F-35 First Flight Comments...

[rjmaz1]

But if UCAVs aren't, technologically, much further out (if at all), and they promise all the A2G capability of an F-35, with greater range and endurance (and expendability) - at a third the cost - does the F-35 really make sense?

We have a stealthy, manned fighter in production in the F-22.

The USN has a bunch of brand-spankin new F-18E/Fs.

SPOT ON!!

This is why it would be in everyones best interests to cancel the JSF. No one can really afford it.

Simply Increasing production of both the F-22 and Super Hornet will work out much cheaper than introducing a completely new aircraft type.

Keep F-16 production open to provide a cheap fighter to fill any shortages and to keep the international customers happy.

A block 70 F-16 would also be on the cards, using the F-119 engine from the F-22. That with the help of the AESA and conformal tanks from the block 60 would allow the F-16 to have similar performance to a Eurofighter.

The Super Hornet still has alot of room for growth.

The US Navy would operate 600+ F/A-18 E, F and G models. The Air force would operate 400 F-22's with 1000 F-16's in either block 52 or 60.

That is by far the most cost effective way to go. It would also allow the US to wait for UCAV. I can see the role of the Harrier being completely replaced by a UCAV in the next decade or so.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

THS,

>>
Why build a F-35 because there is no opposition and haven't been for the last 10 odd years?
>>

The Air Force structure of 1991 could defeat the the Airforces of 2003 if DPRK, FRY, Iraq and AfG are your baseline. The Airforce of 2015 (10 F-35s on every carrier, 1,100 F-35s stranded in the U.S. because Japan doesn't want Basein hazards and we have no remaining 'influence' in the SCS) _could not_ defeat the Chinese.

>>
1. You don't know what threat might come in say midlife for the F-35, thus the options for specialisation of the design is limited. The plane must cover a wide range of possibilities as it will be the only combat jet for the allies and the other half of the F-22/F-35 combination.
We are trying to plan 50 years ahead!
>>

The F-22 will beat the F-35 _today_ in every relevant metric. The F-22, with more power, more _useful_ bay volume and less tanker drain, will STILL be there tomorrow. The same goes for the F/A-18F which will gain MORE LO (probably via stealth pods which may also resolve carriage stress issues) in Lot III and /already has/ the inestimable value of a second ACS configured cockpit to run drone combat controller missions that spread the apertures out to get you a mosaic picture _before_ assigning weapons. The only areas where the F-35 -may- conceivably have some value lie in offensive NCW and DEWS as a function of the STOVL turbine takeoff and more sophisticated avionics/aperture baselines.

The F-22 can accomodate DAS. The F-22 can accomodate EOTS-as-AIRST. The APG-77 can 'learn' to do the NCW mission if it doesn't in fact already know how (70mb SAR patch maps in 3 seconds). The laser system is a function of onboard fuel for a COIL and/or capacitor banks for a diode weapon. i.e. With a RAM-T in a stealth pod, you can probably get that down as well. In any case, the REAL threat of DEWS (scaleable gen-1 compromises) is ground up, not the other way around and here the F-22 has an /immense/ advantage in slingbomb distance.

>>
2. The aim of the aircraft is as much to elevate the barrier for ANY opposition. That is: Defeat them before they even begin to fold aluminium. If the strategy is successfull, we will be stuck with a plane that only ever uses say 25% of its ability. I know this sound round about - and it is.
But suppose you halve lifespan and price by specialisation - you run the risk of specialiazing the features away that will be needed. This risk is large as the enemy really wants to kill us, and he will exploit any weakness.
>>

We are being beaten by a monkey force for which the JSF will remain just as _utterly_ inept at fighting as any other manned platform. OTOH, if someone wants to send up fighters to kill a UCAV I say _do it_. I can count a falling fireball as a firm kill and from behind the leading edge of UCAVs an F-22 can shoot-thru with some ease, simply because it KNOWS their signature and formation positioning.

OTOH, I can't trust my own planners to tell me that the freakin' Serb Air Force is dead only to see 19-26 MiG-21s lift off on the last day of the war. Which is ridiculous.

Lastly: THE BEST LINE OF SIGHT AIR SUPERIORITY FIGHTER ON THE PLANET IS GOING TO BE A 747 WITH A 1MW COIL IN IT'S NOSE AND WE OWN IT!!

