Multiple Destroyers Were Swarmed By Mysterious 'Drones'

March 23, 2021 6:31 PM

The disturbing series of events during the summer of 2019 resulted in an investigation that made its way to the highest echelons of the [US] Navy.
posted by Fiasco da Gama (34 comments total)

I think they were referring to the MK87 line throwing mod, it might have been an attempt to entangle and down a drone in a recoverable way.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:11 PM on March 23, 2021 [4 favorites]

Very weird and baffling. Not aliens. But what?
posted by davidmsc at 8:43 PM on March 23, 2021

It is unclear why anyone would operate drones near Navy warships in such a brazen manner.

Surely not? I can think of like seven reasons off the top of my head why any of several other countries would operate drones near Navy warships in such a brazen manner. Most of them require submarine capability, but that's hardly rare now is it?
posted by Nelson at 9:07 PM on March 23, 2021 [10 favorites]

Very weird and baffling. Not aliens. But what?

Harassing and antagonizing the naval fleets of allies and adversaries alike is as old as naval fleets. Someone was either making a point, having a bit of fun poking the top dog in the eye, or both.
posted by tclark at 9:27 PM on March 23, 2021 [6 favorites]

So these were for sure drones and not just miniature UFOs...?
posted by blue shadows at 9:41 PM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

An Aegis-equipped ship? I could win a game of Civ II with a few of those, knowwhaImsayin?
posted by clawsoon at 9:47 PM on March 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

Super interesting and cool, thanks FdG!
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:47 PM on March 23, 2021

The really striking thing the article doesn’t dwell on very much is how big the area of ocean was that these sightings occurred in within a relatively short span of time. On night #2 the first and second sightings were about 100 miles apart and happened within 37 minutes. And there’s so little information about what was actually observed. The only visual descriptions we get are a flashing red light and at another point a white light that hovered above a ship’s flight deck. A cruise ship (maybe 30-40 miles away from one of the Navy ships) reported seeing as many as a half dozen drones, but there are no details about what exactly they witnessed.

A minor point, but one that jumped out at me, was the catamaran ORV Alguita acknowledging having consumer drones aboard. Their reported range was only ‘a few feet’, which must have been a misunderstanding or a transcription error. The model they mentioned actually has a range of up to 4 miles (but no more than 30 minutes of battery). Regardless, the Alguita was too far away so it’s a moot point.

However, there are commercial fixed-wing drones used for surveillance and mapping that are capable of staying aloft for multiple hours and ranging up to 60 miles from a base station. Of course, the cost of just one of these drones (roughly $30k) plus a long-range video link ($46k gets you about 30 miles of range and $86k gets you 60 miles) would be prohibitive for all but the most highly-motivated parties.
posted by theory at 10:54 PM on March 23, 2021 [14 favorites]

I imagine learning drones can get this close without much consequence is as valuable as any actual data or surveillance they picked up, eh?
posted by maxwelton at 11:30 PM on March 23, 2021 [11 favorites]

This seems like a precursor to the kind of activity seen in Arizona and surrounding states middle of last year like this over an Arizona reactor complex. Post 911 IDK why these aren't treated as acts of war and shot down pre-emptively. They look like proof of concept / envelope pushing.

Is it just me or do others think the US fixation on happy endings and fantasy lead to treating this kind of thing not as seriously as they perhaps should. I used to be a lowly security guard but when I saw / heard chatter that something was coming up the line I'd nip it in the bud rather than wait.
posted by unearthed at 12:31 AM on March 24, 2021 [18 favorites]

Although a description of the drones doesn't seem to appear in the FOIA'd documents, I find it hard to believe the Navy doesn't have a pretty good idea of what they looked like. Surely in an encounter lasting 90 minutes, with at least some of the drones apparently showing lights, the SNOOPIE teams described in the article would have been able to aim a telephoto lens and a flash/spotlight at one of them...
posted by The Tensor at 12:54 AM on March 24, 2021 [4 favorites]

Is it just me or do others think the US fixation on happy endings and fantasy lead to treating this kind of thing not as seriously as they perhaps should.

