asymetric warfare

In article ,
Johnny Bravo writes:
On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 13:30:53 -0000, "John"
wrote:

Time of Flight of IRBM, 30 minutes. Speed of CVBG, 25 kts. Detection
of launch, instantaneous. DSP Sats, y'know. Radius of circle that
could contain the target - 12.5 Nautical Miles.

35 knots (let's be generous) and half an hour means a ship or convoy could
get 32410m away from the target point. This gives an area of
3,299,954,370m2. UK trident-II missiles can 8 475kT warheads which will
start fires at 9km, meaning they'll make the fuel onboard a carrier explode
within an area of 254,469,005m2.

That's start fires of flamable material left exposed in the open,
not inside a steel hull. You're going to need to be a lot closer than
that to ignite the fuel stored in a carrier. UK Trident missiles are
based on the W76 warhead, not the W88 warhead, and have a 100kt yield,
not 475kt.


US ships constructed after 1969 were specially designed to resist the
shockwave generated by a nuclear weapon. You could cause severe
damage to the ship out to 1.8 nm or so. To sink it you would need to
be close enough destroy the ship through overpressure by being within
.8 nm or so. If you are close enough for the thermal pulse to burn
through the hull to ignite the fuel the shockwave would rip the ship
apart.

If you wanted to guarantee a kill by being within .8 nm or so it
would take about 400 warheads to cover all the ocean a 32 knot carrier
could reach in 30 minutes. Catching it within 1.8 nm by two different
warheads and could sink the ship from flooding and only take you 160
warheads or so; but this wouldn't be 100% certain.

Sure, it's possible that you can take out a CVBG with a shotgun nuke
approach, but it would take the UK 35% of it's missiles and 80% of
it's warheads to be reasonably sure of success.

It's worse than that, form the U.K. Nukes a CVBG standpoint.
The Brits have 58 Trident D5s, (Which are stored and maintained in the
U.S., but that's beside the point) and less than 200 warheads. That
means that each missile's going to have 3 warheads, and you can't get
all of your boats to sea.

Now, just going from the declassified stuff from Crossroads Able, and
applying the known scaling laws, you'd have to place a 100 KT warhead
within 8,000-9,000' of a ship in order to have a reasonable chance of
putting it out of action. Not sinking it, mind you, but giving it
ither things to worry about rather than pulverizing you. That's an
area of effect of 7 sq. NM. A 25 kt CVBG, which startes dispersing
and evading on a launch warning, (You don't have to wait for the
trajectory analysis, after all) could be anywhere in a 490 sq. NM
area. So, in order to cover that 490 sq NM with the density required,
to ensure major damage, and not outright sinking, you'd need 70
warheads. That's 23 UK Trident's worth. And we don't have 1 CVBG,
we've got what, 12? With roughly 8 at sea at any givin time.
So if a U.K./French sized power were to try something like that, what
they'd accomplish is the complete expenditure of their strategic
forces in order to completely **** off somebody with the ways & means
to pull a Carthage on them. (Not that we'd do that)


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in

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

Where does this quote come from?

On 24 Dec 03 10:27:36 -0500, "Ash Wyllie" wrote:

John Schilling opined

Chad Irby writes:

Out of the tens of thousands of cannons sitting on the north side of the
border, anyone want to bet that no more than a couple of hundred
actually get to fire? Especially with a few dozen MLRS launchers and a
couple of hundred attack aircraft cranking out a few million
submunitions across their firing positions... while reducing their
command centers to smoking holes in the ground and jamming
communications.

How do you jam a homing pigeon?

Big magnet.

More to the point, I thought carrier pigeons were extinct?

I know homing pigeons aren't, but I thought they weren't useful for
communications purposes?

In article ,
Penta wrote:

On 24 Dec 03 10:27:36 -0500, "Ash Wyllie" wrote:

John Schilling opined

Chad Irby writes:

Out of the tens of thousands of cannons sitting on the north side of the
border, anyone want to bet that no more than a couple of hundred
actually get to fire? Especially with a few dozen MLRS launchers and a
couple of hundred attack aircraft cranking out a few million
submunitions across their firing positions... while reducing their
command centers to smoking holes in the ground and jamming
communications.

How do you jam a homing pigeon?

Big magnet.

More to the point, I thought carrier pigeons were extinct?

That would be passenger pigeons, as of 1914.

I know homing pigeons aren't, but I thought they weren't useful for
communications purposes?

"a425couple" wrote:


"Paul J. Adam" wrote in

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

Where does this quote come from?

Churchill one would assume...
--

-Gord.

