UK’s Commercial Mine Countermeasures Ship

The UK’s Royal Navy just commissioned a former commercial offshore support vessel (OSV) into the fleet as HMS Stirling Castle, a mine countermeasures (MCM) mothership. 

The ship – previously named MV Island Crown – was acquired from the commercial market for £39.8 million at the start of 2023 to provide a UK host platform for autonomous MCM payloads … [1]

So, for the sum of around $51M(US), the Royal Navy acquired a mine countermeasures ship.  Of course, there had to have been additional expenses in converting it from its commercial role to a naval MCM ship although one cannot imagine the scope of work or the cost would be too significant since the roles are not all that different.  Compare that cost to the cost of a new, purpose built MCM ship and the Royal Navy likely saved something on the order of $300M.

 

HMS Stirling Castle

The salient question, though, is how well suited is the vessel for its new role?  The ship’s duties are described as:

 

Stirling Castle…will now take her place on front-line duties, carrying high-tech equipment, including autonomous surface and underwater vehicles, for specialist mine hunting operations, primarily in UK waters.[1]

This is not a terribly demanding role and consists primarily of launching and recovering unmanned MCM assets, not too dissimilar from its previous role of loading and unloading supplies.  Is the ship exquisitely optimized for the role?  Of course not but is it adequate?  Almost certainly … and for a substantial savings.

 

This is exactly the kind of pragmatic, responsible action that the US Navy should be engaged in.  At the moment, we have no viable MCM ships.  The LCS remains a joke both in terms of its non-existent capabilities and inadequate numbers.  Wouldn’t some US Navy $50M MCM motherships look pretty good about now?

 
 
 
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[1]Naval News website, “UK Royal Navy commissions HMS Stirling Castle as first MHC mother ship”, Richard Scott, 25-Jul-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/07/uk-royal-navy-commissions-hms-stirling-castle-as-first-mhc-mother-ship/

Satellite Imagery Dispersal

There is a significant faction of military/naval observers who have the mistaken belief that satellites can see every vessel sailing on the ocean and that the satellites have some sort of direct link to the firing controls on ships and aircraft thus rendering every ship a kill waiting to happen.  This is nonsense, as ComNavOps has repeatedly pointed out.  The resolution of satellite imagery precludes that kind of omnipotent detection and tracking.  If you have sufficient resolution then you give up breadth of field.  If you have breadth of field then you give up resolution.
 
All this is compounded by the fact that satellite imagery is in high demand and the raw image must be processed and analyzed.  After that, it has to be dispersed to the hundreds of offices wanting access to it.  In the case of fire control, you have to add in layers of command (bureaucracy) before any useful detection/tracking imagery can reach a ship or aircraft where it can be put to actual firing use. 
 
The entire process takes hours or days.  We simply don’t have the kind of instantaneous, raw image-to-the-missile-launch-button that so many imagine.
 
Many of you still doubt that reality.  Well, here’s more proof. 
 

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is working with US Combatant Commands (COCOMS) to operationally test an early version of its Joint Regional Edge Node (J-REN) system designed to speed satellite-based intelligence to the battlefield, according to NGA officials.
 
NGA began development of J-REN — a modernization of NGA’s current information technology “pipe” to more rapidly fulfil commanders’ requests for urgent access to remote sensing imagery and analysis — just last year.[1]

The lack of timeliness of satellite imagery has been a known and on-going issue for many years and even recent advances have been insufficient.
 

The ever-increasing calls from COCOMS for more timely imagery and analysis from remote sensing satellites has been the subject of a tug-of-war between NGA and the Space Force — an issue the two agencies have been struggling to work out for more than a year.
 
The concept is to avoid clogging up limited communications bandwidth with overly-dense data packages, while still ensuring that military operators have good enough information to work with …[1]

There you have it.  If satellites were the omnipotent, all-seeing miracles with direct links to firing controls, this entire effort wouldn’t even be happening, would it?  The blindingly obvious conclusion is that the image-to-fire-control process is a slow one, as ComNavOps has repeatedly stated.
 
