edge of the water
Probably sailors on a destroyer or possibly even a sub. Maybe you can make a Virginia payload module that could carry the components?
I think it's mostly meant so that you can deliver them to theatre on pallets, keeping the logistical footprint equivalent to any other armament currently in use.
> pallets
Ofc. It’s always about pallets.
I guess alternative is its monolithic like a plane and requires special bays etc.
Ease of and secrecy of deployment
That's a big ray
bump
UUUU
Northrop still exist?
I thought they already went to shit after fricking up both F-20 and F-18L project
Are you moronic?
Are you fricking moronic
>Northrop makes half the avionics in the F-35, F-16, F-22
>makes UAVs
>currently making the B-21
>new nuclear missile
>ammunition for countless weapon systems
>not to mention the massive space sector that makes multibillion dollar satellites
who are you trying to impress?
Boeing go to bed you need your energy for the court case
Wings are too big. Guessing they designed it for looks and not functionality. Looks cool though.
Apparently this thing is able to hibernate on the sea floor for long periods of time
What's it supposed to do?
Autonomous underwater missions
Good question. It's extra large, so maybe surveillance? Slap a stealth coating on it and then have it ghost around chokepoints and tail enemy subs? Depending on what a "payload bay" is, maybe it could be armed somehow.
Most likely though, this thing isn't going to do anything at all. It proved that they can make something like this work, so the next step would be to make something that's like this, but optimized for a specific use.
Eat krill and shrimp via filter-feeding.
>Deploys in an EEZ
>Depopulates the local base of the food chain so the ecosystem collapses
>Leaves
No that's what China does.
the local base of the food chain so the ecosystem collapses
Woah there Ted Farrow.
Come to think of it, Cyberpunk 2077 had AI submarines autonomously building and deploying sea mines which ended global shipping when the owners lost communication with them and they just kept mining the sea.
>Cyberpunk 2077 had AI submarines autonomously building and deploying sea mines which ended global shipping when the owners lost communication with them and they just kept mining the sea.
This concept annoys me greatly, as the ocean is the least friendly environment for anything to exist, let alone unmanned ships not undergoing repair and refit. Just the hull fouling alone would drag them to a stop in a few years without ANY work done on them. That and any country strategically threatened by that shit would spam missiles but you could handwave that with anything up to and including "corruption, lol!"
> nanotech handwaving
All fixed.
I mean i remember a DARPA project awhile back where the idea was a type of concrete that repaired itself while in the water.
>a type of concrete that repaired itself while in the water
It's more like a runflat tire, there's compounds in the concrete that plug up cracks when water gets in. It's not back to full strength and it doesn't get stronger over time (except in the usual way for concrete).
Ancient Romans had concrete like this.
The recipe was only rediscovered a couple years ago.
https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106
That kind of concrete has a lot of problems apparently that makes it an absolute pain in the ass to actually use.
>Just the hull fouling alone would drag them to a stop in a few years
CP2077 assumes a lot of things are "solved problems", like ubiquitous antibiotics that prevent any infection and wound repair that lets you practically walk off the operating table.
It's not crazy to imagine a future-tech anti-fouling surface that works with near perfect efficacy.
I haven't read the lore on this in detail though, it's just something you read in passing in the game.
Have a robot arm on the sub that can reach every outside surface
I’m probably misremembering but I thought that the naval mines were constructed by self replicating nano bots, which is dumb since 1: what materials are the nano bots using to make more of themselves and something as complex as a snazzy AI controlled naval mine, and 2: won’t it eventually just end in a grey naval mine shaped goo situation?
I don't know the answers to those question either and it does sound a bit implausible by Cyberpunk's relatively grounded scifi rules.
I could just about buy a robosub that filterfeeds like a basking shark and extracts nitrates, potassium and metals from the water and uses them to build very simple mines but otherwise, it does seem a bit far fetched.
FWIW: I think that it's meant to be a threatened apocalypse because Cyberpunk likes to have a few of those in the background as themes or story hooks.
I also think it's more that they just can't shut them off rather than them being actually out of control. As in it's still obeying its programming and nothing has really gone wrong with that so it will just replace mines that are destroyed but still only deploy them where it's supposed to and in the numbers/patterns it's supposed to. Not quite that bad compared to the alternatives.
Also, it killed international shipping but Arasaka's carrier made the trip from Japan to Night City without incident (aside from Suburo wanting to blow away a Militech outpost because there was some IJN aircraft in the sea there and wanting to nuke Night City on general principle).
So presumably it's not a real threat to military craft who can do mine sweeping, just civilian cargo ships and most of those are said to be unmanned in Cyberpunk, as far back as 2020 I think.
>2: won’t it eventually just end in a grey naval mine shaped goo situation?
