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Detecting Stealth Planes
Zurk writes " Newsweek said China's new Passive Coherent Location (PCL) system
tracked the signals of civilian radio and television broadcasts and picked up aircraft by analysing the minute turbulence their flight caused in the commercial wavelengths. cool huh ? " They hope to use it to detect the F-117A and potentially the F-22. Very cool use of technology to fix a problem.
now they'll have to go back to building wooden planes ....
But, America can't start pointless wars without having a tremendously unfair technological advantage! This ain't right! Oh and if you think this will piss the Pentagon off, it won't. Those guys are in the business of constantly building new weapons of war. This and things like this will only strengthen their case to allocate more funds for defense.
This technology appears to be picking up planes by looking at the turbulence that they leave behind.
Why can't a series of unmanned rockets leaving turbulence all around jam this?
Another issue: if you are following the trail, how good is your fix on its current location? If it was in straight-line flight, OK. But if it was in defensive maneuvers?
Hmmm...how well does it work in different weather conditions?
There are a lot of questions here. Sure it is a cute step, but this is not the final solution and the race will continue.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Considering a lot of people consider stealth technology to be nothing but propaganda this could mean very little. The F117a is only undectectable when flying slowly at altitudes of less than 100m. True it has a smaller radar signature than other planes, but it still has one and that is what matters. If the plane flies below the radar though (100m) no amount of stealth technology will help or hinder it. The USAF just has a funny looking plane so that it can tell you the boys will be safe when they go to bomb some serbian villagers.
J-aims
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Hmmm... If it is possible to do this with only commercial broadcasts, does it mean that this technology might be within the reach of hobbyists?
Anyone know if this requires extremely sensitive and expensive antennas? Or is the hard problem really one of extracting the "signal" from the noise. It seems to be the latter on the face of it. The idea seems to be to study the patterns in what would ordinarily be considered noise to localize atmospheric disturbances.
Could we really have a GNUAircraftTracker running a-la SETI@Home?
Of course you can detect a stealth plane. You can detect a stealth anything. It exists, therefore it interferes.
;)
I believe it's the Typhoon class submarines you can detect by listening for silence in the waters. The submarine is so ``stealthy'' that it's more silent than the water that surrounds it. Blammo!
I would have thought that satellites would have been the first to be used to track stealth aircraft. If you track how the earth reflects a radio signal (radar), and then suddenly something breaks the usual reflection (a stealth plane will break the reflection, but it will not reflect much back itself) you know where to aim.
Isn't it just fantastic what can be done with technology today
well.. if they fly low enough, you could just hire some low paid marine to point and say, "Hey! There's a plane!"
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If the Chinese plan to track stealth planes by looking at radio and televesion waves, couldn't the U.S. purposely alter those signals to make it appear as though there were stealh bombers all over the place?
Or perhpas, could the U.S. put a transmitter in orbit and flood the air waves over China with bogus signals that have bogus torbulences that show bogus stealths.
It seem that this type of technology would be easy to counteract.
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I remeber a couple of years back, while they were saying that the B2 was untrackable, as they were showing it off at a British airshow (farnborough i think) British rockeye missiles managed to track it. Useful if we ever go to war against the americans. Just goes to show, that the technology is never as good as they claim.
But the US thought of that. That's why they had a nuclear anti-air defence system on Thule. Just blow the sky away, and the planes will fall down with it ;)
This is almost funny !
This sounds like a bunch of China-Parnoia to me.
I've been seeing alot of China fears coming from the press of late.
For one thing, just becase someone has a new technology there is no telling how long it will be until it works. Look at the B-1B and it's advanced defensive/Offensive electronic packages...are they operational yet? I don't think they ever reached the promised level of operation.
Saying this new technology might work against the F-22 is simply conjecture. The F-22, when operational in FY-03 will be 14 years newer than the newest F-117A. Plus the F-22 does not rely just on stealth like the F-117 does. The F-22 has an extremly robust powerplant and radar system. The F-22 can cruse about 10,000 feet higher than the F-15, at a higher speed making it much harder for SAMs to intercept the aircraft.
I remember reading something similar a few years ago. Back then (this was a few years stealth planes first made their mark on the battle fields in Irak) the Australians had developed a radar device that could track these planes by the turbulence they generated.
...
Turns out that the shapes these planes were built to, which gives them their low radar profile, was very bad aerodynamically (in the sense that it caused a lot more turbulence than traditional planes would) which in turn enabled this radar to locate the turbulence. Not sure what happened to this project since, but the idea of tracking stealth planes by the turbulence they cause, is nothing new
Curiosity question... whoever submitted the story basically copied the text directly from the web page. The story (at cnn.com) directly attributes Newsweek, but the words are from a Reuters story (copyright 1999, all rights reserved, no permission for redistribution). Since this is unattributed and more than just a summary, is this fair use?
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Ian Peters
Well, we've already found a couple of ways of finding the general location of a stealth fighter, wether it be by air turbulence or satellite radar. The information you get doesn't have to be precise enough to send a missile after it. Once you know where a fighter is roughly you can send up a noraml fighter/intercepter to tack it down. The F117a is notoriously hard to fly, the pilots call it the wobbly goblin on account of how shaky it is, also don't forget during the serbia thing one guy accidently crashed. That doesn't happen in a normal fighter, in an old-fashioned dogfight the stealth fighter would get murdered!
J-aims
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Just because a technology was developed by the Chinese does not mean it's bad. Have you ever considered that what was developed was a press release, or maybe a few well planted leaks? Both sides of the Cold War did this for years, and still do it. Using the media to plant seeds of doubt? Think Viet-Nam, Korea, Tokyo Rose in WW2. None of this is new.
Now if the Chi-Coms have invented and put into practice this technology, it only means we need to find a way to circumvent it. Say, by bombing TV and radio stations first.
Really folks, we have bigger problems to worry about. You know, the Chinese has the first compass. They kept it in a room and never used it until Marco Polo showed up with his. They pulled it out and said, so what?
Don't forget it was a Russian scientist who invented Stealth. He published a paper that inspired our development of the prototype.
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I saw a wierd vapor trail in the sky once through my telescope (while observing the sun). I removed the solar filters and observed the trail. It was a single trail with what looked like periodic rings around it. Like a string from an abacus made with skywriting. Rumors (all we have to go on) is that this is some kind of high speed, high altitude, military spy plane from the US. The plane operates by essentially firing off a periodic serpes of explosions to propel it (hence the ringed trail). Anyone know more about this?
Lockheed-Martin has a web page for their Silent Sentry system. Not much in the way of technical description but it can't be that secret if they put it on the web.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
1. The name "Woobly Goblin" was a joke from the first generation of flight control systems. This was back in the early 80s. It was picked up in Popular Science/Mechanics, in the article with the first offical photos of the 117. It is an inaccurate term.
2. Normal fighters do tend to crash on a regular basis, esp one engire fighters like the F-16 or A-7. Take a look at crashes of fighter types for every 100,000 hours and notice that single engine fighters crash about twice as much.
3. The single F-117A lost in Serbia was lost (pbly) to a SAM that locked on during the bomb run while the weapons bay was open and thus the aircraft was unstealthy. Or it was lost to a combination of SAM and airborne radar illumination coupled with optical sights. It was a full moon on the night the F-117 was lost.
For more on the F-117/F-22 go out and find World Air Power Volume 19 and 38.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Couldn't you just randomly add bursts of these commerical signals (but broadcast from all over the place) to basically add a lot of "noise" to the data. Sort of like /. at -1.
Does this mean they'll be able to detect me flying over China even when I'm wearing my composite spandex Robin outfit? Dammit! I new my sexy curves would be the end of me! Why couldn't I just be flat like Bob's Mom?
This device is passive, meaning it doesn't emit any RF to detect. Conventional radar emits microwave energy, and allows for countermeasures (by homing in on the radar source). This system, if my interpretation is correct, detects the plane based on civilian RF (e.g., FM, AM, etc.) noise. If this technology does not depend on single sources (e.g., large radio towers), but rather a multitude of smaller civilian emissions, it would be very hard for the US to squash, atleast not without causing a lot of collateral damage. That is a pretty big technological leap; not yet developed/implimented anywhere.
However, this development is not an end game by any means. I have little doubt that the US will come up with ways to circumvent it. What is really troublesome for the military, I suspect, is that it could probably be implimented by 3rd world countries which otherwise don't have the resources for such defense mechanisms.
...I personally feel that stealth is a bad way to play the game. Cheaper unmanned vehicles is far better....fly more, who cares if they shoot a few down....
