asymetric warfare

Bernardz wrote:

:Point taken. Don't forget that they would have a long time to prepare.
:Many deep caves with plenty of reinforcement and small opening. Plenty
f anti aircraft missiles in the region.
:
:It would not be an easy target.

It would also not be asymmetric warfare. This is attempting to play
the big guy's game. He will virtually always beat you at it. That's
why it's a mug's game.

We've now added invisible anti-aircraft installations and lots of deep
caves to the mix with the magic technology cruise missile.

You have no idea how silly all this sounds to people who actually
build weapons.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

Fred J. McCall wrote:

It would also not be asymmetric warfare. This is attempting to play
the big guy's game. He will virtually always beat you at it. That's
why it's a mug's game.

We've now added invisible anti-aircraft installations and lots of deep
caves to the mix with the magic technology cruise missile.

You have no idea how silly all this sounds to people who actually
build weapons.

"Asymmetric warfare" against the current US warfighting capability would
be a bit difficult, if you try to stick with standard tactics. The
easier move would be intelligence/espionage.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 02:03:52 GMT, Fred J. McCall wrote:
(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?

Are all of them easy to degrade? Even spread spectrum or frequency
hopping ones?

Not to mention all the spoofing that would become
possible (WEP isn't).

Indeed. However wireless internet doesn't necessarily involve WEP.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

Bernardz wrote:

:I suppose it depends on your definition of skilled and fairly skilled.
:Interesting much of the labor force was actually slave labor.
:
:Sufficient to say that for the purpose of this discussion of asymmetric
:warfare, a major power today should be able to gather and train a labor
:forces to manufacture such a class of weapon which to combat these
:weapons would require a much greater force by the US.

Except that this particular class of weapon does you no good, since
you won't have launching facilities for it for very long. Also note
that what we're talking about now is a bit more sophisticated guidance
than "aim it and when it runs out of fuel it falls on the target".
This requires more skilled tradesmen to implement, among other things.

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

Steven James Forsberg wrote:

: While Iran is not exactly sparkling with freedom, it is one of the
:more democratic nations in the Middle East. Indeed, that is one reason the
:US fears it so.

You really are surpassing yourself in being an idiot for the holidays,
are you not?

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 04:39:10 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

Steven James Forsberg wrote:

: While Iran is not exactly sparkling with freedom, it is one of the
:more democratic nations in the Middle East. Indeed, that is one reason the
:US fears it so.

You really are surpassing yourself in being an idiot for the holidays,
are you not?

I doubt the U.S. fears it-- the biggest problem is that the U.S.
often makes comments about Iranian reformers that the REFORMERS really
wish we could lay off-- kinda like the impact if Stalin had made a lot
of statements backing unions in the 1950's-- it can easily be used by
the opposition.
I would say that barring Isreal, Iran probably has the most
functional democracy in the Middle East, certainly far better than
many of our allies. It's not an american style democracy, by no
means, and it isn't a democracy where fundamental questions of policy
are open to public discourse, but it's still a damn site closer than
many.

In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

Are all of them easy to degrade? Even spread spectrum or frequency
hopping ones?

You should remember that "spread spectrum" is not synonymous with
"unjammable" or "undetectable." As far as that goes, some wideband
jamming techniques can be very effective against normal spread spectrum
communications. There are some major limitations that come with spread
spectrum, mostly having to do with power versus range versus noise.

Frequency hopping is pretty good for keeping people from hearing what
you're saying, but once you know the general band they're working on,
you can either jam them with suitable wideband frequencies, jump on
their frequencies before the receiver can lock on ("fast" jamming) or a
number of other moves.

You can defeat these ECM moves, but the counter-countermeasures cost a
*lot* more money than the countermeasures. And, once again, you're
getting into a technical war with a country that spends a *lot* of money
on that sort of thing.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

In article ,
says...
Bernardz wrote:

:Point taken. Don't forget that they would have a long time to prepare.
:Many deep caves with plenty of reinforcement and small opening. Plenty
f anti aircraft missiles in the region.
:
:It would not be an easy target.

It would also not be asymmetric warfare. This is attempting to play
the big guy's game. He will virtually always beat you at it. That's
why it's a mug's game.

True. But often military people have to play this game.


We've now added invisible anti-aircraft installations

Never said it would be invisible.

What I said is that because there will not be time to clear the anti-
aircraft equipment in this case the planes would be flying into them.

The closest example I can think of is Israel in Yom Kippur war were
because of the immediate demands of the war meant that Israeli planes
early in the war had to fly into very dangerous regions.

and lots of deep
caves to the mix with the magic technology cruise missile.

These sort of cruise missiles have been available for years.


You have no idea how silly all this sounds to people who actually
build weapons.

Tell me?

--
A terrorist kills for publicity.

24th saying of Bernard

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 01:29:13 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

pervect wrote:


: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.

I think you'd better re-read my posts, in great detail. Usually I
don't like to take people to task for poor reading skills, but in your
case I'll make an exception.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 06:26:53 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

Are all of them easy to degrade? Even spread spectrum or frequency
hopping ones?

You should remember that "spread spectrum" is not synonymous with
"unjammable" or "undetectable." As far as that goes, some wideband
jamming techniques can be very effective against normal spread spectrum
communications. There are some major limitations that come with spread
spectrum, mostly having to do with power versus range versus noise.

Frequency hopping is pretty good for keeping people from hearing what
you're saying, but once you know the general band they're working on,
you can either jam them with suitable wideband frequencies, jump on
their frequencies before the receiver can lock on ("fast" jamming) or a
number of other moves.

You can defeat these ECM moves, but the counter-countermeasures cost a
*lot* more money than the countermeasures. And, once again, you're
getting into a technical war with a country that spends a *lot* of money
on that sort of thing.

A quick perusal of some webpages on the 802.11 wireless spec suggest
that the direct sequence spread spectrum is probably the more secure
of the two possibilities (frequency hopping is the other possibility).

However, the fairly modest processing gains - only about 10db or so
according to:

http://www.wireless-nets.com/article...per_spread.htm

and the relatively modest and specific bandwidth allocations

902-928 MHz
2.4-2.4835 GHz
5.725-5.850 GHz

suggest to me that digital internet systems based on the 802.11 spec
will probably be relatively easy to jam or detect, especially if the
receivers and transmitters are using low-gain antennas ("isotropic").

It also seems to me that the need for routing signals through multiple
"hops" is going to

1) be vulnerable if any intermediate system is compromised
2) require routing information to be propagated through the internet
which will identify active sites.

There are some other interesting questions, like what the procedure
for adding a node to this internet system is.