"phil hunt" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 05:26:01 GMT, Kevin Brooks
wrote:

I think there are two issues here. The first is when the sensor is
attached to the weapon, as it is in a sensor in a missile. Here,
there is no sensor/shooter cycle, unless you choose to have a human
involved in the decision to fire.

That is way beyond even our capabilities. You are talking autonomous
combat
systems.

Yes. The progrsamming for this isn't particularly hard, once you've
written software that can identify a vehicle (or other target) in a
picture. It's just a matter of aiming the missile towards the
target.

"The programming for this isn't particularly hard"? Gee, one wonders why
only one nation has to date fielded a system that even verges on that kind
of capability. And as to it being "just a matter of aiming the missile
towards the target..." uhhhh...yeeeah, if you consider "just" including
developing a navigational system that also supports its own survivability
(i.e., is able to negotiate a route to the target down in the weeds),
knowing where the target is in the first place and getting that data to the
firing point realtime, and provided that you target just happens to match up
with what is loaded in the missiles brain (Missile: "I am looking for a
tank...tank..tank..." as it flies across twenty light skinned trucks loaded
with dismounts). You are REALLY lowballing the estimate of how much R&D is
required to field such a semi-autonomous weapon. Ever wonder why you are
just now seeing such technology emerging in the US military (and hint--it
ain't because of our "bloated" defense industry)?


Weapons like this were in existance 20 years ago, for example the
Exocet anti-ship missile. I'm not bsure what problems you envisage
with doing this; perhaps you could elaborate?

For gosh sakes, you are comparing apples and oranges. Exocet was fired at a
known target location, and one which could not be mistaken for something
else short of a freakin' iceberg, and during final approach locks in with
its own guidance radar, operating against a background remarkably free of
clutter. And besides, you are making a point against your earlier
premise--if Exocet was so easy to develop and manufacture, even given the
comparitive ease of its mission when contrasted to a system that has to
find, identify, and attack various DIFFERENT kinds of targets with different
signatures in the terrestrial realm as you have posited, then why have only
a handful of nations been able to develop their own anti-ship missiles?


because you can't just fire them "in that direction, more or less", and
hit
anything--you have to have a pretty narrow determination of where the
target
is right at the time the weapon arrives.

What you could do is have the missile, if it doesn't find a target
to hang around in the area looking for one. (The British ALARM
missile does this literally :-)).

There is one heck of a difference between ARM's that home on active threat
emitters, or follow the last plotted course as HARM does, and these
uber-CM's you have posited that can find and strike various kinds of (very
passive)targets.


Now if you want to send a flock of
CM's out and about to go on a hunter-killer mission, you have some real
problems to confront, like: (a) How do you prevent fratricide or
targeting
of the local version of the Sanford garbage truck (remember that not
every
enemy is going to be able to discount collateral damage like the
insurgents
we are no facing in Iraq do)?

You can't prevent fratricide all the time, and most countries would
have a higher tolerance from losses caused by friendly fire than
most western countries do. The missile would know (at least
approximately - within a few km) were it is, and therefore whether
it is over land occupied by its own side.

LOL! If it only knows "within a few km or so" where it is, then news
flash--you won't even be able to use that puppy against a CVN. Your
postulated
brilliant-CM-on-a-shoestring-budget-able-to-be-manufactured-by-anyone is
sounding more and more ludicrous.


Discriminating between military and civilian vehicles is a lot
harder, I agree.

(b) Are you going to send it in low, where it
MIGHT have a chance at surviving, but its field of view is extremely
limited, so it is that much more likely to not find any target to hit,
but
which also requires oodles of (very accurate, and likely unavailable to
most
potential foes) digital topographic data to be uploaded and a complex
navigation system)

The topographic data would probably be available if the missile is
flying over the territory of its own country.

You have a rather optimistic view of the capabilities of most nations to
handle development of truly accurate x-y-z topo data sets. And once you do
have that data, you have to have a guidance system that can read it, remain
compact enough to fit in your missile, and is capable of extremely rapid
computational work, not to mention is able to manage a massive starting data
set (when we did a relatively simple 3-D mapping effort of our 70+ square
mile town a few years back it was going to take something like
half-a-gig)--ever consider what your missile is going to have to deal with
if it is going to have any kind of range at all?


Otherwise, there are other methods of nagivation: dead reckoning,
celestial, a LORAN-like system could be set up.

Your LORAN system bites the dust when the curtain goes up. Automated
celestial tracking/guidance is not the purview of the amateur, and I doubt
you would get the requisite accuracy from such a system mounted on such a
small platform. DR is a non-starter--again, you don't just hurl a few
missiles in the general direction of the bad guys and say, "Gee, that was
tough--time for a beer!"


or up high where the view is better,

It's possible that a mission might require some of the flight to be
at high level and some at low level. I imagine the missiles could
be programmed for a mission by sticking a computer with an Ethernet
cable into a slot on the missile.

It pops up, it becomes Patriot bait. It stays low, the Avengers eat it. The
CAP fighters can munch on either, but they will more than likely just remain
occupied with frying each launch system as it unmasks.

You are getting quite far off base with this if your objective is to find an
asymetric attack method; what you are postulating plays to the US strengths,
and that is the opposite of asymetric warfare. take the advice of the others
who have already suggested the low tech approach--when you try to out-tech
the US, you will lose.

Brooks


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