On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 04:15:51 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
...
LCCMs could be designed to attack enemy vehicles, both armoured, and
supply columns. The missile could use dead-reckoning to move itself
approximately where the enemy vehicles are, then use visual sensors
to detect vehicles (moving ones would probably be easier to detect).
This would require digital cameras and computers in the guidance
system, both of which are cheap. Programming appropriate image
recognition software is non-trivial, but has been done, and the cost
could be spread over large production runs. As the LCCM sees a
vehicle and chooses a target, it could dive towards it, and
simultaneously broadcast its position and a photo of the target
(useful intel for the missile controllers).

This is really not as simple as you make it out to be. The US military
services are still wrestling with ways to compress the sensor/shooter cycle,
and with fielding weapons capable of handling mobile/time-sensitive targets.
In view of that, the likelihood of any likely foe developing a similar
capability in the near terms (and that really is the next ten years, if not
longer) is remote.

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.

The second is when the sensor is in one place, and the shooter
somewhere else; in those situations, what problems have the USA
encountered, and how have they gone about solving them?

Western nations can, and are, using UAVs extensively, for these
sorts of roles. However, western defence industries tend to be
slow-moving, bloated, produce expensive kit, and it would probably
be possible for a mid-range power, provided it adopts a
minimum-bureaucracy approach to design, to produce weapon systems
faster and more cheaply. Faster weapon system design mewans it could
"get inside the decision curve" of Western arms industries, because
by the time they've produced a weapon to counter the low-cost
weapon, the next generation of low-cost weapon is there.

Then one wonders why those very same nations usually end up trying to buy
the products produced by those "slow-moving, bloated" western defense
contractors.

Because they are more technologically advanced. Some technologies,
for example high performance jet engines, require a large industrial
base to make. The sort of technologies I'm talking about are ones
that can potentially be produced a lot more cheaply, for example by
adapting mass-produced (but nevertheless highly sophisticated)
consumer products. Any medium-sized power should be able to produce
embedded computer control systems.

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