Defense against UAV's

Fred J. McCall wrote:

The IRANIANS claim the helicopters were scrambled to intercept it.
This is part of my reasoning for putting it down to baseless chest
thumping.

Hint: Helicopters aren't used as interceptors.

That's because ships haven't had to deal with UAVs before. As someone
else on this board has suggested, a helo with a machine gun may
actually be the best way of dealing with small, slow UAVs until
something more sophisticated can be developed.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

Jeb wrote:

It would seem to me to be likely that a simple software code
modification would allow an Aegis system to detect smaller, slower
returns (I would expect that right now, those get filtered out so that
seabirds don't cause spurious readings on the radar scopes).

I doubt that very much. If radar systems have great difficulty in
detecting and tracking stealthy aircraft like the F-117, B-2 and so on
- big objects with lots of metal in them - they are going to find it
vastly more difficult to pick up a very small, mostly plastic object
which has also been designed to be as stealthy as possible. If that
could be remedied by tweaking the software, then all of the money spent
on stealth aircraft has been wasted.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

wrote:

:
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: The IRANIANS claim the helicopters were scrambled to intercept it.
: This is part of my reasoning for putting it down to baseless chest
: thumping.
:
: Hint: Helicopters aren't used as interceptors.
:
:That's because ships haven't had to deal with UAVs before.

Air targets are air targets. Helicopters are neither trained nor
equipped to do air intercepts.

:As someone
:else on this board has suggested, a helo with a machine gun may
:actually be the best way of dealing with small, slow UAVs

"Someone on this board" will inevitably suggest all sorts of stupid
things.

Hint #1: It's not a 'board'. Its called a newsgroup.

Hint #2: Helos are too slow to deal with even a slow UAV. The
leading edge of the rotor goes transonic at relatively slow forward
speeds.

Hint #3: A fighter with a 20mm Vulcan will flat mess up a "small,
slow UAV" and actually has a radar on board so that he can see it and
some actual training on how to do an air intercept, neither of which a
helicopter has.

:until
:something more sophisticated can be developed.

It doesn't take anything "sophisticated" to deal with this threat. If
it's really small and really slow, just blow past it in the mach and
let the shockwave trash it. If it's bigger and tougher, that's why
they still put Vulcan cannon on airplanes.

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Fred J. McCall wrote:

Hint #2: Helos are too slow to deal with even a slow UAV. The
leading edge of the rotor goes transonic at relatively slow forward
speeds.

UAVs vary a lot in speed - this article
http://www.armscontrol.ru/UAV/mirsad1.htm concerning a UAV flight over
Israel, has some data which shows that some of them fly as slow as 75
mph. The Swiss Ranger, which seems typical, is quoted as flying at
between 55 and 130 knots. These would certainly be within the
capabilities of a helo to catch.

Hint #3: A fighter with a 20mm Vulcan will flat mess up a "small,
slow UAV" and actually has a radar on board so that he can see it and
some actual training on how to do an air intercept, neither of which a
helicopter has.

Always assuming that the radar is capable of getting a lock on the UAV.
If not, his chance of scoring a hit is remote - the speed differential
is so huge that he could do no more than 'spray and pray'.

:until
:something more sophisticated can be developed.

It doesn't take anything "sophisticated" to deal with this threat. If
it's really small and really slow, just blow past it in the mach and
let the shockwave trash it.

That might do the trick, as long as you've got air support handy (not
all warhips are aircraft carriers, or have one on call).

The basic problem is that naval self-defence systems are designed to
deal with large, fast objects which produce a nice big radar echo. We
know that they have problems picking up stealth planes - that's the
whole point of stealth planes, after all - so it is obvious that
they're going to have a hell of a lot more problems dealing with a very
much smaller and inherently stealthy object. I don't doubt they will
eventually find a means of coping with them, but that's probably years
away - and the threat exists now.

Note that according to the website above concerning the half-hour
terrorist flight over Israel "the Israeli army could also do nothing to
shut down the plane though they observed the entire flight over their
territory."

The situation is analogous to that posed by the first Russian anti-ship
missile, the Styx. It was around for years and no-one took much notice
until one sank an Israeli destroyer in 1967 - then the USN woke up to
the need for a short-range defence system, and Phalanx was the eventual
answer.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

"Mark Borgerson" mborgerson.at.comcast.net wrote in message
.net...
In article V%qfg.6218$JX1.2803@edtnps82,
says...


Given traffic patterns in the Gulf, it ought to be pretty easy
to test whether your software can distinguish between 1000-foot
vessels and 100-foot vessels.

Mark Borgerson



There are LOTS of 1000 ft vessels in the gulf, most are VLCC's

Keith



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wrote in message
ups.com...

The situation is analogous to that posed by the first Russian anti-ship
missile, the Styx. It was around for years and no-one took much notice
until one sank an Israeli destroyer in 1967 - then the USN woke up to
the need for a short-range defence system, and Phalanx was the eventual
answer.

The Israeli navy was dealing with Styx quite well without Phalanx in 1973.

--
William Black

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.

William Black wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

The situation is analogous to that posed by the first Russian anti-ship
missile, the Styx. It was around for years and no-one took much notice
until one sank an Israeli destroyer in 1967 - then the USN woke up to
the need for a short-range defence system, and Phalanx was the eventual
answer.

The Israeli navy was dealing with Styx quite well without Phalanx in 1973.

Yes, because they learned the hard way that they had to do something
about it (and losing a destroyer is a very hard way...). Phalanx was
simply the last-ditch element of a layered defence system which the USN
thought it prudent to add as a result of the Israeli experience.

