asymetric warfare

"Damo" wrote:

:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
.. .
: "Damo" wrote:
:
: :A civilian is making a cruise missile in his garage in New Zealand for less
: :then 5000 dollars.
:
: I'll believe it when he gets it done, it has a usable warhead
: fraction, and it works after being bounced around on roads (and off)
: in the back of a truck for six months. And if it passes that, then
: we'll talk about flight profiles, RCS, accuracy under GPS-jammed
: conditions, etc.
:
: Get back to me.
:
:I wasnt pretending this was military grade weapon (the GPS component rules
:that out straight away) but if someone told you this 10 years ago you would
:write it off completely.

Really? I find that quite odd, since I remember George talking about
how to build a rocket much more cheaply than we are STILL building
them and didn't "write it off completely". I'm pretty sure that was
more than 10 years ago. I do find the price tag pretty ludicrous,
given that you can't buy a car for that kind of money.

:With todays technology it is at least possible, and
:for terrorists it doesnt have to meet your guidelines above - just hit
:something in a city will do it.

Using mortars off the shelf is easier and cheaper if your only goal is
to lob some explosives into a city.

--
"Death is my gift." -- Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

Fred J. McCall wrote:
:I wasnt pretending this was military grade weapon (the GPS component rules
:that out straight away) but if someone told you this 10 years ago you would
:write it off completely.

Really? I find that quite odd, since I remember George talking about
how to build a rocket much more cheaply than we are STILL building
them and didn't "write it off completely". I'm pretty sure that was
more than 10 years ago.

I started saying that more than 10 years ago now, yeah.

There are now several other companies flying stuff in
the price / performance / complexity range I was talking
about, though I have not yet gotten full development
funding for my project and didn't receive one of the
DARPA FALCON project awards, though several of the
others did.

I do find the price tag pretty ludicrous,
given that you can't buy a car for that kind of money.

A lot of that is markup and costs associated with stuff
that has nothing inherently to do with the structure or
systems (interiors are not cheap).

Car engines and drivetrains also cost a lot more than
pulsejets do, cruise missile wings don't have to be
structurally all that complicated, etc.

People build homebuilt aircraft that are far larger
and more complicated (other than guidance electronics)
than our notional cruise missile for a thousand or two
thousand hours work invested, using tools and technology
that can be obtained in the bush in Rwanda if need be.
If we assume the cruise missile is half that effort,
that's five hundred to a thousand hours of effort.
In a lot of countries, people get paid a couple of
bucks an hour for reasonable tech-oriented labor.
If you wanted to do this with a prop (or, ducted fan)
there are two cycle aviation engines off the shelf
in quantity one at $2k and down for low power,
$4-5k and up some for about a hundred horsepower.
The ducted fan / afterburner job used in the
second generation, never used Kamizaze plane
used a hundred horsepower engine and a wooden
fan unit.

The only cost center which runs the risk of running
severely outside the budget is the computer and guidance
hardware. The INS will be several thousand in quantity
even if it's fiber optic gyros and MEMS accellerometers,
if you're aiming for 10 meter inertial accuracy over
those 200ish kilometers. The camera system engineering
will not be trivial, though the camera itself may end up
being very cheap (or cameras... CMOS cameras for $20 or
less retail today means that some solutions may just be
"buy more cameras"). The computer itself is trivial
and off the shelf, even hardened for flight. The software
is a sticky point but not as hard as some have made it out
to be, other than the image-matching software. I believe
that the image-matching problem is overstated here based
on previous investigations I have done, but I am not a
competent expert on that corner of the problem.


-george william herbert

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...
"Damo" wrote:

:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
.. .
: "Damo" wrote:
:
: :A civilian is making a cruise missile in his garage in New Zealand for
less
: :then 5000 dollars.
:
: I'll believe it when he gets it done, it has a usable warhead
: fraction, and it works after being bounced around on roads (and off)
: in the back of a truck for six months. And if it passes that, then
: we'll talk about flight profiles, RCS, accuracy under GPS-jammed
: conditions, etc.
:
: Get back to me.
:
:I wasnt pretending this was military grade weapon (the GPS component
rules
:that out straight away) but if someone told you this 10 years ago you
would
:write it off completely.

Really? I find that quite odd, since I remember George talking about
how to build a rocket much more cheaply than we are STILL building
them and didn't "write it off completely". I'm pretty sure that was
more than 10 years ago.

Was that just a rocket or a cruise missile? Cheap GPS units are only a
relative recent occurance although in the US you may have had $100 GPS units
10 years ago.

I do find the price tag pretty ludicrous,
given that you can't buy a car for that kind of money.

Well actually you can buy cars for that amount of money, and quite
complicated ones at that. A flying bomb is IMO much simpler -
engine+computer+leading edges and servo units. Making it reliable and
accurate is another thing entirely....


:With todays technology it is at least possible, and
:for terrorists it doesnt have to meet your guidelines above - just hit
:something in a city will do it.

Using mortars off the shelf is easier and cheaper if your only goal is
to lob some explosives into a city.

If you want to escape launching something from 20-50km away is much better
then 2-5km away. And more terrifying - imagine the media response: CRUISE
MISSILE HITS NEW YORK!

Damo

--
"Death is my gift." -- Buffy, the Vampire Slayer