asymetric warfare

In article ,
phil hunt wrote:
On 19 Dec 2003 15:56:55 GMT, Bertil Jonell wrote:
In article ,
phil hunt wrote:
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.

Have you looked up "Tactical and Strategic Missile Guidance" by Zarchan
(ISBN 1-56347-254-6) like I recommended?

I haven't -- I tend not to read off-net sources, due to time, space
and money constraints.

Lots of university libraries should have it. There are at least five
copies of it at various libraries in Sweden, so there should be 50+ in
the uk.

I would still really, really recommend it. It illustrates the hidden
complexity of guidance. The naive algorithm of "I know which way the target
is, so I'll turn towards it" can't be expected to work all that well.
Even if the missile avoids crashing because the guidance got it into
an uncontrollable oscillation.

-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."

Peter Skelton wrote:

So hide the sgnal in Mork & Mindy reruns or the data from the
Greater West Elbonian Stock exchange.

Possibly the only solution that will work, though it depends on the
Elbonian electrical power grid not coming under attack, and Leader or
General retaining breath and the ability to send the orders to
TV/Radio station.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
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Text-Only Version:
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
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discussion.

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.

What made you think I didn't know that?

What, did you think I'm going to post *all* the good
countermeasures to a US attack in an open forum?!?!?....


-george william herbert

North Korea, on the other hand, has enough artillery on the border to
completely level Seoul within a few hours, from what I understand. That
alone is enough to stop any plans for an invasion. In a way, it's even
worse than the nuclear problem. Unlike a nuke and its delivery system,
there's no possible way to take out mumble-thousand pieces of artillery
before the deed has been done.

Kinda makes you wonder how well they can coordinate those artillery
pieces... they can't even feed their troops.

Actually their army get's fair chunk of the food, it's the civvies that are
having the worst. So the question would be "How much fuel does the army
have?"

Out of the tens of thousands of cannons sitting on the north side of the
border, anyone want to bet that no more than a couple of hundred
actually get to fire? Especially with a few dozen MLRS launchers and a
couple of hundred attack aircraft cranking out a few million
submunitions across their firing positions... while reducing their
command centers to smoking holes in the ground and jamming
communications.

Koreans have had time to prepare firing positions for their artillery, so
they should have some cover. And using landlines reduces the risk of jamming
and can provide quite secure communications if they have enough of "surplus"
capacity.
But I don't think that that many NK artillery pieces can reach Seoul from
their prepared positions. What is the howitzer/cannon ratio of NK army? And
I doubt that they have newer shells with longer range.

For reference, look at the "massive" weapons infrastructure in Iraq, and
how they never managed to get more than a few percent of them into play.
And Iraq was in relatively good shape compared to what Korea's going
through right now.

You have to take notice of cultural differences. Korean mentality is quite
different from arab mentality.
But it is true that NK wouldn't be able to beat SK, but it might inflict
some really nasty damage to civilians, specially if they can lob chemical
weapons with their artillery and missiles. And if they have working nuke
with delivery method, it can turn quite nasty.

In article ,
David Pugh -cay wrote:
Of course, how hard would it be to add GPS guidance to a Katyusha rocket?

You can't do it with a civilian 'one chip' GPS, they don't like high
speed.

Since the rockets rotate (I think) the antenna is going to be a problem.

You'll need a gyro in the rocket so it can know where 'down' and 'north'
is since the GPS gives its outputs as long/lat.

Then the guidance has to translate this data into steering commands,
taking into account the altitude and the speed of the rocket so that it
can fly a sane trajectory. And while you *can* get altitude and speed from
the GPS, they won't be especially accurate. If that is a problem, and
I think it is (Imagine the the poor rocket thinking it is 200m west
of the target at 50m and 300m/s, and the altitude from the GPS is in
error by 50m high. Oops) you'll need a pitot and barometric altimeter,
or a radar altimeter.

The guidance is doable, but hard.

If
you could bring the CEP down to 10m or so and still have a warhead of 10kg
(the 122mm Katyusha has a 20kg warhead so this is at least plausible), you'd
have a very, very nasty weapon for insurgents (target checkpoints, the
people trying to evac the victims of the latest road-side bomb, etc.) or
terrorists (target parked commercial aircraft at a gate, the 50-yard line at
the Super bowl, etc.).

If everything went right in the R&D and it was as lean as lean can be
each round would still be as expensive as a MANPADS.

If it was fatter: Copperhead.

-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."

Just to give some figures: GPS will give you 5 to 30 meters accuracy
(as long as the US lets you have it). Galileo will give you about the
same accuracy. I suppose the US can jam both. I'd guess if they could
not, they would not have increased the accuracy publicly available and
would make much more of a fuss about Galileo.

