Defense against UAV's

Jack Linthicum wrote:
wrote:
Jack Linthicum wrote:
wrote:

If the report on the Iran UAV is accurate, the USN is evidently not on
top of this at present. I hope they are working on it, very hard.

Like anti-radiation missiles. Against the launch sites and control
points.

Since only a simple radio signal is needed to control the UAVs (and
then not all of the time - only when they want to instruct them to do
something) that would be very much harder than hitting a high-powered
radar which has to keep transmitting a distinctive signal all of the
time to do its job. And AR missiles could easily be decoyed by lots of
cheap radio transmitters scattered about.

The problem here is that it could be a kind of 'asymmetric warfare', in
that the costs and problems of the defence are potentially far more
costly than those of the attackers.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

The mention was of swarms which implies swarms of signals which then
implies if I have an ECM craft up and I get lots of radiation from one
direction I will send a message to that source. The decoys may work the
second time but not the first or third. The control point will be that,
singular, one command directing all of the UAVs from one spot. How many
generals would you trust if you were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

One thing about swarms. They are capable of communicating with each
other. This is more relevant in fact to what the US can do than what
the Iranians are capable of now. It is also relevant to what China
might do in 7-10 years. In fact a swarm would (like the Internet) have
one communication link. Let us suppose tou were trying to defend
yourself and you decided to fly UAVs in a formation where each plane
was in formation about 500m from its colleagues. 2,000 (hopefully)
cheap aircraft would thereby guard 1,000km of front. If you were to arm
them with LMGs we would have the basis of a system.

The important thing to realize from the software viewpoint is that they
form a network and one controller could control all of them. They need
not in fact take up an inordinate amount of satellite banbwidth.
Remember of course that 2 sides fight every war. The US (and Britain)
is probable capable of developing this within the 7-10 years mentioned
by other contributors.

Such a concept is a direct development of what is going on in civvy
street and the COTS situation. Question - should this be a secret
project or should it be done openly with the perveyors of COTS. It is
very much along the lines of what is hapenning with mobile phones, and
corresponds to a view of what the Internet will become.

Secret projects:-

1) Cost 25% more simply from being secret.
2) Deny themseves Peer Group Review.
3) Frequently deny themselves COTS.

Often the best security may simply be rapid advance not secrecy.

This system will also be a trmendous force multiplier when it comes to
policing a piece of territory. On secrecy cicero a WW2 spy said that if
you were going to hand tomorrow knowing the precise weight and breaking
strain of the rope was not going to help you. I think we whould tell Al
Qaeda the weight and breaking strain. It won't help them.