asymetric warfare

"John" wrote:

Nuclear buckshot will kill most things, and doesn't need to be too accurate
either.

ROTFLMAO.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

In ,
John radiated into the WorldWideWait:
"Duke of URL" macbenahATkdsiDOTnet wrote

John's cutesy-pie combat methods were interesting, slightly, but
suited to a 1930's Boys' Book of How to Have a War.

Everything after the SUV/otto-76 was a bit tongue in cheek though.

Peter did a fine job of dismissing them all.

In the case of the SUVs Peter didn't.. To dodge a tank round all
you need do is side-step half the width of your vehicle. Claiming
that the tanks will close to ploint blank range is stupid when they
are facing concentrated AT fire. I'm also not sure he understood
the potential of the Otto-76 to shoot down smart munitions.

And I especially agree with the last one - countries where all the
citizens are heavily armed are not countries like Iraq, where
people the ruler doesn't like get fed alive into shredding
machines. So they aren't the kind of country we'd be needing to
invade.

However the question wasn't about poor countries, but

Straw man.
I did NOT say a word concerning the wealth, relative or absolute, of
countries. In fact, I don't think ANYone did.

middle-ranking ones, which I took to mean ones comparable to most
european nations.

Both the *stars* of Old Europe, Germany & France, have a history of
mass slaughter of citizenry when a new "leader" takes office.

In article ,
"John" writes:
"Duke of URL" macbenahATkdsiDOTnet wrote

John's cutesy-pie combat methods were interesting, slightly, but
suited to a 1930's Boys' Book of How to Have a War.

Everything after the SUV/otto-76 was a bit tongue in cheek though.

Peter did a fine job of dismissing them all.

In the case of the SUVs Peter didn't.. To dodge a tank round all you need do
is side-step half the width of your vehicle. Claiming that the tanks will
close to ploint blank range is stupid when they are facing concentrated AT
fire. I'm also not sure he understood the potential of the Otto-76 to shoot
down smart munitions.

Actually, John, you don't seem to have much of an understanding of how
tanks work, or what the typical engangement ranges are.
Five miles is right out.
The longest range kill achieved by a tank to date is a 3,000m (roughlt
1.5 Statute Mile shot by a British Challenger II vs. an Iraqi T72 in
the 1990-91 Gulf War. Even in open country like Iraq, the usual
longest range for a Main Gun shot on an opposing tank was 2000m. In a
European rural environment, the most likely engagement range would be
1000m. In more closed country, like, say, the Northeastern U.S., or
Maritime Canada, engagement ranges as close as 50-100m are not
unlikely. (Lots of irregular terrain, lots of trees & brush - European
forests are like gardens in comparison.) Engagement ranges within
urban areas are very short - usually on the order of 200m or so.

Time of Flight for a main gun round to 2000m is about 1.2 seconds.
Time of Flight to 200m, is (Wait for it - 0.12 seconds.
Now, Sport, How much are you going to be dodging your SUV in 1.2
seconds. Be aware that you'll have to shave at least 0.5 seconds off
of that for the driver's reaction time.

Also consider that your millimeter-wave emitting SUV is ligking itself
up like a neon sign in a part of the radio spectrum that nothing else
is on. A couple of sinple horn antannae on the turret sides (Sort of
like the old coincidence rangefinder ears) for DFing, and an
omnidirectional antenna up with the Wind Sensor on the turret roof for
general detection, and you won't, say, be able to hide your
Tank-Killer SUV in Madman Morris's SUV Dealership's parking lot.


And I especially agree with the last one - countries where all the
citizens are heavily armed are not countries like Iraq, where people
the ruler doesn't like get fed alive into shredding machines. So they
aren't the kind of country we'd be needing to invade.

However the question wasn't about poor countries, but middle-ranking ones,
which I took to mean ones comparable to most european nations. Of such I'd
say only Britian or France had the capacity to blunt a US attack, and only
because they can both MIRV task-forces whilst they cross the atlantic.
Nuclear buckshot will kill most things, and doesn't need to be too accurate
either.

