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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.
Both the F-117 and B-2 fly with special fittings when they are not in combat duty. In the F-117 this is in the form of small rectangular boxes over the wings. These fittings increase the radar cross-section of the airplane and make it equal to an ordinary civilian plane; to make friendly skies safer to fly by allowing the planes to be tracked by air traffic control, just like every other plane.
Plus, you don't want everyone on the fair grounds to learn about the capabilities of the plane. If you're interested in the topic, just compare the cockpit photos of the Mig-29 demonstrated to the West in 1989, and Mig-29s in actual service with the Russian Air Force. You will be amazed to see how they dumbed down the cockpit layout so that the first Western smart-ass to see the photos would say "Gee, Russians are using 1950s technology in these."
It is amazing how this little known security feature causes people to downplay the capabilities of these aircraft. I remember back when a bunch of F-117s came to Turkey; the armed forces and civilian air traffic control boasted how they could easily detect the so-called "stealth" fighters. As the Iraqi and Serbian can tell, it is not that easy without the fittings.
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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.
"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