If you think the US military would retire its mind sweeping capability if it didn't have something better to replace it with.... Well you need to think a bit harder.
The government doesn't give up its toys unless it replaces it with something better That's more fun to play with.
It is not that the newer tech is bad. It's not. It is at this moment simply a victim of inconvenient timing. They almost retired the A10 - several times and we are all glad they didn't. Budgets have a way of forcing the military into decisions like this.
Those wooden hulled Avenger class ships are now in salvage. The newer Littorals have a missions package of various mine hunter technologies that have yet to show they can effectively find mines. That missions package failed its own detection trials and the Navy officially stated thus saying, they "could not determine the operational effectiveness or reliability of the system." That is all public knowledge. The Pentagon report was released in March of this year.
One of the main problems for the Littoral missions package from what I understand is that there has not been the data library accumulated yet along with the institutional knowledge to allow operators, and even AI, to distinguish between actual mines and signal noise. That library will be built through actual use in order to dial it in - just like it is with every other systems library we use. They will get there. It just may take a little more time. The MEUs being sent into the area also have some mine sweeping capabilities. The Tripoli is already in theater and the Boxer was on the way. So it is not like we have no options. However, in high stakes combat situations we would have preferred to have a stronger hand going into this.
Well in my original comment I talked about combining data from three different sources and running it through AI. Your original response was only about one of those sources so it was a misrepresentation or a strawman of my entire point.
I remind you we have the technology to detect a specific heartbeat from the air from a great distance away that The general public didn't know about until just this week.
Machine learning excels at detecting anomalies and pattern recognition. It's just a matter of putting the data in and I doubt with millions and millions of dollars in contracts on the table that some government contractor hasn't put in this work already for all types of applications in underwater detection.
All of that tech you mentioned may work on land and for air applications. Underwater is a different story. My statements are not solely my own random speculations and opinions, but are based upon statements made by those with a great deal more expertise with underwater technology and the environment than myself, as well as the Navy and Department of War themselves about the current status of our operational capacity.
Marine research does not have the same institutional knowledge base that has been built over the years for air and land. There is so much of what is under the waves that we know almost nothing about simply because we have not been able to clearly see it. However, our tech is getting better at peering through the underwater environmental physics that adds some difficulty to our tech applications. But the US, as well as others, are quickly learning and more advanced systems are coming online in real time. It won't be long before many of those ocean knowledge gaps will be closed. AI has become a huge factor in that process.
I know they can map some geological structures using SAR, but locating mines? I don't think so. At least not yet.
😂
If you think the US military would retire its mind sweeping capability if it didn't have something better to replace it with.... Well you need to think a bit harder.
The government doesn't give up its toys unless it replaces it with something better That's more fun to play with.
It is not that the newer tech is bad. It's not. It is at this moment simply a victim of inconvenient timing. They almost retired the A10 - several times and we are all glad they didn't. Budgets have a way of forcing the military into decisions like this.
Those wooden hulled Avenger class ships are now in salvage. The newer Littorals have a missions package of various mine hunter technologies that have yet to show they can effectively find mines. That missions package failed its own detection trials and the Navy officially stated thus saying, they "could not determine the operational effectiveness or reliability of the system." That is all public knowledge. The Pentagon report was released in March of this year.
One of the main problems for the Littoral missions package from what I understand is that there has not been the data library accumulated yet along with the institutional knowledge to allow operators, and even AI, to distinguish between actual mines and signal noise. That library will be built through actual use in order to dial it in - just like it is with every other systems library we use. They will get there. It just may take a little more time. The MEUs being sent into the area also have some mine sweeping capabilities. The Tripoli is already in theater and the Boxer was on the way. So it is not like we have no options. However, in high stakes combat situations we would have preferred to have a stronger hand going into this.
Well in my original comment I talked about combining data from three different sources and running it through AI. Your original response was only about one of those sources so it was a misrepresentation or a strawman of my entire point.
I remind you we have the technology to detect a specific heartbeat from the air from a great distance away that The general public didn't know about until just this week.
Machine learning excels at detecting anomalies and pattern recognition. It's just a matter of putting the data in and I doubt with millions and millions of dollars in contracts on the table that some government contractor hasn't put in this work already for all types of applications in underwater detection.
All of that tech you mentioned may work on land and for air applications. Underwater is a different story. My statements are not solely my own random speculations and opinions, but are based upon statements made by those with a great deal more expertise with underwater technology and the environment than myself, as well as the Navy and Department of War themselves about the current status of our operational capacity.
Marine research does not have the same institutional knowledge base that has been built over the years for air and land. There is so much of what is under the waves that we know almost nothing about simply because we have not been able to clearly see it. However, our tech is getting better at peering through the underwater environmental physics that adds some difficulty to our tech applications. But the US, as well as others, are quickly learning and more advanced systems are coming online in real time. It won't be long before many of those ocean knowledge gaps will be closed. AI has become a huge factor in that process.