asymetric warfare

On 19 Dec 2003 15:42:36 -0800, (Jack
Linthicum) wrote:


Precisely, and make that about March 10th 2003. It's the Grand Fenwick
strategy, you lose, retain all of your weaponry that counts, and drag
the opponent into a situation where he can't win. An armory of AK-47s,
ammo, RPGs, ammo, Land mines, Mortar rounds, whatever you can bury in
your front, or back, yard. General Van Riper told us this back in
August 2002. We said he was cheating. No one remembers 'alls fair
in...'

http://sgtstryker.com.cr.sabren.com/...?entry_id=2887
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

General Ripper. Now there's a name that brings back memories.

http://wso.williams.edu/~mhacker/strangelove4.html

Chad Irby wrote in message . com...
In article ,
(Jack Linthicum) wrote:

Precisely, and make that about March 10th 2003. It's the Grand Fenwick
strategy, you lose, retain all of your weaponry that counts, and drag
the opponent into a situation where he can't win. An armory of AK-47s,
ammo, RPGs, ammo, Land mines, Mortar rounds, whatever you can bury in
your front, or back, yard. General Van Riper told us this back in
August 2002. We said he was cheating. No one remembers 'alls fair
in...'

http://sgtstryker.com.cr.sabren.com/...?entry_id=2887
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

He got a "freebie" in the first part of the exercise, and managed to
"sink" a lot of the US fleet (which would *not* have happened in real
life, with the intel and resources he had available) so they reset the
exercise. This is "gaming the exercise, not the scenario," and it takes
advantage of holes in the exercise that aren't meant to model the real
world.

He then went to a low-tech communications mode, to "beat" the high-tech
intel that the US normally gets when fighting against pretty much anyone
else in the real world, and expected to have 100% effectiveness in
fighting the game. Of course, his low-tech methods (motorcycle couriers
and personal communications) were degraded by the exercise monitors,
like they would be in real life.


Present situation seems to duplicate that low tech communications
mode. So far.

Some of the other results were very much non-real, like sneak attacks
that only succeeded because the one guy sitting at a terminal was
looking something up, and missed the first warnings - something that
couldn't happen in reality, with hundreds of people out there to notice
troop movements.

You are assuming 'troop movements' the present situation is guys
hiding in mosques or behind children ambushing GIs who get out of the
protective zone.

The funny thing is that the *real* world results were even more
optimistic than the expected results from the exercise... a fraction of
the deaths and a shorter war.

We expected a war from March to way past December?

"Jack Linthicum" wrote in message
om...
Chad Irby wrote in message
. com...
In article ,
(Jack Linthicum) wrote:

Precisely, and make that about March 10th 2003. It's the Grand Fenwick
strategy, you lose, retain all of your weaponry that counts, and drag
the opponent into a situation where he can't win. An armory of AK-47s,
ammo, RPGs, ammo, Land mines, Mortar rounds, whatever you can bury in
your front, or back, yard. General Van Riper told us this back in
August 2002. We said he was cheating. No one remembers 'alls fair
in...'

http://sgtstryker.com.cr.sabren.com/...?entry_id=2887

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

He got a "freebie" in the first part of the exercise, and managed to
"sink" a lot of the US fleet (which would *not* have happened in real
life, with the intel and resources he had available) so they reset the
exercise. This is "gaming the exercise, not the scenario," and it takes
advantage of holes in the exercise that aren't meant to model the real
world.

He then went to a low-tech communications mode, to "beat" the high-tech
intel that the US normally gets when fighting against pretty much anyone
else in the real world, and expected to have 100% effectiveness in
fighting the game. Of course, his low-tech methods (motorcycle couriers
and personal communications) were degraded by the exercise monitors,
like they would be in real life.


Present situation seems to duplicate that low tech communications
mode. So far.

You know that for a fact, Jack?


Some of the other results were very much non-real, like sneak attacks
that only succeeded because the one guy sitting at a terminal was
looking something up, and missed the first warnings - something that
couldn't happen in reality, with hundreds of people out there to notice
troop movements.

You are assuming 'troop movements' the present situation is guys
hiding in mosques or behind children ambushing GIs who get out of the
protective zone.

You were trying to use Van Riper as your example--he was NOT modeling
two-three man sniper attacks during that simulation though, was he? The
biggest problem with van Riper was that he allowed his ego to outgrow the
goals of the exercise and tried to effectively hijack it midstream. He was
unprofessional and extremely unrealistic--if you are running a corps-plus
level exercise, you are not going to be creating accurate models of low
level combat in the first place, and every swinging Richard who has ever
played in the BBS-CBS arena knows that.


The funny thing is that the *real* world results were even more
optimistic than the expected results from the exercise... a fraction of
the deaths and a shorter war.

We expected a war from March to way past December?

