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#41
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Defense against UAV's
Andrew Swallow wrote: Many UAVs are flown under remote control. Radio direction finding may permit the location of its headquarters to be found. Good point, few countries have enough satellite bandwidth to manage UAVs the way the US does, so unless Iran is buying bandwidth from someone else, they'd have to be RC controlled UAVs. That would make the controller VERY vulnerable to counter fire and would severly limit range. It would also make the control of the UAV somewhat easy to jam, or even commandeer. |
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Defense against UAV's
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#43
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Defense against UAV's
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#44
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Defense against UAV's
Henry J Cobb wrote:
Jim Yanik wrote: There's a lot of ASSUMPTION that this "UAV" was a small drone and not a full-size RC military aircraft. Does anyone know for certain what it was? Well the USN hasn't said anything yet, so all we have to go on are what the Iranians are known to have. http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...ran/ababil.htm wing area 1.76m² Max. launching weight 83 kg Cruise speed 165 Knots Endurance is 1.5 h Minus 25 minutes on station leaves 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back or a range of 80 nm. -HJC If it is cheap it does not have to make a return journey giving a range of 160 nm. Andrew Swallow |
#45
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Defense against UAV's
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#46
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Defense against UAV's
Hezbollah also flew a UAV over Israel in 2004:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/w...on-israel.html So this isn't a new problem. Come to think of it, didn't an Israeli UAV photograph a U. S. Helicopter carrier off Lebanon while the Marines were in Beirut in the 1980's? |
#47
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Defense against UAV's
Keith W wrote: 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 ? Scared ****less of being shot down? Wishful thinking? Orgasmic about being able to release their weapons and claim kills? Darkness/lousy weather/bad visibility? Flying fast and having only few short seconds to make decision? Releasing their weapons from way too far range for positive identification (perhaps because being scared ****less)? Can be any of these or their combination. A UAV with realtime video image recognition and IR sensors is unlikely to be especially cheap Realtime video image recognition needs a source of video (probably a wide-angle search camera + narrow angle scope with some decent magnification for examining the suspicios contacts), a decent CPU to do the number crunching and a software to do the analysis. The first two items are not particularly expensive. The software might take real pains to develop, but afterwards the copies are free. Perhaps the costliest part of the development would be sea trials (to see how is the real-time identification working and debug it), but then who knows what they use their small UAVs for now (see the first message of this thread). snip 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. The cost might be high for initial development, but there is not reason the cost should be high on per-unit base. Cameras/CPUs and copying software is cheap. Cooled IR sensors and other fancy sensor stuff might rise the cost - the question is how much of it is needed, especially if you don't ask for all-weather capability. 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 Nothing is invisible. But if its signature is there with seagulls and sun reflections off waves, the locking/homing task is so much harder. 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 An attacking UAV can make its decision to attack close enough - when it can actually see the island/aircrafts on deck of the carrier. And has a lots of frames to base its decision on. It might even send some info to the controller and ask whether to attack or not (again, tradeoff between how much you send and how reliable you want your communication channel to be). 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. Such an UAV will not be small: it will be Predator size, powered by a Rotax, Jabiru or more likely cheap copy of them. But it can be cheap, especially if mass produced and intended for one-way cruise-missile type missions. Ultralight aircraft kits are essentially hand-made and sell for 10-20k. Replace the cabin with the warhead(s), give it faster wing (no need for low stall speed, this is on one way mission) and the sensors/brains/communication kit and mass produce it. Be smart designing it (ease of mass production) and try to reduce the IR/radar signature, but don't go overboard with that - keep the costs down. The only potentially expensive parts on the aircraft are sensors and warheads. The 200kg is the total useful load, some UAVs will have it divided as sub missiles for massed attack on air defense radars, other UAVs will simply have a big explosive load (hoping that the radars have already been damaged, so they can get in close to do BAM). .... 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 Yeah, you need real time image recognition. That is the enabling technology. I think we can agree to disagree whether that is possible in the next 5-10 years, for operation in good visibility. The quoted 200kg was just quoted as an example - about what an ultralight aircraft can carry. You need your aircraft big enough to have enough range to engage the carrier group operating off your shores, so a 200kg payload will not significantly increase it anyway. A modified ultralight can't fly that fast, leaving it rather vulnerable. That's why you are better of launching submunitions from out of range of the gun CIWS. Those subminitions need to be reasonably smart (once qued by the sensors of the main craft, they need to be able to lock on their target and hit it), but not necessarily pack a lot of punch (hitting radars, aircraft on deck and so on). Once the radars have been damaged, the second wave can then just press on with large warhead bringing general destruction. (Or, to keep it simple, they all go together. If the radars are switched off, the large warheads will arrive and do the damage, if the radars are on (likely), the submunitions will home on them.) DUH ! Keith |
#48
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Defense against UAV's
Airyx wrote:
Therein lies the problem with a UAV, the radar system ignores it because its too slow. That lasts only as long as it takes to recognize the potential threat that little, slow UAVs could pose. I can't imagine that developing a new algorithm to pick out non-avian flight patterns would be that tricky. I doubt that there are many birds that follow as linear and consistent a flight pattern as your average UAV, and a cheap lightweight UAV won't be able to spoof the behavior of a seabird. |
#50
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Defense against UAV's
Jeb wrote:
Airyx wrote: Therein lies the problem with a UAV, the radar system ignores it because its too slow. That lasts only as long as it takes to recognize the potential threat that little, slow UAVs could pose. I can't imagine that developing a new algorithm to pick out non-avian flight patterns would be that tricky. I doubt that there are many birds that follow as linear and consistent a flight pattern as your average UAV, and a cheap lightweight UAV won't be able to spoof the behavior of a seabird. There is an upper limit on the number of targets a radar can track. A thousand aircraft would be a large force but a thousand birds is a small flock. Andrew Swallow |
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