One claim reports that China's robot warships will extend an advantage of the U.S. fleet in the Asian waters. The China Shipbuilding and Offshore International Company had their product on show at the IDEX-2019 trade show at Abu Dhabi, which is a scale model of a robot warship that can operate without a crew.
The JARI unmanned surface vehicle has a length of 49 feet, and a 20-ton displacement. It has an operating range of 500 miles and 42 knots on the water, as per specifications. It is smaller than the People's Liberation Army Navy's manned Type -55 destroyer.
Built for ocean warfare with a varied weapon load out, it includes a torpedo launcher, front machine gun, eight small vertical launch system cells, and rocket launcher for engaging target with stand-off distance weapons.
JARI USV is equipped with a sensor array on top of the superstructure, with dipping sonar that serves as sensors and receivers to collect commands from a satellite.
Based on the product video, the robot-drone can be adapted for specific mission load outs and be adaptable for any kind of mission it will be used for. The combat system is made for any kind of warfare on the sea.
All the weapons are used for gunfire attack, taking down aerial targets, ant-sub that looks like a similar kind of American water dreadnaught. Nothing is known about the system for running the AI, and how advanced are the autonomous systems or how well the system racks up to existing systems on U.S. warships.
The Chinese beat the Americans to the gun when the U.S. Navy is just starting to make its own robot warship. According to Rear Admiral William Galinis, the U.S. Navy will make large, robot-vessels, not smaller ones.
According to Galinis, the project will not start until the final specs for the U.S. Robo-dreadnaught. This was confirmed by Breaking Defense, a publication that writes about defense and arms.
Americans are planning two types of robotic warships, one is 132-feet long which is the Sea Hunter. This is a medium-sized ship that will specialize as decoys, scouts, with sensors and ECM jammers equipped to jam ship to ship communication.
Adding to the U.S. punch is the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) that is corvette sized, with an anti-ship missile but needs a relay ship to fire their payload. In February 2019, the Orca Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (LUUV) is 51-feet long and with a range of 6,500 nautical miles.
In February 2019, the Navy paid Boeing $43-million for four Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles. The 51-feet-long Orca autonomously can travel up to 6,500 nautical miles.
Using unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) can make up for fewer conventional warships with a crew complement. Admiral John Richardson (naval operations) might go with USVs that add more manned U.S. dread naughts for the U.S. navy that will cut costs for yearly budgets.
America has 645 ships while China has 650 ships. With China adding robot warships to their armada, the U.S. Navy will also be expanding with USVs that are more sophisticated than a smaller multi-role drone.
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