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#141
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On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:25:54 +0000, Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , phil hunt writes On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 05:26:01 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote: 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. Falling off a cliff isn't a problem once you've learned how to fly like Superman. Trouble is, that prerequisite is harder than you might expect. Getting a machine to tell a T-72 from a M1A1 from a Leclerc is hard enough in good conditions You don't have to. You have to be able to tell whether it's a vehicle or not, and if it is, is it in an area likely to be occupied by own forces. : doing so in the presence of camouflage, obscurants and when the crew have run out of internal stowage (so have hung lots of external gear) and maybe stored some spare track plates on the glacis front ('cause they need the spare plates and they might as well be extra armour) gets _really_ tricky. Do you err on the side of "tank-like vehicle, kill!" or "if you're not sure don't attack"? I'd tend to err towards the former. note that it's a lot easy to spot a moving vehicle than a stationary one. Would it not be embarrasing to have a successful armoured raid broken up by your own missiles? Indeed. Maybe some form of IFF? Key problem is that going up against the US loses you your comms and observation I doubt that that is true, assuming a competent comms network. DR is patchy at best unless you've got good inertial guidance systems (non-trivial). Celestial only works on clear nights Or during daytime. - so you're limited to fighting wars after dark on cloudless nights with no flares in the sky. LORAN is a radio broadcast and therefore not survivable against a US-style opponent. If you have lots of transmitters, many of which are dummy transmitters, and many of which are only turned on for a short time, using frequency hopping, it's rather harder to destroy the network. 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. This has only been done for twenty years or so in the West, so hardly a great advance. I never said it was; it is merely the obvious way to do it. -- "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). |
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On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:43:49 -0500, Ray Drouillard wrote:
Also, since it's not encrypted, it can be spoofed using a local transmitter That doesn't logically follow; it's possible to make non-encrypted data that can't be faked, you just use a digital signature. -- "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). |
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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). |
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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). |
#145
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In article ,
"John" writes: "phil hunt" wrote in What would be sensible strategies/weapons for a middle-ranking country to employ if it thought it is likely to be involved in a war against the USA or other Western countries, say in the next 10 years? To deal with the US Army... Use SUVs with anti-tank rockets and a millimetric radar mounted on the back. In iraq US gunners opened fire at 5miles. Since the rounds travel at a mile/second, this would give an SUV 5 seconds to dudge, which would be simple with guidence from the radar. Meanwhile the top-attack missiles tear through the thin turret roofs. Buy a few otto-76mm armed tanks with dual use surface/air to deal with incomming aircraft/missiles/bombs/helicopters and to rip enemy soldiers to pieces. 5 seconds to dodge... Dodge where, exqctly? In what direction? How much? To be at the least effective, you're going to have to somehow get 1 vehicle's size distance away from where you were. Since SUV's don't move a 1 mile/second... Oh, and what if the Rascally Americans don't open fire at 5 miles Becasue there's in a city, or there's intervening terrain, or you're not a visible target, and engave at a shorter distance? (Which is what happens. Even 500m (1500') is long range when you're not shooting at, say, Iraqi tanks in the open desert. In that case, they wouldn't be engaging SUV-type things with Main Gun rounds. ('cause it would go through the SUV, and the SUV behind the SUV, and the Tree behing the SUV behing the SUV, and the School behind the tree - you get the idea) They'd use either the .50 cal MG on the turret top, or teh .30 cal co-ax. (Don't discount the Coax. It's got a dedicated gunner with a telescopic sight, a laser rangefinder, and is mounted on a 65-ton tripod. In that case, you don't have 1 round to dodge, but several dozen. As for the top-attack missile - when is it going to be fired? Who's going to guide it? How are they going to maintian guidance for the 20-60 seconds it will take to reach its target while riding in a moving/evading/exploding SUV? To deal with the US Air Force... Buy old airliners and fit with reloadable missile launchers and modern AA radar, counter measures, and refueling probe. Take old fighter designs, and hang them fully fueled and armed from ballons. That'll multiply thier endurance by a factor of ten at least. Fit search-radar in envelope and have them patrol your boarder. Network them together and you'll have an end to surprise US attacks. I'd pay good money to see an F-104/Mirage II/MiG-21 launched from a balloon.If you could make that one work, Ringling Brothers would give you a contract But Quick. As for refrobbing old airliners as long-endurance Patrol Fighter AWACS - well, first, they're easy to detect, and therefore, neutralize. You can either shoot them down, or go around them. Being airliners, their ability to move crossrange will be poor. They'll also need improved airbases, and, as you mention, tankers. WHen the bases disappear, so does your Air Defence. (It's always struck me as amusing how many folks seem to think that all you need to improve aircraft range is a probe. You also need tankers. Lats of tankers. Lots of big tankers. Consider that in 1982, the RAF used its entire tanker force to get one Vulcan from Ascention Island to Port Stanley. (Victors, in this case - Not a lot of tankers, and not a lot of transfer fuel. The same mission could have been flown, by the U.Ss. with 3 aircraft - 1 B-52, and 2 KC-135s. The U.S. tanker fleet alone outnumbers most other nations entire Air Forces. To deal with the US Navy... Buy old torpedos and fit to larch home made rockets (see X-prize entries) with 50-100 mile range. Get the rockets to dump the torpedos within a few miles of a nimitz carrier groups and you're garanteed to blow up something *really* expensive! A _lot_ harder than you think. And the launches will be detected. A Numitz at flank speed would be a significant distance from the inital impact area before the Super ASROC you've described gets there. At which point, the torp, if it survives the impact intact (not a trivial thing), is goig to have a hard time finding a profitable target. In the meantime, you've now 1: Revealed your intentions in an unambiguous manner, and 2: Nicely marked all of your launching sites. making it damned hard to clain that it wasn't your doing. Teh end effect, even if you do hit a ship, would be an awful lot like kicking a nest of Africanized Bees. Alternatively buy the following: 1 million RPG-7s 5 million RPG-7 rounds 10 million AK-74s 1 billion bullets Distribute evenly through out your population, train them, set up a Swiss-style monitoring system, and let the Americans invade. Then blow up everything of value they own the second they let their guard down. They'll leave in a few months and you can go back to normal. In order to do that, you have to have a population that thinks the country you're leading is worth fighting for. But then, countries that its citizens thing are worth fighting for tend not to be high profile targets to the U.S. Alternatively fly a few airliners into american nuclear power stations. The aftermath of multiple chernobles will destroy America as an effective strategic power. Well, the onlu problem with _that_ one is that Chyernoble, bas as it was, didn't depopulate large stretches of the Ukraine or Russia. U.S. racotrs have far superior containment, and, in fact, are required to be designed such that they can shrug off a direct hit from a large airliner. You are the illegitemate son of Robert S. Macnamara, and I claim my 5.00! -- Pete Stickney A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster |
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#147
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On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 20:03:48 GMT, Charles Gray wrote:
co-ordination = radio What radio? the U.S. will have every frequency jammed And then the USA won't be able to use radio either. -- we practically own the radio spectrum. Also, that sort of time on target tactic takes a lot of training-- and most 3rd world countries don't have it. To put it this way, at no point during either GW I or II was the Iraqi military, much larger, with many hardened facilities, able to pull off this sort of coordination. They weren't exactly the most competent army the world has ever seen, were they? When officers are promoted for politcal reliability instead of competence, that's what you expect to happen. -- "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). |
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#150
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