The Trump administration was 4 years of rowing backwards in terms of security and defense, and China, at least, wasn't very far behind in the first place.
posted by jamjam at 1:07 AM on March 24, 2021 [6 favorites]

Uh... isn't this a serious win for whoever was flying the drones? The Navy didn't intercept them, they (the drone flyers) now know how close they can get and getting only reaction -x-. It all sounds like a very successful scouting mission.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:18 AM on March 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

Looks like one of our spy planes came close to Chinese air space recently, too

I don’t understand why China wouldn’t agitate against the US after Trump and COVID. We look so weak domestically. Saying that war is certain feels too far, but rapidly shifting international power dynamics are certain at play and will yield continued surprising escalations.
posted by glaucon at 1:46 AM on March 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

It is unclear why anyone would operate drones near Navy warships in such a brazen manner.

That this was said about the US military without any hint of irony speaks volumes about just how distorted mainstream discourse is about American empire.
posted by Ouverture at 4:55 AM on March 24, 2021 [13 favorites]

The big unanswered question here, for me, is "why didn't these billion-dollar warships just blast the drones out of the sky?" The American military, and especially the Navy, is goddamn terrified of asymmetrical warfare like this--can you imagine the fallout if a handful of cheap UAVs managed to disable or sink an American warship? The Navy has been wargaming with swarms of drones since at least 2004, and you can bet your last dollar that a ship like that is equipped with at least three separate weapon systems designed to track and destroy small and fast-moving airborne threats. The fact that a few of them were able to not only buzz the ship, but hang out for 90 minutes before scurrying off to points unknown, represents a major fuckup somewhere in either the standing orders for the fleet or in the judgment of the commanding officer of the ship. If the story actually happened like it's being reported, this is a career-ending breach of security protocol by someone fairly high up in the chain of command.

So honestly my guess is that the drones were also being operated by the American military, someone had orders to let the exercise happen, and the frantic followup is because the Navy's left hand has no idea what its right hand is doing. Which is about as rare as a day ending in a Y.
posted by Mayor West at 5:48 AM on March 24, 2021 [17 favorites]

If they haven't been identified, they are by definition UFOs.
posted by acb at 5:51 AM on March 24, 2021 [12 favorites]

Also, the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:23 AM on March 24, 2021 [21 favorites]

I gotta think that they’re doing a lot of looking at rules of engagement on something like this. I don’t know what planning they’ve done for random drones showing up during routine non-wartime open sea maneuvers, but they’re likely not eager to start shooting at things without knowing the threat presented by them. My guess is that if this happens again, they capture or destroy drones and wait to see who bitches about it.
posted by azpenguin at 7:39 AM on March 24, 2021

Or they could be ours but we couldn't identify them clearly enough to either destroy them outright or just let them go about their business. When you say there are only a few countries in the world with the resources and interest to do this you need to consider all of them, and it is hardly a stretch to imagine left hand not knowing what right hand in black glove is doing.
posted by Cris E at 7:58 AM on March 24, 2021

The recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan suggests to me that a lot of our most expensive military equipment (ships, tanks, aircraft) is as obsolete as pikemen. The Armenians got demolished by new inexpensive drones and other “smart” weapons.
posted by interogative mood at 8:14 AM on March 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

Post 911 IDK why these aren't treated as acts of war and shot down pre-emptively. They look like proof of concept / envelope pushing.

The likeliest answer is that we're doing it to ourselves, as in some other branch of the military or three letter agency is running the drones, and leaving open the possibility that ~Chynuhh~ is sending them is useful for the ongoing and extremely loud anti-Chinese propaganda campaign
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 8:33 AM on March 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

When you say there are only a few countries in the world with the resources and interest to do this

I'm not sure that's really a safe assumption. The Iranian-backed Houthis have been building pretty capable drones lately (although the most noted ones are more like budget cruise missiles), and we don't really know the extent of their sophistication. You can build a pretty long-range drone out of upmarket consumer gear, not exactly off-the-shelf, but it wouldn't be exactly the Apollo program.

You can substantially improve the loiter time of a commercial or commercial-ish, quadcopter-type drone by replacing the lithium battery pack with some sort of hybrid powerplant, maybe a very small gasoline or nitromethane engine powering a brushless generator. That would change the sound of the thing, probably enough for someone to hear if they were close to it, though.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:44 AM on March 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

It is unclear why anyone would operate drones near Navy warships in such a brazen manner.

That this was said about the US military without any hint of irony speaks volumes about just how distorted mainstream discourse is about American empire.

