asymetric warfare

In article ,
phil hunt wrote:
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:09:48 +0100, Michael Ash wrote:

Well, don't forget that only a very tiny percentage of any regular army
will be composed of people fanatical enough to become suicide bombers.
Your four-million strong Elbonian People's Happy Army will turn into a
handful of suicide bombers and a whole bunch of deserters if you tried
that strategy. Not to say it may not be the best use of that army, but I
don't think it would be that effective.

Indeed. Developing and caching weapons that allow people to be
guerrillas with reduced risk to themselves (such as time-delayed
mortars) would seem an obvious thing to do.

But there are no ranging shots with such mortars: Its fire for effect
from the first round. They'd have trouble hitting a barn, if it was
smaller than 10 Downing Street.

-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 message , phil hunt
writes
Indeed. Developing and caching weapons that allow people to be
guerrillas with reduced risk to themselves (such as time-delayed
mortars) would seem an obvious thing to do.

Done thirty years ago with assorted single launchers (basically just a
rail and a stand) to point a 107mm or 122mm rocket targetwards, and a
countdown timer to fire it minutes or hours after the guerilla has
departed.

If you're lucky then you can plant it on the hospital roof, across the
street from the orphanage and next door to the elementary school, and
tip off the news crews so that any enemy counterbattery fire is widely
reported.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Simon Morden wrote in message k...

Which is what I would suggest. No country could currently defeat the USA in a
stand-up fight. So disperse your army globally and take out US-interest soft
targets: embassies, companies, tourists, registered shipping, anything that
flies a US flag.

The losses would be sickening, and it makes me nauseous to think about the
scenario. Especially if army elements managed to get on US soil.

I see serious problems regarding command, control, communications, and
morale of the dispersed army in such a situation. I also see another
serious problem, in that you are buying yourself potential war with
_every_ country that your dispersed army is operating on -- other
countries are unlikely to take a very positive attitude towards your
"soldiers" (they would more likely be viewed as "terrorists" or
"homicidal maniacs") blowing themselves up on their soil to attack
Americans.

What is likely is that most of your "army" would defect or desert, a
few attacks would be carried out alienating virtually the whole world
against one, and your regime would finish their lives as criminals
wanted by pretty much every country on Earth.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

"Pete" wrote in message ...
"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
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?


Instead of trying to build *up* to defeat a western/Nato/US opponent, the
only possible solution would be to build *down*, and grow self aware,
mobile, small scale explosives.

A 20 year old with a backpack full of C-4, as is done now.

Now,please. Using more dogs to sniff them out would work nicely, but
given the religious affiliation of the bomb carriers, miniature pigs
would be better. To lower costs, you could even train
rats(http://www.apopo.org/whyrats).

Karl M. Syring

"Pete" wrote in message ...
"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
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?


Instead of trying to build *up* to defeat a western/Nato/US opponent, the
only possible solution would be to build *down*, and grow self aware,
mobile, small scale explosives.

A 20 year old with a backpack full of C-4, as is done now.

Now,please. Using more dogs to sniff them out would work nicely, but
given the religious affiliation of the bomb carriers, miniature pigs
would be better. To lower costs, you could even train
rats(http://www.apopo.org/whyrats).

Karl M. Syring

"Pete" wrote in :

Instead of trying to build *up* to defeat a western/Nato/US opponent, the
only possible solution would be to build *down*, and grow self aware,
mobile, small scale explosives.

A 20 year old with a backpack full of C-4, as is done now.

Why send a man to do a boy's job?

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 03:22:52 +0000, ess (phil
hunt) wrote:

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?

I think one strategy would be to use large numbers of low cost
cruise missiles (LCCM). The elements of a cruise missile are all
very simple, mature technology, except for the guidance system.
Modern computers are small and cheap, so guidance systems can be
made cheaply.

How are you getting your position information?

The cheap solution is to use GPS. But IIRC the US has complete
control over the GPS satellite system. So if you are at war with the
US, you can't count on your GPS working right.