 
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[1]Breaking Defense website, “NGA field testing new processor to speed imagery to US regional commands”, Theresa Hitchens, 18-Apr-2025,
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/04/nga-field-testing-new-processor-to-speed-imagery-to-us-regional-commands/

Five Tons of Unmanned Stupidity

I just read yet another article extolling the wonders of unmanned surface vessels for logistics and/or attack.[1][3]  This one was singing the praises of the Leidos Sea Specter slow, low profile boat which Leidos claims can carry a 2-5 ton payload for 1000-2200 nm at 8 kts in sea state 3.[2]   The manufacturer’s original concept was for this craft to be used as a logistics delivery platform.  A recent article suggested it could be used to attack Chinese carrier or surface groups using a containerized torpedo.

Let's consider a couple of important aspects to this concept.
 
Speed – This craft, like most unmanned craft, is appallingly slow;  it can’t get anywhere useful in any tactically relevant time frame.  While the manufacturer claims the craft can sail from Guam to any point in the first island chain on a single tank of gas, it would, as a relevant example, take 5+ days, best case, to make a 1000 nm journey.  This demonstrates the idiotic nature of a combat use for this craft.  Say a Chinese surface group was spotted transiting past an island, it would take around a week for the craft to carry its single containerized torpedo to that point.  Of course, the target group would be long gone.  People are making this stuff up without thinking it through.
 
Payload – The payload is very small with severe volumetric limitations which will reduce the effective payload substantially.  The cargo area is limited in volumetric size to a maximum payload storage area of 29’ x 4’ x 4’ which, essentially, means just small boxes as opposed to any sizable equipment.
After seeing the tiny cargo area in a manufacturer’s video, it is obvious that the claimed payload of 2-5 tons would only be for bricks stacked in the area with no space.  Any realistic cargo, with packaging and space will be far less.  One ton might be optimistic.
 
This is far too small a payload to be logistically significant for any but, perhaps, a lone coastwatcher on an island mountain.  For example, an infantry division in combat consumes some 1000 tons of various supplies per day and that’s probably unrealistically low!  An armored division uses some 600,000 gal (2000 tons) of fuel per day in combat and, again, that’s probably ridiculously optimistic.
 
If someone thinks we’re going to resupply Guam or some far flung, hidden Marine missile shooting outpost using these tiny boats, they’re sadly mistaken.
 

Leidos Sea Scepter

 
Conclusion
 
The only thing this craft can deliver is five tons of stupidity.  I understand why industry keeps producing these kinds of nonsense products … they make profits for the company because the military is so enamored with unmanned technology that they’ll buy anything, regardless of whether it has any viable use.  It is up to us to recognize stupidity because, clearly, the military can’t.
 
 
 
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[1]Naval News website, “U.S. Marine Corps Trials Unmanned Logistics Concepts in the Indo-Pacific”, Carter Johnson, 25-Apr-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/04/u-s-marine-corps-trials-unmanned-logistics-concepts-in-the-indo-pacific/
 
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-xNZwlH8sM
 
[3]Naval News website, “U.S. Navy Pairs Heavyweight Torpedo with USV in a New Program Effort”, Carter Johnson, 15-Jul-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/07/u-s-navy-pairs-heavyweight-torpedo-with-usv-in-a-new-program-effort/

2025 GAO Annual Weapon Assessments Tidbits

Following are some tidbits from the current June 2025 GAO annual weapon systems report.
 
 
Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) – Radars are being produced and delivered while testing is ongoing.  This kind of concurrency is what’s behind so many development and production cost overruns and schedule delays as problems are uncovered during production and reworks have to be performed.  I simply don’t understand what’s so hard about grasping this concept but the Navy seems absolutely unable to get it.  In this case, it’s even worse because we’re producing the radars faster than the ships they’re intended for and the Navy is having to warehouse the radars until there’s a ship ready for them.  Why produce untested, undeveloped systems when we don’t even have a use for them?
 
 
Ford Class – GAO reports the unit cost for the four Ford class carriers as $16.3B.  Yikes!  CVN-79 is struggling with weapon elevator installation (what a stunning surprise!) which will delay delivery.  The Navy may defer ‘non-critical’ work like painting until post-delivery … yet another example of accepting an incomplete product.
 
 
F-18 IRST – Remember back in 2007 when the Navy came up with the bright idea of attaching an IRST sensor to the front of a fuel tank for the F-18?  A simple, if less than optimal approach, right?  Well, 8 years later and they’re still working at it and it’s still not ready.  From the GAO report,
 

… while the IRST pods demonstrated capability at tactically significant ranges during operational testing, the pods were extremely unreliable. …  only managed to achieve 14 hours mean time between operational mission failures—short of the 40 hours required.