I doubt that US can jam Galileo just by turning a switch as it it with GPS.
But they probably will develop some jamming feature against the Galileos
signals.

In article ,
pervect wrote:
Of course this has spawned yet another argument, where I point out
that if you know what the satellites are supposed to be sending, use
of encryption (rather than spread spectrum) would be unlikely to
provide much security. Other people have suggested that "good codes"
are harder to break than this.

I read in a book(1), that some guys had patented a way of using the
P-code to enhance the accuracy of the civilian code, even without having
the keys, but the control systems theory they used passed far over my head.

(1) Possibly 'Global positioning system theory and practice' by
Hoffmann, Wellenhof and others.

-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."

In article , "tadaa" wrote:

cirby wrote:
Kinda makes you wonder how well they can coordinate those artillery
pieces... they can't even feed their troops.

Actually their army get's fair chunk of the food, it's the civvies that are
having the worst.

Even the army is on the short end of the trough right now. North Korea
is in insanely bad shape. Even their border guards are getting on the
scrawny side, and those guys have always been the cream of the NK crop.

So the question would be "How much fuel does the army have?"

Not much, from all reports. The Chinese have apparently cut back, and
are putting pressure on them that way. The best NK pilots get something
like 45 minutes of flight time per month... not too good for training.
Similar for the tanks and other big weapons.

Koreans have had time to prepare firing positions for their artillery, so
they should have some cover. And using landlines reduces the risk of jamming
and can provide quite secure communications if they have enough of "surplus"
capacity.

....and you think the US hasn't scoped out those areas and planned a
firing solution for them? And that the command centers won't be the
first thing on the target list? We have a lot of neato
anti-communications hardware, and some of it will kill landlines quite
nicely.

You have to take notice of cultural differences. Korean mentality is quite
different from arab mentality.

But still human, especially as more and more of them starve to death.
They ceratinly have some "true believers," but they also certainly have
enough folks who will, plainly bug out at the first sign of an attack.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

"Charles Gray" wrote

"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.

And watch them all die horribly. SUV's will be picked up by the
forward screens of the army units, which can shoot them up just
wonderfully-- not only that, but the first thing the U.S. will do is
nail the SUV's from the air. Cluster muntions do horrible things to
lightly armored vehicles.

Cluster munitions aren't terribly manouverable though. And what makes the
think that the radar put there to let the drivers dodge incoming tank-fire
cannot detect incomming cluster-bombs?

In addition, some hotsmoke rounds already incorporate anti-radar
chaff. You can't move until the warhead hits-- because if you're
using vehicle mounted radar, that's probably a form of beam rider of
SAH guidence. Both are eminiently jammable.

I never said the radar was for guidence; it's there so they can see and
dodge incomming tank-rounds and other munitions.. You can use any missilbe
for the SUV, and you can manouver whilst firing. During this period the wire
is being pulled out the tube at 300mps at minimum, a few mps to either side
is not going to break it. There are also fire-and-forget missile systems.

76mm AA tanks have been developed (although none are in service as
far as I know-- the Italians evidently weren't able to sell them), but
they have the simple problem of being big enough to be killed from far
out side the 76mm range-- you're going to have B2's and B1's dropping
LCAS GPS guided weapons, and all sorts of other wonderful stuff from
quite far out of range, cued in by UAVs which the Air force doesn't
mind losing at all.

US army next-gen guided-bombs are essentuially UAVs with 90% explosive
filling. They are big and will show up on radar. At this point the gun turns
and fires at the bomb/missile before it gets close enough to do damage.


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.

And woudl you prefer to do this before, or after we develop the
anti-matter driven beam cannons? integrating things like AA missiles
into a civilian air frame is incredibly complex,

Not that complex. As long as the air-frame can take the load and there's
room for the wires it's rather easy. With any boeing of airbus aircraft the
belly is fully accessable and there's plenty of space to add any kind of
load-distribution system you like. Modern phased arrar radar can be mounted
in the same location weather radar is, eith the electronics placed directly
behind the bulkhead in 'first class'.

and as for dangling
fighters from ballons, that's just silly.

It would increase a fighter's patrol endurence from hours into days at
little extra fuel cost. That's not silly. That's *very* useful for a
cash-strapped military.

Not only that, but they'll
be blinded by ECM, painted by AWACs and killed from a long way off by
fighters.

And the ballons die horribly, but the fighters have already dropped away and
are consuming the USAF's attention and running the terrible risk that an
american might die (GASP! HORROR!) before they even cross the boarder. And
what makes you think that things like AWACS will be able to fly in the near
future? Very simple rockets could be built as first stages to older
missilbes, or clusters of older missiles, which could put them in enough
danger that commanders draw them back beyond their useful distance. If
something cannot be used as effectively it's as good as badly damaged.

