asymetric warfare

LukeCampbell wrote in message
Oh. My reading was that it could operate at full power (about 100 kW
CW) for several seconds, and then had to be shut off to cool. Since I'm
not actually working on the beasty, though, I can't say if my reading is
correct or not.

They're pulsed lasers, iirc. The first version, using the
flash lamps, has to be. Flash lamps don't give a continuous
pumping effect. Reading from what both HELSTF and LLNL has
said, the LED pumped version is a follow-on. The laser guys
are just as excited about the pulsed effects as we are. Rapid
thermal cook-off takes a lot longer (theoretically) and doesn't
work in every situation.

Will

Luke

--
William P Baird Do you know why the road less traveled by
Speaking for me has so few sightseers? Normally, there
Home: anzha@hotmail is something big, mean, with very sharp
Work: wbaird@nersc teeth - and quite the appetite! - waiting
Add .com/.gov somewhere along its dark and twisty bends.

(George William Herbert) wrote:

:Stinger is used in air to air mode, there's a separate product
:version for it even (ATAS Block 2). It's used and qualified on
:US Army helicopters.

Against other helicopters. An F-22 is just a bit of overkill for
hunting helicopters.

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

William Baird wrote:

They're pulsed lasers, iirc. The first version, using the
flash lamps, has to be. Flash lamps don't give a continuous
pumping effect. Reading from what both HELSTF and LLNL has
said, the LED pumped version is a follow-on. The laser guys
are just as excited about the pulsed effects as we are. Rapid
thermal cook-off takes a lot longer (theoretically) and doesn't
work in every situation.

That is just too cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Luke

"Damo" writes:


"John Schilling" wrote in message
...
(George William Herbert) writes:

John Schilling wrote:

Likewise, if your idea is that it doesn't matter how easy an individual
missile is to find and kill because you are going to saturate US/NATO
style air defenses with numbers, you don't match it against the present
standard of an F-15 with four each AMRAAMs and Sidewinders but against
an F-22 packed to the limit with air-to-air Stingers; fourty-five stowed
kills at 0.8 Pk per shot, if my math is correct.

I was under the impression (mistaken?) that the F-22 can only carry 4
air-to-air missiles, if it carries more it loses what stealth it had and you
might as well send in F-15s??


The F-22 carries, internally and stealthily, six AIM-120 AMRAAMs and two
AIM-9 Sidewinders. It can carry four missiles (2 ea AIM-9 and AIM-120)
*and* two JDAMs internally, as a self-escorting strike aircraft. That
may be where you got the four missiles bit from.

But AMRAAMS are gross overkill against the sort of cruise missile being
postulated here. You only need the long range, midcourse guidance,
high energy and terminal maneuverability if the target is going to
evade and/or shoot back, or if it's moving fast enough that even a
supercruising F-22 can't engage closely.

Against minimal cruise missiles, an air-to-air Stinger is more than
enough. Yes, the Stinger has an air-to-air variant, and yes, the
seeker will lock onto the exhaust of a small piston engine. And
you can pack eight of them in the weight and volume envelope of an
AIM-120, or four for an AIM-9. Fifty-six total in an F-22, without
compromising stealth or supercruise[1].

This is not to say you could do it tomorrow. You'd have to design
4- and 8-rail extendable launchers, and integrate the missiles and
launchers with the F-22 weapons control system. But it could be
done faster than the hypothetical opposition could field their
cruise missile swarms, at which point American fighter pilots get
to have more fun than they've had since the Marianas Turkey Shoot.


[1] A competent adversary not irrationally wedded to the Great
Cruise Missile Swarm tactic would keep just enough MiG-29s or
the like in inventory that American pilots would reasonably
insist on a couple of AMRAAMs at all times Just In Case. So
maybe fourty Stingers and two AIM-120s would be a more realistic
loadout for this scenario, ~34 stowed kills at 0.8 Pk. Probably
a couple more with the gun :-)


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

Fred J. McCall wrote:
(George William Herbert) wrote:
:Stinger is used in air to air mode, there's a separate product
:version for it even (ATAS Block 2). It's used and qualified on
:US Army helicopters.

Against other helicopters. An F-22 is just a bit of overkill for
hunting helicopters.

The thread was specifically on, how does the US respond
intelligently to the swarm of a tenth of a million cheap
cruise missiles fired by the Swami of Elbonia in response
to the 1st Armored, 1st Cav, 1st Inf, 3rd Inf, 7th Inf,
103rd Airmobile Armored, and a host of other units
swarming across his border.

The intelligent response is, of course, that the USAF
on hearing of this threat fits tens of Stingers in
pods to all the fighters they have available;
in twenty years, that will be F-22s and F-35s.
And lasers, no doubt. But lots of Stingers.

There aren't enough helicopters in the world,
probably, to justify fitting that many Stingers
to a F-22 or F-35, though I wouldn't say it would
*never* come to pass.


-george william herbert

(George William Herbert) wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
(George William Herbert) wrote:
::Stinger is used in air to air mode, there's a separate product
::version for it even (ATAS Block 2). It's used and qualified on
::US Army helicopters.
:
:Against other helicopters. An F-22 is just a bit of overkill for
:hunting helicopters.
:
:The thread was specifically on, how does the US respond
:intelligently to the swarm of a tenth of a million cheap
:cruise missiles fired by the Swami of Elbonia in response
:to the 1st Armored, 1st Cav, 1st Inf, 3rd Inf, 7th Inf,
:103rd Airmobile Armored, and a host of other units
:swarming across his border.
:
:The intelligent response is, of course, that the USAF
n hearing of this threat fits tens of Stingers in
ods to all the fighters they have available;
:in twenty years, that will be F-22s and F-35s.
:And lasers, no doubt. But lots of Stingers.

