Impact of Eurofighters in the Middle East

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:15:39 +0100, Keith Willshaw wrote:
[regarding compiling open source software]

All of which negates the point of open source which is to
be able to make changes.

The point of open source isn't so much that *you* can make changes,
but that *everyone else* can as well. Which means, for a popular
open source program, the changes you want have perhaps already been
made...

Frankly all Joe Blow wants
is to be able to pop his CD in the drive and hit
the OK Button when its asks if he wants to install it.

Yes, and you can do that with Linux.

typically using Java's JAR format: you just put the .jar file in the
relevant directory.

Java is however horribly resource intense

It can be, but it is also an appropriate solution to many problems.

The world's most populous country is going for Linux in a big way.
How much market share will open-soruce apps have in 2010?

That depends on whether or not they software writers ever get
paid for their work, that market is notorious for piracy.

Piracy is irrelevant consideration to open source software. It is
relevant to proprietary software, where it can reduce revenues,
which is likely to cause open source to predominate over time.

I don't see govmts going bust, that's not really a consideration for
them.

Governments arent the main customers for software.

For operating systems and office suites, they are. In the UK, the
main customer for these sorts of software is the state. The same in
most other countries.


--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:09:18 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
But with the number of
missiles around Baghdad in GWI and II, it easily qualifies.

Don't understand you.

Lots of missiles and radar = "heavily defended."

But weren't a lot of them old and obsolescent?

And since you're claiming that stealth isn't that important,

I don't recall ever making that claim -- perhaps you could vremind
me where I did.

By trying to show that it's not that effective,

I'm not trying to show it isn't effective, I'm trying to find out
how effective or otherwise it might be.

and imagining odd ways
of detecting a plane with non-radar techniques that won't work.

You seem to have already decided they won't work. I'm sorry you seem
to have a closed mind on this issue.

With pure visual, planes are pretty hard to find at anything like a safe
distance.

What do you mean by "safe distance"?

Far enough away so they won't kill you.

If you are manning a passive sensor, the planes won't know where you
are unless they are virtually on top of you, say a few hundred
meters away. By which time the planes are already dead.

If you're in a plane, you're not going to be using image
magnification to find the other guy, unless you know right where he's
coming from in the first place.

I more had in mind an observer on the ground.

"Hey, a plane just flew over!"

"Great, where is it?"

"Uhhh... it went west..."

Er, no. An observer with modern IR and visual electron systems,
linked to a computer network.

If we are using visual sensors, we could have several point towards
it and use parallax to get the exact position.

Each of which would then have to find the very tiny object. That's
covered below.

Once the first has, the second knows approximately where to look.

You also lose them for 1/2 of the day (pure optical sensors are not too
good at night), on cloudy days, if there's smoke in the way, if the
sun's behind the target... and you need a *lot* of them. With the
curvature of the Earth in the equation, you're going to need a linked
ground observer station every 20 miles or so - at *best*.

I was assuming they'd be closer than that.

Once the position is got, the defenses can fire a missile to
intercept, using ground-controlled mid-course guidance, and active
radar (or IR) terminal homing.

All of which are vulnerable to spoofing or jamming. Oops.

How would it be vulnerable to spoofing, given that the missile and
ground station could use modern cryptographic techniques to verify
each others identity?

Identifying is fairly easy. Either use IFF or the known positions of
friendly aircraft to know whether it's hostile. If you know it's
hostile, use the size of sensor returns to guess more or less what
it is (cruise missile/ small fighter/ big fighter/ AEW), though the
precise nature isn't very important, since in all cases the response
would be the same.

So the other guys pop up a plane or two and get you to actively ID them,
or you target them with a long-range radar (that doesn't work because
they're too stealthy), because some guy saw something the couldn't
really identify... and then they kill you between reloads, because the
other "Wild Weasel" plane is at 50,000 feet, above the clouds, unseen by
your ground observers, watching where the missiles came from. Later
that night, they kill your launchers.

What if each launcher only contains one missile? Or the launchers
are mobile, and move after every launch?

Note that there's no need for the launchers, radars, and other
sensors to be particularly close to each other.

I imagine also that there's no need for the radar transmitters and
receivers to be located together either -- perhaps people with more
knowledge than me can verify this. Also, radio astronomers use
multiple dishes to creatre the effect of one big dish -- I wonder if
this would work with networked radars.

Narrowing down the field of view enough to make visual ID makes for
a lot less coverage per sweep. If you know where the target is, it
gets fairly easy, but you have to look in the right direction
first, and hope there's no clouds or haze in the way.

Yes.

