"Dionysios Pilarinos" wrote in message
...

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
.. .
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. The closest thing we have to that in service are the
intelligent
antiarmor submunitions, which are already in service in cluter munitions
to
include WCMD dispensers, and will soon be available as a warhead option
for
the Army's ATACMS missiles. But they still require a sensor in the loop,
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.

I think that Phil is probably talking about weapons like the IAI Harpy. It
is a relatively inexpensive "CM" used in SEAD operations. The only
significant technology employed by this vehicle is in the sensor (and even
there, a "middle-ranking country" should not have a problem developing or
procuring).

The question really is if it is possible to integrate different sensors
(TV,
IR) on such vehicles, if you can accurately identify targets (based on
some
signature characteristics or library), and how effective it could be (at
not
killing your own or being easily defeated by the enemy).

And those questions are the kind that even the US, with its multi-billion
dollar R&D structure, is tangling with--do you really see some second/third
world potential foe solving that dilemma over the posited period of the next
ten years? I don't.


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)?

That depends on the programming of the weapon. The same thought process
that
goes into autonomously targeted systems (ALARM, Harpy, SMArt, etc.) -
systems that can be launched against enemy positions and where the weapon
autonomously selects on locks on to its target - would be used.

Those home on active emitters, keeping their last transmitting location in
their memory in case they drop off the air. That is a big difference from
going after targets that are purely passive and are not radiating (or not
radiating anything you can actually read with a system that could be placed
in such a small weapon--detecting the frequency agile signals from vehicle
FM radios is not going to work).


(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) or up high where the view is better, but also where
it
becomes easy meat for the layers of Patriots and Avengers fielded by the
resident duckhunters, along with any covering Aegis controlled Standards
in
the littoral zone, and the ubiquitous F-15/F-22 CAP? and,

Good questions for the side employing them. If you are indeed talking
about
a "massive" use of such weapons, I think that the Patriots (and other
anti-aircraft systems) would be quickly (and quite expensively)
overwhelmed.
Overwhelming, confusing, and otherwise countering the sensor might be a
better approach.

I disagree. On the one hand you are going to have to use a pretty complex CM
of sorts, as we have already seen from the discussion to this point, if you
are going to engage previously unlocated targets, so the idea that these
things will be cheaply turned out in some converted auto garage is not going
to cut it. They will also be expensive--the R&D effort is still required,
since what has been postulated is essentially an autonomous attack system
that does not currently exist even in the US. Third, the number of Patiots
that can be made available is not a trivial number--count the number of
missiles available in the uploaded canisters of a single battery, not to
mention the reminder of its ABL that is accompanying them. Finally, we have
a rather substantial stock of Stingers, including ones mounted on Avengers
and BFV-Stinger, along with the regular MANPADS. Sorry, this just does not
look realistic to me. Other posters have taken the more proper tack--don't
try to confront the US on conventional terms and instead go the
unconventional warfare route--much more likely to at least stand a chance at
success of sorts.


(c) Development of
a reliable, compact, onboard sensor suite that provides enough
resolution
to
find likely targets, and a darned intelligent software package to handle
target discrimination (from background clutter, earlier posited garbage
truck, etc.), and can also recognize an entire range of potential
targets
and select the one you would want hit from amongst all of them.

If you are talking about a "massive" deployment of such inexpensive
weapons,
you might not need to concern yourself with those that "miss". Depending
on
the cost of the vehicles, the total number acquired, and the budget
allocated, the user might be satisfied with a success rate well below
100%.

I'd be surprised if this approach yielded a system that acheived a success
rate that reaches even double digits--for the commitment of significant
resources that would have been better used training irregulars and creating
caches of weapons and explosives.


Sorry, but I
don't see ANY potential foes we might face in your near term overcoming
one,
much less all, of those hurdles, and I am sure I have missed a few more.
[snip]

The Harpy has been around for a while. And in the mean time, technology
has
progressed and costs of acquisition declined (for commercially available
components).

Again, there is one heck of a difference between going after an active
emitter like an AD radar and passive targets, especially if you are the
disadvantaged party in terms if ISR and C-4, which we can bet the opposition
would be in such a scenario.

Brooks