Depends on their parameters. If they're just focused on dropping mines right outside of commercial ports, then they might go dormant after the area is saturated and they have excess stock, just waiting for an explosion to wake them up again. That'd conserve a lot of their resources and make it harder to find and clear them since they won't show up on as many scans.
Transform into a B-21
AMERICONS, TRANSFORM AND ROLL OUT!
>Muffled, The Touch, in the distance.
Turn a profit
Hunt down aussies
>What's it supposed to do?
Take the fight to 8 story tall crustaceans from the protozoic era
Probably be a "loitering drone" in seabed.
Just lay there waiting until something intresting comes close by. Then activate, and do funny things. The shape seems to be optimised to minimize sonar contacts and blend into the bottom of the sea. Don't know how well modern sonars can distinct different materials, but I bet they have thought about that too.
It could be combined early warning/scouting vehicle and switch to kamikaze mode when it sees a good target.
>Probably be a "loitering drone" in seabed.
>Just lay there waiting until something intresting comes close by. Then activate, and do funny things
It might be stealthy enough to sneak a nuke up to a reef base, or just slip in, drop some minepedos on the floor and sneak out again.
>crank out hundreds for less than the cost to manufacture and crew submarines
>fill them with nukes
>park them on the ocean bed offshore of potential belligerents
>wait
>??
>profit
It's too based so there's no chance
Checked and correced
Seems like it'll be a Poseidon but actually functional and far outclassing it
Could be a liquid metal reactor like the Russians use. This seems like a pretty ideal application for it but the US has been scared of them for the last 70 years
Turn taxpayer dollars into champagne. It's very good at it.
Kill robot steve irwin
TOO SOON.
enrich northrop shareholders
>AAAAAH IM SO FRICKING STUPID
>I'M USELESS
>I GET CAUGHT IN FISHING NETS AND SCARE MYSELF TO DEATH
>I'M moronic AND UNREASONABLY HUGE
>NO ONE KNOWS WHAT I DO, I JUST FLOAT AROUND AND GET EATEN
>WHY AM I HERE
Made me think of this
Action man is so much more SOVLful than GI Joe holy shit
does it explode?
I knew this book was ahead of its time when I read it as a kid.
I read that too and was also reminded of it. Good job on remembering and finding it.
Cool
Fricking Ace Combat.
future ASW platform? interesting that there was a manta ray designed ASW asset in that ghost fleet book.
i started reading this but noped out when the chink pilot lady started navigating through her cool 3d unix operating system or whatever like in jurassic park. is the rest of the book not dogshit?
it's alright. i read some reviews that compared it to a 21st century red storm rising, but it doesn't hold a candle to it. there's quite a bit of nonsense, and considering it's set in 2026 the writer's ideas of where technology would be in 10 years is childish at best. some neat parts though, but it doesn't really stack up to anything decent.
So what’s the point of developing secret military technology if they’re just going to brag about it on Twitter, unless we don’t have any secrets anymore
typically it's just to dab on thirdies. we make a demonstrator that proves something is a viable concept, and probably have a limited number of another combat model hiding away somewhere. meanwhile, 25 years later thirdies build a copy of the demonstrator and parade it around as a wunderwaffle that they managed to build and perfect while america abandoned because they couldn't get it to work.
>typically it's just to dab on thirdies. we make a demonstrator that proves something is a viable concept
While demonstrators serve a purpose, I think there's a certain soft power building involved as well.
It doesn't hurt to let everyone know that you're still way ahead of them in various areas, keeps some middle-tier powers from pushing the limits of what they can get away with.
trick china, give it 6 months and china will unveil a manta copy thats undetectable and supersonic and overall better than the american one
It's not like they would remain secret to any country who would be interested.
So you might as well parade them and tell your own population what their tax money is used for.
The real secret is going to be composition of a drone stealth paint, what method you used to make the sub silent, how far away a sensor actually reach and how well it does. Plus other things I can't tell about because I'd have to eliminate anon.
>the basic exterior dimensions of an object should be a closely-guarded state secret
Thirdie detected.
hey look its the UFOs everyone has been seeing
Man I hope they give this thing some LRASMs and we could have true kino
HOLY FRICK ITS ARSENAL GEAR
I'm interested in how this thing powered. Doesn't seem like it would be diesel/electric set up. Teeny tiny nuclear reactor?
>Teeny tiny nuclear reactor?
No such thing but you might be thinking of a radioisotope thermoelectric generator which it probably is, or at least has as a backup.
I'd guess it uses an RTG to charge a large on-board battery. It might have solar or wave charging capability as a backup too, or at least a real one might, this wouldn't need it.