...and *that's* why people don't use visual acquisition and targeting.
A system with a useful "uptime" of a couple of hours a day is a loser in
so many respects...

People *do* use visual acquisition and tracking. The British army
for example.

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

In article ,
(phil hunt) wrote:

If you are manning a passive sensor, the planes won't know where you
are unless they are virtually on top of you, say a few hundred
meters away. By which time the planes are already dead.

A few hundred meters. Except that in a high/high/high precision strike
mission, the closest the planes get to you is nine miles straight up.

Er, no. An observer with modern IR and visual electron systems,
linked to a computer network.

As Phil busily reinvents the WWII Ground Observer Corps...

Once the first has, the second knows approximately where to look.

And by the time they figure that out, the first guy's lost it. The best
you could hope for is a whole string of guys saying "I saw a plane a
minute or so back." Run a half-dozen planes through at a time, and
suddenly half of your planes get through with no effective ID.

You also lose them for 1/2 of the day (pure optical sensors are not too
good at night), on cloudy days, if there's smoke in the way, if the
sun's behind the target... and you need a *lot* of them. With the
curvature of the Earth in the equation, you're going to need a linked
ground observer station every 20 miles or so - at *best*.

I was assuming they'd be closer than that.

So, for a country the size of, say, Iraq, you'd need an observer every
ten miles (each being responsible for about 30 square miles - you have
to have some overlap), linked together with a modern computer/comm
network. You'd have 6000 observer stations, each with at least four
observers on duty at all times, hoping for clear weather. And only
working in daylight. Manpower alone would take up about 24,000 people
on duty... with support crews, tech, extra coverage, you're looking at
30,000 to 50,000 people. For a system that only works part of the time,
at best.

What if each launcher only contains one missile? Or the launchers
are mobile, and move after every launch?

You keep putting restrictions on the usefulness of your system...

Note that there's no need for the launchers, radars, and other
sensors to be particularly close to each other.

No, you pretty much killed the whole thing with the manpower
requirements for the optical part.

People *do* use visual acquisition and tracking. The British army
for example.

Everyone does, sorta. Nobody *relies* on it any more, though, because
it's really not that effective for anything other than "hey, look, a
plane," or "did you hear something?"

--


Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:15:39 +0100, Keith Willshaw
wrote:
[regarding compiling open source software]

Piracy is irrelevant consideration to open source software. It is
relevant to proprietary software, where it can reduce revenues,
which is likely to cause open source to predominate over time.


Its highly relevant when software costs a shedload of money
to develop. Developing software that does complex tasks
like process simulation costs a LOT of money and contrary to
popular belief many software companies walk a line awfully
close to bankruptcy. Finding that your software can be bought for
$2 a time in Beijing is mighty disheartening

I don't see govmts going bust, that's not really a consideration for
them.

Governments arent the main customers for software.

For operating systems and office suites, they are. In the UK, the
main customer for these sorts of software is the state. The same in
most other countries.


Cite please.

I seriously doubt the UK Government owns the majority
of PC's in this country

Keith

[snip, save space]


http://www.washington-report.org/bac...91/9104034.htm

Even Begin agreed that both the 56 and 67 wars were "wars of choice"
on Israel's part, and that it initiated the combat:

"It was 12 years ago when Prime Minister Menachem Begin admitted in
public that Israel had fought three wars in which it had a "choice,"
meaning Israel started the wars. Begin's admission came in a speech
delivered on Aug. 8, 1982, before the Israeli National Defense
College. His purpose was to defuse mounting criticism of Israel's
invasion of Lebanon, which had begun two months earlier on June 5 and
was clearly one of Israel's wars of "choice." The others were in 1956
and 1967...[Begin Begin quote] "Our other wars were not without an
alternative. In November 1956 we had a choice. The reason for going to
war then was the need to destroy the fedayeen, who did not represent a
danger to the existence of the state...In June 1967, we again had a
choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do
not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest
with ourselves. We decided to attack him. This was a war of
self-defense in the noblest sense of the term. The Government of
National Unity then established decided unanimously: we will take the
initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back, and thus assure the
security of Israel and the future of the nation."

http://www.washington-report.org/bac...94/9407073.htm

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom, as exhibited by continual Israeli
pronouncements and the meager coverage provided by a main-line media
that prefers to stick with the original "Israel was forced into war"
concept, means that many today still cling to the old notion that
Israel had no choice in its wars with its neighbors that have netted
them the land originally mandated to the Palestinians, along with a
chunk of Syrian territory.

Brooks




Google search reveals that your quotes appears only in the Palestinian
"washington-report".

