I’d say Copperhead torpedoes.
Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
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Dozens is about 12 per year more of anything else we build.
AndyinOz
Member
Good bet, Anduril's website states that the XL-AUV is a potential launch platform for the Copperhead 100 and 500. So I imagine that would be one possible payload besides having it filled to the gills with sensors for ISR packages.I’d say Copperhead torpedoes.
OldTex
Well-Known Member
Both the Mk54 and MU-90 Lightweight torpedoes are designed, according to the information available publicly, for ship and aircraft launch mostly against submarines. For a submarine torpedoes are usually a heavyweight design, such as Mk48ADCAP or Spearfish, which have a significant range and speed. A LWT from a submarine would be the equivalent of firing at point blank range.
Andruil would be happy to sell their Copperhead UUV as an explosive payload delivery system for the Ghost Shark XLUUV, but why reinvent what already exists and is supported in the ADF inventory.
The Ghost Shark may well take on an offensive capability in the future, but at this early stage it would be more a case of developing suitable CONOPS and providing additional ISR. A potential area of utilisation could be surveillance of undersea infrastructure.
It may also be that Arafura class vessels might become tenders or motherships for groups of deployed Ghost Sharks.
The cost of a Modified Military Off The Shelf option is pretty much always the same as a clean sheet design. The exception to this is modular designs, but they are compromised in a number of ways that effect cost and capability.
The way to mitigate this is to have a capable, adaptable, sovereign design and build capability, supporting a continuous build program. This is however also a compromise as it only works if you build small batches of continually evolving designs, which is less efficient than building large batches of a fixed design.
Japan has chosen the continuous build of small evolving batches, that permit them to rapidly design and build new designs and larger batches when the strategic situation changes.
Australia continually attempts to do this but fails because of a lack of commitment and consistency.
Can deploy
Seabed Sentry, AUVs, Torpedoes, Mines and apparently it can strike Vertical(I’m guessing one of the pods/modules in the future is small VLS system for missiles or torps, drones, buoys+beacons etc). -Ghost shark looks to be about 2-2.5m tall.
>copperhead 100 is 2.7m long and copperhead 500 is 4m long
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Going Boeing
Well-Known Member
I agree that offensive capabilities will probably be included in the future but ISR appears to be its initial role. I would not be surprised if the Government has already committed to acquiring Anduril’s Seabed Sentry system for deployment by the RAN’s Ghost Sharks - it appears to be exactly what’s needed on the approaches to Australia and in the main choke points.
Seabed Sentry
Anduril and Ultra Maritime Announce Partnership on Autonomous Ocean Sensing Capability - Naval News
Both Ministers were at pains to emphasise that this platform (itself) not in combination with anything else necessarily (aka providing target data whilst something else does the firing) provides long range "strike". How and with what is not being revealed but they made it clear. Ghost Shark can and will provide offensive strike capability from the vesssels themselves.
There are unprecedented levels of secrecy surrounding this project. We don't know how many will be built, what weapons and sensors will be carried,
details about speed, range, operational depth, endurance, we don't even know the exact location of the factory that is building them.
I am even wondering if we will learn about other related programs such as Copperhead or Sea Sentry. Sea Sentry in particular is something I would probably want to keep secret.
One thing that does come to mind is that these things will need to be deployed close to their area of operation. I doubt they really have the range to be deployed from Australia. You would need to either base them from a friendly nation in that region such as Papua New Guinea or use surface vessels, or submarines to deploy them.
Could be interesting times ahead, but we might never hear much about them.
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