Recommend you go back to misunderstanding the wierd world of your mythical
micro-nukes, Jack--this subject is obviously beyond your comprehension
level.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:17:34 GMT, Derek Lyons wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote:
The problems listed above are information-processing problems, that
is, software problems. Does it really require billions of dollars to
solve these problems? I say no: a few small groups of really
competent programms can be many times more productive than how
software is traditionally written.

The issue isn't programmers Phil. The issue the massive amounts of
R&D to develop the information needed to specify the sensor that the
programmers will process the output of.

The sensors needed are visual and IR imaging. It doesn't require a
massive R&D program to determine that, or to decide which
combinations of number of pixels and widths of field of view are
appropriate.

The issue is the massive
amount of R&D needed to develop the algorithms the programmers will
implement to analyze the output of the sensor.

Do you know anything about programming? If you did, you'd know that
developing algorithms is what programmers do.


--
"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).

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 06:17:02 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
...
Even
LCCM's are fairly high technology, and 'dead reckoning' isn't as easy
as it sounds.

Why not?

Accumulated error, for one thing; you can't count on GPS for positional
updates.

Say the error is 1%. Then it'd be 1 km off on a 100 km journey.
That's close enough for terminal homing to

Your LORAN idea fell flatter than a pancake.

No it didn't.

So you are now left
with trying to cobble together an inertial nav system--more weight and
complexity, more R&D required, and in the end it is not going to give you
the kind of accuracy you need over the distances you will have to negotiate.

Are you an expert on inertial nav systems? If so, how much
weight/cost? If not...

Cheap digistal cameras would be very easy to spoof-- smoke comes
to mind,

Yes, but you can't light fires *everywhere*.

What? You do know what those nifty little stubby, multi-barrel thingies
mounted on all of our armored vehicles are, don't you?

Yes. But they can't be firing *all the time* just in case they are
going to be attacked. True, they could fire when they've spotted an
incoming missile, assuimng they do spot it. The missile could
perhaps go away and come back 5 minutes later, or it could alter
other forces to the target location, or it could fly through the
smoke (it travels a lot faster than the targets). Or it could use
sensors that can see through smoke -- I'm not sure if IR or radar
would work.

and if you start going for IR systems, you've just stopped
being "cheap".

That's mostly true, IR cameras cost around $5000. Probably it'd be
best to have plug-in sensors so ther operator could choose to add IR
when it's necessary for the job.

Now you need a whole new set of target data--more R&D again.

I'm not sure it would be that much more. For the main application of
spotting moving vehicles you could probably use essentially the same
software. Also, the shape of objects under IR is the same as under
visual light.

Also, computer's and programs that can pick out
targets against ground clutter are somewhat more difficult-- note the
fact that even now the U.S. still prefers laser guided missiles, and I
don't believe we have any autonomous weapons like this in stock
(although some are being made ready). The problems are tremendous.

sarcasmWell, obviously, if the USA can't do it, no-one else
can./sarcasm

The hell with your sarcasm, the fact is that it is a hell of a lot harder
nut to crack than you seem to comprehend. If you think otherwise, you need
to go into business for yourself and offer us this wonderful, cheap, easily
produced autonomous attack system to ther DoD.

My understanding -- and I've heard this from multiple sources -- is
that in defence procurement it's not how good your product is, it's
who you know.

Swarm co-ordination is a software problem. To solve it, you need a
few clever postgrad students, properly managed.

ROFLOL! Gee, I guess you also consider AI to be something you can acheive
over next weekend, right?

Er, no, I didn't say that. And in any case, swarm co-ordination is
obviously not AI-complete, as you would know if you knew anything
about it at all.

Your habit of taking every serious problem with
your pet theory here and writing it off as a "software problem which is easy
to take care of" is getting a bit monotonous.

Do you know anything about software? I've been a programmer all my
professional life, and I like to think that I do have some
understanding of the field.

One example-- low cost bombs using GPS and inertial guidence were
developed and fielded by the U.S.-- while the system itself is "low
cost" the effort to develop it is anything but. Low cost loitering
UAV's and cruise missiles are in development-- in the U.S. and UK. I
think maybe China and India might be able to conduct a design effort
like you sugggest, but it woudl be hard for them, and I can't see
other nations, like Pakistan, any African nations, or even smaller
western nations like Austraila, Canada, or Italy being able to even
come close.

Hell, india has not managed to get their Arjun tank project in order, and
Phil thinks they could pull this autonomous hunter/killer scheme off?

They could technologically. Whether they could managerially is
another question entirely.

The idea that Italy couldn't make a cruise missile is silly IMO.

Sure they could--but they can't make the autonomous uberweapon you have
posited. Nothing to be ashamed of--right now neither can we. But you can,
because all of the problems are mere exercises in writing a few lines of new
code, right?

A few hundred thousand lines, more like.

--
"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).