>>
3. I do agree the F-35 is approaching the dinosaur concept stage: It is too big to survive in the long run; but the long run doesn't matter if you die in 25 years. The comparison is the Battleship - in the event they were hardly used in their intended role - and they nearly ruined several countries; but hadn't they been build the opposition would have flattened the parcimoneous.
>>

Then why are you planning for 50? The end of the JSF will _not_ spell the end of manned airpower. I am not so rabidly robot enthusiastic as to deny our forces all hope of a 'backup plan'. I simply see ZERO reason to export LO as a 700nm radius strike figher to Allies that have not been useful in our current war and for whom the equivalent purchase fill numbers compared to our own force reductions are LESS THAN HALF what we are giving away as capability on our own.

Will any Danish F-35 land on a carrier? I think not. And this is precisely where the deepest cuts are coming.

That said, the real 'long view' problem is that in 10-15 years (now that 'the powers that be' have sabotaged Gen-1 chemical DEWS) the manned pilot will have no more life value than an idiot with an Enfield going over the top in 1916. His ability to survive will be implicit to the _random dice toss_ effects of proximal approach to a deathray that excises him from the air in the blink of an eye.

And in the interim, he will _still_ be useless because we NEED 200 sorties airborne for 12-15hrs at a time on ONE tank of gas. And nothing we have can do that. Both because of 'fighter class' SFC on a monster engine. And because, _as a manned platform_ you are looking at 5,000 dollar per flight hour costs in the 'cheap' F-16. And I seriously doubt if the F-35 will do much better.

In any case, 24 / 6hr mission length = 4 station changes. 24 sorties / 15 hour mission length = 1.6 station changes. 200/4 = 50 total 'armed NTISR' orbits. 200/1.5 = 133 total 'armed NTISR' orbits.

$5,000.00X6X200 = 6 MILLION dollars a 'flying day'.

$1,500.00X15X200 = 4.5 MILLION dollars a 'flying day'.

A 1/3rd cut. A cut which can be _further cut in half_ by taking out 90% of the highest paid, least useful 'component' TRAINING factors of the 1.25:1 manning ratio from the peacetime ab initio, squadron, currency and deployment training.

Taken together, this is represents a REAL CHANGE IN CAPABILITY.

Because you have to _be there_ to make a difference. To enforce the notion that _no_ the insurgent force is NOT going to have free entry/exit to attack deliberate patrols OR 'high density collaterals' (marketplaces, soccer fields). As well as infrastructural targets.

And you can only do that if you can afford to run the airframe not the pilot force ragged.

In this, the JSF is as useless at that kinds of missions we are flying _today_ as it will be in 25 OR 50 years time.

>>
4. Before You discard allies out of hand: (I know I'm being provincial) Denmark will probably buy 2-3 squadrons; but these squadrons will cover quite a large area in the Baltic - and the alternative for the US would be building a base structure and probably use a squadron more.
>>

Snort.

1. NATO is _not_ a hot zone. It won't /become one/ until Iran starts threatening to lob Shahab into your precious 'in area' ops zones.

2. The F-16 could 'cover quite a large area of the Baltic'. And with modern weapons systems and permissive external carriage, the F-16E might in fact be _more effective_ as a non-LO platform. I mean, 'who do you have to hide from amongst friends', hmmm?

3. You assume too much in your belief that the JSF will not end up costing you 'two squadrons' in final purchase price. As I have already illustrated, we are likely _below_ the 1,600 airframe cap which Steidle said was the minimum before the cost numbers go vertical. And we don't yet know what will happen when the entire Gulf, seeing the U.S. humiliated by a bunch of idiots with pipe bombs, decides to start selling their oil in any damn currency they please. If the U.S. economy crashes, so will the production economics of the JSF.

CONCLUSION:
Nothing occurs in a void. And the biggest question relative to the JSF is what happens when the Europeans decide to skip Gen-5 and go to Gen-6 with a UCAV of their own and a 'clear field' because we destroyed J-UCAS? A 20-30 million dollar 'for real' _bomber_ which has equal utility in the peacetime SAR, resources mapping, espionage COMINT and EEZ/fisheries patrol is a platform that can well be useful given that 'The U.S. tackles the expensive part' of OCA and DEAD.

Along with the threat of advanced weapons systems and the **urgent** need for them to handle the RAM and ballistics/cruise threat, this cost:benefit _competitive_ issue 'between friends' is what must most concern U.S. as a function of justifying F-35 production at -any- level.


KPl.