I think it's great.. You can bet that chinese
spy planes would be shot down if flown over the
U.S... well, it's nice to know that the converse
is true.. Personally, I got a good chuckle when
the USSR shot down a spy plane back in the 80s
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Lockheed and another company are working on similar products. I believe they are competitors, and the other company took the low budget route, relying on the interference of civilian (AM? FM?) radio stations - a bunch of low tech antennas listening in on the disruptions ("shadows") as planes went around. This was in Aviation Leak several months ago, and I think even hit Slashdot.
Also, apparently the low tech low resolution long wavelength radars still in service by Russia and their customers, who can't afford the snazzy new short wavelength radars in use by NATO, are better at detecting stealth planes than those snazzy new radars. I gather the US tried to downplay this, out of embarrassment and cover-your-ass syndrome.
And another tack is mumble-mumble radar, where the transmitter and receiver are far apart. Stealth planes are stealthy not just from absorbing the radar energy, but also from directing radar energy away from the straight return path. Those non-normal directions get more than their share of the reflection -- put a transmitter ahead of the plane and separate receivers on the side, and the side receivers get a better return from the stealth plane than forward receivers get from a non-stealth plane. Or something like that.
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Infuriate left and right
The plane was lost very near the border, it wouldn't have had it's bay doors open. It was not lost due to being shot down, take your point on just falling out the sky- but it was either that or pilot error,. I also stand corrected on the nick
J-aims
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Did the miltitary say it had to be black ?
:-)
- I thought that was just a function of the material they made it out of - course they could have painted it that blotchy infra-red absorbent grey like the rest of the US airforce.....
or did Lockheed suddenly get taken over by Henry "you can have it any color you want as long as it's black" Ford ?
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Of course it's within reach of hobbyists! If you're using an antenna (instead of cable) to receive TV, you've most likely seen the effect that is used. Whenever an aircraft flies near the line of sight between you and the TV transmitter you may experience dynamic multipath reception with characteristic fading of the signal (the picture pulses on/off at a changing rate). This can also happen with FM radio. If you were to characterize the amplitude, phase & frequency of every known transmitter in your area as received at your antenna, any disturbance in these parameters would indicate the presence of some type of reflector (cars, planes, etc.) Collect and correlate enough data and you could predict speed, location, etc. Not particularly practical for hobbyists, but well within the reach of most governments.
It's not picking up by the turbulence of the air molecules, since it's not the same kind of 'turbulence' that pilots refer to on the airplane.
This kind of turbulence refers to the radio frequency spectrum.
If that's all it takes to do the reception and analysis, then connectivity is the only other hurdle. When everyone has T1 equivalent connectivity at home, I'll bet that distributed.net will have competition from distributed.track.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
My take on what the technology actually is.
When watching broadcast TV with a crappy antenna, a plane flying overhead will disrupt the signal. An array ground based antennas can determine the exact pattern of the disruption, and with calibration, determine the size and position of the object causing that disruption. Since the goal isn't to watch TV, the detectors can be made much more sensitive to small disruptions.
The best weather to fly in to avoid this sort of detection would be a thunderstorm (but hard on the planes and pilots).
Such a system is not likely to have the precision of conventional radar, ind is more likely to mistake one target for another (I base that on the longer wavelength of commercial broadcasts).
Final critique, it's a very creative idea!
Doppler radar can detect raindrops. I'm sure the same kind of radar would have no problem detecting stealth planes.
There will be a lot of things that the radar picks up that are larger than bumble bee, maybe thousands, but which ones are moving at more than 500mph?
I read somthing in news week along time ago about how they developed somthing with lighting to make a plane nearly invisable in day if I can find the article I will tell you the day mounth and page sorry I don't have it on hand.
cheers,
Mike
According to what I've read about Gulf War rules of engagement, flying below radar is essentially suicidal. Any pocket rocket can take out low-flying aircraft. To get above that American attack aircraft fly nowadays in pods of 4 at 15-20,000 feet using ECM to convince ground-based SAMs that they are one aircraft or multiple pods.
'Wild Weasels' are A4 pilots on anti-SAM duty. They draw SAM radar and fire AMRAMs to blow them up. This scares the bejeesus out of SAM operators who will then only illuminate targets for a quick moment.
The scary thing about this technology is not that it can be used against stealth aircraft, but that it doesn't transmit, and therefore cannot be countered by Wild Weasel tactics.
fault-tolerant
http://silen tsentry.external.lmco.com/proj/nonsecure/sentry/SS home.htm
:wq
the abundence of hate that democracy and communism have towards each other is probably going to culminate in bio-genetic warefare anyway.
let's see, the US chucks a skyburst of a bio-genetic bomb over beijing, wiping out the population, leaving people writhing in agony as blood spurts from their various orifices.
of course, China will chuck a skyburst of a bio-genetic bomb over Los Angeles, wiping out the population, leaving people writhing in agony as blood spurts from their various orifices.
what fun! and all because the USA tends towards laisez faire capitalism, which has a unfortunate side effect of homelessness and a disparate stratification of the classes (high, low, and the big lie).
what fun! and all because China insures it's people have the bare essentials to survive (except for that 5% that live obscenely high on the hog), and refuses to let anyone criticize that system (unless they want to go to jail, a mental hospital, or be executed).
what fun! both sides view the other as evil. oh well, maybe the death agony will be short. or somehow the two side can compromise? will china get free speech and elections? will the US increase human rights and respect for all people?
Just a not to everyone out there... not all of us Canadians are as foolish as this guy.
I would suggest you think long and hard about the relative merits of the world we live in today vs. a world in which China outpaces the US as a world superpower. There is a reason Canada can have a huge undefended border with the US. Take a look at China's neighbours... an undefended border didn't turn out so well for Tibet. China routinely reiterates its threats to invade Taiwan.
What about proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies? The US has been a strong advocate of non-proliferation (recent CTBT rejection notwithstanding) in these areas. Compare this to China's record on proliferation: They have provided aid to the weapons of mass detruction and/or missile programs of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, South Africa, India, Argentina, Algeria, and North Korea.
I really sorry that you are bothered so much by "the US thinking they're all that and a bag of chips", so much so that you believe you can rationalize a second Cold War on that basis. The reason you can voice your opinion on this forum from the comfort of a free country is not the 70,000+ underequipped Candaian troops stationed here, it's the security guarrantees from our friends in the US, from our benevolent juggernaut neighbour. Get your head checked boy.
...I would find a way to disrput GPS services over the battlefield. Bombs using the GPS guidance packages are the B-2's main conventional weapon, and will soon be in widespread use throughout the USAF.
Any bad guy that manages to take out the GPS satellite constellation in some will take away a capability that our armed forces put to very good use.
Hmmm, I don't think going to college really has a terrible lot to do with it. I mean the most evil tyrannical dictator in the history of the world second only to Hitler, Bill Gates, dropped out of college and is sadly one of the most powerful men alive today, and the richest.
Nikola Tesla went to college, where he was told by his professor that a brushless electric motor was "impossible". In fact just about everything he invented defied what college professors thought at the time to be true.
Albert Einstein often cut class to study physics on his own, he went on to become the most famous scientist of all time.
I am by no means saying that a college education is a bad thing. But just because someone isn't a college graduate doesn't make them dumb, and just because someone is a college graduate doesn't mean they are smart.
I believe the saying is "It's sad that having a science degree doesn't make one a scientist."
RADAR's don't detect raindrops per se. The reflections that humidity bearing clouds give back on the scope is pretty distinctive, and all RADARs (SPS-10, SPA-40, misc fire control RADARs) I've used will do that.
And there's a huge difference between DETECTING raindrops and TRACKING raindrops. I HIGHLY doubt even a SPY-1x will TRACK raindrops.
http://www.bullnet.com
we also have an aircraft named rivit-joint which, by making use of two other planes, flys into enemy airspace and in a matter of seconds knows everything about every kind of transmition in the area. that includes radar, radio, telephone, and of course television. everything in 2 seconds. this planes existance isnt classified, but it isnt glorified either for obvious reasons. measure, counter-measure. neat idea though.