The rest of the world has had functional IRST systems for decades.
 
 
Constellation – Remember how the Navy has been saying for a year or more that the design of the ship is over 90% complete?  Well, they’re now revised that down to 70% after GAO previously called them out for, essentially, fraudulent reporting.  The program is going backward!  Only the Navy could start with a 90% design and, after years, regress to 70% … and you have to believe even that number is probably less than honest.
 
Weight growth is also an issue.
 

In October 2024, the Navy reported 759 metric tons of weight growth from initial estimates—nearly a 13 percent increase …

 
Medium Landing Ship (LSM) – The LSM is the key to the Marine’s concept of forward, hidden bases of missile shooters but the Navy has yet to really embrace the idea of buying the ship.  Initial cost estimates from industry apparently shocked Navy officials and they’ve been forced to start over.
 

Program officials said the offers they received were hundreds of millions of dollars higher than budgeted.

That’s surprising given how accurate Navy cost estimates usually are.
 
 
Mk 54 Torpedo – The Mk 54 Mod 2 Advanced Lightweight Torpedo has run into cost and development issues.
 

Program officials stated that contractors’ estimated costs to complete system development and testing were significantly higher than expected.

 
MQ-25 Stingray UAV – The unmanned tanker has run into lots of problems.
 

The MQ-25 Stingray program continues to report cost and schedule challenges that have led to a funding shortfall of $291 million. The program’s decision to delay the low-rate initial production (LRIP) contract to September 2025, and its efforts to accelerate testing replacements for at least seven components with obsolescence and other issues, contributed to a significant increase in development costs since our last report.

Obsolescence????  How do you run into obsolescence problems for a brand new aircraft that hasn’t even been delivered yet?  You do it by having a program take forever to get fielded.  Development started in 2018 and here we are, seven years later with nothing to show for it.  So, yeah, you screw around for years and you wind up with obsolescence issues before you’ve fielded the first unit. 
 
FYI … first flight has not yet occurred … seven years later.  What’s happened to us?
 
You may recall that, in a first in recent times, the Navy opted to act as the program integrator instead of industry.  Well, they failed.
 

… the program’s software costs increased substantially since last year. Program officials attributed this increase to their 2021 decision to switch from a government-furnished ground control station to one provided by another contractor …

 
ORCA XLUUV – The unmanned submersible program is sinking.
 

It is now unclear whether the Navy will transition the XLUUV to a program of record because there are no clear requirements that the XLUUV can meet ...

This is what happens when you develop something without a CONOPS.
 
 
Ship to Shore Connector – This is a near duplicate replacement for the LCAC.  It should have been a simple and quick project.
 

… the program delayed its IOC date in each of our annual assessments since its originally scheduled IOC in August 2020—a total delay of more than 5 years.

Well, that’s not good but at least we aren’t building these things without having solved the problems … right?  Right?
 

As the program continues to delay key events in its schedule, it continues to construct and deliver craft—with 25 craft either under construction or delivered to date.

I was afraid of that.  So, each problem we encounter and each solution that’s implemented will require all the previously built and delivered craft to undergo rework.
 
 
Columbia SSBN – The price tag now sites at $10.5B each.  The delivery schedule has slipped by a full year and is likely to slip another year, according to the Navy.
 

The program attributed particularly slow periods of construction to out-of-sequence work that significantly disrupted planned construction events and led to large amounts of rework. According to program officials, the out-of-sequence work resulted from missing instructions in some design products that detail how to build the submarine.

Concurrency rears its head again.
 
 
Virginia SSN – The construction rate is woefully short of what we need.
 

The program’s 2024 construction rate fell to 1.15 submarines per year from 1.2 per year in 2023, short of the Navy’s goal of 1.5, according to program officials. …The Navy has a goal to deliver 2.3 submarines per year by the early 2030s.

A goal of 2.3 subs per year versus the current reality of 1.1?  Hmm … doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.
 

Construction continues to cost more than planned.

Costs are higher than the Navy estimated?  The Navy has underestimated every project it’s ever embarked on.  At some point, don’t you have to admit that you’re incompetent to generate cost estimates and start applying something like a 100% fudge factor?  Before anyone tries to defend the Navy by saying that it’s very difficult to estimate costs, note that other agencies seem to routinely estimate Navy project costs pretty accurately.  Further note that ComNavOps also estimates Navy project costs pretty accurately (Constellation, for example;  you can check it in the archives).
 