 

[B.Smitty]

Although this isn't so much a discussion about UAV, I'm extremely doubtful that it will ever really, at least in our lifetime, represent the majority of combat aircraft.

There are huge risks from having such a force structure, specifically communications. IMO it's a little like a force relying soley on satellite guided munitions...

What if a controlling ship/ground-station/satellite is "lost", whether that be through jamming or destruction? That's a loss of quite a bit of power in one hit.

Against fixed targets, UCAVs don't need to communicate any more than a TLAM or CALCM.

In BAI/killbox interdiction, or general hunting for bad guys, you can use difficult-to-jam, LOS comms from an airborne controller (such as Kurt's two-seat F-18F).

Or you can do what we do now with enemy emitters - drop a PGM on them.

Losing GPS would hurt us a ton - not just UCAVs. But there are other ways to navigate and guide munitions that are completely compatible with UCAVs.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

What if they hijack the controls? :shudder

How?

Make a case for your argument beyond that of 'Cylons run amok!' and I will try to answer.

Please keep in mind:

1. The UCAV runs on autopilot, not a remote flight control linkage ala Predator. It can be _preflight_ floor-restricted to never itself be Flight 11'd into a building because the sensors and munitions available today do not benefit from such low level flight. Indeed, they are superior to 'fighter = nose forward' apertures because they are A2G optimized by spectrum and coverage.

2. Similarly, the PTOD effect of NO SEEKER TO BASKET (pure IMU if need be) and auto-calc'd LARs to take into account cross/headwinds makes level release as kinematically secure as a CDIP dive toss with 8K pullout. Simply because the fall distance plus glide kit renders ballistic shortfalls massively less likely.

3. Any 'intelligent spoof' is a 2-way affair and as such can be not only detected but hacked back or blown up or simply /ignored/ as coming from 'too low on the horizon' to be anything but blanked out via the polarized receiver angle subsystems 'guarding' it out. OTOH, the authenticated sender has two other MAJOR advantages: A. He can dedicate an airliner to the antenna size needed to overwhelm the Jx spoof. B: He KNOWS where the receiver is. Because that receiver is sending low-power satellite/pseudolite _up_ link positioning signals over L16 or TTNT. While the itself remaining LO'd up and stood off from direct threat detection thresholds.

4. There will ALWAYS be multiple command oversight levels in place. X on the ground can call for a spread of target patterned GBU-39 with airburst. But if Y in the BBJ or CAOC sees that this is in fact a crowded market place in the middle of the morning rush to buy fresh chickens for lunch, he has the ability to override. Conversely, if X is getting hosed and _can't_ make the 'local' 911 call (because he is being jammed or because, 'as the sole ETAC assigned' has just taken a round to the head. Or perhaps is himself busy firing his M4 just to keep from being overrun. Or simply can't see the damn mortar team reverse sloped on a ridgeline a mile and a half away and 2,000ft higher up than him.), that guy back in the small airliner or large ground facility or even, gasp, a _correctly configured, 2-seat, fighter cockpit_ can still 'dial long distance' with the effect of "Hold on soldier, nobody dies for nothin' on my watch!" and start dropping selective fires on what he SEES, top down, to be massed or weapons pit threat signature concentrations. If need be, using a 'futures' based graphic overlay setting which synchs up TOF airburst radial overlays into the /backside/ of a bounding infantry assault or small ambush (desultory = fixed firing position) type fight. Even really close in.

5. Nothing repeats. There is no analyzeable pattern. First because the comms are linearized above the guerilla ESM level of direct sampling. Second because you use spreading and PRN techniques _as with any secure comms_ to hide the meaningful among garbage. And lastly because the commands themselves are a function of single-use go code lists that are isolated in a command console and the moated crypts section (electronic and explosive memory-safed). Thus the digital bits equivalent of 'Apple ###' (release GBU-39 on XbyYbyZ coordinate) this sending is 'Busride' the next. And not only is this true for **One UCAV** (whose mission lists change with every DTM upload for the next sortie) but also for every other UCAV in the air at that time. And the mission after that.

6. A man at 15-25,000ft is no 'safer a sanity check' through his targeting pod soda straw than he can be convinced by a familiar voice or an authentic code verifier to commit to a target. And yet that is _exactly_ where he's gonna be to stay out of the trashfire at minimum fuel burn. In this, the MOB effect on situational synthesis of 'looks right' weapons release is outmoded from the start.

