asymetric warfare

"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


--

"Kevin Brooks" wrote:
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.

Depending on LORAN plays to one of the great strengths of the US...
Electronic warfare. (Not to mention various more violent ways of
taking the system off the air.)

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
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On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:53:21 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote:

"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"?

Read the rest of the sentence: "...once you've written software
that can identify a vehicle (or other target) in a picture"

I could probably have phrased that better.

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.

I'm sure thast large warships can be sighted several km away.

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,

You do realise, you can get hard disks small enought otfit in your
hand, that store tens of gigabytes these days?

and is capable of extremely rapid
computational work,

Today we have 3 GHz processors. Every 12-18 months speed doubles. I
doubt if processing speed will be a problem.

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.

No, because you use multiple transmitters, which aren't all switched
on at once, plus large numbers of fake transmitters there to be
targets for bombs. The transmitters can shift frequencies and use
short transmissions, to further reduce the probability of being
detected.

Automated
celestial tracking/guidance is not the purview of the amateur,

LORAN was around 40 years ago; therefore any country with
1960s-equivalent tech should be able to build one.

and I doubt
you would get the requisite accuracy from such a system mounted on such a
small platform.

Why is the platform size an issue?

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!"

Again, why would DR not work?


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 05:54:28 +0000, phil hunt wrote:
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:53:21 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote:

"The programming for this isn't particularly hard"?

Read the rest of the sentence: "...once you've written software
that can identify a vehicle (or other target) in a picture"

I could probably have phrased that better.

Like, say, "The programming for this isn't particularly hard,
once you've waved your hands and assumed all the really hard
bits are already done"?

[...]

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,

You do realise, you can get hard disks small enought otfit in your
hand, that store tens of gigabytes these days?

Of course you can. Just because you have somewhere to put the
data doesn't mean the data is easy to acquire, though.

You can get detailed digital elevation data for the United States
(horizontal resolution of 30 meters for the lower 48, 90 meters
for Alaska), but that's because the United States Geological Survey
has gone to a great deal of effort to compile it and make it
available.

How many other countries have done the same? Does the
Royal Elbonian Survey Office even have decent 1:24,000
topographic map coverage of Elbonia to use as a starting
point for compiling a digital elevation model?

[...]
Your LORAN system bites the dust when the curtain goes up.

No, because you use multiple transmitters, which aren't all switched
on at once, plus large numbers of fake transmitters there to be
targets for bombs.

LORAN transmitter sites are not small. Check out

http://www.megapulse.com/lorsys.html

for a picture of a modern solid-state transmitter -- they
don't need water cooling systems any more, apparently, but
you still need a large room with a HVAC system capable of
handling "moderate air-conditioning loads".

That's nothing compared to the size of the antennas, though.
A LORAN transmitter station typically has multiple guyed
antenna masts with heights ranging between 300 and 1,000 feet.

You are not going to be able to build lots of them,
and you definitely can't move them around.

The transmitters can shift frequencies and use
short transmissions, to further reduce the probability of being
detected.

Great -- now all you need to do is figure out how to
hide a forest of immobile antenna masts that are hundreds
of feet tall.

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.

Why is the platform size an issue?

You need a stable platform for accurate celestial navigation.
A small aircraft-sized HLCCM isn't it, and semi-accurate celestial
navigation only tells you your position to within 5-10 miles.

You also need to be able to see the stars, so using celestial
navigation would mean your HLCCM would only be able to navigate
to its target if it was night and the weather was clear.

Automated celestial navigation is really only practical for
vehicles that operate outside the Earth's atmosphere --
spacecraft and ICBMs.

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!"

Again, why would DR not work?

Because dead reckoning is the least accurate form of
navigation. Do you really want your HLCCMs to miss
their targets by miles because the wind changed
direction after they were launched?


ljd

ess (phil hunt) wrote:

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,

You do realise, you can get hard disks small enought otfit in your
hand, that store tens of gigabytes these days?

You do realize the problem isn't *storing* the data, it's *generating
and integrating it*. It's not a matter of storage, or CPU capacity,
but of analysis and algorithms. (A friend of mine recently generated
a 3-d topo of our county as the first step in building an integrated
GIS for the local water department. Took six months.)

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
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discussion.

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:56:18 GMT, Derek Lyons
wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote:

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,

You do realise, you can get hard disks small enought otfit in your
hand, that store tens of gigabytes these days?

You do realize the problem isn't *storing* the data,

If you were more literate, you would realise that I was replying to
the the point "remain compact enough to fit in your missile".

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:56:18 GMT, Derek Lyons
wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote:

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,

You do realise, you can get hard disks small enought otfit in your
hand, that store tens of gigabytes these days?

You do realize the problem isn't *storing* the data,

If you were more literate, you would realise that I was replying to
the the point "remain compact enough to fit in your missile".

If you were more literate, you would realize that you adressed only
half the statement you replied to. Which is typical, as you have a
history in this thread of avoiding or handwaving away the hard parts.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

ess (phil hunt) wrote:
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.

No, because you use multiple transmitters, which aren't all switched
on at once, plus large numbers of fake transmitters there to be
targets for bombs. The transmitters can shift frequencies and use
short transmissions, to further reduce the probability of being
detected.

All of which increases the cost and complexity of your missile
guidance system. It has to; store *all* possible stations,be able to
determine which master/slave complex is currently active, and
determine which frequencies to use. Not easy, not easy at all.

(Setting aside the difficulties of setting up such a system.)

Automated celestial tracking/guidance is not the purview of the
amateur,

LORAN was around 40 years ago; therefore any country with
1960s-equivalent tech should be able to build one.

Nice dodge there, failing to address the issue of celestial
navigation.

And sorry, the assumption that anyone can easily do something that was
done forty years ago is invalid on it's face. A LORAN system requires
complex electronics, accurate surveying, guaranteed power, good sized
antenna... All non-trivial, none cheap, and none 'garage' compatible.

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!"

Again, why would DR not work?

Because all navigation system accumulate inaccuracy as time-of-flight
increases. Without periodic updates, you are almost ensured of
failing to hit your target.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:05:46 GMT, Derek Lyons wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote:

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!"

Again, why would DR not work?

Because all navigation system accumulate inaccuracy as time-of-flight
increases.

Well, that's obvious. it's how quickly it accumulates innaccuracy
that matters.

Without periodic updates, you are almost ensured of
failing to hit your target.

Unless you have some other method of terminal guidance.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:05:46 GMT, Derek Lyons wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote:

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!"

Again, why would DR not work?

Because all navigation system accumulate inaccuracy as time-of-flight
increases.

Well, that's obvious. it's how quickly it accumulates innaccuracy
that matters.

Given your lapses to date, I don't assume you know anything, as you've
displayed massive ignorance so far.

Without periodic updates, you are almost ensured of
failing to hit your target.

Unless you have some other method of terminal guidance.

ROTFLMAO. First you have to get into the area where terminal guidance
can take over.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.