More new toys, and one olde one

China has unveiled a largish drone…ten TONs’ worth.  The drone is expected to be a “mothership” for smaller drone swarms.

While initially it can look like a normal attack aircraft, its central payload section is labeled as ‘Isomerism Hive Module’. This reveals that the mothership could have the capability to launch drones mid-air and then manage swarms to carry out operations.

The ability to launch multiple drones mid-air and then use the mothership as a command center is a dream project of China and several other countries.

It should be noted that the ability to launch and retrieve drones mid-air can extend the range of operations for any army. It can give drones a much-needed additional range to carry out intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic warfare.  Interesting Engineering.com

Our next stop is, surprisingly to me, in Spain, where they claim a reliable enough Air Independent  Propulsion system to be installing it in submarines.

The AIP system generates hydrogen from sustainably produced alcohol (bioethanol) stored in the submarine. The hydrogen mixes with oxygen, which is also stored inside, to generate electricity through a fuel cell which is capable of charging the vessel’s batteries.

Navantia states that this system is capable of keeping the submarine submerged twice to thrice longer than other conventional vessels.

The S80 class submarines are the only 3,000-ton submarines in the world equipped with the AIP system, according to Navantia’s press release.

We’ve always heard how a sub running on batteries is VERY quiet – no reactor cooling pumps to make noise, but the downside is that most are diesel electric. So once a day or so it has to surface and run its diesel engine to charge the batteries, right? So take that surfacing out of the equation and you have a very quiet sub, which can say down a lot longer.

Elsewhere in China, they have shown a ginormous directed microwave system for downing drones. From the pictures, this thing extends to the size of a semi. Wait 5 years, and you’ll probably get a more powerful one in every serving of ramen noodles.

The first of these is a microwave system consisting of a large planar array mounted on top of an 8×8 light armored vehicle chassis. The system also has small rotating radar, which would make sense for target detection and tracking purposes. The underlying vehicle looks to be the same one used in the Type 625E self-propelled short-range air defense system, or a variant or derivative thereof, another CSGC/Norinco offering also seen in the promotional video.

Pictures of a third high-power microwave directed energy weapon system, which is also mounted on a Shacman SX2400/2500-series truck, have also emerged. This system has its microwave array on a different style of articulating mount at the rear of the vehicle, as well as what looks to be a radar inside a dome on an extendable mast toward the cab end.  TWZ.com

Kinda sounds like the Chinese are pretty serious about drone use on the battlefield.

Now let’s move from looking at the future to the dim past…a Facebook posting says the UK’s first aircraft carrier has been discovered on a riverbank. Whoa…how is even an older carrier going to go unnoticed? This is from WW ONE (and four years before the USS Langley became our first.)

Looking like another just another rusting hull poking out of the water, for years the large dirt covered rusting wreck in the Thames was ignored.

But a maritime journalist spotted the vessel was a 1918 Thorneycroft Seaplane Lighter.

Although at just 58 feet long it looks nothing like the modern HMS Ark Royal – which is more than ten times as long – the damaged vessel was the first of the kind.

The tiny craft, discarded in the river like a shopping trolley or piece of litter, would have seen action during the First World War as aircraft carriers were introduced for the first time.

Originally it would have carried one plane that was launched by being towed into the wind – and then recovered after it was ditched into the sea on landing.

Jon Jefferies, from the museum, said the small vessel was a significant find.

‘It’s only tiny but it’s this ship that led to the development of the massive modern aircraft carriers,’ he said.  Ye Olde School

Category: China, Science and Technology, UK, WWI