CONCLUSION:
This isn't WWII. Where Enigma vs. Ultra gave _strategic_ insight to a given comms security system after /years/ of analysis (starting in 1939 and not really 80-90% effective until 1942) and HOURS of processing time. This is a case where _the codes themselves_ change every 24hrs. And the results from their use are obvious in minutes.

Lastly, as with any 'First Day Of War' capable system (500 knots and 1,000nm capable with .0001m as -30/-35 dbsm signature baselines) you can always send the UCAVs in in 'F-117 mode' (total EMCON lockdown). To attack fixed targets until the threat ability to project and command an effective hack/spoof is dinimished.


KPl.

 

[Big-E]

When the future of UAVs hits it's apex the flights will not be pre-planned or AI taking over the mission. Someone will still be at the controls and those controls at some point can be hijacked.

 

[phreeky]

I know plenty about encryption, and I also believe it'd be near-on impossible to gain control over them. However my concern is more with jamming the comms between it and any/all controllers (can't say I know much about it and what's actually possible).

As for minimal communications, I guess it'd work on fixed ground targets, but surely that'd be it? What do you do about mobile ground units? Or air targets? Are there some types of targets that always need visual confirmation?

big-e: at present it would take a huge amount of time to crack a "simple" key-based encryption with a reasonable size key. and when there is a two way trust (controller+uav), all you've gotta do is have a set of agreed keys to switch to at set time intervals, even every 5 minutes if you're REALLY worried, and you'll be fine.

 

[rjmaz1]

When the future of UAVs hits it's apex the flights will not be pre-planned or AI taking over the mission. Someone will still be at the controls and those controls at some point can be hijacked.

UAV flights can be pre-planned just like waypoints are added to an aircraft computer before a mission.

It will be impossible to hack, unless there is a large security breach. If security has been breached the entire fleet will be grounded for only a few hours while someone walks around with a USB memory stick changing all the command codes or the "language" that the aircraft uses.

If they then used this language change technique every single day then by the time information is leaked it would have been changed many times since.

It will be so easy to make the network 100% secure.

Also they do not need artificial intelligence to make a UCAV fly and engage targets all by itself. All it needs is good coding which is available today. If the US spends enough time and money they can break every combat element down into simple no/yes algorithms that can be processed by the computer.

 

[gf0012-aust]

UAV flights can be pre-planned just like waypoints are added to an aircraft computer before a mission..

They already are in some instances - its no guarantee of mission integrity. Waypoint planning of UAV's has been around since the early 60's - the technology has improved - and so has the intercept capability.

It will be impossible to hack, unless there is a large security breach. If security has been breached the entire fleet will be grounded for only a few hours while someone walks around with a USB memory stick changing all the command codes or the "language" that the aircraft uses..

I gather you haven't worked in military comms? thats not the way it works. Its not a you beaut milspec wireless network that can be secured by a walk around. It would be a logistic nightmare - and in a theatre event an absolute galloping nightmare as all other comms in that loops are assumed to be compromised as well. It's a centrifugal reaction.

Milspec assets are not allowed to have open keys for updates.

If they then used this language change technique every single day then by the time information is leaked it would have been changed many times since..

again, these processes already exist - and they are no guarantee of total and safe compliance. Apart from the fact that some comms is actively hopping, there are some hardwired assets that forcibly change their access codes every 5-15 minutes (eg). Its not a new technique.

It will be so easy to make the network 100% secure..

again - its not. and not by a long shot. there is no such thing as a secure network. 6 months ago a network security test was run where the most robust "wireless" system was breached in under 90 seconds. You don't need to hijack the handoff, all you need to do is dislocate the mission. if you successfully dislocate the system then you've interrupted a transaction process - and other systems reactions downstream start to let you map out "patterning" behaviour.

the basic law of assumption is that if we know how to do it, then they know how to do it and we are at a diminishing point of advantage.

Also they do not need artificial intelligence to make a UCAV fly and engage targets all by itself. All it needs is good coding which is available today. If the US spends enough time and money they can break every combat element down into simple no/yes algorithms that can be processed by the computer.

and yet there are numerous examples at ROV and UAV Conferences where sessions focus entirely on how vulnerable remote management is - and will continue to be.

One of the most secure systems in the world, with years of positive test results was breached last month. 30 seconds of opportunity was generated as contact was lost and the asset went into safe cycle. Any UAV going into a safe cycle has just broadcasted critical info about where/when and who has sent it.

