Now US Navy is arming drone boats

Source: Independent

Now US Navy is arming drone boats
John Reed
Saturday 03 November 2012

While the US Air Force's drones have been firing all sorts of air-to-surface missiles and bombs for roughly a decade now, the Navy took a big step toward getting in on the action last week when it launched six Israeli-made Spike missiles from an unmanned 36-foot motorboat.

The Navy pretty much admits that the project — called the unmanned surface vehicle precision engagement module (USV PEM) — is aimed at defeating threats that are straight out of Iran's war plans for the Persian Gulf region.

"The USV PEM project was developed in response to recent world events which have increased the concern over swarms of small attack craft, as well as threat assessments outlined in recent studies conducted by the Naval Warfare Development Command," said NAVSEA Naval Special Warfare Assistant Program Manager Mark Moses in a press release. "The study punctuates the effectiveness of these swarm attacks against both military re-supply ships and naval vessels. Technology demonstrated in this project can provide a capability to combat terrorists who use small low-cost vehicles as weapons platforms."

It sounds like the Navy is looking at using small fleets of these vehicles to patrol the waters around its larger vessels to shield against swarms of suicide attackers using tiny speedboats laden with explosives — a longstanding vulnerability to U.S. ships designed to pummel large ships, aircraft, and inland targets from far away using missiles, torpedoes and large caliber cannons.






Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/now-us-navy-is-arming-drone-boats-8280128.html