China's Jindalee clone was demoed with a live track of an aircraft over North China, whose flight parameters just happened to match "stealth"; although nobody there actually made any announcements about this funny track they were showing, the US reps suddenly got very nervous...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The black color is not a liability, but an advantage. It is common sense that it the daytime, with a much more irregular sky and excessive light, that making a plane near invisible would be most difficult, and the best bet is to paint it black and fly at night, when, on most nights, black planes are mostly undetectable at night. Also, It was either use of bay doors or exterior weapons, using bay doors makes sense.. for a small amount of time it sacrifices stealth capability, but only for a relatively short time and the weapons are ready to fire, and it is pretty much too late to do anything about it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This technology has been around for quite a while. Lockheed Martin has a passive detection system which isn't even completely classified anymore. One of the great things about this tech is that it can do much more than detect anti-stealth aircraft. It can also detect thing flying at very low altitude, which would normally be below radar. Imagine how much low altidute drug traffic can be stopped with a network of silent sentry sites in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many other countries are rumored to have this technology including the Czech Republic and Turkey. When you consider that these places are not the most tech advanced places in the world, it should come as no surpise that we decided to take out all broadcasting capability in Yugoslavia. I'm sure that China having this ability is no shock to the people running the show. What they probably worry about on a daily basis however is when will Iraqi get it. Sooner or later someone will sell it to them and it will get much tougher to bomb them as we are now.
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name
I spent 8 years as a radar tech in the Navy. I can tune a radar in so good that it can detect a seagull at several miles, But it's worthless when it's tuned in that good. Most of the time you can't find the seagull because there's too much Garbage that is also displayed on the screen. So the radar has to be slightly detuned. That way you only see the stronger signals. Stealth takes advantage of this. Tune the radar in good enough to detect the small radar cross section of the plane and you can't find it on the scope because of all the other garbage. Stealth just hides in the garbage. When you consider how much turbulance there is in the air without any plane to add to it you will quickly run into the same problem of finding the target in the garbage.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Power Projection.
If you don't know what this means, it is the ability to project power in areas far from your homeland. The United States has this ability, as do the UK and France to a lesser extent. China does not have the warships or experiance to succesfully project power. If you look at the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 79 they were mauled by the Vietnamese army.
Simply, China or India can not invade the US just because they have more people.
Several groups of two words: spy satellites, cruise missiles, B-2 Bombers, and Sekrit Stuff(TM) we've never ever heard of. Now add in several thousand ICBMs aimed at Chinese cities. Given all this, do you really think China would try to invade the US?
Why would China invade the US anyway? China has the power to invade most countries in the world right now, but you don't see it happening. People who think like this are paranoid. The whole "Us" and "Them" thing is way out of hand. I'm sure the Chinese have no more desire to be involved in a huge, bloody, devastating war than the US does.
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So no D-day, but rather :D-day IMHO.
Has anyone studied this garbage to see if it is random or not? If it's not, then develope algorithms and tune up the radars. and yes it would be hard, but this is war :) or so were told.
An invasion could be undertaken on the US. It would have problems though.
First you send in infiltrators, who set up airstrips in remote locations, and purchase ammunition. They purchase vehicles and fuel. You then take about two dozen chartered commercial jet airlines, you load them with troops and land them at US airports all friendly like, most likely the east coast. It doesnt take long for 500 or so armed troops to capture an airport, and then fortify their position quickly. The 747's can carry anti-tank/heavy weaponary, and plenty of ammunition. No food, cause that isnt neccessary. These troops are the first wave and will only be the front line for a short period. 10-20 minutes behind these 747's, are standard long range cargo planes, carrying light armor vehicles and more troops, these land at the commercial airports and at the private airstrips you have set up.
Your troops take the LAU's and go like hell towards your assigned targets. Airbases, Army Bases, Naval Bases, Police Stations, Gun Stores.
The trick is to move fast and capture quickly. A night attack on a weekend would be best, as you would capture quite afew bases relatively lightly manned and vulnerable, you might even bring pilots/tankers/sailors with you to take the captured vechiles and add to the chaos. You continue to bring in troops from china by air and land them at your secured areas.
At this stage it gets sticky. Your main mode of transport of large armor and troops is by sea. Getting by SOSUS is quite hard, and you have to deal with naval assests in the pacific. Hopefully you would attack at a time when a carrier isnt present close by in the pacific. You have to get your tanks in, so one way would be by using normal car carriers, who are on scheduled runs to make landfall on the same day as your attack to deliver vehicles. If you were serious about your plan, you might even nuke pearl/guam in the first 24 hours of your attack, to make it easier to move more heavy units from china to the US. This would also allow you to move a chinese carrier closer to the US to provide air support for the grunts and eventually transferring all aircraft to captured US runways.
You have to link up your heavy armor, light armor and infantry to push inland, obviously after securing your captured cities. You then utilise these cities, and the railroads to supply food and munitions to your front lines as they spread inland. Time elapsed is about 48-72 hours, more then enough time for the US army to mobilise and to present a good front line, possibly near the rockies.
Attack of the US is not an easy task, and requires exquisite timing of delivery of assets. It requires china to send troops a huge distance, and to get past pearl with ships. It would obviously be easier to attack with an allie close by, say from cuba or south america, to attack other borders at the same time. This draws units away from your main assault.
Now this is a possible scenario, if, china had the logistical assets to do this. The Chinese army is much like the soviet army used to be. A large club to bludgeon your opponent to death with numbers, aslong as he is relatively close. China has never had to move huge amounts of troops over an entire ocean to attack an enemy so far from home. It isnt easy logistically. But possible. To make it more interesting, an enemy may even release chemical/biological weapons before he attacks. He may poison water supplies. He may release anthrax or similar diseases. He may sabotage power stations, he may cause an increase in terrorism before hand.
There are alot of things in warfares bag-o-dirty tricks.
As for disabling the US nuclear counter attack, that is a tough nut to crack, and would require unconventional techniques im sure. For example purchasing properties near known ICBM silos, buying a few hundred stingers and praying you can cripple a few missles before they hit your country. Perhaps small backpack nukes could be used to crack the silos at close range, but thats debatable, as those silos are hardened and quite well built. Maybe wait till they open up to launch? Who knows.
Naval nukes are even harder to disable apart from an intense naval campaign by your forces to kill the subs, even then, they can launch from almost anywhere, and damn but their quiet.
Carrier based nukes are also a concern. It is unlikely you would attack the US without first developing a good ABM defence.
So in answer to your comment
'It would be exceedingly difficult to come anywhere near the US shore with any kind of sizable force.'
True, but not impossible. Give war a chance!:)
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
True.
However, due to the high alltitude and low-observability of the F-22 most SAMs will not beable to aquire and launch until the F-22 has already past, this turns the pursuit into a tail chase where the F-22 has the advange since it can manuver and spoof with chaff/flares. Also it is harder for a SAM to manuver because of it's smaller control surfaces and the higher altitude the F-22 operates at.
The majority of Soviet-Bloc SAMs were developed with the F-16/15 and Torando in mind. The F-22 is faster and higher flying than the last generation NATO fighters.
Most SAMs operate in the Mach 2-4 range, and they use all of thier fuel in the first few seconds of flight.
A Russian aviation fan, who naturally happens to be a fanatic Serb supporter, put up a page about US and Allied losses in the Kosovo campaign.
Check the site out for more information about the F-117 loss, and other claimed US and Allied losses. The F-117 is credited to SA-6 missiles in this page.
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I don't know what in that post made you think I am a friend of Milosovic's, I am not. But, there is no getting around the fact thact hundereds of innocent serbian civilians, most of whom hate Milosovic too, were killed, that massive amounts of civilian infrastructure was destroyed, and that the blocking of the Danube with the remnants of it's bridges is having a massive economic effect on all the countries of eastern Europe, with the possible exception of Serbia, as few people trade with them and they never used the Danube as much as others anyway.
J-aims
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B2 and F117 planes have been detected, sometimes accidentally, by other American jets. I am not offering conjecture - there are written accounts of accidental detection.
Detection of these planes is no longer considered difficult by first-world defense planners.
As for the B2 - it is a plane without a mission, and an egregious waster of money.
The Air Force knew this plane was not a useful countermeasure and attempted to block its development (see quotes by Gen. Horner, who was then the commanding General of the Air Force). Think about it - if the Soviets (who were the threat at the time) had portable launchers, they could hide them anywhere in the five million hectares of forest in what was the Soviet Union. You can't bomb what you can't find.
By the way, spy satellites cannot see through solid object, so the the density of the Soviet forest was well suited to block prying eyes from watching missiles launchers from being moved around.
As a small common-sense conjecture, one must wonder why the B-52 is still the most heavily used bomber in service, even though the B1 and B2 were intended to replace it (at least partially).
I have no intent of rationalizing another Cold War. I just find that given the alternatives, letting the US be the World Cop is not a good thing. Do I like China? Not in the slightest. They have an appaling Human Rights record, they are agressive, they proliferate arms around with world.. But what are you going to do about it if they figure out how to circumvent US Stealth technology? Not a lot.