DSTO - for all their expertise in ROV's - and they literally are world leaders in UAV/ROV management also don't see the integrity of remote management systems as absolutely successful. In the last 3 years alone the perception of asset volume in a given battlespace has changed dramatically - and the technology is struggling to deliver. You can COTS the hardware - but you have to Milspec the comms - and thats a known problem.

The "safest" medium of all to manage ROV's is the sea - and we've made a considered decision to stay hard wired or umbilically connected as we know that asset integrity is still fleeting. We get more data, robust data, persistent data out of tied assets. All the softwired tests didn't deliver across certain parameters

Bandwidth mapping is an issue, asset tasking and expectations in a congested theatre are another.

we're a long way off that degree of integrity - and current estimates are 10-15 years unless something radical is discovered in the intervening years.

In 2006, in the australian govt, any NI critical data is hand delivered. we still do not allow certain data types to go across soft lines. Some poor sod gets a free ride in a designated green or white car and delivers it personally.

the poor old british consulate in canberra took such a hammering from the chinese embassy that it was closed down, electronically vacuumed and rebuilt so as to turn it into a huge 3 story tempest room. That was the only way to stop the chinese embassy from sucking emissions and hijacking electronic data. it was bombarded so much from the chinese that staff were getting sick.

UAV's are even harder to secure. The solution is far from being as simple as you portray.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

Big-E,

>>
When the future of UAVs hits it's apex
>>

Fine, if you assume the term 'UAV' to be a descriptor of the vehicle class defined by Predator. The simple fact of the matter is that a remote pilotage LINK is indeed a continuous transmission hazard not rewarded by the extreme lag inherent to a 3-4 second delay between control initiation and actuation in both the MEP and Flight Controls. Something all Predator pilots are already 'slow, blended, movements' restricted from rabid-ape exercising their rights to indulge in that most quintessential of 'pilot bleep' justifications for 'personal control'.


>>
...the flights will not be pre-planned or AI taking over the mission.
>>

Why? All missions are preplanned even on manned assets using laptop level route and defense and timing and target 'flow' parameters well beyond human calculation and integration. Pilots run the route, see their mistakes -as the computer references the baseline parameters- and plot fixes and workarounds that minimize the risks before downloading the plot into a data transfer module which is then inserted into the aircrafts mission memory.

They then 'fly what the machine planned' excepting those few occasions when something popsup and they are forced to react to it with slow and head-gimbal limited reactions.

Stealth in a _UCAV_ largely removes even the latter problem while systems like DAS provide vastly more datarich numeric streaming values to the processor than any human can 'interpret' from his HMD.

FACT: Throughout Operation Deny Flight, the route complexities across a mere /90 miles/ of Adriatic into Bosnian/Albanian transit corridors were 'so complex' that it took up to two weeks before the newly deployed guys were competent to transit without someone getting yelled at for porking up the airspace control rules around the multiple neutral, commercial lane and other 'no fly' zones. OTOH, during OAF, a BGM-109 flew a _perfect first time_ route with a mere 19 minutes planning response time to target what later turned out to be a decoy MiG-29.

FACT: While a pilot may or may not choose to keep his hand in to maintain a feel for the flight, autopilots VASTLY outperform him for course, corridor, height, speed, throttle setting efficiencies.

_And have for decades_.

In this you specifically misquoted me because 'AI' requires that a expert system of some kind recognize a given environmental constraint as separate and yet interactive with itself. An autopilot merely has to fly to a mathematically defined point in the sky where it can release a glide weapon that LARs out on target. The sky is huge. It is empty. It is _uncomplex_. It /does not require/ 'AI' to navigate.

>>
...Someone will still be at the controls and those controls at some point can be hijacked.
>>

Why? Why do you persist in the belief that humans MUST pilot an airframe when /human biologic weaknesses/ are the chief driver on current platform inefficiencies, both in peace and in war?


KPl.

 

[phreeky]

there is no such thing as a secure network. 6 months ago a network security test was run where the most robust "wireless" system was breached in under 90 seconds. You don't need to hijack the handoff, all you need to do is dislocate the mission.

Well all "systems" of information exchange, whether it be "hard" or "soft" have a certain element of risk. When you say "there is no such thing as a secure network", IMO it can be made far more secure than somebody personally delivering information.

Online banking is an example of a relatively secure network (relative to most online systems), however if you look at them from a raw "attack from abroad" point of view they're quite insecure compared to a system that doesn't rely on private/public key structures etc (i.e. tables of shared private keys).

