asymetric warfare

ess (phil hunt) wrote in message ...
for
potentially 500-1000+ missiles, all cooridinated with each other to hit the
same small targets *simultaneously*?

co-ordination = radio

Against the US?

They've spent billions of dollars on the ability to listen in to what
you're saying on the radio, prevent you from talking on the radio,
finding out where you're talking from on the radio the better to drop
a bomb on your head, and pretending to be your boss telling you what
to do over the radio. They're reasonably good at it.

Try again.

-jake

In message , phil hunt
writes
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:25:54 +0000, Paul J. Adam news@jrwlyn
ch.demon.co.uk wrote:
Getting a machine to tell a T-72 from a M1A1 from a Leclerc is hard
enough in good conditions

You don't have to. You have to be able to tell whether it's a
vehicle or not, and if it is, is it in an area likely to be occupied
by own forces.

#1 sounds easy until the enemy starts deploying decoys and disguising
targets. #2 still requires not only significant navigation, but some
noticeable amounts of real-time intelligence gathering and
communication.

_Someone_ has to reliably determine whether the 'US tanks to our front!'
message is a feint, a hasty raid or the real invasion; work out where
those tanks will be by the time the missiles arrive: and reliably get a
message back to the launch unit. This has to be reasonably proof against
deception, EW, jamming, and blunt attack.

More to the point, it rules out most resistance and makes life for
refugees short and nasty, since "general area of enemy forces" will
contain both own forces trying to fight (unless these missiles are your
only resistance) and civilians fleeing.

: doing so in the presence of camouflage,
obscurants and when the crew have run out of internal stowage (so have
hung lots of external gear) and maybe stored some spare track plates on
the glacis front ('cause they need the spare plates and they might as
well be extra armour) gets _really_ tricky. Do you err on the side of
"tank-like vehicle, kill!" or "if you're not sure don't attack"?

I'd tend to err towards the former. note that it's a lot easy to
spot a moving vehicle than a stationary one.

Own forces retreating and fleeing refugees make equally good targets. Of
course, you can implement "this way = friendly, that way = enemy" logic,
but then if the US is retreating or your own forces advancing when the
missiles arrive...

Would it not be embarrasing to have a successful armoured raid broken up
by your own missiles?

Indeed. Maybe some form of IFF?

If you can get the IFF feature robust, reliable and not compromising own
forces for under $10k per missile, let everyone know!

Key problem is that going up against the US loses you your comms and
observation

I doubt that that is true, assuming a competent comms network.

Landline telephone need landlines and exchanges, easily targeted.
Cellular telephone needs masts and repeaters, ditto. Broadcast radio is
vulnerable to jamming, eavesdropping and spoofing (or simply "bomb the
emitter".

A comms infrastructure that is robust, secure, and prompt is not easy
even for the UK or US to guarantee, let alone a Third World nation under
attack by opponent(s) with air superiority.

DR is patchy at best unless you've got good inertial guidance systems
(non-trivial). Celestial only works on clear nights

Or during daytime.

And if it's cloudy? Or can you only fight in good weather?

- so you're limited
to fighting wars after dark on cloudless nights with no flares in the
sky. LORAN is a radio broadcast and therefore not survivable against a
US-style opponent.

If you have lots of transmitters, many of which are dummy
transmitters, and many of which are only turned on for a short time,
using frequency hopping, it's rather harder to destroy the network.

You'll run out of transmitters before the US runs out of weapons. LORAN
needs _large_ transmitters and that makes it a lot easier to simply
blast everything that looks like a LORAN station.

--
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

In article ,
Charles Gray wrote:

I don't think anyone expected such a collapse-- most serious
predictoins I read expected a fairly easy field war, followed by
some ugly city fighting, as Saddam tried to suck the U.S. into a
Berlin style slugfest.

I made some fairly optimistic predictions on the order of the ground
campaign taking as little as six weeks, and people thought that was just
silly...

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

Paul J. Adam wrote:
phil hunt writes
Paul J. Adam wrote:
Getting a machine to tell a T-72 from a M1A1 from a Leclerc is hard
enough in good conditions

You don't have to. You have to be able to tell whether it's a
vehicle or not, and if it is, is it in an area likely to be occupied
by own forces.

#1 sounds easy until the enemy starts deploying decoys and disguising
targets.

They have to deploy good-enough decoys forwards with the
advancing troops. Consider for a moment how hard it would
have been for the US to get significant quantities of good
decoys forwards of the Kuwaiti border by T+4 hrs.

#2 still requires not only significant navigation, but some
noticeable amounts of real-time intelligence gathering and
communication.

A kill box from thirty kilometers north of the Iraqi border
with Kuwait, going twenty kilometers south of that border,
by T+4 hrs after the US Army breached the border, nine months
ago, would have worked quite well.

_Someone_ has to reliably determine whether the 'US tanks to our front!'
message is a feint, a hasty raid or the real invasion; work out where
those tanks will be by the time the missiles arrive: and reliably get a
message back to the launch unit. This has to be reasonably proof against
deception, EW, jamming, and blunt attack.

A massive invasion, and anything of regimental strength or more
is going to count, is hard to hide. The details of how far and
how fast the front line has moved may be more opaque, but any
serious attack has very real limitations on how fast it can
roll out. One can easily posit kill box limits which are
very easy to justify and will suffer very little blue-on-blue
for the defender. And more to the point, will do far more
damage than any remaining defender forces in those boxes,
and the oncoming attack will presumably wipe those forces
out promptly.

The timing and positioning of the box may require not targeting
your own FEBA of effective resistance, and not targeting the
leading invasion echelons. But that doesn't matter. It took
days for the US forces to finish crossing the border into Iraq.
Kill boxes with the description I gave would have been valid
for much more time than is needed to set up and execute the
cruise missile attack starting.

More to the point, it rules out most resistance and makes life for
refugees short and nasty, since "general area of enemy forces" will
contain both own forces trying to fight (unless these missiles are your
only resistance) and civilians fleeing.

This depends on the geography. Not many Iraqi civilians were in
the kill boxes I specified above.

[...]
I doubt that that is true, assuming a competent comms network.

Landline telephone need landlines and exchanges, easily targeted.
Cellular telephone needs masts and repeaters, ditto. Broadcast radio is
vulnerable to jamming, eavesdropping and spoofing (or simply "bomb the
emitter".

A comms infrastructure that is robust, secure, and prompt is not easy
even for the UK or US to guarantee, let alone a Third World nation under
attack by opponent(s) with air superiority.

We have two types of communications that have to happen successfully,
plus a decision loop.

The reports of the invasion have to make it back to the designated
authority over the missile firings. As stated earlier, it's very
hard to credit any scenario under which it takes even twelve hours
for a country to know the US has invaded.

Then the leader has to make up his mind to fire some or all of the
cruise missiles.

Then the word has to make it back out to the missile sites.

Even without good landlines, the word getting out to the missile
sites doesn't have to be any more sophisticated than an emergency
action message. A single code word, which shifts over time, may be
enough. To suggest that the US can reliably disrupt significant
two way communications is no leap. To suggest that we can reliably
prevent *any* communications, even a broadcast one way message
which can be very brief, is unrealistic.


-george william herbert

(George William Herbert) wrote:
Even without good landlines, the word getting out to the missile
sites doesn't have to be any more sophisticated than an emergency
action message. A single code word, which shifts over time, may be
enough.

Yes, you are correct, many of these things are *conceptually* simple.
But moving from concept to execution, even without the overkill
practiced by the West, contains many hidden and non-obvious snags.

For a 'simple EAM' to work, you need a system manned 24/7. If you
don't want to do that, you need a reliable way of 'pre-alerting' your
forces to stand-to. You need to securely create, distribute, and
store the code words. (And an alternate supply of the same in case of
compromise.) You need to procure, supply (spares), train, test, and
maintain the individual components as well as the whole system. (And
complicating the whole affair in many third tier nations are political
issues.)

It is doable, probably even on the cheap, but if you want a useful
system you cannot skimp on the details.

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.

Derek Lyons wrote:
(George William Herbert) wrote:
Even without good landlines, the word getting out to the missile
sites doesn't have to be any more sophisticated than an emergency
action message. A single code word, which shifts over time, may be
enough.

Yes, you are correct, many of these things are *conceptually* simple.
But moving from concept to execution, even without the overkill
practiced by the West, contains many hidden and non-obvious snags.

For a 'simple EAM' to work, you need a system manned 24/7. If you
don't want to do that, you need a reliable way of 'pre-alerting' your
forces to stand-to. You need to securely create, distribute, and
store the code words. (And an alternate supply of the same in case of
compromise.) You need to procure, supply (spares), train, test, and
maintain the individual components as well as the whole system. (And
complicating the whole affair in many third tier nations are political
issues.)

It is doable, probably even on the cheap, but if you want a useful
system you cannot skimp on the details.

It's made a lot simpler by the operational environment;
an ICBM strike really could come out of the blue, but a divisional
strength US Army invasion is not going to suprise anyone.
The 24/7 requirement only applies to known crisies.