I don't know the details of the system (one reason I'm free to post) -
but the absolute best case I can see is for you to force the US to
basically shut off the GPS system everywhere. Depending on your
weapons range, you may be able to force GPS nullification only in a
limited area (the US can probably scramble the timing when the
satellites are over the area threatened by your weapons, while leaving
the timing intact when the satellites are over "safe" areas.

Denying the US use of GPS would have a negative impact on US military
capability, but it would not eliminate it.

From a terrorist POV - naw, it's pretty obvious, but I'll defer
comment, no sense in making life easy for them.

"pervect" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 03:22:52 +0000, ess (phil
hunt) wrote:

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?

I think one strategy would be to use large numbers of low cost
cruise missiles (LCCM). The elements of a cruise missile are all
very simple, mature technology, except for the guidance system.
Modern computers are small and cheap, so guidance systems can be
made cheaply.

How are you getting your position information?

The cheap solution is to use GPS. But IIRC the US has complete
control over the GPS satellite system. So if you are at war with the
US, you can't count on your GPS working right.

I don't know the details of the system (one reason I'm free to post) -
but the absolute best case I can see is for you to force the US to
basically shut off the GPS system everywhere. Depending on your
weapons range, you may be able to force GPS nullification only in a
limited area (the US can probably scramble the timing when the
satellites are over the area threatened by your weapons, while leaving
the timing intact when the satellites are over "safe" areas.

That is a decent description of the selective availability (SA) function of
GPS. SA renders the average (non-US military) receiver incapable of
determining a precise fix, and you need precision for the kind of weapons
the poster was postulating. SA was shut down a couple of years back so that
civil users (i.e., surveyors, commercial aircraft, etc.) could take
advantage of its precision (prior to that occuring surveyors had to use what
is known as "differential GPS", a more time consuming method of achieving a
precise location), but according to the official USG website on the subject
it can be reinstituted over a particular region at will.


Denying the US use of GPS would have a negative impact on US military
capability, but it would not eliminate it.

Actually, I don't think SA adversely affects US military systems.

Brooks


From a terrorist POV - naw, it's pretty obvious, but I'll defer
comment, no sense in making life easy for them.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 08:21:03 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


That is a decent description of the selective availability (SA) function of
GPS. SA renders the average (non-US military) receiver incapable of
determining a precise fix, and you need precision for the kind of weapons
the poster was postulating. SA was shut down a couple of years back so that
civil users (i.e., surveyors, commercial aircraft, etc.) could take
advantage of its precision (prior to that occuring surveyors had to use what
is known as "differential GPS", a more time consuming method of achieving a
precise location), but according to the official USG website on the subject
it can be reinstituted over a particular region at will.


Denying the US use of GPS would have a negative impact on US military
capability, but it would not eliminate it.

Actually, I don't think SA adversely affects US military systems.

Brooks

Processors and computing power are getting cheaper every year - and
there are a lot of US weapons with military GPS around - so it's
conceivable to me that someone could obtain one of these weapons and
reverse-engineer the GPS system on them.

If there is no sort of "auxiliary code input" to the weapon (i.e. some
sort of activation code that has to be input) the reverse engineered
weapons would work just as well as the US weapons, so the US would
have to make the choice of whether it was better for everyone to have
(accurate) GPS or nobody to have GPS.

Without knowing for sure, I would personally expect that current
weapons would have some sort of auxiliary code, and that this code
would have to be entered as part of the target programming process
(which is quite long according to news reports, though it's getting
shorter).

Even without auxiliary codes, the US could still activate the system
at random times. Unless the enemy knew when the US was going to
activate the system, the US might be able to have some "windows of
opportunity" to use their GPS weapons. Of course the enemy might be
able to take advantage of these same windows if they could respond
quickly enough and if they could detect the US launches.

Assuming (as I suspect) that "auxiliary code input" to the weapon is
required, things get more complicated. Basically the question is how
long it would take for the enemy to figure out what the auxiliary code
was to activate their weapons.

One extreme scenario to illustrate the concept - the satellites could
send out random hash until, say, 6:03 am when a major US strike was
planned. At this point, the satellites would start transmitting valid
information according to some specific agreed upon code which the
enemy didn't know in advance. When all US weapons reach their target,
the satellites would go back to sending random hash.