The point of my analogy was simply that new threats tend not to be
taken very seriously until somebody gets hurt by them - then there is a
reaction.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

wrote:
Fred J. McCall wrote:

It doesn't take anything "sophisticated" to deal with this threat. If
it's really small and really slow, just blow past it in the mach and
let the shockwave trash it.

That might do the trick, as long as you've got air support handy (not
all warhips are aircraft carriers, or have one on call).

Actually, on reflection I can see problems. Trying to fly very close to
a UAV when you're closing at a speed of at least 340 metres per second
and the UAV might make unpredictable moves at any time could be a
recipe for disaster....a collision would certainly deal with the UAV
but not in a very cost-effective manner.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

Keith W wrote:
wrote in message
ps.com...

Keith W wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Jack Linthicum wrote:

Almost all the arguments one sees here are based on the fact that UAVs
are dumb and if you can take the comms out, you are fine. I am not
sure that will hold for long, especially if the UAVs are used against
ships on open sea, in fair weather, in 'kill every warship you see'
mode - which all makes the autonomous decision making of the UAV so
much easier.

That of course also makes spoofing and the use of decoys much easier
and makes the user rather unpopular with any other seafarers. It'd
be something of a pity if your UAV's decided to attack the local
fishing fleet instead of the USN battle group. Given the number of
offshore
rigs and support ships as well as tankers in the Persian Gulf such
indiscriminate weapons would seem rather unattractive to the Iranians
as an example.


If you are using video imaging (backed up by some other, e.g.
IR/passive EM sensors),
I suspect it is a graduate student's exercise in image recognition to
distinguish a warship (esp. aircraft carrier) from an oil
rig/tanker/finshing ship. Especially if you are flying slow.

As a software engineer I'd suggest you are wrong. If such recognition
is so easy how did an Argentine aircrew drop bombs on an
American tanker in 1982 believing it was a RN Carrier ?

A UAV with realtime video image recognition and IR sensors is unlikely
to be especially cheap

Chaff and flares might foil simple radar/IR seekers, but I can't see
how would they defeat video imaging sensor (+good software behind it).



Design for minimal communication and bandwidth needs
(just for higher level commands/coordination) - much tougher to detect
and jam.


It is easy to imagine a swarm of UAVs used as very sheap relatively
slow (200km/h) flying cruise missiles with small warheads, designed to
attack radars and similar on-ship targets that can be seriously damaged
with a small warhead (spray a shotgun of darts with wavy aluminium
tails into that phased array and see what it can do afterwards).


200 km/hr UAV's are going to be rather vulnerable to all forms
of active defence including point defence missiles like RAM
and to CIWS.
Yes. That's why you want them to be really cheap and use swarming.

With real time image recognition systens cheap will be quite a trick.

On
the other hand RAM is IR homing and the IR signature of a 100hp piston
engine is negligible compared to the IR signature of a rocket/jet
engine of the current antiship missiles.


But not small enough to be invisible

Phalanx (or other gun-based CIWS) should be effective, but has rather
short range (and not THAT much reloads, if you are dealing with a huge
swarm). I suspect it is also looking at targets with much higher radar
signature and very different characteristics.


Thats just software and rather easier to do than deciding if
that 1000 ft long ship is a carrier or VLCC

The CIWS mounts look rather distinctly and will obviously be among the
targeted areas of the ship. You don't need that much of a warhead to
put CIWS radar ot of commission - so perhaps an UAV with 200kg warhead
can actually carry 8-12 short range missiles designed for homing on
CIWS radar and launch them while being out of range of CIWS.


Earth Calling Planet Esteban - a UAV with 200kg warhead and
8-12 sub missiles will be neither small nor cheap.


Another possiblity is to actually fly high (say 5-8km) so that the UAV
will have to be attacked by missiles and/or aircraft, not CIWS guns,
and drop (homing) submunition from there, gravity doing the delivery
work. You will want to make these UAVs stealthy, to make the locking of
the missile seeker real difficulty (and postpone finding the UAVs as
much as possible).

There is a tradeoff between sophistication and cost (and reliability,

And you are now propsing sophisticated, costly and probably unreliable.


simple systems are easier to debug/design correctly). However, a
country like China/India or even Iran should be able to mass produce
good enough UAVs for peanuts (i.e be able to field thousands of them).
The key term being 'good enough', not 'super duper, all weather, high
reliability and long service life'.

But with real time image recognition, organic SEAD and large warheads

DUH !

Keith



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I think you have misssed one vital point. The Iranians may not aim to
sink a US battlegroup, they may simply want to close the straights of
Hormuz. For this purpose the motto would be, if it floats and moves
sink it.

One of the main characteristics of asymmetric warfare is that military
forces are rarely attacked. "The services are the safest place to be!".
No, suicide bombers go into restaurants and target civilians, not the
Israeli military. One can argue here about the "Geneva Convention".
Lets face it, in modern conditions the GC is a dead duck

BTW - The Iraqis are taking most of the casualties NOT US or British
forces.

wrote in message
oups.com...



I think you have misssed one vital point. The Iranians may not aim to
sink a US battlegroup, they may simply want to close the straights of
Hormuz. For this purpose the motto would be, if it floats and moves
sink it.


In which case they would use mines, ships are more easily sunk by
letting water in the bottom than by letting air in to the top. Mines
really are cheap and effective weapons.

One of the main characteristics of asymmetric warfare is that military
forces are rarely attacked. "The services are the safest place to be!".


Note that the Iranians are as dependent on free traffic movement through
the straits as everyone else.

No, suicide bombers go into restaurants and target civilians, not the
Israeli military. One can argue here about the "Geneva Convention".
Lets face it, in modern conditions the GC is a dead duck

BTW - The Iraqis are taking most of the casualties NOT US or British
forces.



All of which while true is irrelevant to the question at hand.

Keith



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