Also, as far as non-nuclear weapons go, the US spent a great deal of time and effort spreading arms around during the Cold War to deal with the 'Commie' threat. You can hardly make them Heros. I'd rather have someone else representing the Free World. There's a reason that there are Jihads declared on the USA, and they have nothing to do with jealousy of world power. They have to do with the US believing they can control the world.
The way the US has led the UN by the hand in justifying their military action lately (or skipping the UN entirely) is not exactly a good thing. And the US will continue to be a semi-agressor, doing what they please in the world unless someone does something. Another superpower can keep them in check. A Cold War doesn't even have to be the outcome.
And for the sake of reference, Canadian troops put American ones to shame for training. The US just has more and a way bigger toy-budget.
I remeber a quote on the subject of F-22s vs. the newest Russian fighters.
"If you have a sniper rifle and you are trying to shot a knife wielding midget in a telephone booth are you going to get in the phone booth with the midget or are you going to shot him with the rifle?"
The point is a fighter like the F-22 isn't going to get in a knife fight with an SU-35 or F-16. It is going to stand-off and fire AMRAAM missiles at a range where the target is unable to lock on to the F-22. An F-22 will prbly be one hell of a dog-fighter, like the F-15 or F/A-18 is, but thats not it's primary job. It's job is to defend the AWACS/JSTARS and sweep the skys so the F-117s and F-16s can do thier job.
From what I read, it mainly means that PRC can now expect to lose most of their broadcast transmitters to American cruise missles in the first hour of any action against Taiwan. Ditto Taiwan. Or am I missing something here?
From what I've read, if you have a large distributed radar network (many radars all over the place, coordinated by a central computer), you have a high chance of tracking stealth planes like f117 and b2, because one radar's signal will get reflected in a different direction and may be caught by another radar. Also, stealth planes are as visible as ordinary fighters when they open their weapon bays to fire. There have been cases when the weapon bay jams open and then the f117 is basically a sitting duck.
Isn't that more like just one word? *g*
Anyways, the distance from UK to France is a lot shorter than from China to US. The US would learn about the invasion early enough to build a good defence at the west coast and Mexican+Canadian borders (it is highly unlikely that China would attempt a direct invasion). Besides, there is absolutely no way to prepare a large invasion in secret these days. AFAIK, Germany didn't have any spy satellites at WW2 ;-)
I agree. You'd need to have a good understanding of EM radiation, antenna design etc. Then you'd need some signal processing kit. Due to the amount of EM around, I thing DSP would be daft (in the initial stages of the processing setup at least). I'd look at doing filtering with tuned passive stuff first, then feeding that to some electronics to watch variations, then feed that to an output stage (I'd be doing at a lot of oscilloscope time before I considered digitising it).
I live near a large flock of ravens (corvid family - about 150 of them). They fly over at predictable times at between 30 and 120 feet. I'd calibrate the kit against them first. Calibrating the setup, and keeping it calibrated, would be the headache.
If I could detect the ravens, then I'd ask the US military for a stealth plane to play with. This is where the 'hobbyist' bit is limiting.
I suspect there would be major problems in a populated area with transmissions from electric motors, microwave ovens, mobile phones, overhead lines and all the other bits of electromagnetic technology we rely on. I'd give it a go if I had the time, though.
Now that that's aside, I'll make mention of our little stealth-detecting technology.
It sucks. Plain and simple, it's not a good thing for the US - the masqurading force in freedom preservation and technical innovation, amongst other things. If America's military force and status is challenged any more, it will eventually crumble to another attacking nation. China now presents itself as the second, if not first, most powerful nation in the world. They've got our missile technology (thanks Bill), and now they seem to have technology that could possibly rival and destroy the most expensive and powerful air force in the world. It has the potential to nullify millions - or even billions and trillions - of dollars in research.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"the typhoon is huge"
Right. The largest military sub to see active duty.
"it is nuclear powered rather than desal (sp) powered"
Wrong. The Typhoon boats are nuclear, diesel, and battery powered. Why do you think they were so darned big? The reactor put out enough juice for a city. If that failed, there were two mammoth diesel engines. By mammoth, I mean 12'x10'x6', 10,000+ hp, and enough tourque to drive the boat through the water at 20 knots. Should those fail, there were two large banks of dry cell batteries on either bow. The batteries served three purposes:
"I don't think the largest sub in the world is more silent than the water around it."
Wrong. Here's an example: Let's say that there is a skyscraper in the middle of a field (just follow me on this). Now let's say that the wind is blowing out of the North. Let's also say that you are blind, and walking past the south side of the building (going East to West). There will be a point when the building will start to block out the wind. Logic will tell you that it's no longer windy, and it's also very quiet. You may then deduce that there is a building to your right. Here's a diagram:
**********************
**********************
.........--------*****
.........||||||||*****
.........||||||||*****
....o....||||||||*****
.........||||||||*****
.........||||||||*****
.........--------*****
**********************
**********************
Legend:
* = wind;
-,| = building;
o = you;
. = calm air;
Now, relate that to being in a sub. Since there is always ambient noise in the ocean, the trick is to find someplace where there isn't enough noise. That'll be a Typhoon (or maybe a Charlie) with her plant cut way back. If you know where you are and how fast you're going, you can figure a bearing on the Typhoon. Once you have that, you can use basic trig to figure out range, speed, and mark, in that order. After that, it's simple to sneak up and fire your torps and get back out.
zantispam (who gets waaaaaaaay to into this stuff)
Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
This is not a new development, Lockheed had
this system developed years ago. Hell, they
even wanted to sell it as a Air Traffic Control
System.
In any case Stealth technology is not that
great anyhow, it is relatively trackable
by decent missiles anyhow.
Hell, it was shown that the more advanced
IR/Radar SA(Surface to Air) missiles could
track them with relative ease.
In any case, an arms race with China will
probably be inevitable anyhow given a U.S.
stance of global military superiority.
-Alan
-- Man was created on the seventh day when god was tired. --
China and the USSR got on bad relations decades ago. I don't think that the "collapse of communism" changed that much.
Even so, you would NOT want to send troops over the Bering strait. Why not? Terrain! Go look at a map, count mountain ranges. That is *not* territory through which you want to maintain an overland supply train.
No, the idea of China invading the US any time soon is sheer idiocy. They are far better advised to just wait. The US today is the largest debtor nation in the world, and it has held that title for over a decade. The current economic boom is hiding it, but eventually the markets will wake up to the fundamental economic reality, and in due course of time military might will follow the money.
The days of the US single-handedly dominating the planet are numbered, and the Chinese leadership knows it. This is not to say that the US will be toothless any time soon. But, like the British Empire before it, the Spanish empire before that, and so on through history, economics is catching up to current World Superpower.
Of course the realization of this status may take a while. Look at the British Empire. Between WW I and WW II the stage was set for its collapse. WW II demonstrated that it would not last, and the years following saw Britain quickly losing its territory. Yet the British public didn't realize this for decades after. They even went to war defending a corner of the Empire as late as the 1980s, and we still have as a last cultural hurrah the James Bond movies...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
And shortly after this information was leaked, secret double-agent panda Hsing-Hsing committed suicide at the National Zoo. The tricky part was knowing the leak was going to happen months in advance so he could start dying of renal failure.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I agree with the spirit of your letter completely. People like this have no place in a (mostly) intelligent place for discussion. However, you should consider that the way you addressed them does not make you too much better.
Moderate them down!
-- K
In general, everything I've heard, which has been common knowledge in the west, has been that the MiG fighters have a very good reputation for engineering. In particular, westerners seem amazed (I was amazed, for one) to learn that the MiGs are not fly-by-wire and are still very easy to fly.
-- "Ever wonder why the SAME PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories?"
It's my WAY or the HIGHW..., wait a sec has this been done before ?
A Bugg
Honestly, this isn't all that much of a surprise for a number of reasons. The article goes very lightly on Lockheed Martin's Silent Sentry system which we've had for years. So much, in fact, that the way that it works isn't even classified anymore.
Furthermore, it seems that the by using commercial broadcasts you're risking a lot. Turn on your TV with just an antenna. Even use a really powerful antenna. Unless you're right by your local TV station, you're out of luck. The picture will get scrambled from interfereance over space by the uneven random distrubance of everything from atmosphereic/pressure differences to object's in it's path. So unless you had a vaccum and a perfect signal between all your recieving antennas (as has been pointed out you'd need at leat 3 to get a 3D reading, although more would be helpful.), you'll have some interference and turbulance. Furthermore, radio signals in places like China are less likely to be reliable than in more developed countries.
