Defense against UAV's

Jack Linthicum wrote:
wrote:
Jack Linthicum wrote:
...
The mention was of swarms which implies swarms of signals
not necessarily, if mostly autonomous UAVs are used

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.
Ever heard of fiber optics communications? Set-up multiple cheap
antennas for communication, and link them with fiber optics to your
safe hidden command centre. Why you guys always assume that the bad
boys are dumb beyond recognition alludes me...

What the hell is an autonomous UAV?
An UAV that can fly itself using an autopilot (see cruise missiles) to
predefined destination, look around and try to see and identify ships
and perhaps asks the controller for help in making crucial decisions
(attack/ignore/move elsewehere).

and to what purpose?
Increase survivablilty/success of the system. Little, low bandwidth
communication = difficult to detect & jam.

You need a unique signal for each aircraft otherwise they will all turn left at
the same time.
You are still thinking 'remote controlled airplane'. Think 'remote
command'. The UAVs are capable of flying themselves, they just might
need advice from time to time. You don't tell each single aircraft what
to do exactly, you just send a message to the whole swarm: "20% of you
attack the ship, priorities ar A,B,C, the rest go to box [X,Y] and
search for targets there" Each UAV rolls a dice, if it is in the 20%,
it rolls a dice to choose among the identifiable targets on the ship
(phased arrays, CIWS radars, bridge, aircraft on deck, catapult). They
actual flying and execution of the commands is done autonomously. (It
will be a bit more complicated, but this is the basic idea.)

On the first shot you may hit a bunch of decoys but also
the target or targets. Especially if the decoys must be deployed under
the control of the central command. Second time the decoys may stay on
and the command freqs shut down. Third time no one cares and fires
enough weapons to take care of the site and the decoys.
No decoys needed. The UAVs themselves are cheap enough so that would be
waste. Perhpas you can have a hi/lo mix of UAVs with high end
sensors/UAVs with cheapo sensors (as the sensors are likely the
costliest part of the UAV), the cheapo UAVs acting as a sort of decoys
(but still being able to inflict damage, just with a bit lower
probability.)

I have heard of fiber optic communications, those antennas will still
radiate
With autonomous UAVs, the radiation will be intermittent and low
bandwidth. Using spread spectrum/frequency agility or whatever, it
will be difficult to pick up out of the noise. And antennas are cheap
and you can have plenty of them....

and believe it or not the U.S. military can figure out where
the command point is physically.
:-) Like they had sooo much intelligence on WMD in Iraq. Or their
capability to take out Serbian tanks/guns/command centers. ;-) Somehow
I don't think Iran is a country in which USA has a lot of good
humint....

And tt's not like you need an air conditioned bunker holding 100s of
people and computers, anywhere in the vicinity where you can connect to
your fiber network is good enough. The squad doing the control might
decide themselves in the morning of the attack where they want to be,
not even their superiors need to know...

The bad guys do not have to be smart
or dumb, they will be overwhelmed by the amount of crap the U.S. can
throw at tem.
You know, never underestimate your adversary...
Somehow, the Serbian military was not particularly overwhelmed, the
civilian infrastructure was....

It's the occupation afterwards that is the sticking point.
Well, I don't think US will be dumb enough to try to occupy Iran. But
with Dubya you never know....