Except the planes are busy doing other things (like taking out launch
sites and such) and it would take time to vector properly configured
aircraft after the missiles. No, I think this is one you handle by
giving the ground troops better air defense. It would be both cheaper
(when you saw the threat being created) and more generally useful (for
things like aircraft threats) if you never need it for hunting the
missiles. That lets your ground troops interdict these things while
your aircraft hammer the launch points (plus all the enemy C4I assets)
into so much floating dust.

--
"You keep talking about slaying like it's a job. It's not.
It's who you are."
-- Kendra, the Vampire Slayer

ess (phil hunt) :

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.

I would like to thank you for this thread. It has given me some insight on
what is going thru the minds of some of the smaller idiot countries that like
to rattle the cage holding the USA. As a Canadain it is always a wonder to
hear some of the silly ideas about the USA that comes out of the rest of the
world.

Things I have learnt:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

2) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too big to
fight. America is BIG, it really is BIG, I mean really, really BIG. When
America goes to war, it does not gear up production to fight, instead it uses
the war to clean out all the old stock it has lying around to make room for
new shiny weapons that it will make later after examining the results of the
old weapons. By the way America hate holding onto old stock, it does not
matter how little you are, they want to use all thier old stock on you to
clean out the inventory. I guess it make the paperwork easyier.

3) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too expensive.
America is rich, it probably is the only country where government people say
"A billion here, a billion there, soon it starts to add up to real money' and
mean it. In other words if you spend a billion dollars making your defense
system, America can afford to spend ten billion tearing it down. Ditto, if
you spent 10 billion.

4) There are people who insist on trying the fight the last war again.
America has a number of think-tanks who's only job if to figure out was went
wrong in the past and how to avoid repeating it and what could go wrong in
the future and how to prevent it. Depending on America to follow your war
plan is dumb.

5) People who have not tried to do advance programming, communication
networks, or operation of multiple mobile units in the middle of the FOG of
war think it is far easyier that it really is. America loves dictators who
try to control thier entire army from thier headquarters.

6) Cheap systems are not cheap. America's kill ratio is so high that cheap
systems have to be bought in quantities that are no longer cheap.

7) Off the shelf items are not harden enough to survive what an weathly
attacker can do to make them fail. Units that are hard to fool are expensive
to bye.

Earl Colby Pottinger

--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:25:13 -0000, Earl Colby Pottinger
wrote:



Things I have learnt:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

Me neither. I can see why some people might think that as a nation we
are not too bright or perhaps easily manipulated, but we certainly
seem to be willing to fight.


2) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too big to
fight. America is BIG, it really is BIG, I mean really, really BIG. When
America goes to war, it does not gear up production to fight, instead it uses
the war to clean out all the old stock it has lying around to make room for
new shiny weapons that it will make later after examining the results of the
old weapons. By the way America hate holding onto old stock, it does not
matter how little you are, they want to use all thier old stock on you to
clean out the inventory. I guess it make the paperwork easyier.


3) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too expensive.
America is rich, it probably is the only country where government people say
"A billion here, a billion there, soon it starts to add up to real money' and
mean it. In other words if you spend a billion dollars making your defense
system, America can afford to spend ten billion tearing it down. Ditto, if
you spent 10 billion.

Tell me something, do you like throwing the nation's money away? I
gather we spent about $60B fighting the Iraq war, and are planning to
spend another $80B or so on "reconstruction". "Reconstruction" is
apparently not reconstructing very much at the moment (almost no power
in Iraq, water shortages, etc. from an article I recently read) -
despite a very large budget. Oddly enough, Iraq did a much faster job
of reconstruction all by itself without US help after the Gulf war.
Go figure.

What are we actually getting for our money? Do you think that the US
gvt is going to find the mysteriously missing weapons of mass
destruction?

Apparently you don't want to set any limit into how much money the US
will throw away.

The recent trend to mindless militarism in the US frankly alarms me.

If we were actually getting something from it as a nation, it might be
understandable (though not particularly ethical, a sort of "big fish
eats little fish might makes right" sort of ethics). But we're not
even getting anything from it (as a nation, I mean, I'm sure a few
rich people are getting very much richer).

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:01:24 -0800, pervect
wrote:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

Me neither. I can see why some people might think that as a nation we
are not too bright or perhaps easily manipulated, but we certainly
seem to be willing to fight.

Perhaps it comes from the typical American unwillingness to suffer
unnecessary casualties. Not that we won't do what it takes, just that
we'd prefer to do it without any of our guys dying. Rather than
trying to storm an enemy position, we'd rather just bomb and shell the
hell out of it first, losing time but gaining lives. It's a long and
glorious tradition going back to the time when American irregular
troops were considered unmanly and cowardly for not standing toe to
toe with the British regulars and exchanging volleys with them.

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

In article ,
Johnny Bravo writes:
On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:01:24 -0800, pervect
wrote:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

Me neither. I can see why some people might think that as a nation we
are not too bright or perhaps easily manipulated, but we certainly
seem to be willing to fight.

Perhaps it comes from the typical American unwillingness to suffer
unnecessary casualties. Not that we won't do what it takes, just that
we'd prefer to do it without any of our guys dying. Rather than
trying to storm an enemy position, we'd rather just bomb and shell the
hell out of it first, losing time but gaining lives. It's a long and
glorious tradition going back to the time when American irregular
troops were considered unmanly and cowardly for not standing toe to
toe with the British regulars and exchanging volleys with them.

Apparantly there are those (see the A-Bomb on Japan thread) who think
that this is, somehow, unfair.

Ain't nobody fights fair.

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