That said, you have to have the capability to operate on that
basis, with those fundamental system capabilities and reasonable
reliability. It doesn't need to be 100%, if you have tens of
thousands of cruise missiles... some firing late is not going
to be the sort of disaster that ICBM partial failures to launch
on warning or partial failures to launch in a pre-emptive first
strike would be.

Doing it on the cheap is probably doable. Doing it on the stupid
would leave it vulnerable to US breaking the command and control
system down.


-george william herbert

In article ,
says...

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
Bernardz wrote:
Say I built heaps of multiple-rocket launchers built an improved WW2,
V1
jet to hit a city say at 200 miles and then targeted them at an US
ally
cities.

Aiming would be pretty trivial, most modern cities are pretty big
anyway
and so what if a a lot miss? Its not like they cost me much anyway
each
missile.

Aiming them is trivial. Producing them, storing them until needed,
deploying them when needed, and launching them in a coordinated
fashion *isn't*. (And all the steps in the process are vulnerable to
disruption.)

Besides that, once the dirty deed has been done, the country that
launched them is in really deep s***. Even if they had a bunch of US
military weapons that they had managed to buy from the black market,
they would do about the same thing as a rock flung at a hornet's nest --
except that the rock flinger wouldn't be able to run away.

In the very worst case, the US might have to resort to expending a half
dozen or so ICBMs. Realistically, however, I can't see anything more
drastic than a few B-52 air raids upon all suspected military posts.

This a common problem with deterrence.

I would suggest that they make a demonstration rather then do the deed.





Ray Drouillard





--
The rich and the poor want the same thing, money.

21st saying of Bernard

What about a tripod launched cruise missle with a range of say less then
50km. You would only need one or two people to launch a missile this size,
they could hide in a mosque or cave and fire it towards the
yankee-imperialist *******s when in visual range (or if they have any intel
from outside visual range). You could set the altitude at launch and approx
distance to target (ie do not look for target until you have travelled 3km
or whatever), this would prevent blue-on-blue - at least enough for them.

The target could be acquired using cheap off-the-shelf digital equipment, we
now have 5 megapixel digital cameras for less then 500 bucks, any bets on
the price in a 2 years? 5 megapixels will pick out humans from kilometres
away and convoys even further. Image recognition is not that hard, at least
not for what we need. It only has to find a tank or truck, not tell us the
make and model. When you have 100,000 missiles it doesnt really matter if
only 10% hit targets. For supporting evidence of how far image recognition
has come use some OCR software - it does a pretty good job of handwriting
now, not bad for a computer. Also look to facial recognition software - the
computer has to find faces in large, moving crowds and then find a match in
a quick manner. Admittingly it doesnt work very good (doesnt stop silly
govt.s thinking about buying it of course) but our system only has to find a
face (tank, humvee, grunt).

You could also set a target priority at launch to help prevent 300 missiles
all going for same tank (ie this batch go for tanks, this batch for grunts
and this batch for trucks, etc etc). You would still get overkill but again
it doesnt really matter for our hypothetical despotic nation.

Another problem raised was flight control for the missile. I dont think this
will be an issue since we already have UAVs for less then 20,000k that can
fly themselves and CPU power keeps getting higher. Today I saw that yamaha
has a fully autonomous helicopter, I am no expert but a helicopter would be
more difficult for a computer to fly then a missile no?

So there you have it, a missile that can be cached around the country, small
and cheap and potentially damaging enough to send the troops home (or at
least make the invasion very embarrassing).

Damo

pervect wrote:

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

Denying the other guy use of GPS doesn't prevent the US military from
using it.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

Bernardz wrote:

:Say I built heaps of multiple-rocket launchers built an improved WW2, V1
:jet to hit a city say at 200 miles and then targeted them at an US ally
:cities.
:
:Aiming would be pretty trivial, most modern cities are pretty big anyway
:and so what if a a lot miss? Its not like they cost me much anyway each
:missile.
:
:My missiles shot down are a lot cheaper then the anti missiles the US
:uses anyway.
:
:The make sure that this US ally is aware of your capability. That might
:keep the US out of the conflict.

You've got to build them somewhere. They have to launch from
somewhere. Both of those 'somewheres' can be targeted and obliterated
in pretty short order.

:This strategy seems to work for the North Koreans.

Well, no. What works for the North Koreans is a bunch of artillery
and a huge army sitting poised to attack South Korea, whose capital is
right up there by the border. IRBMs and nuclear warheads help, too.

--
"Nekubi o kaite was ikenai"
["It does not do to slit the throat of a sleeping man."]
-- Admiral Yamamoto