Chinese Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV)

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
How feasible is it to use these XLUUVs as undersea "loyal wingman" drones of sorts, kind of like how modern manned aircraft is increasingly using CCA UCAVs? Would they have the range & speed to keep up with manned SSNs & the rest of the PLAN CVBG? Or would they need some kind of "carrier" vessel to tow them along until they're needed for duty?
How do the SSN communicate with the XLUUV underwater?
 

Nautilus

New Member
Registered Member
How feasible is it to use these XLUUVs as undersea "loyal wingman" drones of sorts, kind of like how modern manned aircraft is increasingly using CCA UCAVs? Would they have the range & speed to keep up with manned SSNs & the rest of the PLAN CVBG? Or would they need some kind of "carrier" vessel to tow them along until they're needed for duty?
Underwater communication using the EM spectrum is quite a bit harder than when using the air as the medium. Bitrates are much lower, and emitting any kind of signal exposes you to a greater risk of detection. Acoustic signals could be used for short ranges, but you're again making yourself into a big target, and it would limit the range where you can operate as a cohesive pack. If it turns out that XLUUVs will be used to complement manned subs, they will probably have a greater degree of autonomy than CCAs by necessity and roam semi-independently.
 

para80

Junior Member
Registered Member
Yes, autonomy underwater is the biggest issue. Its an issue even for USV, and there the basic technical challenges are far more trivial (the operational challenges in a contested environment are something else).

Torpedoes use wire (fibre optic) guidance for the same reason. In fact any breakthrough in underwater communications would probably have far more immediate repercussions for how torpedos and missiles can be used as opposed to controlling UUVs.

For the time being UUVs for reliable communication either need to rely on wire guidance like torpedoes or they have to deploy an emitter to the surface, and a crewed submarine would have to do the same. With obvious issues for detectability.
 
Top