Time of Flight of IRBM, 30 minutes. Speed of CVBG, 25 kts. Detection
of launch, instantaneous. DSP Sats, y'know. Radius of circle that
could contain the target - 12.5 Nautical Miles.
U.S. Supply Convoys hump along at 20 kts, these days, so you're
looking at a 10 NM circle there.
Time of arrival of U.S. ICBM ('cause we're Nice Guys, and aren't going
to unleacsh somethig on the order of 10 Trident MIRVs on your country,
and only take out single targets, roughtly 1.0-1.5 hours after launch.
Your Command Centers and missile bases, or Missile Sub ports don't
move, and you made the mistake of going Nuclear first.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 19:41:06 -0000, "John"
wrote:

"Duke of URL" macbenahATkdsiDOTnet wrote

John's cutesy-pie combat methods were interesting, slightly, but
suited to a 1930's Boys' Book of How to Have a War.

Everything after the SUV/otto-76 was a bit tongue in cheek though.

Peter did a fine job of dismissing them all.

In the case of the SUVs Peter didn't.. To dodge a tank round all you need do
is side-step half the width of your vehicle.

At 1,000 yards the travel time of a 120mm APFSDS round is .52
seconds, Average human reaction time for someone doing nothing but
sitting there and waiting for an event they have to respond to by
flipping a switch is .3 to .8 seconds with a good 60% being above the
..5 second mark. Someone performing a complex task in reaction to a
signal, like driving around and then having to dodge in a specific
direction at a signal ranges from .35 to 1.5 seconds with 85% being
over .5 seconds. - Henry and Rogers, 1960

Assuming that your system is so good that it can classify every
round on the battlefield, tell what is coming and going, be scanning
the air for cluster bombs and rockets and take 0 seconds to illuminate
a light on the dash telling you which way to swerve, it won't help you
at all.

85% of your vehicles will be killed by the first shot because they
didn't respond in time and none of the rest will be able to get that
half width in the .15 seconds they have to move the vehicle. At 40mph
the vehicle will move 9 feet forward in .15 seconds, about 1/2 it's
length, leaving the back half of the vehicle beind the center point.

Claiming that the tanks will
close to ploint blank range is stupid when they are facing concentrated AT
fire.

1,000 yards isn't exactly point blank range.

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

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.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

ess (phil hunt) :

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?

I think one strategy would be to use large numbers of low cost
cruise missiles (LCCM). The elements of a cruise missile are all
very simple, mature technology, except for the guidance system.
Modern computers are small and cheap, so guidance systems can be
made cheaply.

I would like to thank you for this thread. It has given me some insight on
what is going thru the minds of some of the smaller idiot countries that like
to rattle the cage holding the USA. As a Canadain it is always a wonder to
hear some of the silly ideas about the USA that comes out of the rest of the
world.

Things I have learnt:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

2) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too big to
fight. America is BIG, it really is BIG, I mean really, really BIG. When
America goes to war, it does not gear up production to fight, instead it uses
the war to clean out all the old stock it has lying around to make room for
new shiny weapons that it will make later after examining the results of the
old weapons. By the way America hate holding onto old stock, it does not
matter how little you are, they want to use all thier old stock on you to
clean out the inventory. I guess it make the paperwork easyier.

3) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too expensive.
America is rich, it probably is the only country where government people say
"A billion here, a billion there, soon it starts to add up to real money' and
mean it. In other words if you spend a billion dollars making your defense
system, America can afford to spend ten billion tearing it down. Ditto, if
you spent 10 billion.

4) There are people who insist on trying the fight the last war again.
America has a number of think-tanks who's only job if to figure out was went
wrong in the past and how to avoid repeating it and what could go wrong in
the future and how to prevent it. Depending on America to follow your war
plan is dumb.

5) People who have not tried to do advance programming, communication
networks, or operation of multiple mobile units in the middle of the FOG of
war think it is far easyier that it really is. America loves dictators who
try to control thier entire army from thier headquarters.

