asymetric warfare

In message , phil hunt
writes
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 05:26:01 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote:
That is way beyond even our capabilities. You are talking autonomous combat
systems.

Yes. The progrsamming for this isn't particularly hard, once you've
written software that can identify a vehicle (or other target) in a
picture.

Falling off a cliff isn't a problem once you've learned how to fly like
Superman.

Trouble is, that prerequisite is harder than you might expect.

Getting a machine to tell a T-72 from a M1A1 from a Leclerc is hard
enough in good conditions: doing so in the presence of camouflage,
obscurants and when the crew have run out of internal stowage (so have
hung lots of external gear) and maybe stored some spare track plates on
the glacis front ('cause they need the spare plates and they might as
well be extra armour) gets _really_ tricky. Do you err on the side of
"tank-like vehicle, kill!" or "if you're not sure don't attack"?

Would it not be embarrasing to have a successful armoured raid broken up
by your own missiles?

It's just a matter of aiming the missile towards the
target.

Which presupposes you know where the target is, even roughly, in a
sufficiently timely manner.

Weapons like this were in existance 20 years ago, for example the
Exocet anti-ship missile.

Which never once hit its intended target from an air launch (five
launches, all aimed at 'carriers'; two hits, one on a picket ship and
one on a STUFT that was seduced off another picket)

Bad example. (Besides, Exocet in 1982 was a frontline Western
capability, launched from aircraft with radar that could cover the
missile's range window... and they _still_ missed their intended
targets. You're talking about Hail Mary shots of extended-ranged Exocets
from the Argentine mainland... really not likely to work)

I'm not bsure what problems you envisage
with doing this; perhaps you could elaborate?

Key problem is that going up against the US loses you your comms and
observation (in oldspeak) or your C4ISTAR (in newspeak). Can't get recce
flights out to see where they are, can't get communication with your
forward observers, can't orbit surveillance assets. Observe how
thoroughly Iraq was deceived in 1991, for instance, or how Argentina
spent most of the Falklands conflict trying to figure out where the
British forces were and what they were doing. (Even when they had a
perfect target, they hit escorts rather than HVUs)

because you can't just fire them "in that direction, more or less", and hit
anything--you have to have a pretty narrow determination of where the target
is right at the time the weapon arrives.

What you could do is have the missile, if it doesn't find a target
to hang around in the area looking for one. (The British ALARM
missile does this literally :-)).

Which area are you firing it at? Seeker windows are small and
battlefields are large. The larger the area it's expected to scan, the
harder it is to build and the less reliable it will be.

(b) Are you going to send it in low, where it
MIGHT have a chance at surviving, but its field of view is extremely
limited, so it is that much more likely to not find any target to hit, but
which also requires oodles of (very accurate, and likely unavailable to most
potential foes) digital topographic data to be uploaded and a complex
navigation system)

The topographic data would probably be available if the missile is
flying over the territory of its own country.

Otherwise, there are other methods of nagivation: dead reckoning,
celestial, a LORAN-like system could be set up.

DR is patchy at best unless you've got good inertial guidance systems
(non-trivial). Celestial only works on clear nights - so you're limited
to fighting wars after dark on cloudless nights with no flares in the
sky. LORAN is a radio broadcast and therefore not survivable against a
US-style opponent.

or up high where the view is better,

It's possible that a mission might require some of the flight to be
at high level and some at low level. I imagine the missiles could
be programmed for a mission by sticking a computer with an Ethernet
cable into a slot on the missile.

This has only been done for twenty years or so in the West, so hardly a
great advance.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk