The new mode of warfare using unmanned boats to carry out surprise operations has gradually attracted widespread attention from countries around the world with the Russia-Ukraine war. China, as a major country in the development and manufacture of unmanned equipment, has been deeply engaged in this field for many years and has achieved extremely amazing results. For example, in July 2023, the private enterprise Yunzhou Intelligent controlled 56 unmanned boats in the waters of the Wanshan Islands in the South China Sea to conduct a large-scale formation collaborative test. Under the complex and changeable sea surface conditions, a number of test items such as group formation maintenance, formation autonomous transformation, dynamic task assignment, and cooperative obstacle avoidance have been completed, showing the prototype of the mainland's "shark swarm" operation!
Under the control of the controller, these 56 unmanned boats can easily and smoothly change back and forth between "loose" and "assembled" formations on the sea surface according to orders. It can not only sail in a neat queue, but also interspersed and combine between rows and columns, and can also form "words" or "graphics". It can be said that as long as there is a demand, these unmanned boats can be realized quickly and accurately. And this kind of technology, which can control the actions of dozens of unmanned boats at the same time, coupled with specially armed unmanned boats, is a "shark swarm" that can perform a variety of military tasks!
Coincidentally, at the Saudi World Defense Exhibition in February 2024, the "Thunder" A2000 armed unmanned boat developed by China State Shipbuilding Corporation was also officially unveiled. The Thunder A2000 is a trimaran ship, equipped with an active phased array radar, an 8-cell missile vertical launch system, cruise missiles with a range of up to 290 kilometers, and an automatic naval gun. And on the outboard of the left and right sides of the hull, there are also 24 units of "long-range cruise missile" launchers. There are also 2 flight decks on either side of the stern for taking off and landing drones, and even 4 small suicide drones can be released underneath. It can be said that the "Thunder" A2000 is not only very strong in its own combat strength, but also an "unmanned combat carrier" that can release combat drones, unmanned boats, and cruise missiles!
So, let's imagine: if the "Thunder" A2000 armed unmanned boat with such a strong combat strength is matched with a large-scale unmanned boat control system similar to that developed by Yunzhou Intelligence, then once this "shark group" is put into the maritime battlefield, how high can the survival probability of the "enemy" fleet be?
At present, such a "shark swarm" composed of multiple unmanned boats has a wide range of military applications. For example, in peacetime or low-intensity combat environments, the unmanned boat "shark swarm" can undertake tasks such as wide-area search, surveillance, patrol, and mine search in large areas of the sea. With UAVs and unmanned underwater vehicles, it is possible to complete the large-area exploration and search mission of "deep sea + shallow sea". In addition, it can quickly arrive at foreign submarines and other "time-sensitive targets" that suddenly appear at sea, which is conducive to the rear to deploy troops to drive them away or strike at them according to the situation.
In such a high-intensity battlefield as maritime air defense and antimissile operations, the unmanned submarine "shark swarm" can cooperate with manned warship formations, and can not only arrange unmanned boats equipped with air defense missiles on the periphery of our fleet's defense zone to expand the scope of the fleet's air defense circle, but also arrange unmanned boat groups with electronic jamming equipment in the upper layer of the fleet's defense zone to add another layer of "electromagnetic defense" to our own fleet. When faced with an attack by the enemy's anti-ship missiles, manned warships can command the "shark swarms" in the inner and outer layers to carry out defensive operations, first using the peripheral "shark swarm" unmanned boats and the fleet's own air defense missiles to carry out hard killing, and then deceiving and interfering with the "fish that have slipped through the net" to carry out soft killing. The three-dimensional air defense system of both soft and hard is used to achieve in-depth defense and echelon confrontation, and greatly extend the air defense and anti-missile area of the formation!
"Shark Swarm" control interface
Of course, this kind of "shark swarm" unmanned boat is also a good hand at carrying out anti-submarine warfare, and after installing sonar equipment on it, this kind of "anti-submarine shark swarm" can carry out "submarine search" operations in a large area of suspicious sea areas. Because the unmanned boat has a strong maneuverability ability, the efficiency of carrying sonar for submarine search operations is far more flexible than that of the "sonar buoy" launched by the airborne, and the sea area can be changed at any time according to the need, which is much higher than the efficiency of the "sonar buoy" that can only detect one sea area fixedly. And with the unmanned underwater vehicle with attack capability, then the entire one-stop task of "searching for submarines" and "attacking submarines" can be efficiently completed by unmanned ships and boats.
However, these "science fiction" combat capabilities first require the "shark group" of the unmanned boat formation to solve the technology of cooperative navigation first, and the difficulty lies in the three aspects of human-boat coordination, inter-ship coordination and cross-platform coordination. Moreover, judging from the current military exploration experiments of unmanned boat formations in various countries around the world, almost all of them are confined to closed waters, and even if they are tested in the open sea, they also choose calm and low sea conditions. After all, unmanned boats are generally small in size and tonnage, and their innate ability to resist wind and waves is very weak. Moreover, due to the difference in volume and tonnage, it also leads to a large gap in the number and performance of communication and combat equipment that can be carried by various unmanned boats. Therefore, at this stage, unmanned boats still cannot be separated from the nearby support of manned ships, otherwise it is easy to fail the mission.
The U.S. Navy has already deployed 2 missile-launching unmanned boats to the Seventh Fleet in 2023
In addition, there are almost no reports on the mainland in the large-scale formation of military unmanned boats and coordinated tests with manned ships, which is somewhat backward compared with the US military, which has already started cooperative combat exercises between unmanned boats and manned combat ships a few years ago. After all, in recent years, many domestic scientific research institutes and enterprises have engaged in unmanned boat formations, which are still in the stage of control system testing and navigation control verification, while the US Navy has begun to deploy unmanned boats to the Seventh Fleet in Japan in 2023 - this gap is still relatively obvious.
Video images and target designation fed back by the unmanned vehicle
However, it may be that the Chinese Navy has already conducted similar tests, but our military has never played "virtual" games, but whenever it can be put on display, it will definitely be the top equipment that breaks through the earth! Then let us wait and see for the "shark swarm" of the Chinese Navy to arrive at an early date!