asymetric warfare

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 05:54:28 +0000, phil hunt wrote:
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:53:21 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote:

"The programming for this isn't particularly hard"?

Read the rest of the sentence: "...once you've written software
that can identify a vehicle (or other target) in a picture"

I could probably have phrased that better.

Like, say, "The programming for this isn't particularly hard,
once you've waved your hands and assumed all the really hard
bits are already done"?

[...]

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?

Of course you can. Just because you have somewhere to put the
data doesn't mean the data is easy to acquire, though.

You can get detailed digital elevation data for the United States
(horizontal resolution of 30 meters for the lower 48, 90 meters
for Alaska), but that's because the United States Geological Survey
has gone to a great deal of effort to compile it and make it
available.

How many other countries have done the same? Does the
Royal Elbonian Survey Office even have decent 1:24,000
topographic map coverage of Elbonia to use as a starting
point for compiling a digital elevation model?

[...]
Your LORAN system bites the dust when the curtain goes up.

No, because you use multiple transmitters, which aren't all switched
on at once, plus large numbers of fake transmitters there to be
targets for bombs.

LORAN transmitter sites are not small. Check out

http://www.megapulse.com/lorsys.html

for a picture of a modern solid-state transmitter -- they
don't need water cooling systems any more, apparently, but
you still need a large room with a HVAC system capable of
handling "moderate air-conditioning loads".

That's nothing compared to the size of the antennas, though.
A LORAN transmitter station typically has multiple guyed
antenna masts with heights ranging between 300 and 1,000 feet.

You are not going to be able to build lots of them,
and you definitely can't move them around.

The transmitters can shift frequencies and use
short transmissions, to further reduce the probability of being
detected.

Great -- now all you need to do is figure out how to
hide a forest of immobile antenna masts that are hundreds
of feet tall.

Automated celestial tracking/guidance is not the purview
of the amateur, and I doubt you would get the requisite
accuracy from such a system mounted on such a
small platform.

Why is the platform size an issue?

You need a stable platform for accurate celestial navigation.
A small aircraft-sized HLCCM isn't it, and semi-accurate celestial
navigation only tells you your position to within 5-10 miles.

You also need to be able to see the stars, so using celestial
navigation would mean your HLCCM would only be able to navigate
to its target if it was night and the weather was clear.

Automated celestial navigation is really only practical for
vehicles that operate outside the Earth's atmosphere --
spacecraft and ICBMs.

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 dead reckoning is the least accurate form of
navigation. Do you really want your HLCCMs to miss
their targets by miles because the wind changed
direction after they were launched?


ljd

"Mike Williams" wrote in message
...
Wasn't it pervect who wrote:
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.

The last I heard, the projected date for the launch of the Galileo
Next
Generation Global Navigation Satellite System was some time in 2005,
so
after that date there could be an alternative to the American GPS.
However, anyone who's at war with the US is likely to be also disliked
by the Europeans behind Galileo, and might find that they can't get
good
readings from either system.

Also, since it's not encrypted, it can be spoofed using a local
transmitter -- and that spoofing won't affect the American GPS system at
all.


Ray Drouillard

(George William Herbert) wrote:
The response was "Yes, but now they're working 95% of the time,
rather than 55%".

That lesson is hard even for well funded navies...

nods And that's where the low cost frightfulness proposed elsewhere
in this thread really falls down.

It's pretty much a given that a decent cruise bird can be built for
around $10k. However, I'd be willing to wager a bottle of beverage of
choice that their reliability won't exceed 50%. That's high enough
for a terror campaign, but as a useful military weapon, it's nowhere
near enough. 'Cheap' weapons aren't nearly as cheap when you have to
launch *four* $10k birds to ensure that *one* lands on target.
Lacking assurance of a kill adds greatly to the difficulties your
offense must face, and complicates your logistics chain.

D.
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"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:
George William Herbert wrote:
The response was "Yes, but now they're working 95% of the time,
rather than 55%".

As I understand it, one of the things that motivated the invention
of integrated circuits was reliability -- of naval electronics
and avionics. The systems were coming up against the limits
of what one could reliably do with discrete components.

Reliability comes not just from increasing MTBF, but in decreasing
MTTR. BITE (Built In Test Equipment), modular electronics, designing
for maintenance... All these things go into increasing uptime, and
IC's make them all much easier.