6) Cheap systems are not cheap. America's kill ratio is so high that cheap
systems have to be bought in quantities that are no longer cheap.

7) Off the shelf items are not harden enough to survive what an weathly
attacker can do to make them fail. Units that are hard to fool are expensive
to bye.

Earl Colby Pottinger

--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:25:13 -0000, Earl Colby Pottinger
wrote:



Things I have learnt:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

Me neither. I can see why some people might think that as a nation we
are not too bright or perhaps easily manipulated, but we certainly
seem to be willing to fight.


2) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too big to
fight. America is BIG, it really is BIG, I mean really, really BIG. When
America goes to war, it does not gear up production to fight, instead it uses
the war to clean out all the old stock it has lying around to make room for
new shiny weapons that it will make later after examining the results of the
old weapons. By the way America hate holding onto old stock, it does not
matter how little you are, they want to use all thier old stock on you to
clean out the inventory. I guess it make the paperwork easyier.


3) There are people to this day who think they can make a war too expensive.
America is rich, it probably is the only country where government people say
"A billion here, a billion there, soon it starts to add up to real money' and
mean it. In other words if you spend a billion dollars making your defense
system, America can afford to spend ten billion tearing it down. Ditto, if
you spent 10 billion.

Tell me something, do you like throwing the nation's money away? I
gather we spent about $60B fighting the Iraq war, and are planning to
spend another $80B or so on "reconstruction". "Reconstruction" is
apparently not reconstructing very much at the moment (almost no power
in Iraq, water shortages, etc. from an article I recently read) -
despite a very large budget. Oddly enough, Iraq did a much faster job
of reconstruction all by itself without US help after the Gulf war.
Go figure.

What are we actually getting for our money? Do you think that the US
gvt is going to find the mysteriously missing weapons of mass
destruction?

Apparently you don't want to set any limit into how much money the US
will throw away.

The recent trend to mindless militarism in the US frankly alarms me.

If we were actually getting something from it as a nation, it might be
understandable (though not particularly ethical, a sort of "big fish
eats little fish might makes right" sort of ethics). But we're not
even getting anything from it (as a nation, I mean, I'm sure a few
rich people are getting very much richer).

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:01:24 -0800, pervect
wrote:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

Me neither. I can see why some people might think that as a nation we
are not too bright or perhaps easily manipulated, but we certainly
seem to be willing to fight.

Perhaps it comes from the typical American unwillingness to suffer
unnecessary casualties. Not that we won't do what it takes, just that
we'd prefer to do it without any of our guys dying. Rather than
trying to storm an enemy position, we'd rather just bomb and shell the
hell out of it first, losing time but gaining lives. It's a long and
glorious tradition going back to the time when American irregular
troops were considered unmanly and cowardly for not standing toe to
toe with the British regulars and exchanging volleys with them.

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

In article ,
Johnny Bravo writes:
On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 22:01:24 -0800, pervect
wrote:

1) There are people to this day don't seem to understand that Americans are
not cowards, they just don't like to fight wars. **** they off and they will
fight, they will not be scared off, rather they will hit you with everything
they have got. Why people think otherwise that is beyond me.

Me neither. I can see why some people might think that as a nation we
are not too bright or perhaps easily manipulated, but we certainly
seem to be willing to fight.

Perhaps it comes from the typical American unwillingness to suffer
unnecessary casualties. Not that we won't do what it takes, just that
we'd prefer to do it without any of our guys dying. Rather than
trying to storm an enemy position, we'd rather just bomb and shell the
hell out of it first, losing time but gaining lives. It's a long and
glorious tradition going back to the time when American irregular
troops were considered unmanly and cowardly for not standing toe to
toe with the British regulars and exchanging volleys with them.

Apparantly there are those (see the A-Bomb on Japan thread) who think
that this is, somehow, unfair.

Ain't nobody fights fair.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster