TR Possible USV, UCAV Carrier Mothership İdeas For Navy ?

[Brave Janissary]

We are producing a Unmanned Surface Vessels and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles who can capable making ASW, ASUW etc. And most of them have limited ranges for open sea warfare. But when you deploy USV's and Ucavs from a ship in the middle of sea or ocean they can capable to fill the gap of many conventional battle platform.

For example ;

USV's will have a sonar capacity. Even if their active sonar range 1/4 of Ada class corvettes their unit prices will be almost 1/10 of Ada class corvettes. That's mean 2.5 times more asw capability. And also more local produce capacity (theirs engine is also turkish), fast production and low maintain capability is also another advantages.

All of them same for ASUW Configurated ones. So we need a create a future drone mothership .

My İdea is about USV Drone Carrier ;

I think Usv based air defence is doesnt logical for a while. So we need a a ship who can carry Usv's and capable to control most of them same time (Control console and communication capacity), and also have a air defence capability.

I think we can use a small lpd's like tais 140 meter kind docked lpds for this mission . No need a Anadolu kind 1 billion dollar unit costed monsters. A regular usv almost same size a mbt . So this ships can carry clearly 20-30 asw/asuw/ew usv and deploy him back floatable dock. Also one x band radar and one smart-s or cenk-s for air defence with help of 16x midlas for 32x quadpack hisar-rf and 16x double pack siper.

So that kind of ship can control on usv's in 400 km mission mission radius and protect him againts air targets on 150 km around.

So whats your concept ?

 

[dBSPL]

Of course, there are many determining factors here, such as the naval doctrine and role of the operator force and the nature of the unmanned platforms to be used: But I think the mothership concept will evolve through the evolution of ships with high firepower and area dominance such as frigates in a more hybrid role, not directly or sole over seabasing or platform transport dock types.

The concept of internal multipurpose deck is generally prominent in new generation frigate/destroyer designs, and also this flexibility is one of the main factors that make the Turkish Navy's TF-2000 concept unique too.

The TF-2000 concept drawings show that the ship can carry 4-6 combat USVs and possibly many more UUVs at the same time. In addition to the targeted scanning radius(thx to ÇAFRAD), the ship can effectively provide mothership service to all of these unmanned naval vehicles in terms of air defence umbrella, communication network capacity, hangaring and maintenance. Or the Absalon class hybrid ship in the Danish navy can also serve as an example in this regard. This ship is of course not a drone carrier, but it was developed as a frigate with a very flexible multirole capability, including military transport, from the design stage.

In addition to the seaworthiness of drones in terms of operational continuity due to sea conditions, another issue is the fast and safe launching and recovery of these unmanned platforms. In this sense, there are some different types of cranes, and conceptual studies on this subject have become quite diverse. As far as I know, Damen shipyard has several concepts on this subject. For example, more advanced crane types can be installed in the hangar doors used for RHIB boats on the middle deck. Smaller drones and UUVs can be evacuated from an aft under-deck compartment right next to the towed sonar.

Surface drones with proper sonar sets can extraordinarily expand the frigate's underwater tactical picture, perform RF jamming, or conduct anti-ship attack in wolfpack formation, making it extraordinarily difficult to engage the mothership as a whole. This can simply multiply the multiplier effect of each frigate/destroyer platform.