 
T-AGOS Surveillance Ship – Scheduling and design issues, again.
 

… the program will likely miss its goal for fielding T-AGOS 25 in 2027 by several years.

Several years????  It’s essentially a commercial ship!
 
 
 
Conclusion
 
Who’s running these clown shows and why haven’t they been fired yet?  Wake up, Hegseth!  The GAO report is telling you, loud and clear, who to fire.  Quit screwing around and start firing people.

Iskander

The National Interest website has an interesting article on Russia’s Iskander missile.  The article describes the missile,
 

Russia’s Iskander system, particularly the Iskander-M variant, is equipped with two solid-propellant single-stage guided missiles, model 9M723K1, each capable of carrying a warhead weighing 1,543 pounds. These warheads can include high-explosive fragmentation, cluster, or even nuclear payloads. With an operational range of 249 to 311 miles, the Iskander-M can strike targets deep …
 
The missile’s hypersonic terminal speed, reaching Mach 6 or 7, and quasi-ballistic trajectory, which involves evasive maneuvers during flight, make it exceptionally difficult to intercept. …  Russia has introduced radar decoys that deploy during the missile’s final approach, generating false signatures to confuse air defense systems like the US-supplied Patriot missile battery. Additionally, the missile’s ability to perform unpredictable maneuvers at high altitudes complicates interception algorithms, reducing the effectiveness of even defenses. The Iskander’s mobile launch platform, which can independently target and fire within seconds, adds to its survivability, as it is challenging to locate and neutralize before launch.[1]

Impessive, on paper, without a doubt but this is not an invincible weapon.
 

This has been especially evident in attacks on Kyiv where, despite Ukraine’s success in intercepting some missiles, the upgraded Iskander-M has caused significant damage.[1]

It would be interesting to know the circumstances of the successful intercepts and the overall success rates.
 
It is also noteworthy that the reported successes of the Iskander tend to be mainly centered around attacks on cities rather than military targets.  It is possible that the Iskander may be more of a terror weapon, similar to Germany’s V-1 rockets in WWII, than an effective combat weapon.
 
It is also worth noting that Ukraine possesses only fragments of a comprehensive air defense system and in only limited numbers.  It may be that the Iskander successes are more the result of a lack of air defenses than the effectiveness of the missile, itself.  On the other hand, perhaps not.  What is the success rate of the Iskander when attacking targets defended by active air defenses such as Patriot?  We just don’t know.
 
 
Discussion
 
Several thoughts occur:
 
Where’s our version of something like this?  Which one of our missiles has capabilities of similar to this?  I’m not aware that we have a missile approaching this type of performance.  We have a lot of different types of missiles so maybe I’m missing something? 
 
How do we effectively defend against this type of missile?  Are we testing our defenses against a representative threat surrogate?  I know we’re not because there is no realistic threat surrogate.  Since we’re not testing, how do we know how our defenses will perform?
 
It’s clear that the Iskander is not unstoppable.  How stoppable it is in the face of an actual defense is unknown but there is no reason to throw up our hands in defeat, as so many do at the mere mention of hypersonic missiles.
 
This emphasizes the importance of deep surveillance to try to target the launchers prior to launch.  We have plenty of deep strike options.  What we lack is survivable, deep surveillance assets that would be unaffected by anti-communications efforts (jamming, etc.)
 
Intimately tied to deep surveillance is deep strike with an emphasis on rapid response.  We have plenty of deep strike options but they need to be linked with the deep surveillance and targeting so that when a target is found, a weapon can be on its way in moments to destroy the target before it can launch or move.
 
It is also important to apply deep interdiction to prevent resupply of enemy missiles from occurring.  There’s a limit to how much damage an initial salvo of enemy missiles can do.  The challenge is to prevent follow on missiles from reaching launch points.  This requires deep strike interdiction on the order of hundreds of miles inside enemy territory.  This is the kind of task that a carrier group or a Marine amphibious raid behind enemy lines might address.
 
The challenges are twofold: 
 
1. Develop our own version of such a missile, including a ship launched variant.
2. Develop realistic defenses that are be mobile and can move with our forces.
 
 
 
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[1]National Interest website, “Russia’s Iskander Missiles Are Giving Ukraine a Massive Headache”, Brandon Weichert, 24-Jun-2025,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-iskander-missiles-are-giving-ukraine-a-massive-headache