If it's intended to hibernate for periods of time then it really opens up the options for charging because it could float in the middle of the ocean just sunbaking on the surface with some little solar panels in the wings under perspex or something and leisurely charging until passive sonar tells it that someone's getting close enough to see it and it wakes up and dives.
If you're patient enough then a wave-based or even tidal generator could be made pretty small and provide more than enough current to keep a low-power secondary CPU running that monitors some passive sensors and wakes the primary at the right times.
The most important question remains unanswered. Can you grab onto the front and ride it like it's biological cousin?
https://twitter.com/anthroaerospace/status/1785699760021672124?s=46&t=ySaWSLoZU6lwZ7u03-FcBQ
I figured it out....
Man I was expecting amphibious capabilities to be 9th gen at minimum. So are submersible aircraft carriers back on the menu then?
The main issue is getting an engine that requires basically no maintenance and just keeps going for years at a time, nuclear is ideal but good luck convincing anyone to have unattended nuclear reactors all over the ocean.
>The main issue is getting an engine that requires basically no maintenance
See
RTGs have been running Voyager I for 47 years and counting and in far more extreme conditions.
We already use them in remote locations and it's not really that big a deal if they leak into the ocean. Not in the numbers that are around now anyway, if navies are fielding tens of thousands of these things, it could be a real problem in the future.
>RTGs have been running Voyager I for 47 years and counting and in far more extreme conditions.
also far lower power requirements. Voyager has nearly zero power expenditure compared to something that actually has to move
>also far lower power requirements. Voyager has nearly zero power expenditure
Check the power supplied at launch, it's much more than you'd think. It's degraded by 80-90% now but our ray sub won't need that kind of lifetime and the power loss is mostly just fuel expenditure anyway so it could be refueled at a nuke capable port. Possibly even just the RTGs swapped out and the old ones sent back to the states though I expect NATO bases could handle replacing radioisotope rods or something, it doesn't take that much containment.
The sub has the advantage that it can just use the RTG to charge its battery, it doesn't need to run off it. If it gets to low battery, it parks on the sea bed and charges if in hostile territory or on the surface and charges quicker if not in war conditions.
The IAEA doesn't want you to know this but nuclear reactors floating in the ocean are free.
>unidentified transmedium craft
What did globohomosexual mean by this?
This is a sign we are about 10 years away from the 4th industrial revolution for the benefit of society. The military is always a foreshadow. AI, robotics, & automation. Will essentially cause massive deflation on a wide scale, which is a good thing. Innovation = deflation. Food, clothing & housing will be dirt cheap in 10 years but not in a communist sense. It will be the highest quality. On the military side, we will have the ability to produce unmanned hardware with precision strike capabilities in mass, as well. The US will be the first military to combine quality + quantity - we will have the first military that will be used to destroy life if neccesary, but also preserve our own lives to the maximum effect via unmanned tech. The best part is that Russia destroyed itself before these innovation, but we also are selling massive amounts of military hardware that will be 100% obsolete to what the US will have in 10 years and that will just be the beginning. If the Europeans & the rest of the world want to blame us in the future for taking advantage of this once in a millennium opportunity, they can go ahead & blame the 2 greatest military defense assets in history - the Atlantic & Pacific oceans. Whatever happens in the rest of the world during this upcoming 10 year period, the oceans will allow us to watch from a distance & help where we see fit from a distance. The East cannot innovate without copying the West, but also suffer from the fact that the East has a greater demographic challenge than the West & it's not even close. If they want to engage in unmanned combat, they are 50 years behind the the US in terms of being able to fight while also having a demographic crisis. All the while, the most important Industrial Revolution is taking place in America that is yet to be seen & is unhindered. God Bless America & the two greatest military/defense assets on the planet - the Atlantic & Pacific oceans.
Why do they want to do with it? Yet more zog toys to project power and terrorize the world?
SO THE MIC WON'T LET ME BE
OR LET ME BE ME, SO LET ME SEE
TRIED TO SHUT ME DOWN IN THE S. CHINA SEA
BUT IT'D BE SO CHINKY WITHOUT ME
Implessive, how many Chinese supplier parts imported from Mexico did it uses
Mad nobody likes your thread chang?
cope harder junkie mutt
Wait, I thought they make air planes?
Planes that drop into water
Nice. Those are pretty high up in the tech tree.
TFTDmind
Did anyone ever complete this game? I could defeat the original on highest difficulty setting (after difficulty bug fix), but even TFTD on easy always fricked me up immediately when the aliens started using mind control.
It's not that much harder than the original outside of the hell that is cruise ship terror missions, and abusing explosives is easier than ever since you can stack some of them without explosions destroying the other armed bombs before they detonates.
Psi is always a b***h but it's not any worse than the original.