D.
--
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ess (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, it's *generating
and integrating it*. It's not a matter of storage, or CPU capacity,
but of analysis and algorithms. (A friend of mine recently generated
a 3-d topo of our county as the first step in building an integrated
GIS for the local water department. Took six months.)

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
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discussion.

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
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.

Of course, how hard would it be to add GPS guidance to a Katyusha rocket? 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.).

The Katyusha has a range of around 20km so the only defense would be hard
cover (tough to arrange everywhere), active defenses (which have yet to be
fielded), or GPS-spoofing. The last is possible but it diminishes the
usefulness of GPS for your side as well.

ess (phil hunt) wrote:
Otherwise, there are other methods of nagivation: dead reckoning,
celestial, a LORAN-like system could be set up.

Your LORAN system bites the dust when the curtain goes up.

No, because you use multiple transmitters, which aren't all switched
on at once, plus large numbers of fake transmitters there to be
targets for bombs. The transmitters can shift frequencies and use
short transmissions, to further reduce the probability of being
detected.

All of which increases the cost and complexity of your missile
guidance system. It has to; store *all* possible stations,be able to
determine which master/slave complex is currently active, and
determine which frequencies to use. Not easy, not easy at all.

(Setting aside the difficulties of setting up such a system.)

Automated celestial tracking/guidance is not the purview of the
amateur,

LORAN was around 40 years ago; therefore any country with
1960s-equivalent tech should be able to build one.

Nice dodge there, failing to address the issue of celestial
navigation.

And sorry, the assumption that anyone can easily do something that was
done forty years ago is invalid on it's face. A LORAN system requires
complex electronics, accurate surveying, guaranteed power, good sized
antenna... All non-trivial, none cheap, and none 'garage' compatible.

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. Without periodic updates, you are almost ensured of
failing to hit your target.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

"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.

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.

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!

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.

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

ANTIcarrot.

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 01:30:28 GMT, "Anthony Garcia"
wrote:



If it were easy to hit troops with self-targeting systems don't you think
the U.S. would be doing it already?

I think the hard thing to do is to avoid incidental civilian
casualties with self-targetting systems.

This is probably enough to scrap the idea in the US, which is public
ally committed to the idea of avoiding avoidable harm to
non-combatants. I'm a little bit cynical as to how this works out in
practice, but I do think that most of the high-ranking staff officers
do try to make battle plans that will minimize civilian casualties.
Probably the main difficulty is that battles don't always follow the
battle plans....

How did I get off on that topic? Anyway, I really don't know how well
the idea would work if bystander casualties were not a concern. It
seems to me that we would not actually know until the idea was built
and tested, and we probably would not really know until it was used in
the field. I think that the intimal development of such weapons would
be prohibitively expensive if it were carried out by a government.
It's possible that some private companies might be able to develop
such weapons at a reasonable cost (and a significant risk that they
would not work after being developed), but it's unclear if they would
perceive the market demand for them to justify the cost and the risk.

(Derek Lyons) writes:

(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.

ROTFL. Yes, once you master the extraordinarily difficult task of
writing software to identify a target, then pretty much else is
simple.

Actually, it isn't. Even given a simple, absolute, "the target is
3.7 degrees left of and 1.1 degrees below sensor boresight axis",
determining the flight control outputs that will steer the missile
towards the target is a Very Hard Problem. Actually implementing
those flight control problems in hardware is another. Simplistic
"steer the missile towards the target" solutions, tend to result
in divergent oscillations that end up with the missile tumbling
out of the control. Simplistic solutions to that one, tend to
result in the missile always being behind the curve and losing
sight of the target in the terminal approach.

Getting it right, requires a lot of specialized knowledge, a lot
of analysis and design work, and a lot of testing.


But you appear to be underestimating the effort needed to
write that software.

Standard hacker arrogance. All hardware problems can be solved
in software, and all software problems can be solved by two guys
with a case of Jolt cola and a long weekend.

For problems where this is actually true, there's nothing better
than unleashing a top hacker. Designing cruise missiles, as it
turns out, is not such a problem. It can probably be done an
order of magnitude faster, better, and cheaper than the major
military powers do it, but that requires a first-rate technical
and managerial team working under ideal conditions, and it's
still an order of magnitude harder and more expensive than he
imagines.

Doing it when the Generalissimo demands that his ne'r-do-well
son-in-law have an important part in the project team, the
Ministry of Security has a suspicious eye on some of the top
people you actually *want*, and you need to work through three
middlemen and a smuggler just to get a good oscilliscope, is
probably right out.


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