asymetric warfare

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 21:40:13 -0500, "Ray Drouillard"
wrote:



Even if the non-encrypted civilian access GPS is turned off, the
military system will work fine.

Yes, another poster pointed that out, so I stand corrected. Also,
because the signals coming from the satellites are apparently spread
spectrum, it will be much less easy to reverse-engineer the codes than
I anticipated. Because we know what the output of the atomic clocks
should be, we know what the "clear" signal has to be. So I expected
extreme difficulties in encoding these signals - it's like trying to
design a good code when you have someone with access to the plaintext
working on breaking it.

However, with the spread spectrum approach, the difficulty will be to
be able to detect the signal in the broad-band noise.

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

And don't wait - surrender right now! We are Borg, your ass will be
immolated.

(Sorry, but I couldn't resist).

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:10:41 -0000, "John"
wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in
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?

To deal with the US Army...
Use SUVs with anti-tank rockets and a millimetric radar mounted on the back.
In iraq US gunners opened fire at 5miles. Since the rounds travel at a
mile/second, this would give an SUV 5 seconds to dudge, which would be
simple with guidence from the radar. Meanwhile the top-attack missiles tear
through the thin turret roofs. Buy a few otto-76mm armed tanks with dual use
surface/air to deal with incomming aircraft/missiles/bombs/helicopters and
to rip enemy soldiers to pieces.

And watch them all die horribly. SUV's will be picked up by the
forward screens of the army units, which can shoot them up just
wonderfully-- not only that, but the first thing the U.S. will do is
nail the SUV's from the air. Cluster muntions do horrible things to
lightly armored vehicles.
In addition, some hotsmoke rounds already incorporate anti-radar
chaff. You can't move until the warhead hits-- because if you're
using vehicle mounted radar, that's probably a form of beam rider of
SAH guidence. Both are eminiently jammable.
76mm AA tanks have been developed (although none are in service as
far as I know-- the Italians evidently weren't able to sell them), but
they have the simple problem of being big enough to be killed from far
out side the 76mm range-- you're going to have B2's and B1's dropping
LCAS GPS guided weapons, and all sorts of other wonderful stuff from
quite far out of range, cued in by UAVs which the Air force doesn't
mind losing at all.


To deal with the US Air Force...
Buy old airliners and fit with reloadable missile launchers and modern AA
radar, counter measures, and refueling probe. Take old fighter designs, and
hang them fully fueled and armed from ballons. That'll multiply thier
endurance by a factor of ten at least. Fit search-radar in envelope and have
them patrol your boarder. Network them together and you'll have an end to
surprise US attacks.

And woudl you prefer to do this before, or after we develop the
anti-matter driven beam cannons? integrating things like AA missiles
into a civilian air frame is incredibly complex, and as for dangling
fighters from ballons, that's just silly. Not only that, but they'll
be blinded by ECM, painted by AWACs and killed from a long way off by
fighters.
Networkign is a nice phrase-- how exactly do you intend to do this
against the most technologically advanced power on earth? Note he
specificed mid-range powers, which means mid-range budget. This
concept, even if it would work, would break the bank of the United
States, which means no other nation could even concieve of it.

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.

To deal with the US Navy...
Buy old torpedos and fit to larch home made rockets (see X-prize entries)
with 50-100 mile range. Get the rockets to dump the torpedos within a few
miles of a nimitz carrier groups and you're garanteed to blow up something
*really* expensive!

Getting a torpedo to successfully deploy from a rocket, in working
condition is far, far more difficult-- and no Nimitz class BG is going
to get within 100 miles of your coast until those rocket launchers are
dead, dead, dead.


Alternatively buy the following:
1 million RPG-7s
5 million RPG-7 rounds
10 million AK-74s
1 billion bullets
Distribute evenly through out your population, train them, set up a
Swiss-style monitoring system, and let the Americans invade. Then blow up
everything of value they own the second they let their guard down. They'll
leave in a few months and you can go back to normal.
Expensive-- and begs the question of will the people fight. Still,
probably the most logical solution here. The U.S.'s greatest weakness
has always been long term guerilla conflits.



Alternatively fly a few airliners into american nuclear power stations. The
aftermath of multiple chernobles will destroy America as an effective
strategic power.

1. You won't get mutiple Chernobles. We have somewhat more effective
designs than the russians, taht don't blow up quite as
enthusiastically into steam explosions. In many cases, you probably
won't even fully breach the containment building. You will get some
release of radiation, but not the doomsday amounts you expect.
2. Congratulations. You've just launched a strategic attack on the
United States. We'll see your airliners, and raise you a few nuclear
strikes on major military bases.
Alternately, we'll just go fully to war, decide not to count the
cost, and dig out every soldier above the rank of Lt. and shoot him.
Direct attacks on teh U.S. by any identifiable nation is a big like
walking up to a grizzly bear and smacking him in the nose. Not smart.

"phil hunt" wrote

I imagine the missiles could
be programmed for a mission by sticking a computer with an Ethernet
cable into a slot on the missile.

Here ya go. Code to this explanation, and you're all set.

http://www.techblvd.com/Rvideo/Guidance.wav

Easy.

Pete

I've been given some consideration to this topic, and beyond some of
the proposals, I do have a question about one possible tactic.
First of all, buying some Mig-29's, Rafaels, or F-16's just gives
the USN and USAF more targets. You cannot buy enough to make any
difference, they will be quantitatively outnumbered and qualitatively
outgunned (few nations will have such refinements as AWAC's) and will
be shot down, leaving the USAF free to do as it pleases. Ditto for
the bases, which will be killed fairly quickly.

Now, in the 1980's, the birtish had the idea of the Small Agile
Battle Field Aircraft (SABA), which in some incarnations was a fanjet
(pusher style) aircraft with 6 hardpoints for sidewinders, and a 25mm
internal gun for use against tanks and helicopters. 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.

Now, if I was a second or third teir nation thinking of engaging
the U.S., I'd want this.
i'm not going to gain air superiority, but if I can keep the air
force looking to squash allthe cheap cockroach planes I have out
there, they might not be able to fully concentrate on CAS either.
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, and heck, I might
even be able to get some CAS of my own in.

Now, would this be viable? Note, I'm not saying "coudl I win",
because in an all out, there will be only one likely outcome, but
"could it make more trouble for the U.S. than a tarmac load of
Mig-29's or other expensive jets."

"Mike Williams" wrote

The cheap solution is to use GPS. But IIRC the US has complete
control over the GPS satellite system. So if you are at war with the
US, you can't count on your GPS working right.

The last I heard, the projected date for the launch of the Galileo Next
Generation Global Navigation Satellite System was some time in 2005, so
after that date there could be an alternative to the American GPS.
However, anyone who's at war with the US is likely to be also disliked
by the Europeans behind Galileo, and might find that they can't get good
readings from either system.

As of this month, Galileo is already subject to US
control/degradation/jamming if necessary.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W25942BD6
from www.tagesschau.de [bablefish translation]
"Galileo will work on a frequency, which is at any time easily influenceable
for American of military. Without consulting Europe, American armed forces
will be able to switch off the European satellite navigation system Galileo
in crisis and conflicts likewise, as this already happens with the American
global Positioning system (government inspection department). "

Pete

"John" wrote:

To deal with the US Army...
Use SUVs with anti-tank rockets and a millimetric radar mounted on the back.
In iraq US gunners opened fire at 5miles. Since the rounds travel at a
mile/second, this would give an SUV 5 seconds to dudge, which would be
simple with guidence from the radar. Meanwhile the top-attack missiles tear
through the thin turret roofs.

Except you'd need a *lot* of these, to make sure you had a decent force
survive after the initial artillery attacks from over the horizon.
Since they're soft targets, you could pretty much remove them from the
battlefield with a couple of loads of smart munitions. If you don't
have a lot of these SUV-type machines, you have to worry about
everything from bombs on down. Then you also have to worry about
command and control, which adds another couple of layers of complexity
to the issue.

Buy a few otto-76mm armed tanks with dual use
surface/air to deal with incomming aircraft/missiles/bombs/helicopters and
to rip enemy soldiers to pieces.

