Paul J. Adam wrote:
phil hunt writes
Paul J. Adam wrote:
Getting a machine to tell a T-72 from a M1A1 from a Leclerc is hard
enough in good conditions

You don't have to. You have to be able to tell whether it's a
vehicle or not, and if it is, is it in an area likely to be occupied
by own forces.

#1 sounds easy until the enemy starts deploying decoys and disguising
targets.

They have to deploy good-enough decoys forwards with the
advancing troops. Consider for a moment how hard it would
have been for the US to get significant quantities of good
decoys forwards of the Kuwaiti border by T+4 hrs.

#2 still requires not only significant navigation, but some
noticeable amounts of real-time intelligence gathering and
communication.

A kill box from thirty kilometers north of the Iraqi border
with Kuwait, going twenty kilometers south of that border,
by T+4 hrs after the US Army breached the border, nine months
ago, would have worked quite well.

_Someone_ has to reliably determine whether the 'US tanks to our front!'
message is a feint, a hasty raid or the real invasion; work out where
those tanks will be by the time the missiles arrive: and reliably get a
message back to the launch unit. This has to be reasonably proof against
deception, EW, jamming, and blunt attack.

A massive invasion, and anything of regimental strength or more
is going to count, is hard to hide. The details of how far and
how fast the front line has moved may be more opaque, but any
serious attack has very real limitations on how fast it can
roll out. One can easily posit kill box limits which are
very easy to justify and will suffer very little blue-on-blue
for the defender. And more to the point, will do far more
damage than any remaining defender forces in those boxes,
and the oncoming attack will presumably wipe those forces
out promptly.

The timing and positioning of the box may require not targeting
your own FEBA of effective resistance, and not targeting the
leading invasion echelons. But that doesn't matter. It took
days for the US forces to finish crossing the border into Iraq.
Kill boxes with the description I gave would have been valid
for much more time than is needed to set up and execute the
cruise missile attack starting.

More to the point, it rules out most resistance and makes life for
refugees short and nasty, since "general area of enemy forces" will
contain both own forces trying to fight (unless these missiles are your
only resistance) and civilians fleeing.

This depends on the geography. Not many Iraqi civilians were in
the kill boxes I specified above.

[...]
I doubt that that is true, assuming a competent comms network.

Landline telephone need landlines and exchanges, easily targeted.
Cellular telephone needs masts and repeaters, ditto. Broadcast radio is
vulnerable to jamming, eavesdropping and spoofing (or simply "bomb the
emitter".

A comms infrastructure that is robust, secure, and prompt is not easy
even for the UK or US to guarantee, let alone a Third World nation under
attack by opponent(s) with air superiority.

We have two types of communications that have to happen successfully,
plus a decision loop.

The reports of the invasion have to make it back to the designated
authority over the missile firings. As stated earlier, it's very
hard to credit any scenario under which it takes even twelve hours
for a country to know the US has invaded.

Then the leader has to make up his mind to fire some or all of the
cruise missiles.

Then the word has to make it back out to the missile sites.

Even without good landlines, the word getting out to the missile
sites doesn't have to be any more sophisticated than an emergency
action message. A single code word, which shifts over time, may be
enough. To suggest that the US can reliably disrupt significant
two way communications is no leap. To suggest that we can reliably
prevent *any* communications, even a broadcast one way message
which can be very brief, is unrealistic.


-george william herbert