Also remember that we've had this technology for a number of years. We haven't widely deployed it dispite the fact that it's cheaper to do so than most conventional radars. Believe me, the military likes *NEW* toys more than they like *EXPENSIVE* toys. And this would be a new toy. It evedeintly isn't that reliable, unless the Chinese have managed to leapfrog us in this.
Also it's been pointed out that you can just start taking out TV/radio stations. The silence would be deadly if this was your only air defense. You could also theoretically do such things as rotate the plane every now and then to change the way that it disturbs the air. By traveling at different directions to the wind and at different angles and wind patterns, you'll change the turbulance that you create. Also remember that air craft (with the exception of ones like the F-117, designed before we had good enough computers to effectively design a plane like the F-22) are *DESIGNED* to make as little disturbance as possible. Before it was just areodynamics, now it may be a possible way to be stealthy. Futhermore a system this sensative would also detect things such as low pressure zones, air disturbance created by such things as factories, etc. (especially in cities), and would probably be *MUCH* more prevalant than the signature left by a 20m aircraft.
of course the next step is quantum stealth
you can detect it, but as soon as you figure out where it is, you cannot know where its going
Austrailian radar techs discovered they could find stealth aircraft by bouncing radar off the turbulence behind the plane. If you've ever seen an F-117 it has some pretty awesome turbulence, so awesome it needs special compensators just to let the thing fly. Until someone figures out how to build an aircraft with little or no turbulence caused by drag anything is detectable if you put some thought into it.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
SO what if its detected? its irrelevant.
What is important is when that radar detecting you is able to switch to fire control mode and guide a missle into your burners. Few fire control radars can lock onto a 117.
Operationally, stealth has done well compared to other aircraft. For example 117's never lost a plane over the Gulf. That in itself is a hell of an achievement in any war zone, especially given that random effect that bullets and flak tend to have on your life when you are over a war zone.
One stealth went down over Kosovo, which is a loss, but hardly a huge tragedy or blow to the stealth program. And this 117 was only shot down when its bomb bays were opened, giving a slight radar signature that was locked onto.
Another stealth fell from the sky without being shot at, which is bad, but nothing compared to some of the incidents regarding russian made aircraft, or even some aircraft such as the f-16a, or the f/a 18, which had some major teething troubles, resulting in deaths.
regardless if a radar can detect you, someone still has to shoot you down, and standard fire control radars in migs cant do it, no standard fire control radars on russian designed sams can do it.
I havent read or heard anything saying this PCL system has fire control capabilities, thus is only a pain in the ass, and not a show stopper.
Best they can do is direct planes that cant easily lock onto you in your direction. And most pilots know how to deal with that. Hit the turf on full burner and get the hell out of the way.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
The best color is actually a dark violet, the color of a moonless sky.
Stealth is black because real men don't fly purple planes. (Kind of like why fire engines are red normally, instead of the fluorescent yellow) However, I've heard rumblings of re-paints on them to the weird purple color.
Can we say Pearl Harbor????? The US radar people SAW the PLANES on there radar but did they do anything about it nope. Must be a glitch or birds.
Ya right. oops there went most of the US naval fleet.
One thing I haven't seen comment on is the importance of its being a passive system. Radar attracts radar-seeking missiles and generally alerts targets to their being tracked. This system could guide interception without attracting attention to itself.
udin
Well as cool and usefull as this is it is not the death of stealth technology in it's current form. Using a signal that you don't controll adds a step to identifying a target. For example someone detects what apears to be a stealth aircraft on a bombing run over beijing, The detected change could be the result of some malfunction at the source of the signal that is being tracked. The operator would have to call to see that there is no problem with the tranmission itself, then report the target to someone who can visually confirm the target before any counter attack could be launched. This is a very exploitable weakness... The agressor could limit attacks to coastal areas where he can drop whaterver bombs he needs to and hightail it out of there.
A better long term solution? How about constructively searching for peaceful solutions?
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
There have been several references to the mysterious Australian radar which can detect Stealth aircraft. I think a clarification is needed on the operating principles of this radar.
As far as I remember, this specific radar used to be called "JINDALEE" by the Australians, and it's an "over-the-horizon" radar, which works by bouncing the radar signals off the low layers of the atmosphere to see over the horizon. The radar required seperate transmitter and receiver arrays with some distance between them (sometimes called a "bistatic" configuration) and hence could detect stealth aircraft, since the receiver array could pick up radar echoes scattered by the special shape of the body of Stealth aircraft.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
"3) They could invade Alaska, if they got the Russians to go along with it, by crossing the Bering Straight. Personally, I wouldn't want to travel over a thousand miles of tundra and mountains with no roads. I doubt the Chinese army would either. HUGE logistical problems."
Not a chance in Hell. The Russians and the Chinese don't like eachother very much. (See my post earlier in this thread.)
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
He said bare essentials. "In a first world sense" presumably includes a number of things one could ( and indeed prior to 1900 would ) live without ( for example, cars and electricity ). You are guilty of confusing "wealth" with "bare essentials"
Stealth bombers are designed to be 'invisible'. They are a 'hole' in the air. This works well because most radars searching for bombers are on the ground. Air with nothing in it is blank, so a B2 blends right in.
It's when you scan downwards that things fall apart. In Australia the the CSIRO built the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar. It works by bouncing radar signals off magnetised sections of the far upper atmosphere.
The short form is: "Hmmm ... what's this in Nevada? It's a batwing-shaped hole moving at 600mph. Now I wonder what that is?"
Australia. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the south-east pacific...
be well;
JC.
-- The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the fictional entity who may or may not have expressed them
You then take about two dozen chartered commercial jet airlines, you load them with troops and land them at US airports all friendly like, most likely the east coast. It doesnt take long for 500 or so armed troops to capture an airport, and then fortify their position quickly.500? In most large cities, the police alone would outnumber and outgun them, let alone the national guard.
Your troops take the LAU's and go like hell towards your assigned targets. Airbases, Army Bases, Naval Bases, Police Stations, Gun Stores.
By this time a full scale military alert would already have been triggered, and Beijing would be glowing with the aid of a nearby submarine. Added to which, it would be trivial to block access routes and tie off the groups of troops. Your troops would be stranded, hunted, and eventually crushed with ease most likely by state police units alone, who would once again substantially outnumber and outgun your troops on the ground.
You have one basic flawed premise - the surprise attack. Most likely any hostilities between the two powers would be preceeded by months of posturing, during which time national defenses would be beefed up, airports made more secure, and submarines and bombers would be scouting their targets. Satellites would easily, easily detect any significant movement. Intelligence would likely be able to predict the movement with great accuracy.
I think you've watched Red Dawn too many times.
Pointing to yet another major problem. The "lifers" are dropping out like flies. Except for sometime around 1790, I doubt our forces have been so young, green and ill trained.
The attitude of the current administration and the "political correct" Bravo Sierra that has been forced upon the services in the name of social engineering has taken a huge toll in non-coms and real officers (but not the brass kissing, career building, type that are worthless on a battle field - unfortunately the current environment is great for them - yuk!)
Smith & Wesson: The original Point-and-Click interface.
...so everybody lookie -- our evil Chinese enemies made some incremental progress in radar technology, everybody should be scared shitless, shut up about human rights and social problems in US, forget about rotting education, and start supporting True American Values -- chauvinism, big guns and meaty contracts to large companies.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The 1000 number is pure guesswork. I suspect that 1000 antennae could do a really good job, but I don't have a feel for the number cruncing or bandwith requirements. You might need substantially more computers than that -- but spare cycles are more abundant than people who can build an antenna.
I like a little paranoia as much as the next person, but going from the detection of Stealth planes to a Chinese invasion of the US is a bit of a stretch, even for the eccentric segment of /. posters. I, for one, go to sleep every night with a high degree of confidence that tomorrow the sun will rise, there will not be black helicopters flying overhead, and those darn communists, socialists, liberals, secular humanists, gun control advocates, athiests or whatever your favorite Boogy Men happen to be won't be marching down Main Street. So, unload your guns and put them away, cancel your subscription to Survivalist Weekly, and have a warm cup of tea. You'll feel better. Really.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
To purchase it is not like spending money but rather it is an investment in the future in a blow against the empire
With the sums we're already sending to Communist countries, and likewise technology, cutting anyone off at this stage of the game would like closing the bard door after the horse got out.
If Israel hadn't done it with our tacit approval, then the current (US)administration would have found another way just like they have with missle guidance technology, ball bearing manufacturing, super computers, et al. It'd be like shooting the messenger.
Smith & Wesson: The original Point-and-Click interface.