However you point that "You don't need to hijack the handoff, all you need to do is dislocate the mission" is completely valid - it would be FAR easier to block transmissions between systems than to intercept, decode, alter, etc.

and yet there are numerous examples at ROV and UAV Conferences where sessions focus entirely on how vulnerable remote management is - and will continue to be.

Again I don't believe it's all that vulnerable from a information "trust" point of view, just an information delivery reliability point of view.

One of the most secure systems in the world, with years of positive test results was breached last month. 30 seconds of opportunity was generated as contact was lost and the asset went into safe cycle. Any UAV going into a safe cycle has just broadcasted critical info about where/when and who has sent it.

More info? What do you define as "breached"?

UAV's are even harder to secure. The solution is far from being as simple as you portray.

I still strongly believe UAVs will never play a primary role in combat. Great for fixed ground targets, and especially good where you don't want to risk big dollar planes (and pilots) over high-risk airspace to bomb a bunch of bunkers etc, but that's it.

As for AI etc, well I hate the term. Computer software, whether classed as AI or not, is ultimately just a bunch of algorithms. "AI" used, well the ones with any reliable results, are typically based on quite simple learning systems for extremely specific tasks and on strict parameters. It's a VERY, VERY long way off doing anything other than maintaining an aircrafts attitude and following flight paths (the best it'll do is probably learn to cope with difficult environmental conditions).

Just my 2c, as a programmer

 

[Kurt Plummer]

GF0012,

>>
They already are in some instances - its no guarantee of mission integrity. Waypoint planning of UAV's has been around since the early 60's - the technology has improved - and so has the intercept capability.
>>>

How many times was a Predator 'intercepted', at height, by a SAM in OIF? In Kosovo? 'Intercepting' a prebriefed mission upload being impossible at the electronic level, most particularly if they don't know where the farking thing _physically_ is.

Something highly probable in a _UCAV_ designed for D1/R1 penetration.

The simple fact of the matter is that the USAF was against arming UAVs in 1996. And we missed UBL, twice, because of it. The USAF now 'likes the Predator!' (with gritted teeth) but only because it is non-threatening powered sailplane technology in an age defined by multiple hundred-foot-second EM globals that make anything NOT jet powered with swept wings either 'sufficiently stood off' or _a designated morte_.

Since the UAVs are sent in to do the dirty dumb dangerous mission set /anyway/ (the fast jet jockeys being too busy coordinating their next round of golf or too scared pissless to volunteer the UAAU sortie) it is hardly surprising that they get shot down.

But if you pull some Sky Knight teeth and let a _UCAV_ be designed as it should be (LO+DAS+GBU-39+EOTS/XTRA), most of the 'intercept' problem goes right the heck away.

>>
I gather you haven't worked in military comms? thats not the way it works. Its not a you beaut milspec wireless network that can be secured by a walk around. It would be a logistic nightmare - and in a theatre event an absolute galloping nightmare as all other comms in that loops are assumed to be compromised as well. It's a centrifugal reaction.
>>

Tell me how. Tell me how you intercept a line of sight comms system equal to the RF equivalent of a pocket-sun with a total synch-to-burst interval of perhaps 4 seconds sending a datapacket that comes down to maybe 10 operative words in a go-code list that WILL NOT REPEAT FOR A **MILLION TIMES**?

>>
Milspec assets are not allowed to have open keys for updates.
>>

Which means diddly squat all when all the damn assets are 'little green car' isolated on the same bloody base where everything is ALSO 'walk it out to the airframe' _secure_ because they do it with MANNED ASSETS already!

Bluetooth the sucker! Bypass the morons who exist to reinforce their own corrupt mission role.

>>
again, these processes already exist - and they are no guarantee of total and safe compliance. Apart from the fact that some comms is actively hopping, there are some hardwired assets that forcibly change their access codes every 5-15 minutes (eg). Its not a new technique.
>>

Which is your way of not-explaining why it DOES WORK.

>>
again - its not. and not by a long shot. there is no such thing as a secure network. 6 months ago a network security test was run where the most robust "wireless" system was breached in under 90 seconds. You don't need to hijack the handoff, all you need to do is dislocate the mission. if you successfully dislocate the system then you've interrupted a transaction process - and other systems reactions downstream start to let you map out "patterning" behaviour.
>>

How many megawatts behind the transmitter? How close did the monitoring agency 'know' it was to the spoofed receiver? Yes, there will be synch intervals. NO there doesn't have to be a 'reply, in stream' to associate a broken LINK disruption with. Because the reply can either be staggered in time or go _up_ to a satellite or pseudolite.