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 10:41:16 -0500, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

Sure, it's possible that you can take out a CVBG with a shotgun nuke
approach, but it would take the UK 35% of it's missiles and 80% of
it's warheads to be reasonably sure of success.

It's worse than that, form the U.K.

I pretty much had it covered, your numbers aren't so different from
mine.

Nukes a CVBG standpoint.
The Brits have 58 Trident D5s, (Which are stored and maintained in the
U.S., but that's beside the point) and less than 200 warheads. That
means that each missile's going to have 3 warheads, and you can't get
all of your boats to sea.

Nothing is stopping them from putting 8 warheads in each of the 16
missiles the Vanguard carries. They could launch 192 warheads from
one boat. General practice is to put 3 in each missile but nothing is
stopping them from changing it, or just surging all 4 boats.

Now, just going from the declassified stuff from Crossroads Able, and
applying the known scaling laws, you'd have to place a 100 KT warhead
within 8,000-9,000' of a ship in order to have a reasonable chance of
putting it out of action.

I was being generous and using 16,000' and taking off about 1/3 for
the structural improvements the US has added to it's ship designs
based on data from tests like Crossroads - calling it 1.8nm as a nice
round figure - 10,800'

area. So, in order to cover that 490 sq NM with the density required,
to ensure major damage, and not outright sinking, you'd need 70
warheads. That's 23 UK Trident's worth.

There is a slight overlap problem to deal with as the explosions
aren't exactly square, but that's a trivial matter for the purposes of
the example.

And we don't have 1 CVBG,
we've got what, 12? With roughly 8 at sea at any givin time.
So if a U.K./French sized power were to try something like that, what
they'd accomplish is the complete expenditure of their strategic
forces in order to completely **** off somebody with the ways & means
to pull a Carthage on them. (Not that we'd do that)

You never know, killing 7,000+ US servicemen by firing nearly 200
nukes at them is going to really **** the public off. It's not like
anyone can claim it was an accident.

One side effect of this example is why the ballistic submarine
component of the triad was so important, even if we waited for all the
nukes to land, it would be impossible for Russia to get all of our
ballistic missile subs even if they fired their entire arsenal into
the ocean.

One interesting games theory aspect of this is that it wouldn't do
to run at full speed for the entire 30 minutes. If the enemy knew you
would do that, they would just fire along a ring around the current
location of the BG at the max distance it can travel in that 30 mins,
saving themselves quite a few warheads and missiles.

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

pervect wrote:

:On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 12:27:28 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:
:
:pervect wrote:
:
::On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:29:52 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:
::
::pervect wrote:
:
:
::If you think tanks can't kill anything, you might want to explain how
::you came to that conclusion, it isn't very apparent to me.
:
:Oh, *I* don't think that. However, 'your' side has made the argument
:that tank-killing SUVs are practically because tanks can't hit them,
:as "all they have to do is dodge by half their vehicle width".
:
:I hadn't realized we were picking teams. Who else do you think is on
:"my" side,

The gentleman proposing the magical technology cruise missile and
various other 'technological' fixes for problems the guy fighting the
US will encounter, of course.

:and for that matter, who is on yours?

All the sane people who recognize that 'asymmetric warfare' doesn't
mean trying to beat the other guy at his own game, particularly when
it takes 'magic' technology to do it.

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

ess (phil hunt) wrote:

:The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
:country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
:million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
:Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
:almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
:spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
:the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
:something wrong here.

Britain spends money on things that Sweden does not, of course.
Strategic weaponry is expensive to develop and maintain.

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

ess (phil hunt) wrote:

:I've argued elsewhere[1] that middle-income countries should
:consider using a wireless internet mesh as the foundation for their
civilian) information infrastructure. Why not allow the military
:system to piggyback off that? (as a backup: the civilian
:system might be down in an area, and there should be a separate
:military system as well). Now a proper wireless internet
:infrastructure would mean every apartment building, workplace,
:school, hospital, etc being connected. It would be quite difficult,
:both militarily and politically, to shut down such a widespread
:network.

Dirt simple to shut down. You have looked at the various wireless
internet technologies and how easy they are to jam out, degrade, etc,
haven't you? Not to mention all the spoofing that would become
possible (WEP isn't).

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

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 01:37:20 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

(phil hunt) wrote:

:The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
:country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
:million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
:Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
:almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
:spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
:the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
:something wrong here.

Britain spends money on things that Sweden does not, of course.
Strategic weaponry is expensive to develop and maintain.

Not to mention the abilty to quickly deploy-- how long woudl it take
Sweden to move a unit of soldiers to the Middle East, or move them
prepared to fight at the end of the journey.