You know, there are caffeine-free varieties of coffee that are just as tasty. Really.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
No, don't worry folks, China won't get to invade you even though they have a bigger propulation, because the rest of us won't let them, any more than we'd let *you* invade, oh, say, the Divided Kingdom of Small Britain. Thank (insert deity here) for our burgeoning world democracy.
Put those big sticks down over here please...Everybody!
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Yup, and it also requires you to fly slower than the bullets you'd be firing. :)
None required a move of a huge force across an ocean. But if you want counterexamples of what happens to superpowers that try to exert influence from thousands of miles away, try Vietnam or the American Revolutionary War.
In both instances the reigning world power was humilliated by a vastly inferior local force.
I beg to differ--one of those holidays which you have but the rest of us don't have would be best, so I guess you just got off again...good!
Think about it: half of you stuck in too-small airline seats at 37000 feet, stuffed full o'turkey, fast asleep and in an eternal holding pattern over Fort Worth.
As for those on the ground, why, obviously they'd be there 'cos they're just toooo big for a plane altogether, so we'd just tip them over (you know, like cows). They'd never be able to get up again...no need for violence at all.
(If in doubt, get somebody to tickle you and you'll display the appropriate reaction.)
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Yes, this was Venik's webpage
Last time I checked, the US had lost 140 aircraft, including a 3 F-117's, a B-2 bomber (Missouri ?) and 3 B-52's
(Of course, considering how the USSR has to be kept informed of B-52's under START, it's amazing we haven't been told this from other circumstances)
Favorites :
An A-10 was hit by something nasty. It lost it's engine cover. Pictures were posted "Look, we shot down an A-10! We destroyed all of it but this cowling, but we'll find some of it tommorow"
A A-10 was reported landing with major damage to (suprise) the back of the plane.
"And we badly damaged another one!"
Or the legendary Cajun Fear story. "We shot down B-52 # (number) with the nose art "Cajun Fear". A B-52 pilot in rec.aviation.military said "Strange, I flew that one three days later. Looked fine to me". It took over 3 months to convince Venik and Mladen that this plane did in fact still exist. Never removed it from their claims, though.
Dejanews covers the long and nasty story
That's a pretty naive view of power and responsibility. Here's how it works. Communists are evil. There's no room for ethical relativism here, they're bad. As the most powerful nation in the Free World, the United States has the responsibility to prevent evil people from threatening the sanctity of democracy. This may sound a bit meglomaniacal to you, but it's true. If the US had remained complacent while the USSR put nuclear missiles in Cuba, for example, they very well might have won the Cold War. It was US apathy during the 20's and 30's that let World War II escalate to the level it did.
Now I'll be the first to admit that the US has problems, and there are many things about its foreign policy with which I disagree. But I can think of no place I would rather live, and for that reason, I'll do my best to insure that the values with which this nation were founded are not destroyed by communists, terrorists, or holy wars.
are they like the Knight Templars or Rosicrucians? Can they tell me how to get back to atlantis? I'm tired of being stuck in James Joyce's "brain," serving drinks to da Irish.
If Serbia had some big secret tool to shoot down a stealth fighter, a question ?
Why didn't they get more then one ? Hell, why did they shoot down so few planes at all (And if you say they did, please explain the lack of people wanting to know where their sons have gotten to)
Last I heard, the main factor was that some complete moron had the F-117's going in the same air corridor at the same time attacking similar targets, and one night a EA-6 was orbiting 90 miles off target.
Wow. They shot down a stealth fighter. Iraq ended up getting 30+ aircraft in a 40 day war. Yugoslavia got 2.
I know which country would worry me more.
Maybe I was giving the exception and not the rule. But as any scientist will tell you, it is important to note that there are exceptions to the rule when there are exceptions to the rule.
Read more: at Lockheed Martin, about Silent Sentry, about a shuttle launch and about information dating back over a year - this all comes very sudden and suprising to the US defense, completely new and previously unknown technology.
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp
To prevent broaching. Subs are designed to be a tiny bit boyant. That's why when they move normally at a constant depth the diving planes are at a slight down angle (usually a degree or two). If the sub stops moving, she can no longer totally control her depth. That's a Bad Thing ©
Actually not true. You can adjust your buoyancy any way you want. This is done with ballast tanks, of course. A missile sub can adjust buoyancy via normal means, as well as missile comp tanks. These are large tanks which fill with water to adjust buoyancy after missiles are launched (i.e. the missiles are more dense than the water which replaces them in the tube). They also sometimes add a small adjustment to these tanks after being out to sea for a couple months (food is used up by the crew, forcing a compensation).
Some boats can rapidly cycle water within special tanks. The idea here is to keep the sub level, since it is tough to perfectly adjust the different ballast tanks available on the boat.
Steerage. Almost the same problem as above. Any good skipper will try to go no slower than 2 or 3 knots. That way, the boat will still be responsive to steering input. Why? beacause...
True...
Sonar equipment only works in cones or echelons. Problem: you cannot cover the entire 360 degrees around a boat with one passive sonar. Solution: have multiple passive sonars. Most boats have a front array, lateral array, and some (I know the Los Angeles boats do) have towed arrays. For those to work, the boat needs to be able to move the arrays around (purposes of triangulation and all). Not entirely true. I would say a primary motivation for staying mobile is the towed array sonar. It is used quite often (and I would guess that missile subs are even MORE likely to use it). Reason: towed array sonar places a minimum AND maximum on your speed. The line must stay drawn out, but it also can't handle too much stress. This might tie the hands of an attack boat captain. But the missile boats prefer to putt around anyhow, so it's nice to have the extra ears. Now the other reason to move is to clear your baffles. The towed array helps detect noise to the rear, but you do have dead spots to the diagonal rear behind you. That's why you'll often hear about subs moving in a serpent-pattern.
Therefore: Subs will never not move.
False. A missile sub will stop when preparing to launch missiles (not that this happens every day ;)) See ballasting notes above.
Sorry for all the nitpicks - most of your writing has been pretty on target. You're right that subs generally would like to stay mobile. Another reason: navigation / targeting often benefits from motion. In other words, it's easier to get something's position when you know how it relates to your own location over time.
I'd fill in more, but you know...
Oh one more thing - as far as I know, all nuclear powered subs have a diesel-electric and/or battery backup. But I really doubt a Typhoon will get 20 knots out of it :) Diesels have all kinds of problems which limit them. For example when running submerged, you get backpressure on your exhaust due to the water it has to push through (via the snorkel). And with the snorkel raised, you once again get speed limited, because you don't want to break off the mast. They're also noisy as hell.
Battery power is quiet, but not very strong. A boat won't run too long (maybe a couple hours?). You use the diesel to charge the battery.
Oh yeah, and the diesel gives everything on the boat, especially your clothes, a quite unforgettable odor. :-)
SEAL
Here is a reply to some of the threads below, didnt think the post would generate such interest but here goes, ill try and answer some of your criticisms.
Firstly, the above plan isnt THE plan for total victory over the US. It is an invasion plan.
Invasion meaning, 'your troops set foot on enemy soil', not 'you accept the presidents surrender and youre home in time for tea.' Such campaigns dont exist, and never will.
A war is a set of campaigns, an invasion is just one campaign of a war. So set that straight now.
An invasion that could possibly happen, but obviously not from China, as i said in my earlier post, china's armed forces are very limited in what they can do, the above was hypothetical, but marginally possible. If the planets are aligned and the wind is blowing just right.
The strategy does have some holes, no strategy is without them, or wars would last only hours. The best strategy is one that has the fewest holes, and assumes the least about the enemy, and most often the simplest and quickest to execute.
Also remember, few plans survive the first shot.
Now i have assumed a few things about the enemy, hitting upon the night of a holiday or weekend, when many US personell are away, getting laid, on shore leave, or getting drunk in the O club. I am assuming he wont be prepared, wont have defensive assets in place, and will be on a low level of alert.
This is the crux of the surprise attack, if the enemy were prepared, we would attack a different way eh? or not attack at all.
Now response WILL be slow, for one good reason.
How many US invasions have you had? Would you recognize one? Would you quickly be on the phone to the local base commander telling him so? Chances are not. And if you were, he probably wouldnt talk to you, cause he is a busy man, and will wait for word from official channels ie the cops.
So things are chaotic for awhile. Alot of people are running around, some with guns, some in uniform. The base commander is waiting for field intelligence, if he is awake at all. Eventually the local cops will realise they are against a too well organized enemy, and will call in support from the National Guard, or a Regular Army Base. They arent home though are they? they are out or away on liberty. So it takes time to assemble troops. In that time, a well organised enemy is already knocking down your gates, and troops are fanning across your perimeters ready to turn people into lunch meat.