Even if they slow the USAF down an hour, that's an hour's warning more than
a country without such a system woudl get.

Networkign is a nice phrase-- how exactly do you intend to do this
against the most technologically advanced power on earth?

America's boastful tendencies do not change the laws of physics. Stealth
aircraft do not reflect radar back at the origin radar - but they do
reflect. If you have an array of linked radars the others may well pick up
the reflected radar pulses, even if the origin array does not.

Note he
specificed mid-range powers, which means mid-range budget. This
concept, even if it would work, would break the bank of the United
States, which means no other nation could even concieve of it.

The purchase of a few AWAC systems (minus aircraft) would not break the bank
of most middle-ranking nations. Linking them together is a computer problem.

The most logical plan is to expect to conceede air superiority, and
try for things that deny us air-supremacy. If you can get them, lots
of V/Stols.and very carefully concealed air supply depots.

I would point out that building or buying new VSTOLs is going to be far more
expensive than anything I've said.

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!

Getting a torpedo to successfully deploy from a rocket, in working
condition is far, far more difficult-- and no Nimitz class BG is going
to get within 100 miles of your coast until those rocket launchers are
dead, dead, dead.

Again, reducing the range of US navy fighters by 200miles is going to be
worth it! Deploy special-forces with the missiles to hunt down all the
US-special-forces they'll send in, and you can severely inconvenience the US
navy. Plus they have to keep supply-ships away by a similar margin. That
would have a devistating impact on the army's ability to fight a sustained
battle.


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.
Expensive-- and begs the question of will the people fight. Still,
probably the most logical solution here. The U.S.'s greatest weakness
has always been long term guerilla conflits.

By contract, obscenely cheep. Could probably be done for a quarter billion
dollars. In any population you usally get enough people who will fight, and
in war the actual guns and AT weapons will usually fall into their hands.
After that it boils down to tactics. An RPG-7 can disable any tank in the
world with a good side-shot. And massed against the front they can do enough
damage to disable one.

Alternatively fly a few airliners into american nuclear power stations.
The
aftermath of multiple chernobles will destroy America as an effective
strategic power.

1. You won't get mutiple Chernobles. We have somewhat more effective
designs than the russians, taht don't blow up quite as
enthusiastically into steam explosions.

You'd think so wouldn't you? Or at least the government would like you to
think so. Truth is that western reactors have more safety systems than their
russian equivolents, and therefore really are safer. But all that safety
gear counts for very little when it's burnt or blown up, and most of it is
*outside* the reactor building, so it can be accessed if there is a major
incident. At the very least the sudden and violent removal of several
cooling towers would have a disabling effect on power-outout, causing
brown-outs over a large areas and many days.

2. Congratulations. You've just launched a strategic attack on the
United States.

There is no geneva convention that reads, "Thou Shalt Not Attack The United
States." If Sadam had retaliated on US soil they'd have had to just sit
there and take it, because he'd have been well within his rights under
international law. You could try and excecute him for a lot of things but
something like this would not have been one of them. Any other country would
have the same freedom.

There are more strategic targets than nuclear ones. Blowing up the alsakan
pipe-line would have given the american oil-industry a heat attack, and put
the economy in seizers, particularly if accompanied by effective bombings of
oil-tankers whilst in port. Shutting down conventional power stations isn't
terribly difficult either. Do enough of them and the entire US grid will
fail. Since natural gas is pressurised by the national grid, that will fail
as well. And that would be *fun*. ^.^

This is to say nothing of a small numer of lesser terrorist attacks you
could commit, like bombing the NY subway, blowing up petrol tankers and
stations, or shooting government officials. Successful or not any attack
will shut the area down and down the economy and popularity ofthe war down a
peg.

Alternately, we'll just go fully to war, decide not to count the
cost, and dig out every soldier above the rank of Lt. and shoot him.
Direct attacks on teh U.S. by any identifiable nation is a big like
walking up to a grizzly bear and smacking him in the nose. Not smart.

At wich point you get sanctions placed on you by the oil-nations and your
stategic assets over-seas are seized and/or destroyed. In fantasy-land at
any rate. Terrorists doing such things is one thing. But a suposed
democratic country doing them is another. Considder how upset some people
are whe nthe US pretends half a dozen peopel in Guantanimo Bay don't deserve
basic human rights. Now multiple that by a few hundred thousand...

ANTIcarrot.

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 03:23:49 GMT, Fred J. McCall wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote:

:I find it hard to take your post seriously since you are apparently
:unaware of very well-known cryptographic techniques.

And I find it hard to take your post seriously since you are
apparently unaware of very well-known traffic analysis techniques.

Which, in particular, do you refer to?

--
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people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).