Isegoria

Lockheed Martin’s experimental X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft, or QueSST, built by the company‘s Skunk Works for NASA, provides no traditional forward visibility to its pilot:

Ultimately, it’s planned that the X-59 will achieve supersonic speeds over land that create no more than a sonic ‘thump’ — rather than the ‘boom’ associated with previous supersonic transports. That could convince U.S. and international regulators to change the laws governing supersonic commercial aviation.

This is all part of an overall design that’s specifically intended to reduce the kinds of sonic booms that have long been an obstacle in the way of commercial supersonic flight over land. With such a long snout ahead of them, the X-59’s pilot instead relies upon the eXternal Vision System (XVS) and an array of forward-facing high-resolution cameras. An aperture for the 4K camera used in the XVS can be seen in these new photos, located atop the nose, broadly above where the canard foreplanes are located.

Britain’s Royal United Services Institute and the US’s Pentagon have acknowledged that Russian electronic warfare is reducing the accuracy of American guided weapons, including JDAMs and HIMARS rockets:

In particular, Withington pointed to the Russian Army’s R-330Zh Zhitel, a mobile truck-mounted jamming system specifically designed to disrupt GPS and satellite communications in the 100 MHz to 2 GHz wavebands. “Signals from the U.S. GPS satellites which JDAM kits use are transmitted on wavebands from 1.164 GHz to 1.575 GHz,” according to Worthington. “These fall squarely within the R-330Zh’s catchment area.”

Worthington claims to have seen official documents that put the R-330Zh range at 18.6 miles, with a 10kW-strong jamming signal. This is “notably stronger than the strength of the GPS signal arriving from space,” he noted. “Moreover, the closer the GPS receiver is to the R-330Zh’s jamming antenna, the stronger the jamming signal becomes.”

In theory, the Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module upgrade to JDAM in the early 2000s should ensure that JDAM will only respond to authorized M-Code encrypted military GPS signals. However, Russian jammers may still be able to disrupt the signals through “sheer brute force” jamming beams, Withington said.

Russia could also intercept M-Code signals and retransmit them with slight alterations to a JDAM, causing the bomb to miss. Efforts to bypassing Russian interference by using signals from multiple GPS satellites could in turn be countered by employing multiple jammers.

Russia’s counter-GPS efforts are part of a massive electronic-warfare campaign that has also disrupted Ukrainian radio communications and drone operations.

Russian forces “now employ approximately one major EW system per 10 kilometers [6.2 miles] of frontage, usually situated approximately 7 kilometers [4.3 miles] from the frontline,” according a recent RUSI report on Russian tactics. This jamming has contributed to a Ukrainian drone loss rate that RUSI estimates to be as high as 10,000 UAVs per month.

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Nonetheless, Russian electronic warfare has limitations. Emitting jamming beams discloses a jammer’s location, and Ukraine appears to have located and destroyed Russian systems such as the R-330Zh. Ironically, smothering the airwaves with powerful jamming beams may also be disrupting Russian GPS and radio communications.

David Hambling, author of Swarm Troopers, explains drone warfare in Ukraine:

The Navy surface fleet is essentially floating airstrips surrounded by air defense batteries, Austin Vernon says:

Floating airfields are valuable where land bases are constrained or surprise/mobility is critical.

Potential flashpoints with China, like Taiwan or the South China Sea, are more expansive than Europe but aren’t the vast Central Pacific. Airfields, aircraft, land-based air defense, and small utility ships can replicate most of a carrier strike group’s capabilities in a war with China. Aircraft are capable anti-ship platforms, they can keep enemy airplanes at bay, and there are plenty of airfields to fly from. But they cannot clear the way for supply ships nor operate persistently deep in enemy territory. The minimum viable Navy has to handle enemy mines and submarines. Adding offensive mine and submarine capabilities is the next logical step.

Minesweeping capability will be critical for supplying forward bases, keeping Taiwan from starving, and gaining entry to the Taiwan Strait later in the conflict, and the following features could help:

Sonar to Find Mines

Most minesweepers have active sonar arrays to find potential mines. There are low-resolution modes for broad searches and high-resolution modes for investigating potential mines. The Navy might have to adapt less capable off-the-shelf sonar and put those arrays on whatever ships they can scrap together.

Charges to Destroy Mines

A brute force option might be launching depth charges at anything that looks like a mine on wide-view sonar rather than confirming with narrow-band sonar, UUVs, or divers.

Better Mine Triggering Methods

It would be ideal if new decoys could simulate ship sounds and magnetic signatures well enough to trigger mines.

Underwater Micro Drones

Some proposals envision launching small unmanned underwater vehicles from motherships to seek out mines and eliminate them – essentially underwater loitering munitions. These are one of the few technologies that might help US submarines fight in the shallows deep in Chinese territory.

The US may not have air supremacy, so the answer for hunting subs can’t be P-8 patrol planes dropping buoys at every likely hiding place:

More Advanced Listening Network

The US tracked Russian nuclear submarines during the Cold War with a network of sensors in the Deep Sound Channel that transports noises for hundreds or thousands of miles. Most waters in East Asia are too shallow for this layer to exist. A network in East Asia will need more nodes or different technology to work effectively.

These capabilities are highly classified, and there have been suggestions that the US and Japan are improving the existing systems. The Navy has also added low-frequency active sonar with a 160+ km range to their submarine tracking boats. These systems perform much better against quiet diesel subs in shallow water.

China has also built listening networks to counter US submarines.

Underwater Seagliders

Seagliders and wave gliders are a class of drones that loiter in the ocean for months or years to collect data. They are hyper-efficient, often using a few watts. The mission can be as simple as collecting oceanographic data or as complex as tracking enemy subs. These gliders could increase submarine detection capability deep in enemy territory. They have to prove that they are stealthy enough to avoid detection/destruction, and software must be energy efficient to avoid running down the batteries.

Expendable Drone Aircraft

Another speculative option is putting sensors like magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) on small, inexpensive flying drones. You might be able to buy hundreds of these for the cost of one anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopter, increasing the coverage area.

ASW Patrol Boats

There won’t be time to build anti-submarine warfare powerhouses like a Perry-class frigate or Spruance-class destroyer. And the current fleet has no dedicated ASW ship. There will be a need for boats capable of escorting carrier battle groups and convoys. The more desperate the timeline, the more ramshackle solutions will be. Grafting on older sonar arrays and torpedo racks is probably the bare minimum.