"Charles Gray" 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.

Cluster munitions aren't terribly manouverable though. And what makes the
think that the radar put there to let the drivers dodge incoming tank-fire
cannot detect incomming cluster-bombs?

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.

I never said the radar was for guidence; it's there so they can see and
dodge incomming tank-rounds and other munitions.. You can use any missilbe
for the SUV, and you can manouver whilst firing. During this period the wire
is being pulled out the tube at 300mps at minimum, a few mps to either side
is not going to break it. There are also fire-and-forget missile systems.

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.

US army next-gen guided-bombs are essentuially UAVs with 90% explosive
filling. They are big and will show up on radar. At this point the gun turns
and fires at the bomb/missile before it gets close enough to do damage.


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,

Not that complex. As long as the air-frame can take the load and there's
room for the wires it's rather easy. With any boeing of airbus aircraft the
belly is fully accessable and there's plenty of space to add any kind of
load-distribution system you like. Modern phased arrar radar can be mounted
in the same location weather radar is, eith the electronics placed directly
behind the bulkhead in 'first class'.

and as for dangling
fighters from ballons, that's just silly.

It would increase a fighter's patrol endurence from hours into days at
little extra fuel cost. That's not silly. That's *very* useful for a
cash-strapped military.

Not only that, but they'll
be blinded by ECM, painted by AWACs and killed from a long way off by
fighters.

And the ballons die horribly, but the fighters have already dropped away and
are consuming the USAF's attention and running the terrible risk that an
american might die (GASP! HORROR!) before they even cross the boarder. And
what makes you think that things like AWACS will be able to fly in the near
future? Very simple rockets could be built as first stages to older
missilbes, or clusters of older missiles, which could put them in enough
danger that commanders draw them back beyond their useful distance. If
something cannot be used as effectively it's as good as badly damaged.

Even if they slow the USAF down an hour, that's an hour's warning more than
a country without such a system woudl get.

Networkign is a nice phrase-- how exactly do you intend to do this
against the most technologically advanced power on earth?

America's boastful tendencies do not change the laws of physics. Stealth
aircraft do not reflect radar back at the origin radar - but they do
reflect. If you have an array of linked radars the others may well pick up
the reflected radar pulses, even if the origin array does not.

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 purchase of a few AWAC systems (minus aircraft) would not break the bank
of most middle-ranking nations. Linking them together is a computer problem.

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.

I would point out that building or buying new VSTOLs is going to be far more
expensive than anything I've said.

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.

Again, reducing the range of US navy fighters by 200miles is going to be
worth it! Deploy special-forces with the missiles to hunt down all the
US-special-forces they'll send in, and you can severely inconvenience the US
navy. Plus they have to keep supply-ships away by a similar margin. That
would have a devistating impact on the army's ability to fight a sustained
battle.


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.

By contract, obscenely cheep. Could probably be done for a quarter billion
dollars. In any population you usally get enough people who will fight, and
in war the actual guns and AT weapons will usually fall into their hands.
After that it boils down to tactics. An RPG-7 can disable any tank in the
world with a good side-shot. And massed against the front they can do enough
damage to disable one.

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.

You'd think so wouldn't you? Or at least the government would like you to
think so. Truth is that western reactors have more safety systems than their
russian equivolents, and therefore really are safer. But all that safety
gear counts for very little when it's burnt or blown up, and most of it is
*outside* the reactor building, so it can be accessed if there is a major
incident. At the very least the sudden and violent removal of several
cooling towers would have a disabling effect on power-outout, causing
brown-outs over a large areas and many days.

2. Congratulations. You've just launched a strategic attack on the
United States.

There is no geneva convention that reads, "Thou Shalt Not Attack The United
States." If Sadam had retaliated on US soil they'd have had to just sit
there and take it, because he'd have been well within his rights under
international law. You could try and excecute him for a lot of things but
something like this would not have been one of them. Any other country would
have the same freedom.

There are more strategic targets than nuclear ones. Blowing up the alsakan
pipe-line would have given the american oil-industry a heat attack, and put
the economy in seizers, particularly if accompanied by effective bombings of
oil-tankers whilst in port. Shutting down conventional power stations isn't
terribly difficult either. Do enough of them and the entire US grid will
fail. Since natural gas is pressurised by the national grid, that will fail
as well. And that would be *fun*. ^.^

This is to say nothing of a small numer of lesser terrorist attacks you
could commit, like bombing the NY subway, blowing up petrol tankers and
stations, or shooting government officials. Successful or not any attack
will shut the area down and down the economy and popularity ofthe war down a
peg.

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.

At wich point you get sanctions placed on you by the oil-nations and your
stategic assets over-seas are seized and/or destroyed. In fantasy-land at
any rate. Terrorists doing such things is one thing. But a suposed
democratic country doing them is another. Considder how upset some people
are whe nthe US pretends half a dozen peopel in Guantanimo Bay don't deserve
basic human rights. Now multiple that by a few hundred thousand...

ANTIcarrot.