asymetric warfare

Charles Gray wrote:

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.

They'll stay concealed until someone tries to use them.... The
J-STARS picks up the trucks, an intel weenie figures out the
truck/airplane cycle and... Your depot gets a visit from the USAF.

One thing the US is getting good at, is identifying the head, and
cutting it away from the body.

D.
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
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discussion.

"Ray Drouillard" 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?

One word: Surrender

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

"David Pugh" -cay wrote in message ...
"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.

The problem is there is no system of guidance on the 122, other than
the direction you aim it and the elevation. It leaves, it goes, it
lands.

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:31:06 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

Charles Gray wrote:

also, since my planes operate close to the ground, i may be able to
lure some jets down to where AAA can get at them,

Among other things, this is *exactly* why long range look-down
shoot-down capability has been chased by the big boys for decades now,
and is actually more-or-less working.

True-- while the Rutan's version of the SABA had some stealth
characteristics, I don't think the average small nation can make all
composite aircraft.
Still, 50 propjobs well dispsersed will last longer than 10
Mig-29's needing a mile long runway. (of course, "Longer" in this case
might simple equal a day as oposed to a few hours.)


THe idea with the thing was that it was small, fairly cheap, agile, and very
STOL (so you could use open fields). Instead of trying for air superiroity by
an uber plane it tried for survivability by being able to have lots of
them, and very dispersed basing.

While a popular idea, it's not without it's drawbacks. You need a
sophisticated (and very vulnerable) logistics system to get bullets,
bombs and fuel forward to the aircraft. You need a sophisticated C3I
system to get target data forward to the aircraft.
You could establish a lot of single use caches, say a single disguised
truck by a field with enough fuel and ammo for a single reload. That
woudl, however, take a LOT of planning.
The biggest problem, as you pointed out, as that in 10 years the US
will probably be having UAV traffic jams, and the day of concealing
something with silly little camaflauge net is well in the past.


While sitting on
the ground, especially near the FEBA, the aircraft is extraordinarily
vulnerable.

D.
Oh true-- if I had my druthers I'd also back this up with some
effective SAMs.
the problem is that unless there is a really paradigm shifting
devleopment, any second teir nation that fights the U.S. is going to
lose-- the best you could do would be make it a loss that also cost
the U.S. something.
Unfortunately, al these ideas require a professional, trained
military service, and 3rd world dictatorships tend to avoid those for
obvious reasons.

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

"Ray Drouillard" 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?

One word: Surrender

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...'

Or just avoid the whole invasion to begin with. Right up until the
final ultimatum, Saddam probably could have avoided an invasion with
unconditional surrender of all bases, etc, to U.S. inspection.
Would we have let him stay in power? Would he have survived the
loss of prestige? I don't know, but his chances were sure as hell
higher than getting into a shooting match with the United States.

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?

For the peer competitor,even more accelerated downsizing classical military
power and even more accelerated development of HPM weapons.
For others, more attack platforms guided by Mk.I eyeballs and armed with box
cutters.

"Charles Gray" wrote in message
...
On 19 Dec 2003 15:42:36 -0800, (Jack
Linthicum) wrote:

"Ray Drouillard" 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?

One word: Surrender

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...'

Or just avoid the whole invasion to begin with. Right up until the
final ultimatum, Saddam probably could have avoided an invasion with
unconditional surrender of all bases, etc, to U.S. inspection.
Would we have let him stay in power? Would he have survived the
loss of prestige? I don't know, but his chances were sure as hell
higher than getting into a shooting match with the United States.

He was left in power ten years ago. I think that GWB has learned from
his father's mistake, however.

In other cases, a non-despotic leader will probably be able to retain
power.



Ray Drouillard

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.

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.

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.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 21:11:31 -0500, "Ray Drouillard"
wrote:


"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?

One word: Surrender

I must admit that this post by Ray has motivated me to consider the
original problem more thoroughly :-)

One of the primary goals, as I see it, is to try and maintain control
over the air. If a country can control it's airspace, the US (or
perhaps China or Russia or whatever major power is becoming
bellicose), being at the end of a very long supply chain, is going to
have some serious supply problems.

However, it will be very difficult and expensive to maintain an air
force capable of battling it out in the air with US forces, if it is
even possible at all.

I think the problem can be subdivided into two problems - the first is
the aircraft carrier issue, the second is ground based aircraft.

Nukes are a definite possibility for sea "defense", IMO. While I'm
sure the US won't be happy to have a carrier fleet nuked, it seems to
me that it is a lot less likely to result in your country being turned
into a plain of glass than a nuclear attack on ground based forces.
The delivery system of choice remains a problem. I would think a
relatively unguided ballistic missile would be the best choice,
especially if it could be reasonably well armored. Decoys would also
aid penetration. If terminal guidance technology becomes advanced
enough, the decoys can be given conventional warheads and seeking
capability.


However, it would be better to do the job without nukes if possible.
The original idea of autonomous weapons might be able to work here (as
in the terminal guidance missile weapons I mentioned above, or
LCCM's). Torpedoes are another definite possibility, to avoid having
to deal with the antimissile and point defenses. They'd either have
to have a very long range, or be air droppable, or preferrable both
(but I'm not sure how feasible it would be to have both).

The next problem is the one of ground based aircraft. Anti-runway
weapons seem to me to be the weapon of choice here. This is another
area in which LCCM's or terminally guided munitions might work well.

Ray Drouillard wrote:
Crewed by Alien Space Bats, presumably?

European or African alien space bats?

What is the flight speed of an unladen African alien space bat?

Cheeee!


-george