The Small, The Agile and The Many - USNI

[Kirkhill]

Advancing in circles - Or - how to manage continuous improvement in the military context.

The Selby Philosophy​

• Digitally adept naval forces will outcompete forces organized around the principle of industrial optimization. “Data is the new oil and software is the new steel.”

• The systems engineering process built over the past 150 years is not optimal for software-based systems. Instead, iterative design approaches dominate software design approaches.

The F35 will never be perfect. Just as the F15, F16 and Abrams have not been perfected. They continue to evolve. Until, like the Spitfire, they can evolve no more.

The downside is that logistics will be a problem. Program Management will be a problem. And militarily there will be no Great Leap Forward. No magic bullet. Nothing that soldiers can point to and tell politicians "Buy this magic bullet and we can make your problems vanish."

The Small, the Agile, and the Many

The Navy needs to build collaborating, autonomous formations of unmanned vehicles as a hedge strategy.

www.usni.org

Lots and lots of little, cheap stuff. Single purpose PTB/MGB type vehicles on, under and above the water, with no crew on board. And a distributed, nodal, redundant comms system with judicious use of Artificial Intelligence.

 

[dimsum]

Until, like the Spitfire, they can evolve no more.

If only they strapped a jet or rocket onto it...

 

[Kirkhill]

US Navy May Put Autonomous Tech on Crewed Ships to Prevent Collisions​

It’s the same technology already being used on uncrewed vessels.​

US Navy May Put Autonomous Tech on Crewed Ships to Prevent Collisions

It’s the same technology already being used on uncrewed vessels.

www.defenseone.com

Reduction in crew sizes while enhancing capabilities and introducing technologies the will make unmanned flotillas possible.

Northrop looks to adapt electronic attack system for smaller ships​

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman is conducting research and development to adapt its electronic attack platform — built for the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer — to fit on smaller ships, a company official said.

“We’re also looking at opportunities to scale down the system for smaller ship classes — frigates and smaller — and looking at ways to make a scaled-down version of SEWIP that can be effectively employed and rapidly installed on the smaller ship classes,” Mike Meaney, vice president of land and maritime sensors at Northrop, told C4ISRNET.

SEWIP is the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program Block 3. This version provides ships with a non-kinetic, electronic attack capability, enabling them an “unlimited volley of bullets” to knock down incoming missiles.

Northrop looks to adapt electronic attack system for smaller ships

Northrop Grumman is looking to adapt its SEWIP Block 3 capability built for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to smaller ship types.

www.defensenews.com

Continuing the Air Defence trend that combines AI with Non/Less Than Lethal (to humans) effects (such as EW and Directed Energy).