Dont overestimate your own response time to an emergency that has never taken place before in recent memory on US soil, atleast not with ground troops.
As to a retalitory nuclear strike from the US so quickly, id be doubtful of that. FOr various reasons some mentioned by others of the force for force policies of some politicians, it usually depends on the thoughts of the man at the desk at the time. You would have atleast 24 hours before a response would become official from the US regarding a nuclear strike. Information doesnt flow that fast(alot of desk drivers between grunt and president), and neither do tough decisions.
Also it is hard to block access to armor units, as they are all terrain vehicles plus a bit more. Road blocked? go through a building then through a few hundred backyards. Once the armor is out in the open, even better luck blocking access, tanks were built for ploughing over barbed wire at 40mph.
Now someone mentioned that superpowers who try to exert pressure from afar usually failed, which is why i mentioned perhaps an allie in south america, or cuba, who could exert diversionary force on another front. Allied missions from afar do sometimes work well, World War 1, World War 2, Korean War, GulfWar, Bosnia, Kosovo. These are all examples where the US has been successfull in influencing an area through alliegences and munitions. And korea did require a huge movement of troops over the ocean, from the US to korea.
Now the NRA are an element, but unless you have anti tank weapons, you will have difficulties stopping APC's and medium armor once they emerge from the airport. Not even the US is THAT liberal with weapons:) I work with a few people who wish it were otherwise.
Now Goosekirk had some good criticism's about our 'lil' invasion, and they are noted. You are right, SAC would sure as hell notice the cargo planes, and thats an element that would require some thinking on, perhaps use commercial 747 cargo planes to deliver the vehicles. This would strike out private airfields, cargo planes can stop relatively quickly on a private field, 747's are another matter.
Now as to re-routing traffic, that could be accomplished one way, send troops before hand unarmed, and send your weapons along with your first wave, arming your already present troops.
This enables your troops to arrive over say a 12 hour period on a miriad of different flights, with various stop overs in different countries perhaps.
As to why using air landings at all, why not use everything at hand? The whole idea is to invade an enemy at as many points of entry as possible. Even if the air landed troops dont make it, they provide a great distraction for army groups until the heavy guns arrive.
Evading the US carriers as i said earlier would be almost impossible, but if the vehicles arrive on standard trade routes, using standard expected vehicles, you dont need to evade much at all.
Now as to Why China would invade? I dont think they will ever, or even think of it, if they were to invade anyone it would be siberia. I said i doubted they would invade in my previous post.
The concept behind the first post was to explain that an invasion could take place, not a total victory, that would require on the spot decisions regarding the actions of the US, and noone can say 100% exactly what the US would do in that situation.
Anyways I hope that answered some of criticisms out there, i expected them anyways, as the post wasnt written as a prophecy:) just a hypothetical
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
and?
A detection system based on civilian radio transmission isn't that much harder to stop.
On your own territiory: Require a military controlled switch installed in all civilian transmitters. Click - and no more civilian-assisted detection during war.
On enemy territory - bomb the "civilian" transmitters/power supplies along with the military ones. This is done anyway in order to stop the propaganda machine.
Actually Germany DID know that there was an invasion imminent, theres no way to hide that kind of massive military buildup and training from regular spys. The problem was they had know idea where on the French coast they would be landing and the Allies has a whole big disinformation campain going to confuse the Germans on that particular fact.
Well you mentioned that this would be highly unlikely but lets start the what if.
... and you thought the earth quake was bad .
what if China really dose invade Taiwan and the USA has a president who is committed to protecting Taiwan. so therefore military intervention is taken against China. to expel their forces from Taiwan . would be it not be expected to see some come of retaliation against the USA from China ?
or would it be a localized war just in Taiwan.
one thing is for sure if this was to happen memory prices will go sky high
music the paint
dancefloor the canvas
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
Power Projection.
Perhaps the Chinese do not have the experience, but the invasion of Taiwan would be a matter of reaching ~80 miles for them, not really a projection, versus reaching ~7000 miles for the US. The Chinese would be able to use ground-based planes and helicopters to cross the strait, and small craft to sail it in a couple of hourse, while the US forces would be limited to carrier-based planes and heavy ships that would take about a week to arrive from San Diego.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
why all this fuss about stealth technology ?
.. ill let them know your where you are at. just as soon as i get this damn gun unmounted from this plane . oh buy the way where is the ammo stored for this sucker ???"
we should just forget about it all and start making more planes like the A-10
this is truly a remarkable aircraft and should be a refrence for all engineers.
it has to be one of the hardest planes to knock out of the sky since all sytems are redudant and it can fly home on one engine . the cockpit area that the pilot sits in is protected by titanium armor.
the sheer amount of weapons the thing can be equipped with is totally devastating and we cant forget about the prize possesion of the A-10
the GAU 8 AVENGER near 8000 rpm minute of depleted uranium shells the size of coke bottles .
this gun is not only good for anti tank but anti helicopter and antipersonal and anti any thing that just so happens to remain in its sight for a moment to long .
yep all planes and tanks should be equipped with the GAU 8 .
i wished i had been in the area where that A 10 crashed at i would have been the first on the scene with a cutting torch and tool box .
A-10 pilot : "help me i think i have several broken bones."
ME:" heres some hot chocolate buddy
music the paint
dancefloor the canvas
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
You just have to explain how this one works....
You don't happen to be Tom Clancy incognito?
:)
sorry couldn't resist
V
Great, we've all read the same lousy Tom Clancy novels and other warp0rn. And there are about three posters in this entire thread that actually know something about PCL/Bistatic Radar (and I am not one of them).
This is old, old stuff--researchers in the UK tracked commercial aircraft over Britain in the 1970s using ambient radiation from TV and radio broadcasts. The problem then (and now) is processing--they collected data for a few days, and then spent months separating signal from noise, so it was not quite suited for acquiring a targeting solution 8-p.
Processing power has come a long way--a good-sized van full of computers would probably suffice. But for a PCL-based system to actually provide a targeting solution on a stealthy aircraft (with an RCS well below one foot--real experts would be talking about dB), you probably will need dedicated emitters. They can be remoted, and they can be numerous and redundant and therefore relatively impervious to jamming and antiradiation missiles, but it won't be cheap, and it is not going to happen in China anytime in the next 10 years.
When you read these kind of stories, you should be leery of assertions that a theoretical capability=a weapon=combat capability. China has always done well with pure science, and incredibly poorly at applied military science, and poorer still at turing a technology into a military capability.
Anyway, it's always more interesting to look less at what such pieces assert, and more at why it was leaked now--my guess is that some funding decisions are going to be made soon so they are pumping up the China threat again. You don't have to like China, but trying to paint them as a new USSR is laughable--the dog just doesn't hunt. And we are winning--just visit the place and you will see how much peaceful evolution is working.
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Not being a Geography-buff, I don't know the countries... But there's that 7 mile gap between Russia and Alaska... Something "straights". So long as they secured that corridor, they'ed have a very efficient way of moving troops to this side of the Pacific.
;)
Of course, they'ed have to go through Canada prior to getting at us...
The real difficult point is the receivers themselves, and with just about everything getting a DSP in it these days it is rapidly becoming a software issue instead of a hardware issue. We all know what that means...
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Subotai says, here is the way to do it.
Dec 1, 2000
China announces that as a result of the right wing US congress failing to approve WTO entry provisions, China is opening its borders and providing ships to anybody in China who wishes to emigrate to the US.
Two weeks prior to this, record numbers of Chinese freighters dock in Western Mexico (baja) ports.
Dec 8, 2000
A flotilla of 150 freighters and similar size ships leave China towards the US supposedly carrying immigrants.
US detects the flotilla and dispatches all available Navy and Coast Guard ships to intercept the ships.
Dec 12, 2000
Chinese flotilla passes Hawaii. Several minisubs detach from underneath the freighters. As they pass SOSUS arrays near Hawaii several ships catch fire and sink. Timed bombs are dropped into the water near SOSUS arrays.
December 14, 2000
US forces intercept the Chinese flotilla. They discover that some ships are empty except for a crew. When US forces board, the ships detonate damaging the boarding ship. Other ships are full of Chinese marines who kill the boarders and then capture the boarding ships. Several ships appear to be just carrying immigrants. However, soon after stopping these ships the boarding ship explodes after having limpet mines attached to it by divers.
The bombs at the SOSUS arrays are detonated wiping out a large area of coverage.