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 09:12:47 GMT, Thomas J. Paladino Jr. wrote:

LOL.... now you're talking about *multiple* lauch & storage facilities,

Launch facility = a land rover and trailer

storage facility = any building will do

for
potentially 500-1000+ missiles, all cooridinated with each other to hit the
same small targets *simultaneously*?

co-ordination = radio

The infrastructure and technology for
that undertaking would be even more cost prohibitive, but just as futile.
Even if they were somehow built and tested (extraordinarily unlikely);
again, what would stop *all* of these facilities from being taken out in the
first 10 seconds of the war?

Knowing where they are?

Did the USA knock out all Iraqu tanks at the start of the 2003 or
1991 wars? No, it did not, unlike in your worthless comtemptable
idiot strawman scenario. Did the USA knock out all Serbian tanks in
the Kosovo war? they didn't in the whole war, let alone the first
ten minutes.

Face it, this is a bad idea.

Face it, you're an idiot bull****ter.

--
"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).

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message ...

The funny thing is that the *real* world results were even more
optimistic than the expected results from the exercise... a fraction of
the deaths and a shorter war.

We expected a war from March to way past December?

Recommend you go back to misunderstanding the wierd world of your mythical
micro-nukes, Jack--this subject is obviously beyond your comprehension
level.

Then we did expect a war to last from onset to at least nine months?
It is still going on you know.

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message ...
"Jack Linthicum" wrote in message
om...
Chad Irby wrote in message
. com...
In article ,
(Jack Linthicum) wrote:

Precisely, and make that about March 10th 2003. It's the Grand Fenwick
strategy, you lose, retain all of your weaponry that counts, and drag
the opponent into a situation where he can't win. An armory of AK-47s,
ammo, RPGs, ammo, Land mines, Mortar rounds, whatever you can bury in
your front, or back, yard. General Van Riper told us this back in
August 2002. We said he was cheating. No one remembers 'alls fair
in...'

http://sgtstryker.com.cr.sabren.com/...?entry_id=2887

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

He got a "freebie" in the first part of the exercise, and managed to
"sink" a lot of the US fleet (which would *not* have happened in real
life, with the intel and resources he had available) so they reset the
exercise. This is "gaming the exercise, not the scenario," and it takes
advantage of holes in the exercise that aren't meant to model the real
world.

He then went to a low-tech communications mode, to "beat" the high-tech
intel that the US normally gets when fighting against pretty much anyone
else in the real world, and expected to have 100% effectiveness in
fighting the game. Of course, his low-tech methods (motorcycle couriers
and personal communications) were degraded by the exercise monitors,
like they would be in real life.


Present situation seems to duplicate that low tech communications
mode. So far.

You know that for a fact, Jack?


anybody intercepting their communications?

Didn't they use pigeons or some birds as an early warning device?
http://news.findlaw.com/ap_stories/i...064501_02.html

When we find Russian or Chinese or French spread spectrum or agile
radios we can change that tune, until then it's Winnetou and the
screeching owl.

On 19 Dec 2003 15:38:09 GMT, Bertil Jonell wrote:
In article ,
phil hunt wrote:
I've worked as a programmer for
defense contractors (and for other large organisations), and believe
me, there is a *lot* of waste and inefficiency. If the software was
written right, it could probably be done with several orders of
magnitude more efficiency.

What competing method is there except for Open Source?

Open source -- or rather, using some of the ideas from how OSS
projects are btypically run -- is certainly useful. Employing the
best people (the top 10% of programmers are probably 10 times more
productive than the average, and 100 times more productive than the
bottom 10%) is important, as is encouraging debate (in a
non-threatening atmosphere) as to what can be done better.

Extreme Programming has some very good ideas, as do other Agile
techniques. Collaborative systems for discussing evolving software
projects -- mailing lists, wikis, etc -- are good. Usingn the right
programming tools is important, for example the right lasnguasge or
(more likely) set of languages. On which lanugages to use, Paul
Graham's essays on language design, and the way Lisp makes it easy
for you to in effect write your own specialised language for the job
in hand, are apposite.

Concentration on software quality involves lack of caring about
other criteria, so forcing employees to wear strangulation devices,
or unnecessarily attending work at particular hours, are
counterproductive in themselves as well as being symptomatic of
wider PHB-ism.


--
"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).

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.

The missile would know (at least
approximately - within a few km) were it is, and therefore whether
it is over land occupied by its own side.

How will the information-gathering to determine the alliegance of
each square click be organized? How quickly can this organization get
information and collate it?

I'm sure the information won't be entirely accurate.

How will that information be sent to the
launch sites?

As part of a general military communications network.

How will the launch sites input it into the missile?

As part of the general military comms network; the network would use
Internet technology wherever possible, and the software to input it
into the missile would probsably be identical to the software
dealing with it in other nodes. (Since they'd all be internet
devices).

--
"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).