asymetric warfare

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:29:52 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

pervect wrote:

:Actually there's something I forgot to mention - using similar spread
:spectrum techniques as, for instance, GPS, it will in general be
:fairly hard to tell that a high tech wide bandwidth low power
:transmitter is "up" at all.

So we've established the following so far in this discussion:

1) Tanks can't kill anything, since it can dodge.

2) ECM doesn't work.

There was another equally silly one, but I forget what it was. No
matter.

Even trolls should know more about their subject than we're seeing
demonstrated here.

If you think tanks can't kill anything, you might want to explain how
you came to that conclusion, it isn't very apparent to me.

For extra credit, you might try explaining how the issue of whether or
not "tanks can kill anything" has anything to do with what I actually
said about the difficulty of detecting spread spectrum signals.

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 01:30:25 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:



:Spread spectrum tecniques are really crucial to making this system
:have the level of security it actually does.

Ok, view it that way if you like. I'm really not going to talk about
it other than what I've already said.

OK, if you don't want to explain yourself, I can't force you to.

pervect wrote:
I think there are technologies that our fictitious nation of Elbonia
can use that will make disrupting their C&C structure a lot more
difficult.

Certainly, but homegrowing them as you suggest below is the work of
decades, not weeks or months.

I would even go so far as to say that investing in a
modern C&C infrastructure would probably be the best first investment
Elbonia could make.

Simply making it modern doesn't reduce it's vulnerability. What does
do so it a lot of hard thinking about it's vulnerabilities, and how to
patch those without introducting too much additional complexity,
cruft, or new vulnerabilities.

Probably the best approach would be to grow their
own experts (rather than to rely on commercial systems of others and
think that they can just buy one).

That approach has to start in the elementary schools... And the last
thing the Elbonian dynasty wants is a well educated middle class.

D.
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Fred J. McCall wrote:

(phil hunt) wrote:

:I also had in mind OSS *techniques*, that is using some of the
rocedures in infrastructure that OSS projects often used, to do
:closed-source development. Things like Sourceforge, mailing lists,
:CVS, packaging as tarballs, etc.

What do you think the rest of us are doing? Chipping the stuff out on
stone tablets?


No, embroidering on the ties you are forced to wear.

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

Text-Only Version:
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
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discussion.

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 21:23:50 -0800, pervect
wrote:

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:46:51 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:



You and Phil, and to a lesser extent George, who should know better,
don't seem to realize that killing the enemy C&C is how the US fights
wars today. The days of grinding towards the Capital worrying only
about the front line and hoping a golden bullet takes out the Leader
are dead and gone. This is 2003 not 1943.

I think there are technologies that our fictitious nation of Elbonia
can use that will make disrupting their C&C structure a lot more
difficult. I would even go so far as to say that investing in a
modern C&C infrastructure would probably be the best first investment
Elbonia could make. Probably the best approach would be to grow their
own experts (rather than to rely on commercial systems of others and
think that they can just buy one).



So all Elbonia has to do is create a modern middle class, capable
of supporting an educated technical infrastructure...and by the way,
keep said middile class from chucking the leadership out. Not only
isn't that easy, but that';s not a 10 year project, its a 30 year
project.


I also think there will be an increase in the use of nuclear weapons,
and that the wave of current US military actions will, as a side
effect, encourage nuclear proliferation. I don't think that this will
be widely announced, though - I think that everyone will claim not to
have weapons of mass destruction, and when intelligence turns up
irrefutable evidence of nuclear weapons, they will merely blink and
calmly state that said weapons are purely defensive for use against
military targets only and are in no way classifiable as being WMD.

Why would the U.S. wish to increase using nuclear weapons? I think
the decision to start creating new nuke designs is stupid, but in any
case, the U.S. doesn't *need* nukes in most concievable engagements,
and in fact using them would degrade our own effectiveness.

pervect wrote in
news
In any event, one of the first profitable investments for Elbonia
might be a modern C&C infrastructure that will be hard to monitor,
spoof, or take down.

All this talk about communications misses the point somewhat. The
Americans open most of their imperial conquests by dropping a GBU-28 into
the victim country's central command bunker. Robust communications aren't
all that much use when there's no one left to give the orders.