I mean...it is technically accurate, though, is it not? Yes, there are lots of reasons we can speculate that someone might want to operate drones near Navy warships in a brazen manner, but we don't actually know why that occurred, thus it is unclear.
posted by limeonaire at 9:18 AM on March 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

A readiness exercise of sorts perhaps? It was not detailed as the outcome was less than desirable? Maybe more details may trickle through in the future.
posted by asra at 9:19 AM on March 24, 2021

If I remember right, the "sonic attacks" or "microwave attacks" on US and Canadian embassies in Cuba and China, which left no physical traces, were readily dismissed, including here at MeFi, as mass hysteria.

It's my understanding that the drone incident that closed Gatwick Airport for over a day in 2019 left absolutely no evidence behind - not a single photo, video, or audio recording. Some critics have floated the idea that the whole incident was a flight of fancy.

In this case we again have a story featuring a modern menace, again lacking (so far) the persuasive, simple, easy evidence we might reasonably expect, like photos or videos. But the military is involved. And somehow the tone we're collectively adopting is far less skeptical than it was for, say, the sonic attacks.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:32 AM on March 24, 2021 [5 favorites]

The recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan suggests to me that a lot of our most expensive military equipment (ships, tanks, aircraft) is as obsolete as pikemen

I'd love to read more on this topic. The Economist has had a couple of brief mentions in articles about how in recent armed conflicts (including Nagorno-Karabakh) there have been conflicts between large traditional weapons like tanks vs. swarms of cheap drones. I believe missiles vs drones has also been a thing in the Middle East. And apparently the drone approach is winning. I'd love to read some detailed treatment of what that really means in a technological and military sense. What are the drones? What are they doing? Are they really a significant advance in asymmetric warfare that benefits underfunded parties?

I can certainly speculate but I gotta think someone's written an excellent article about this. Anyone know?
posted by Nelson at 9:41 AM on March 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

The recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan suggests to me that a lot of our most expensive military equipment (ships, tanks, aircraft) is as obsolete as pikemen

I'd love to read more on this topic.

the armenians were using 1970s era soviet gear, old T-72s and infantry, with little anti-air capacity, especially for drone sized attackers. these were easy targets for modern drones. a US force would have intel on the whole area and destroy any staging area nearby for drones and deploy close range anti-air. that's why i'd bet these channel island drones were US military. there's no place for a foreign actor to stage these from, and no reason they wouldnt be shot down unless the captains of these ships had been told not to.
posted by wibari at 9:49 AM on March 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

To those wondering "why not shoot down the dones?" -- a demonstration of defensive capabilities is considerably more sensitive than a detailed exterior scan (particularly if they fail). Further, this escalation could spark retaliations against similar activities.
posted by grokus at 10:47 AM on March 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

The Ship Nautical Or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation and Exploitation team, or "SNOOPIE team. . . "

Go home, Navy, you're drunk.

That a few tens of thousands of dollars of consumer hardware can cause this much upset suggests the US military isn't very good at doing even the job it claims to be doing.
posted by eotvos at 11:04 AM on March 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

Also, the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

Ah, a rare opportunity to assert that A=A.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:26 AM on March 24, 2021

I read in a logic book that saying a tautology is like running around yelling "True!" at everyone
posted by thelonius at 11:39 AM on March 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

If I remember right, the "sonic attacks" or "microwave attacks" on US and Canadian embassies in Cuba and China, which left no physical traces, were readily dismissed, including here at MeFi, as mass hysteria.

Within the last year there was an article in The Guardian, as I recall, saying that the current consensus view in the US intelligence community is that the attacks were quite real, and quoting a Harvard researcher who was involved in the most recent assessment who claimed that brain scans of victims definitively showed very significant and consistent damage, and that it was clear that the attacks had been carried out not with sound, but with microwaves.

Some of the more striking bits of forensic evidence, according to this researcher, were cell phone records showing that the top Russian experts in the use of microwave technology in weapons just happened to be in Cuba at the time of the attacks.
posted by jamjam at 12:47 PM on March 24, 2021 [3 favorites]

I've thought the US Navy was doomed since the Canadian Navy pinged an aircraft carrier from within a battle group decades ago. If Canadians with a seriously underfunded, understaffed and underequipped navy using ancient discarded submarines could penetrate an alert US carrier group then anyone serious and more motivated obviously could very easily send well more than $25 billion in naval hardware to the bottom of the sea.
posted by srboisvert at 2:07 PM on March 24, 2021