All's that drone has to do is take dictation.

And if you can't spot the UCAV because it is BOTH optically and RF _LOW OBSERVABLE_, to the threshold extent which a 20nm glidebomb allows 'effective invisiblity', how much do you really expect some Afghan dushman on his bloody damn camel is going to to be able to rig a solution with _his_ 'COTS from Gateway' hardware?

>>
the basic law of assumption is that if we know how to do it, then they know how to do it and we are at a diminishing point of advantage.
>>

And so rather than have effective, proactive, 'test to see how much the bad guys know we know' COUNTER INTELLIGENCY EFFORT you choose to limit yourself to bombing static structural targets /which we all know/ is -so sucks-to-excess full at winning day to day wars with monkey forces that are about as technologically sophisticated as an orangutuan on LSD.

But can at least vanish in a flash amidst a horde of other swing-armed 'innocents'.

>>
and yet there are numerous examples at ROV and UAV Conferences where sessions focus entirely on how vulnerable remote management is - and will continue to be.
>>

Rather than /assign expertise/ to a bunch of needled necked pencil pushers 'at a conference you dare not name', why not APPLY your own in defining exactly wherein the system as I described it is non functional, STARTING with locating the drone and obviating the sender on a target signature to broadcast mode basis of 'who's on first' predefinition of the hack?

Surely if 'everybody knows everything' applies then there is no natsec or proprietary prohibition against a 'general point by point counter argument' as I have given you?

>>
One of the most secure systems in the world, with years of positive test results was breached last month. 30 seconds of opportunity was generated as contact was lost and the asset went into safe cycle. Any UAV going into a safe cycle has just broadcasted critical info about where/when and who has sent it.
>>

So if an F-117 (or an F-22 for that matter) loses all onboard comms, it is 'obligated to scream help' when the digital tether dies 30 seconds out from target in the heart of the threat WEZ?

Riiiight.

By your definition, it's no wonder 'everyone knows everything' about our commsec, as every jet out there must be a veritable lighthouse of overactive emissions.

>>
DSTO - for all their expertise in ROV's - and they literally are world leaders in UAV/ROV management also don't see the integrity of remote management systems as absolutely successful. In the last 3 years alone the perception of asset volume in a given battlespace has changed dramatically - and the technology is struggling to deliver. You can COTS the hardware - but you have to Milspec the comms - and thats a known problem.
>>

Water doesn't take to RF very well. Last I heard, ELF was still at about 1/mbit second and 10MW per sending. Of course even this has more relevance than 'sound as an omni sample' when compared with directional microwave half a dozen /miles/ above the terrestrial ferrets listening post.

>>
The "safest" medium of all to manage ROV's is the sea - and we've made a considered decision to stay hard wired or umbilically connected as we know that asset integrity is still fleeting. We get more data, robust data, persistent data out of tied assets. All the softwired tests didn't deliver across certain parameters
>>

Apples to Orangutuans.

>>
Bandwidth mapping is an issue, asset tasking and expectations in a congested theatre are another.
>>

Oh please. Go outside. LOOK THEE THE HELL UP.

Is the sky raining airliners on you Chicken Little? No?!? How many contrails? 1? 2? 5?

The sky is a blue void of great-wide-nothingness that makes the flattest desert on the planet look like a veritable postage stamp of bump mapped obstacles. Once you get to your assigned ops area (which may be surveilled with 60nm radar and 40nm optics) NOBODY IS GONNA BOTHER YOU. Not least because, with eight bombs onboard, there is not a freak show of manned assets bottlenecked for a 200nm behind you.

When you're done, you take a given flight route (_preplanned_) past the other SENSCAP orbits out to a 'major thoroughfare' and highway your ass out through a safe corridor like any other putz. Indeed, _given_ that DAS is a requirement for ALL assets (as an SAIRST as well as MAWS) there is no threat of 'unforeseen collisions' even if the mission planner 'somehow' screwed up.

Furthermore, I fully expect any UCAV asset to fulfill it's NTISR role by recording the scene as it flies by like all the other 'for post mission analysis' manned platform would.

IF, within a given high-interest area marked out in mission planning, the drone sees something 'really neat' as a signature bloom or discrete ATC, it /may/ choose to compress that 1X1nm FLIR or SAR patchmap scene down to thumbnail "Are you interested?" size and squirt it off.