The goal for Elbonia should not be robust communications alone but rather
to develop a heavily distributed command system that isn't particularly
vulnerable to the kind of golden-BB decapitation strikes that the Americans
have perfected. This is, however, only going to be possible for values of
'Elbonia' along the lines of India, China or the EU.

--
Coridon Henshaw - http://www3.telus.net/csbh - "I have sadly come to the
conclusion that the Bush administration will go to any lengths to deny
reality." -- Charley Reese

Derek Lyons wrote:

Another half truth, though I don't know if it's you, or you parroting
his half truths. They collected a judgement against him for failing
to pay his taxes.

Indeed, I found that to be the most suspicious part of his story, a
really strong indication he was rationalizing away his responsibility.
How does the government trick you into failing to pay your taxes, so
they can scrub a project of yours, exactly, anyway?

Another very telling bit of the story is that his Web page _used_ to
mention the tax evasion, but it appears not to anymore (at least not on
the front page, and I'm pretty sure the text there is largely the same),
since I heard about the tax evasion from his own site. I'd say the
removal of that little detail is also rather telling.

--
__ Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
\__/ A life without festivity is a long road without an inn.
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On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:46:51 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:



And then the secondary system gets targeted PDQ...

AFAIK, against a good spread-spectrum system, you won't do much better
than to be able to monitor the total energy with a broad-band
detector.

Spread spectrum systems also tend to have much lower transmitter power
than conventional systems - by Shannon's channel theorem, the channel
capacity is proportional to the bandwidth, but only grows
logarithmically with transmitter power. So you'll need a lot less
power for a given bitrate with a wide channel.

The net result is that you can only detect the energy of the
transmitter above background noise when you are fairly close to the
transmitter.

I'm really not sure how quickly you can count on taking out a spread
spectrum transmitter. Especially when it's put on a low duty cycle
transmit mode rather than a continuous transmit mode.

To be realistic, I'd anticipate that anything that looks like an
antenna farm would be bombed, and that some anti-radiation missiles
(presumably looking for signals in the known bandwidth that the enemy
uses) might be left "loitering" in areas that are likely to contain
transmitters (ones with good lines of sight). I suspect that the
former might be more important than the later. Prepatory intelligence
work (like bribing or having agents follow service people) would also
be a factor in locating transmitter sites.

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 08:01:52 -0000, Keith Willshaw
wrote:

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
news
ess (phil hunt) wrote:



:Usingn the right
rogramming tools is important, for example the right lasnguasge or
more likely) set of languages. On which lanugages to use, Paul
:Graham's essays on language design, and the way Lisp makes it easy
:for you to in effect write your own specialised language for the job
:in hand, are apposite.

Again, this is wonderful until someone has to enhance or maintain the
result. EVERY effort written in a 'one-off' special purpose language?
Ugh!

He wants to use lisp for real time software !

No, he merely thinks Lisp's macro system has advantages, when trying
to solve hard problems.


And some nasty disadvantages which is why it has somewhat
fallen out of favour.

Keith

In article ,
says...
In article MPG.1a519da6af0338a89897c2@news,
Bernardz wrote:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oplan-5027.htm

States that "North Korea has about 500 long-range artillery tubes within
range of Seoul...is within range of the 170mm Koksan gun and two hundred
240mm multiple-rocket launchers...The proximity of these long-range
systems to the Demilitarized Zone threatens all of Seoul with
devastating attacks."

Such an attack might result in a 100,000 dead in Seoul in the first day.

...if nobody bothers with counterbattery fire, or drops a bunch of high
explosives in the area of the artillery to make them stop shooting.

We *know* where these cannons are going to be firing from. Wh know
where their hardened shelters are. We know where their radar defenses
are.

If the North doesn't start with a completely unprovoked surprise attack,
they've got a good chance of getting erased very quickly.




I doubt we know as much as you think. We would definitely know once they
started firing in bulk missiles and shells.

If that moment comes, I doubt we would have time to knock their radar
defenses. That means it going to be very dangerous there.





--
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the dealer has 10.

22nd saying of Bernard