Tentaculats are scary as frick since they're flying chrysallids, but the fact that you don't get them on terror missions like chrysallids means you're up against way less of them without convenient civilians for them to rape, and while lobstermen are bastards they insantly fold to stun and drills.
I just never found a strategy that worked reliably. In the original I always just armed everyone with heavy plasmas and alien grenades as fast as possible and whenever I got my first blaster launcher it was smooth sailing to mars. In TFTD I usually got shrek'd before I got to the blaster launcher equivalent. And, yeah, those multi-level terror missions were pretty much impossible for me.
Didn't know you could stack explosives, that would definitely make it a bit easier. Also never used any of the melee weapons. I couldn't read english when I first played the game so any tips in the in game encyclopedia were lost on me.
?si=FLBuogGqFHyXH7AE
The commanders of the next American Civil War already played this game.
>next American Civil War
WWIII maybe.
I don't think an American Civil War would see heavy use of submarines. Not zero granted but it's not going to be a defining feature the way it will be in the South China Sea where this is really going to shine.
Given its shape, I wonder if it does the shark thing of not being buoyant when underwater and relying on lift to stay off the sea bed. Like a plane, but swimming.
I see this thing surfacing to fire 1 or 2 LRASMs and sink away or just explode cause lol drone. Lots of these could be spooky as frick
Can't wait for the SCMP cope articles from the chinks saying that they "achually have something similar too!".
How long until it crashes into a whale or an orca decides to ram it and flip it over?
Millions of aliens pouring into our country and our cities are being fed by crime and this is what congress is focused on.
>Millions of aliens pouring into our country and our cities are being fed by crime
Immigration is at normal levels and crime has steadily decreased.
Try again glavset.
> and this is what congress is focused on.
You'd like the west to abandon military technology but it's not going to happen. Western MIC will continue to advance and you'll be left far behind.
>Immigration is at normal levels and crime has steadily decreased
Nice gaslighting attempt, but any that isn't chronically online all day everyday like you are, can just look around outside at their surroundings.
>crime everywhere
>police won't do shit against criminals
>but they will smash in teenagers heads for protesting against ZOG
>millions of illegals have come in the past couple years
Your lies have no power.
I like the crime has steadily decreased lie. There was a huge increase in 2020 which the media calls the COVID increase (not the Floyd surplus) and we're still not back down to violent crime levels from a decade ago. Basically set us back 15 years.
It's good though. The shills and regime automatons can't do anything other than lie because they have nothing else. They have no answers to the serious problems society is facing right now. The System is collapsing.
Just 2 more weeks surely
>NAFO gore posting
Ngmi
I already made it, I have a fresh daily buffet of delectable zigger death. What more could one want than watching disgusting ru*sians dying in agony?
I am a moderate btw
This post is a prime example of brain rot
TZD
grow up manchild
Weapons procurement at the congressional level is a sales pitch. They aren't doing much thinking there.
Most MIC waste for meme gizmos
But what does it do?
Makes a lot of "Consultants" and defense contractor board members a lot of money. That's pretty much it.
Looks cool but is it actually any good
whats the point of this? carrying nuclear warheads?
Useless without shells
The amount of brainrot on this board. Nuclear power? what the frick are you people talking about
>propulsion method: buoyancy
It's an underwater glider.
Where do you think the propellers get power anon?
Simple, there is a battery of hamsters on wheels
>what are batteries?
>how do conventionally-powered air-independent propulsion submarines work?
>how do conventionally-powered air-independent propulsion submarines work?
Nuclear power
This thing uses batteries and recharges by swimming up to an underwater recharging station that harvests energy from thermal differentials by??? which might sound moronic but,
>DARPA
We need one that can float up to China's new aircraft carrier and attach itself with very powerful magnets and if China doesn't pay us the ransom we blow the hull. Like a naval warfare version of the barnacle parking device.
we'll name it the Remora
isn't that just a limpet mine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpet_mine
It is, but you need divers to manually attach those. Drone limpet mines would be game changing. Imagine having a bunch of them explode at the same time remotely.
Only in the way that a Hellfire is just an antitank grenade
if its meant to do stealthy shit it needs to be fully autonomous, otherwise EW would pick it up, and too much shit could go wrong if there is no human supervision
which means its probably for anti sub stuff or littoral recon, cause field assembly
What are the hydrodynamic benefits of a manta shape
what if it can go into ground effect
Literally flies underwater, generating lift just like plane wings do in the air. Normal submarines use buoyant air tanks to control their vertical axis, floating like balloons.
Not lift. Dive. The wings are upside down compared to aircraft wings and generate 'dive' to counter the craft's buoyancy. Gun fact, normal subs are reverse-zeppelins too.