asymetric warfare

What about a tripod launched cruise missle with a range of say less then
50km. You would only need one or two people to launch a missile this size,
they could hide in a mosque or cave and fire it towards the
yankee-imperialist *******s when in visual range (or if they have any intel
from outside visual range). You could set the altitude at launch and approx
distance to target (ie do not look for target until you have travelled 3km
or whatever), this would prevent blue-on-blue - at least enough for them.

The target could be acquired using cheap off-the-shelf digital equipment, we
now have 5 megapixel digital cameras for less then 500 bucks, any bets on
the price in a 2 years? 5 megapixels will pick out humans from kilometres
away and convoys even further. Image recognition is not that hard, at least
not for what we need. It only has to find a tank or truck, not tell us the
make and model. When you have 100,000 missiles it doesnt really matter if
only 10% hit targets. For supporting evidence of how far image recognition
has come use some OCR software - it does a pretty good job of handwriting
now, not bad for a computer. Also look to facial recognition software - the
computer has to find faces in large, moving crowds and then find a match in
a quick manner. Admittingly it doesnt work very good (doesnt stop silly
govt.s thinking about buying it of course) but our system only has to find a
face (tank, humvee, grunt).

You could also set a target priority at launch to help prevent 300 missiles
all going for same tank (ie this batch go for tanks, this batch for grunts
and this batch for trucks, etc etc). You would still get overkill but again
it doesnt really matter for our hypothetical despotic nation.

Another problem raised was flight control for the missile. I dont think this
will be an issue since we already have UAVs for less then 20,000k that can
fly themselves and CPU power keeps getting higher. Today I saw that yamaha
has a fully autonomous helicopter, I am no expert but a helicopter would be
more difficult for a computer to fly then a missile no?

So there you have it, a missile that can be cached around the country, small
and cheap and potentially damaging enough to send the troops home (or at
least make the invasion very embarrassing).

Damo

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 20:29:53 +1000, Damo wrote:
only 10% hit targets. For supporting evidence of how far image recognition
has come use some OCR software - it does a pretty good job of handwriting
now, not bad for a computer. Also look to facial recognition software - the
computer has to find faces in large, moving crowds and then find a match in
a quick manner. Admittingly it doesnt work very good

This is true. However, consider that telling a tank or truck from an
empty road is easier than telling a face from another face.

Another problem raised was flight control for the missile. I dont think this
will be an issue since we already have UAVs for less then 20,000k that can
fly themselves and CPU power keeps getting higher. Today I saw that yamaha
has a fully autonomous helicopter, I am no expert but a helicopter would be
more difficult for a computer to fly then a missile no?

They are reputedly more difficult for a human, at any rate.


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