Why do you post the EXACT same response twice to different posts?
Sighhh...well, here it is again:

General Yitshak Rabin, Chief of Staff, Israeli Defence Forces:
a.. "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which
he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an
offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." (Le Monde,
February 28, 1968 )

Menachem Begin, Minister without Portfoli:
a.. "In June l967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations
in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to
attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack
him." (New York Times, August 21, 1982)

Again, are you now gonna claim that the NYT and Le Monde are
"Palestinian" fronts? LOL!

Brooks



I looked for it again and didn't find it in any reliable site on the net.
I tried searching with google, copernic and on Hebrew.






One only needs to enter their main page in order to realize that their
reliability is not bigger that that of the former Iraqi information
minister (Sahaf).

http://www.wrmea.com

Why the quotes you brought doesn't appear not even in one reliable
neutral or Israeli source acroos the net?

Also, debating with you in the past, when I proved something to you,
you just snipped it and few posts later repeated your unproven claims
that I just disproved. So don't bother...





I'm not persisting on this issue in order to "win the debate". If you
were right and I was wrong then I learned something new. But it's
important for me to fix the false impression (on my opinion) that you
created, saying that Israel was the aggressor on 1967 and the Arab
were not the aggressors.

Look, don't get me wrong, but this argumentation reminds me what some people
use to explain why Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941: "sooner or later the
Soviets would attack; they were preparing, so it was better to strike
first".

In addition to what I said above, let me add that I do consider the party
that initiates the fighting as aggressor. Unless the shots were fired
everything else is possible: once the fighting starts the situation changes
considerably. There was certainly a threat for Israel in 1967, but it was
Israel who attacked first. Pre-emptive or not, starting a war and conquering
enemy territory, and then holding it for decades to come, is an aggressive
movement in my opinion beyond any doubt.

I disagree with you, but for now it will be enough for me to show that
the only aggressors in 1967 were the Arabs.

If it was the Arabs "alone", then why is Israel still holding the Golan? Why
was the West Bank annected? Why have the Israelis built settlements there?
If Israel was not an aggressor and there was no intention to conquer, they
why were all these things done?

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying: feel free to acuse me for this. But, as long as
nothing changes in this regards you can't expect me to consider Israel
anything but an aggressor in 1967.

If it's important to you, then we could check specifically war after
war, incident after incident. Maybe then and when looking on the wider
picture we could find arguments we both agree upon.

I rather think this is important for you: I doubt you can change my mind in
this regards.

It is you who brought the 1967 matter into this thread, not me. For me
it's just important to correct your false claim (on my opinion)
regarding that war.

Err, I draw several general conclusions. You jumped on the part about the
Six Day War. So, sorry, but there must be a misunderstanding of a sort here
if you still instist I brought the issue of 1967 to this thread. If, then I
brought not only the issue of 1967, but also all the other Arab-Israeli wars
of the last 55 years on this thread. This, however, is needed for such like
you in order to understand the situation in the context of the answer to the
question: would Saudi EF-2000s be a threat for Israel or not.

The answer to this question, namely, is negative: no, they would not be a
threat, but Israel is a threat for its neighbours. Why? See bellow.

1. If you try to insinuate that the blockade of the Tiran straits
wasn't a proper casus belly, or that the six days war wasn't a no
choice war for Israel, then look at what I wrote above.

I saw it and this is not going to change my opinion.

2. If you are honestly trying to find out whether the "talk about the
Saudis eventually buying EF-2000s" will prompt Israel to open a war,
then the answer is no.

To be honest, I'm not so sure. Perhaps not an outright war, but the Israeli
political (or, should I actually say "military", as Israel is meanwhile
largely lead by former military officers) leadership is meanwhile so
paranoid that one can really expect everything from it.

3. Saudi-British negotiations are not an existential threat for
Israel.

Given the reactions of the Israeli media, and the Israeli lobby in the USA
every time the Arabs buy something, apparently they almost are. When the
Egyptians buy 20 AGM-84 Harpoons, one can read everywhere about "new
threats" for Israel. When the Iranians test their IRBMs, that's also a
threat. When the Saudis talk about buying EF-2000 there is also similar
screaming (see this thread) etc. No, these are no "existantial threats" at
all, but your people make them look as such. When Israel is buying 60 (more)
F-16, developing and producing nuclear and other WMDs, not caring at all for
international conventions and regulations, that's - "of course" - for
"defence purposes"...

So, it's this biased campaign which is so disturbing for me. At earlier
times I was pro-Israel. I'm not any mo I'm getting sick of such and
similar propaganda. To make it clear again: I'm not saying that Arabs are
any better either, but what Israel is doing meanwhile, and what its
politicians and representatives do and how they act is simply too much.