The enemy would have to figure out what the code was in a very short
time period, and program and launch their weapons before the code
expired. This would be extremely difficult.

Pessimistically assuming that the current military GPS system does get
compromised, and that the code breaking process could be done in
minutes, the US is of course free to build a better one with more
modern (and longer) codes. Of course, retrofitting existing weapons
to use the new GPS system might be a bit involved. OTOH, it could be
as simple as pulling out a modular "black box", and replacing it with
a new improved one.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 10:32:11 -0800, pervect wrote:
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 08:21:03 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

That is a decent description of the selective availability (SA) function of
GPS. SA renders the average (non-US military) receiver incapable of
determining a precise fix, and you need precision for the kind of weapons
the poster was postulating. SA was shut down a couple of years back so that
civil users (i.e., surveyors, commercial aircraft, etc.) could take
advantage of its precision (prior to that occuring surveyors had to use what
is known as "differential GPS", a more time consuming method of achieving a
precise location), but according to the official USG website on the subject
it can be reinstituted over a particular region at will.

Denying the US use of GPS would have a negative impact on US military
capability, but it would not eliminate it.

Actually, I don't think SA adversely affects US military systems.

No, it doesn't, by design. SA only affects the accuracy of the
GPS satellites' coarse positioning signal. Military GPS receivers
can receive additional signals from the satellites that allow
more precise position determination.

Processors and computing power are getting cheaper every year - and
there are a lot of US weapons with military GPS around - so it's
conceivable to me that someone could obtain one of these weapons and
reverse-engineer the GPS system on them.

If there is no sort of "auxiliary code input" to the weapon (i.e. some
sort of activation code that has to be input) the reverse engineered
weapons would work just as well as the US weapons, so the US would
have to make the choice of whether it was better for everyone to have
(accurate) GPS or nobody to have GPS.

The military GPS signal is encrypted. A receiver needs to know
the current encryption key to decrypt the signals and use them
to compute its position, so just duplicating the hardware somehow
won't do you any good.

Encrypting the signal also makes it very difficult for
an enemy to spoof GPS signals -- spoofed signals would have
to be encrypted with the correct key to fool a receiver.

Without knowing for sure, I would personally expect that current
weapons would have some sort of auxiliary code, and that this code
would have to be entered as part of the target programming process
(which is quite long according to news reports, though it's getting
shorter).

Encryption key, not "auxiliary code".

I don't know any details of how the keys are distributed, but
I suspect the people who designed the current GPS system thought
a lot about the issue and came up with a solution that is
relatively secure and not terribly inconvenient.

[...]

One extreme scenario to illustrate the concept - the satellites could
send out random hash until, say, 6:03 am when a major US strike was
planned. At this point, the satellites would start transmitting valid
information according to some specific agreed upon code which the
enemy didn't know in advance. When all US weapons reach their target,
the satellites would go back to sending random hash.

The enemy would have to figure out what the code was in a very short
time period, and program and launch their weapons before the code
expired. This would be extremely difficult.

See

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2003/iraq-and-gps_faq.pdf

for a discussion of these issues. According to the author, the
use of selective availability (SA) to prevent opponents from
using civilian GPS receivers to get accurate position fixes is
a thing of the past:

"The technique the U.S. military developed which allowed them to
switch off SA is selective in-theatre jamming of the SPS signal."

Another poster suggested that SA could be turned on and off on
GPS satellites individually as they overfly the area of conflict --
this is rather unlikely. The orbital altitude of the GPS
constellation is approximately 10,000 miles. This means that
at any given time, a single GPS satellite is above the horizon
and visible to GPS receivers over almost half of the earth's
surface. It would be possible to selectively impose SA on one
hemisphere of the earth at a time, but not in an area much
smaller than that.

To return to the original topic of this thread, I think the
Elbonians would be better off spending money on developing
cheap inertial navigation systems for their hypothetical
low-cost cruise missiles (HLCCMs) than going to any effort to
try to outsmart the U.S. Air Force so they can use GPS.

Inertial navigation systems can't be jammed or spoofed, and
are accurate enough to get HLCCMs within hypothetical low-cost
terminal seeker range of their targets.


ljd