Slashdot Mirror
Your Online Marketplace for Classified Jet Parts
jonerik writes: "Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Air Force is less than pleased about the recent posting of a number of sensitive jet communications components on eBay, including parts for the SR-71 spy plane, the F-16 fighter, the KC-10 tanker, and the giant C-5 transport. According to the article, the parts had sat in a warehouse for 12 years after being lost in shipping when the dealer, Norb Novocin, bought the lot for $244 in an unclaimed property sale. Novocin ended up selling four of the items to bidders in a recent auction, including an X-Band Weather Radar Modulator for $500 and a high-frequency radio circuit card for $32. The Air Force is looking into the incident and Novocin is cooperating."
I've seen ebay ads for high end crypto gear. Technically unclassified itself, but it was built to fill hardware crypto keys, the crypto being quite classified when paired with the hardware it went to. With a couple connections in the right places, someone could use that to fill a STU-III(secure telephone) with current crypto
that carrier would have at last a full flight wing in the air, as well as being dead center of its carrier group. Any hostile trying to take out the carrier would have to go through a ring of aircraft - including AWACS with downward looking radar that doesn't really care if you're skimming the wave tops - followed by a ring of destroyers and cruisers. All fully armed with sea-to-air missiles and AEGIS anti-missile guns.
That's a pretty good summary of a basic fleet air defense. I think it's worth mentioning how the Soviet's actually planned to get through all that defense though.
The strategy is called a rollback. Basically, if you fire a lot missiles at an air defense system, each one will be intercepted a little closer to the target than the one before it. Slowly, the defenses are rolled back until missiles start getting through.
There's no way to stop a rollback. All Aegis or a good CWIS do is increase the number of missles required to roll the defenses back, or decrease the intercept range reduction from each missile. At some point, obviously, it would get too expensive (each cruise missile costs nearly 1mil) to fire that many - but it is always possible.
Other factors are fighter cover. The phoenix was designed to kill the bombers before they could launch (each backfire bomber destroyed = 3 cruise missiles). Submarines are a big factor. A submarine strike against one or two of the air defense cruisers (not the carrier itself) coordinated with the air strike is very effective.
Of course, the carrier group has its own subs to hunt the enemy subs. And the bombers can bring fighters to cover them. Offensive and defensive measures swing back and forth like that.
On top of that is the tactical use of all these weapons. When playing Harpoon, I used to like to feign an attack from one direction with a barrage launched by, say an Oscar submarine. Then I'd give the carrier taskforce just enough time to redeploy a couple of cruisers to that side and I'd hit them from the other side with a combined attack by bombers and subs.
If you're willing to spend the cash, it's really not all that hard to kill a single carrier. Of course, the bombers themselves need a large airbase - and that will be destroyed by the airforce right away... I could go on but you get the idea.