Jack Linthicum wrote:
Mark Borgerson wrote:
In article . com,
says...

wrote:
Jack Linthicum wrote:
wrote:

If the report on the Iran UAV is accurate, the USN is evidently not on
top of this at present. I hope they are working on it, very hard.

Like anti-radiation missiles. Against the launch sites and control
points.

Since only a simple radio signal is needed to control the UAVs (and
then not all of the time - only when they want to instruct them to do
something) that would be very much harder than hitting a high-powered
radar which has to keep transmitting a distinctive signal all of the
time to do its job. And AR missiles could easily be decoyed by lots of
cheap radio transmitters scattered about.

The problem here is that it could be a kind of 'asymmetric warfare', in
that the costs and problems of the defence are potentially far more
costly than those of the attackers.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

The mention was of swarms which implies swarms of signals which then
implies if I have an ECM craft up and I get lots of radiation from one
direction I will send a message to that source. The decoys may work the
second time but not the first or third. The control point will be that,
singular, one command directing all of the UAVs from one spot. How many
generals would you trust if you were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

One control point for a swarm of semi-intelligent UAVs does not imply
either continuous transmission or a single transmitter.

Mark Borgerson

I think that a spread spectrum burst type transmission can be
intercepted and given a rough bearing. The money to do this is
miniscule in comparison with making Trident missiles into hand
grenades.
Hm, I don't know. Especially if they employ hundreds/thousands of
battery/solar powered decoy transmitters. You will need to listen on
the whole spectrum, all time, and be able to sort out what is real and
what is noise.

Still have to transmit to the aircraft, whether it is a high
sophisticated address or not the transmission has to be made to each
aircraft.
No, a broadcast to the whole group is enough.

Home on radiation.
The radiation is almost never there (short bursts from different
locations). You will need to remember the bearing/location of the
burst, then examine that neighbourhood for anything suspicious and then
perhaps attack it. With decoy transmitters .... good luck!

Again the idea that the position in which
a large scale use of UAVs is analogous to the IED situation is not
defensible. Multiple targets are multiple targets to an airborne
system. So far I see this whole discussion as one of a possible but not
probable situation.
Tough to say what is probable. What is certain is that the potential
adversaries are not stupid, and they are searching assymetric ways how
to neutralise the US military advantages....