So that's the only complexity associated with Unmanned Underwater Vehicles?
No.
With a manned sub there is a captain and a crew who basically know what they are supposed to be doing and can receive orders and operate on their own most of the time.... sometimes they will transmit information about targets they might detect but not be in a position to engage, but generally they will patrol areas and look for threats and targets and in peace time pretend and practise to attack those targets, and in war time actually attack those targets.
With an unmanned sub who commands it to do things? Some guy in a van in Moscow via satellite link? How does that guy know what is happening on that sub? Well of course he has video feeds... no he doesn't... aircraft have cameras... submarines have sonar... active and passive.
How do the people controlling the under water unmanned vessel know what is happening?
Constantly transmitting sonar information would give away the drones position all the time and make it rather easy to evade or avoid, but without constant positional and audio information the UUV could get caught in a current and dragged off course and sail into the sea bed...
It is not like a plane... you can't just have a few cameras facing forward to pilot the thing and a camera in a ball turret that someone else can use to find targets, and satellite navigation constantly showing altitude and speed and location all the time... a sub is different.
By Large Underwater Platforms I meant upcoming platforms like Lockheed's Orca.
And by expensive I realise America doesn't care that it is broke and that the best solution is to spend even more money, but Russia is not interested in making its MIC companies rich and gives a damn about its own actual defence...
UUVs just shifts the personnel to somewhere else... it doesn't reduce manning requirements at all really.
These are much smaller than SSKs like Kilo, Lada or Type 214. Take a look at this link...what do you think?
If you scroll to the bottom of the article you will see Russia has 4 similar systems plus Poseidon....
The only additional tech on board the Lada will be the AIP. So, more capable I get it. But VASTLY? No new breakthrough tech designed for submarines anywhere in the world in the last 5 years.
Lada is 500 tons lighter, has half the crew number, and is rather better armed than improved Kilo subs... I think Vastly counts... the Sonar array is substantially better... the sort of thing they normally fit to SSNs...
Such communication will be secure. Besides that's how SSKs operate too with aircraft.
It doesn't matter if it is secure... the Russians didn't need to crack the signal from Dudayevs cell phone... they just tracked his location and dropped a bomb on his head...