At airports on the west coast, in LA, San Diego, San Francisco and Phoenix, regularly scheduled Chinese airlines crash, taking out runways and control towers. In San Diego, the airline misses the civilian airport and crashes at the Naval Air Station.
As the ruccus on the surface starts, approximately 30 Chinese subs race from underneath the freighters. Some subs attack the larger surface vessels while others race to the East.
Chinese minisubs detonate themselves in the mouth of Pearl underneath incoming ships, blocking the harbor mouth.
In Mexico, the Chinese freighters crews arm themselves and set up a perimeter around the docks. The freighters start to disgorge fighters, helicopters, tanks and infantry. This is the Eighth Route Army of the PLA. The Mexican government is letting this take place in exchange for a gift to be received in a few days. The PLA begins to move out.
In the US, Chinese, instigated by infiltrators begins to riot against US aggression against peaceful immigrants.
In California, several large media outlets are taken over by rioters.
December 15, 2000
Chinese forces reach the border in Arizona, New Mexico and California. The border outposts are destroyed. In the border towns, announcements of this are quickly sent out, resulting in a crush of immigration at the border.
Chinese subs reach San Diego and detonate torpedos at the sub entry tunnels. Several carriers and the Airbase are hit with sea launched cruise missiles. Chinese subs do the same at Bremerhaven, Washington.
Between the port attacks and freighter decoys, half of the US Navy is out of action.
December 16, 2000
Broadcasts in Spanish and English tell the people in the US that they will only be harmed if they resist. They encourage all who wish to take up arms against the racist WAP dominated US government.
A division of the Eighth Route army seizes Los Alamos and White Sands and turns west. Tucson, Santa Fe and Phoenix declare themselves open cities.
Hidden Chinese units in LA, San Franciso and San Diego begin seizing critical facilities.
The main body of the Eight Route Army reaches San Diego where fighting with Navy stragglers begins.
Seeing the way things are going, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Argentina Russia, declare themselves to be Chinese Allies. 2 mexican army divisions occupy Phoenix and Santa Fe. A third division heads to San Diego.
China capture San Diego and LA quickly falls.
December 18, 2000
China captures San Francisco.
December 25, 2000
China announces that California, Arizona and New Mexico have been pacified and are now part of the new SouthWestern Special Administrative Region. Other states who wish, may also join. No one will be persecuted for beliefs or opinion, however opposition to the Chinese government will be dealt with strongly. The border with Mexico is reestablished, however China sets an agreement to allow Mexicans and other Latin Nationals to work in the US.
With Silicon Valley gone, the US returns to being a largely agrarian nation. The new Southwest becomes extemely profitable and other states soon begin to join.
"The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into the tiger's den."
Not proportionally, it isn't.
1980: 22.7% of federal budget outlays were Nat'l Defense.
1998: 16.2%.
Deal.
Source: OMB numbers, "Budget of the United States Government". FY 2000 (1999).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Indeed - that is why the Indian navy is buying up an old Soviet Aircraft carrier.
They also were at a loss for satellite imagery during the recent border skirmish with Pakistan and are going to work at orbiting their own imaging satellites.
China has it's own capabilities - usually underestimated in my opinion. China is not our friend - they are competition in many venues.
That is the REAL world - being the bigest badest guy on the block(read planet) has it's advantages.
I'd rather be in that position personally. I KNOW the US isn't perfect, and is often a bully.(All you have to do is travel a little around the world to discover that.) You'll also discover that you have it better here than most places!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Weren't the stealth planes first developed in the mid 80's? That was more than a decade ago. Undoubtably the Skunkworks has developed something better than what we know about. Just because someone has the ability to detect stealth does not mean that they will detect it. It would take a fairly large undertaking to canvas the entire country of China to detect the few stealth aircraft. I think China has bigger problems to worry about than the US.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I think it would take something like a month for your invasion fleet to cross the Pacific (after all the Chinese are going to have to commandeer a lot of civilian transports to move their invasion force and you probably want most of your troops landing at around the same time). Assuming they somehow evaded all those subs and surface ships we have out there, do you really think your initial wave of a few thousand Chinese with little in the way of heavy weaponry are still going to be alive and holding out? Even if our response is slow it ain't going to be that slow.
P.S. AFAIK the Chinese don't have a carrier so it would a bit difficult to use one to support the troops. The Chinese admit that they aren't going to be capable of anything but regional naval power until around 2050.
In my totally uninformed opinion Chinese invasion is pure fiction. Coincidentally, Larry Bond has a new book coming out called "Invasion" about this very topic.
This kind of sneak attack might work for a day or two, but then it would be crushed. You can land enough troops to take an airfield, but not enough to assault the neighboring military bases. More importantly, you cannot resupply them. Once surprise is lost you won't get any airplanes through. Light infantry don't require a great deal of supplies, true, but then again they would be carrying the same sorts of weapons as the police / national guard / hastily organized militias / etc.
They won't have tanks because they're too darned heavy. Even a 747 can only carry one or two main battle tanks. Remember the multi-month buildup to Operation Desert Storm? That was because they had to move the tanks by ship.
Sea transport will also be cut off pretty quickly once surprise is lost. Mr. Hagar did mention "you might even nuke pearl/guam in the first 24 hours of your attack." That IS what it would take - you'd have to knock out the U.S. Navy altogether. The reason we pay mongo $$$ for a huge navy is to prevent this sort of invasion. The problem with nuking the fleet in harbor: it's more or less been tried already:
"In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."
Admiral Yamamoto in an interview with Shigeharu Matsumoto, a member of the Japanese Cabinet, 1940
The Japanese at the time had the world's third largest navy. They were at least an even match for the U.S. Pacific fleet. Currently the Chinese have pretty close to squat for a navy.
The human visual system is an odd thing.
Basically, by running with your lights set up right, you give off the same ambient light level as the sky, or close enough, and you become very hard to pick out.
Just painting the plane doesn't have the same effect, because you can't reflect 100% of the available light, so you turn up darker. In the case of the bottom and most of the visible front of the aircraft, most of the light you're reflecting has already lost intensity by being reflected off of the ground.
-k. ^-^ ^D
Im not sure its easy to compare the 117 with those two aircraft, as both of those are multi-role combat aircraft, while the 117 is primarily a bomber. It is obvious though that those aircraft would have been in more dangerous situations, but mostly because they are rather easily detected by standard SAM sites, and air to air threats(even with ECM pods), thus they would attract more enemy attention. However, I would say that the 117 missions over baghdad, given the amount of flak that went up during those missions, amazes me that not one of the aircraft was shot down, even by chance, disregarding the technology. I agree though that we are at a point where the aircraft is worth more then the pilot, I wonder if we will reach a point one day where the pilot is considered ballast and redundant.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
Hm, Poland 1939, Russia 1941, Hawaii 1941, Korea 1949
More importantly, three of these examples were military failures. Only the invasion of Poland was ultimately successful. The U.S. is much bigger; the Russian example is probably the best parallel.
I never said heavy armor on Commercial 747's, i said transportation of some light armored units in commercial 747 cargo planes. Hell you could even pull IFF transponders from 747's fit them to military cargo planes if you want to.
I didnt say for the aircraft not to use IFF transponders, but to make full use of them, travelling along standard routes for air traffic.
Hence its a surprise attack, not a surprise suicide.
Second, transporting armor in a car carrier is not going to be sunk if as far as everyone knows it has a legitimate manifest and is due to dock legally.
Yes the US would know that China would be massing vehicles at ports and airports by satellite data, but how many times has China had excercises near taiwan? Quite often. Especially involving army/navy amphibious deployments. Satellites are great for taking photos, but they dont tell you what the enemy intends or thinks 90% of the time.
Lastly, read the previous postings, and get the drift that i have all along said this is highly unlikely, highly difficult, that the plan has operational holes in it as all plans do, that its only a broad hypothetical concept.
I dont believe you have read the document and all the related posts that have added to the entire plan thoroughly. I have said a couple of times, the addition of a chemical or biological or nuclear element into the mix, would make events quite different, also added a diversionary force from a bordering country adding pressure as ive mentioned twice also.
So feel free to read the threads fully, instead of getting the gist, grunting, and clicking reply.
If you believe the US has absolutely no vulnerabilities at all on any border, I would politely suggest, you are deluded.
If you can think of a better operational concept, post it here, and then maybe we can pick holes in your plan.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
Not as a percentage of the national budget, which is the only gauge that counts when we are talking about the federal budget.
<laugh> Like I'd trust anything the Clinton News Network has to say about politics.
My journal has hot
Do you know what the casualty rates were for D-Day? And that was for a force that didn't have to worry about spy sats giving the other guys 3 days notice you were coming.
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