4. I don't have the capability to do an exact assessment of the threat
to Israel in case that Saudia or Egypt will buy Eurofighters. And this
is why I started this thread. To get more information.

Well, just keep it simple: how many wars the Saudis have started against
Israel? How many times have their troops REALLY AND ACTIVELLY participated
in fighting against Israel?

Let's be honest: the answer is actually 0. Yes, "technically", they're still
at war with Israel. But, practically? It was token support the Saudis were
providing to other Arabs in 1948 and in 1973, nothing really more. Last year
it was exactly the Saudis who were offering a recognition of Israel and
peace - under specific conditions: something "unthinkable" for most of the
other Arabs. These reasons alone should actually be enough for you not to
have to expect the Saudi EF-2000 to be any kind of a serious threat for
Israel either. And, there are still plenty of additional reasons which
indicate the same.

Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988:
http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php
and,
Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat:
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 04:40:40 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
(phil hunt) wrote:

If you are manning a passive sensor, the planes won't know where you
are unless they are virtually on top of you, say a few hundred
meters away. By which time the planes are already dead.

A few hundred meters. Except that in a high/high/high precision strike
mission, the closest the planes get to you is nine miles straight up.

And how are planes going to detect a camoflaged passive sensor at 9
miles? It's a lot harder that a guy on the ground detecting a plane
9 miles up -- the contrast with the sky is obvious.

Er, no. An observer with modern IR and visual electron systems,
linked to a computer network.

As Phil busily reinvents the WWII Ground Observer Corps...

Once the first has, the second knows approximately where to look.

And by the time they figure that out,

Ever heard of electronics? Electronic messages are transmitted very
quickly, and computers can process billions of instructions per
second.

the first guy's lost it. The best
you could hope for is a whole string of guys saying "I saw a plane a
minute or so back."

Are you stupid, or are you deliberately not understanding?

Run a half-dozen planes through at a time, and
suddenly half of your planes get through with no effective ID.

You also lose them for 1/2 of the day (pure optical sensors are not too
good at night), on cloudy days, if there's smoke in the way, if the
sun's behind the target... and you need a *lot* of them. With the
curvature of the Earth in the equation, you're going to need a linked
ground observer station every 20 miles or so - at *best*.

I was assuming they'd be closer than that.

So, for a country the size of, say, Iraq,

In Iraq, a lot of the country is unpopulated desert. This is true of
most countries. Obviously some areas would be more heavily defended
than others -- around the national capital, for example.

you'd need an observer every
ten miles (each being responsible for about 30 square miles - you have
to have some overlap), linked together with a modern computer/comm
network. You'd have 6000 observer stations,

I've no idea where you get this number from.

each with at least four
observers on duty at all times, hoping for clear weather. And only
working in daylight.

IR works at night.

Manpower alone would take up about 24,000 people
on duty... with support crews, tech, extra coverage, you're looking at
30,000 to 50,000 people. For a system that only works part of the time,
at best.

Say 50,000. Using Iraq as an example, again, the population of that
country is roughly 25 million, so we're talking about 0.2% of
them, most of who would be reservists. By way of contrast, during
WW2 the UK with roughly twice that population employed 1 million in
the RAF.

What if each launcher only contains one missile? Or the launchers
are mobile, and move after every launch?

You keep putting restrictions on the usefulness of your system...

Placing each launcher separately does not restrict the usefulness of
the system; it enhances it by making it more survivable.

Note that there's no need for the launchers, radars, and other
sensors to be particularly close to each other.

No, you pretty much killed the whole thing with the manpower
requirements for the optical part.

People *do* use visual acquisition and tracking. The British army
for example.

Everyone does, sorta. Nobody *relies* on it any more, though, because
it's really not that effective for anything other than "hey, look, a
plane," or "did you hear something?"

You are wrong. The British army uses it to shoot down aircraft, not
just to spot them. Google Starstreak if you don't beleive me.

Other missile systems that use some of the ideas I'vre been
discussing are the Swedish RBS 23 BAMSE, which can use IR sensors,
the US Avenger, the French Mistral, and indeed all IR missiles.

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 10:06:30 +0100, Keith Willshaw wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:15:39 +0100, Keith Willshaw
wrote:
[regarding compiling open source software]

Piracy is irrelevant consideration to open source software. It is
relevant to proprietary software, where it can reduce revenues,
which is likely to cause open source to predominate over time.

