CDR Salamander - Saildrone’s Spectre: Making Sub Chasers Great Again?

Earlier this year, I got a quick brief on the upscaled version of Saildrone’s surface unmanned system, which has a solid dozen years of proven performance at sea.

I will admit, I was not fully sold when the program first started with the 7-meter Explorer’s deployment to CENTCOM a half dozen years ago, but they’ve proven their utility.

Now, let me put some figures in front of you:

• Displacement: 457 metric tons

• Length: 53 meters

• Speed: 20 knots

That sounds like a pretty big drone, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. That is a WWII-era PC-461-class submarine chaser.

There’s your reference point in size, and from my seat, mission.

What are the figures for Saildrone’s Spectre?

• Displacement: 250 metric tons

• Length: 52 meters

• Speed: 30 knots

A lot lighter, but the Spectre does not carry weapons and does not have to house and sustain a crew of 65.

What do they propose to do with it? It can be configured for a variety of missions, but anti-submarine warfare is what caught my eye.

Saildrone is also working with Thales to integrate the Combined Active Passive Towed Array Sonar-4 (CAPTAS) Variable Depth Sonar on Spectre. This project expands on previous Office of Naval Research-funded work, integrating Thales Australia’s BlueSentry array on the Saildrone Surveyor.

CAPTAS is the tail they are planning to put on the truncated FFG-62 frigates. They are making a compact version for drones like the Spectre. Saildrone has already played around with Thales Australia’s BlueSentry array and the TB29 thin-lined towed array, so this looks to be low-risk—though I have my usual concerns about security/reachback/bandwidth/fidelity loss…but these can be—and from what I’ve been able to glean in open-source, mitigagted.

Now, if you have not already thought of SURTASS and T-AGOS…then shame on you.

Now, CAPTAS on a drone may not be as “special” as what SURTASS and T-AGOS bring to the game…and we don’t need to go into those details on this net…however…FF(X) Flight I does not have a 21st-century ASW capability. The oceans are big. The Russian submarines are few but sporty. The People’s Republic of China’s submarines are not as sporty but are many.

The challenges and requirements Jerry Hendrix and friends outlined in 2017 still apply…and can be transposed to other areas of the world.

ASW is a numbers game.

The oceans are big. More ‘good’ tails in the water pretty soon beat a few ‘perfect’ tails that may or may not be available at some point in the out-years.

Yes, they’re unarmed, but I’m not all that worried about the “attack” part of the locate-track-attack chain. We have decades of multi-platform ASW prosecutions, with one dissimilar unit handing off contact or directing an attack on a target based on information gained from another. Our friend Mr.T’sHaircut can do it in his sleep. The Maritime Gods of the Copybook Headings gave us and our allies the P-8A Poseidon for a reason.

The Spectre hulls are being built by our friends at Fincantieri Marinette Marine up north, and the composite wing by American Magic Services in Pensacola, so we have a good blue-gray combo.

This is good. Let’s get a half-dozen in the water sooner rather than later. Get them to VACAPS, mark off some waterspace, and challenge the geeks from Groton to try to transit from point-A to point-B. Place bets.

It’s all for fun and freedom…let’s see what they can do.

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