“In this modern technological era spawned by the silicon chip, naval surface combatants, land armored vehicles and helicopters over the battlefield are obsolete death traps. “
People have been predicting the last days of helicopters, tanks, aircraft carriers, etc. since forever. There’s a constant battle between offence, defense, tactics, and every element on the battlefield. For the most part weapons systems don’t go obsolete. What happens is the tactics they are used by evolve. Russian tanks took a beating because they sent them into the attack without a screen of infantry. As for things like drones attacking tanks, the tanks will be evolved with active protection systems to shoot down the drones. As for the vulnerability of ships the US navy is evolving what they call distributed systems to provide defense and offense in depth. In other words, the ship will be surrounded by a swarm of smaller elements that can help defend it or press the attack while leaving the ship out of range or offensive systems.
After I left my final job, I wrote a proposal for a system of swarm drones to protect people and installations from the type of attacks we see in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the California startup that had the technology we needed was funded by CCP princes. The companies I was working with and I had to drop it as the technology wasn’t available anywhere else. Had it worked when a drone swarm was sighted a counter swarm would have attacked them using echo-location. It was a real reach technologically speaking but if it had worked it would provide an effective counter to the threats we see today. The battlefield evolves.
Swarm “seagull” drones each packed with C4 explosive, programmed to enter any orifice on a carrier ( and there are many), themselves launched from a submarine based cruise missile, precisely guided to target, cannot be defended. Those gulls will only be the initial attack. Simply would no longer invest in large surface combatants or crew them with brave young people. The sad reality is that this new technology is so destabilizing to the current Pentagon infrastructure and vested priorities that the US itself is not developing these offensive capabilities against potential threats such as the big Chinese navy. The experience of your company is not the exception.