Its highly relevant when software costs a shedload of money
to develop. Developing software that does complex tasks
like process simulation costs a LOT of money and contrary to
popular belief many software companies walk a line awfully
close to bankruptcy. Finding that your software can be bought for
$2 a time in Beijing is mighty disheartening

Then perhaps the proprietary software model is outdated, at least
for some application areas. Had a typical Linux distribution been
made by traditional proprietary techniques, it would cost $ 2
billion to develop. Yet it was developed anyway, without being able
to recoup revenue by sale of copies.

I don't know how many people use process simulation software, so it
may not be a good example. But I'll use it anyway -- you can
imagine I'm talking about a different application area if you like.

Someone writes a simple program to to process simulation. it isn't
very sophisticated, but it does the job for the needs of that one
user. He releases it as open source. Someone else finds it *almost*
fulfills their needs, and extends it, giving their changes back to
the first person. A third person works for a largish company and
realises that with a bit of effort this package could be useful to
them -- so they add to the code and can use it. Eventually, the
package gets more and more features applied to it, and can do
everything the proprietary packages can do.

As I said, I don't know much about process simulation, but there are
open source packages that have been extended in just that way.

For operating systems and office suites, they are. In the UK, the
main customer for these sorts of software is the state. The same in
most other countries.

Cite please.

I seriously doubt the UK Government owns the majority
of PC's in this country

I never said it, did, only that it owns more than anyone else.

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 10:06:30 +0100, Keith Willshaw
wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:15:39 +0100, Keith Willshaw
wrote:
[regarding compiling open source software]

Piracy is irrelevant consideration to open source software. It is
relevant to proprietary software, where it can reduce revenues,
which is likely to cause open source to predominate over time.

Its highly relevant when software costs a shedload of money
to develop. Developing software that does complex tasks
like process simulation costs a LOT of money and contrary to
popular belief many software companies walk a line awfully
close to bankruptcy. Finding that your software can be bought for
$2 a time in Beijing is mighty disheartening

Then perhaps the proprietary software model is outdated, at least
for some application areas. Had a typical Linux distribution been
made by traditional proprietary techniques, it would cost $ 2
billion to develop. Yet it was developed anyway, without being able
to recoup revenue by sale of copies.

I don't know how many people use process simulation software, so it
may not be a good example. But I'll use it anyway -- you can
imagine I'm talking about a different application area if you like.

Someone writes a simple program to to process simulation. it isn't
very sophisticated, but it does the job for the needs of that one
user. He releases it as open source. Someone else finds it *almost*
fulfills their needs, and extends it, giving their changes back to
the first person. A third person works for a largish company and
realises that with a bit of effort this package could be useful to
them -- so they add to the code and can use it. Eventually, the
package gets more and more features applied to it, and can do
everything the proprietary packages can do.


I'm aware of how open source works and for some applications
its great. I have used GNU emacs for may years for example.

As I said, I don't know much about process simulation, but there are
open source packages that have been extended in just that way.


Process simulation is VERY different. For one thing the knowledge
base is often proprietary and we spend a lot of money licensing
that technology but more important a process simulator is
a massive piece of software developed by teams in multiple
locations around the world. The other issue is that the
output is safety critical, getting it wrong at best results in
a millions or billions of dollars being spent on failed designs
and at worst you kill a bunch of people. For this reason the
testing, QC and vaildation process is long and involved.

A new release typically takes between 50 and 200 man years
of development and testing time.

For operating systems and office suites, they are. In the UK, the
main customer for these sorts of software is the state. The same in
most other countries.

Cite please.

I seriously doubt the UK Government owns the majority
of PC's in this country

I never said it, did, only that it owns more than anyone else.


Then by definition they arent the majority purchaser, just another
large customer.

Keith

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:30:53 +0100, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 19:02:28 +0100, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:
Have you seen the plots, Al, or just LockMart propaganda? What aspect
and frequency are we discussing?

No, I have not seen the plots, but looking at, for instance the
forward aspect, the inlets and turbine blades are going to light up a
radar at quite a range.

You mean before or after the redesign to eliminate just that hotspot?

What "redesign"? (not being sarky here, I would really like to know
:-))

Equivalent value, the Raptor is outnumbered: it's better but not _that_
much better.

On current trends the RAF will get more Typhoons than the USAF will
Raptors...

They will need them.

Why? Are we expecting to fight F-22s?

No, that would be suicidal. But you will need at least five Typhoons
to equal one F-22.

Al Minyard

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 21:04:36 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug
wrote:


Well, the Japanese had no choice either in 1941, they were in much the
same position as Israel, and yet people seem to still think Japan
waged an aggressive war.... Gee!

The japanese had every choice. All they had to do was stop the war of
aggression that they had been waging since 1937. Their despicable
attack on Pearl Harbor was an extension of that war.

They were incredibly stupid in attacking the US.

Al Minyard