If you have anything less than a *lot* of armor, you're pretty much
screwed when it comes to maneuver warfare... and those tanks are also
vulnerable to pretty much everything else on the battlefield.

To deal with the US Air Force...
Buy old airliners and fit with reloadable missile launchers and modern AA
radar, counter measures, and refueling probe. Take old fighter designs, and
hang them fully fueled and armed from ballons. That'll multiply thier
endurance by a factor of ten at least. Fit search-radar in envelope and have
them patrol your boarder. Network them together and you'll have an end to
surprise US attacks.

Old airliners with radar signatures about the size of a medium-sized
mall. And by the time anyone manages to get any of these fielded,
they're going to have to worry about airborne lasers and hypervelocity
missiles.

To deal with the US Navy...
Buy old torpedos and fit to larch home made rockets (see X-prize
entries) with 50-100 mile range. Get the rockets to dump the torpedos
within a few miles of a nimitz carrier groups and you're garanteed to
blow up something *really* expensive!

....if you ever get the chance to shoot them. You're not going to see
carrier groups within a hundred miles of a hostile coast until well
after any reasonable defenses/offenses are pretty much toast.

Alternatively buy the following:
1 million RPG-7s
5 million RPG-7 rounds
10 million AK-74s
1 billion bullets
Distribute evenly through out your population, train them, set up a
Swiss-style monitoring system, and let the Americans invade. Then blow up
everything of value they own the second they let their guard down. They'll
leave in a few months and you can go back to normal.

This is assuming that the US is going to invade, say, Norway.

If the US is going to invade some place a couple of orders of magnitude
more likely (like Iran or Syria), you're never going to see anything
like a trained population. You're going to see, well, a lot of places
with the overall military presence of Iraq or Afghanistan. Which had
the armanents you speak of, but would *never* have the ability to let
the population get that strong, or a command structure that would
possibly let the populace get that into their heads. Look at Iraq,
Iran, Syria, North Korea, et al.

The weapons list above, by the way, is pretty close to what we ran into
in Iraq. Notice how nothing like what you suggest ever happened.

Alternatively fly a few airliners into american nuclear power stations. The
aftermath of multiple chernobles will destroy America as an effective
strategic power.

Not so much. For one thing, you'd ignoring the fact that *nobody* could
manage that any more with any hope of success. For another, you'd have
to hope that an airliner *could* cause that sort of damage (modern
containment domes were designed, in part, to prevent just that). Even
in the worst case, you're looking at limited damage and a loss of some
power generation capability, not a reduction in strategic power.

The other thing is that any country or series of countries that even
tried it would be erased from the face of the Earth, at least
militarily, and everyone who even had a vague suspicion of being
involved would be in much deeper **** than anyone seems to be able to
imagine. Remember when all of the terror folks thought the US would
fold right after 9/11, and we started ripping everyone new assholes?
Multiply that by a hundred.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

In article ,
pervect wrote:

Yes, another poster pointed that out, so I stand corrected. Also,
because the signals coming from the satellites are apparently spread
spectrum, it will be much less easy to reverse-engineer the codes than
I anticipated. Because we know what the output of the atomic clocks
should be, we know what the "clear" signal has to be. So I expected
extreme difficulties in encoding these signals - it's like trying to
design a good code when you have someone with access to the plaintext
working on breaking it.

Assuming that the GPS project was reasonably competent when it came to
encryption, the encryption alone should be an insurmountable challenge.
Encryption which can't be reverse-engineered (by which I mean, you can
publish everything about the system except the keys and it's still
perfectly secure) has been pretty much a solved problem for quite some
time, barring revolutionary new mathematical techniques. The only hard
part is the key distribution. So you'd have to steal a key close enough
to your launch time for that key to still be valid, and do it in such a
way that nobody catches on and changes the key sooner than usual. Having
the plaintext for a section of code text is not, afaik, very much help
when it comes to cracking modern codes.

"Bryan J. Maloney" wrote in message
93.32...
ess (phil hunt) nattered on
. org:

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?

Orbital laser satellites, preferably mind-control lasers. If not that,
then frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams in their heads.

It also would be helpful to shout, "Somebody throw me a bone here!"

ROFL!!!!

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.

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

D.
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