Given the right LOOK UP aperture, it should take all of 1-2 seconds to do so (the F-22/APG-77 test was for a 70mb radar map that required all of 3 seconds with TTNT architecture as I recall).

At which point, the NCW demands go from 'heavy on one of 100 channels' back down to zero. Indeed, I _fully expect_ the removal of the manned mission element to /reduce/ the comms networking demands. Not spike them. Because the drones will have superior annotation and buffer dump efficiencies.

>>
we're a long way off that degree of integrity - and current estimates are 10-15 years unless something radical is discovered in the intervening years.
>>

"Just let me fly for one more generation! I don't care about the guys after me but /please/ I'm not ready to be block-obsolesced! I _LIKE_ driving my aerial ferrari! PLEASE keep me on the federal dole!"

We've heard this ridiculous excuse one too many times now. It's not true. It /hasn't been true/ since the late 60s when Firebees and their derivatives provided the only really useful NRT recce data availaible amidst a veritable horde of 'hours later' manned recce assets.

It /really/ hasn't been true since those same aircraft testflew Maverick and Short-HOBOS to suppress the very AD sights which they previously had only been allowed to take pictures of in the mid-70s.

It's time to stop listening to the manned airpower 'purists' that would screw the world to keep their jobs. And HAVE LOST ANOTHER WAR to prove it.

>>
In 2006, in the Australian govt, any NI critical data is hand delivered. we still do not allow certain data types to go across soft lines. Some poor sod gets a free ride in a designated green or white car and delivers it personally.
>>

And depending on it's classification level, I bet it's still crypted because if it's Strategic Intelligence, any edge you can get in recovery or at least damage control is worthwhile as a function of LONGTERM losses and influence on policy.

But this is a combat system where the value of the data is perishingly small vs. the TWENTY SIX MINUTE AVERAGE FOR _PREFRAGGED_ 'RAPID CAS' DELIVERY OF FIRES.

Which characterized OEF.

How many men died on the ground proving that the most secure data is worthless if it's not timeless because the the platform which exploits it is too expensive and too short-hold limited in it's loiter to make a difference?

I guarantee you it was one man fewer than /should have/. Because UBL would never have been given a 'walk' if 20 UCAVs had been swarming all routes into and out of TB.

>>
The poor old british consulate in canberra took such a hammering from the chinese embassy that it was closed down, electronically vacuumed and rebuilt so as to turn it into a huge 3 story tempest room. That was the only way to stop the chinese embassy from sucking emissions and hijacking electronic data. it was bombarded so much from the chinese that staff were getting sick.
>>

Somebody hammers you in a warzone, you smack them right back.

Different rules for different fools.

>>
UAV's are even harder to secure. The solution is far from being as simple as you portray.
>>

Riiiight. Do be sure and stop by the O'Club to get your free bell ringer.

Myself, it's obvious that the technical solution will _never be found_ so long as the folks in charge are able to compell a refusal to look for it.


KPl.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

Phreeky,

>>
Well all "systems" of information exchange, whether it be "hard" or "soft" have a certain element of risk. When you say "there is no such thing as a secure network", IMO it can be made far more secure than somebody personally delivering information.
>>

Why does information have to be 'exchanged'? Particularly at a real time level of constant 2-way comms?

When I think of an automated FLIR targeting system, I think in terms of 'snapshot animation'. Whereby the UCAV takes multiple pictures of the area and several closeups of the 'obvious bright-hots'. And then sends them as unified (hi-lo resolution) image maps, compressed, to whereever. Given you are using X or Ka bands which have HUGE open blocks of free channel use compared to the clogged C and UHF pipes, you can probably send 1-10mb equivalent (high pixel density) images in just a few seconds.

The console operator on some BMC2 platform then has a look see on his giant 20" monitor and says "Yup! There be dragons!" And cues the target attack on the basis of an overlapping coordinate grid (which matches to what the drone raster-by-raster 'recalls'). Once designated, the target is tracked, even if it moves. And an SDB comes gliding in from upwards of 20nm with little more than a 2-3 seconds of total squirt between them.

Of which half will be 'straight up' to a sattcomms or pseudolite which no theater-based ferret receiver will ever hear.

>>
Online banking is an example of a relatively secure network (relative to most online systems), however if you look at them from a raw "attack from abroad" point of view they're quite insecure compared to a system that doesn't rely on private/public key structures etc (i.e. tables of shared private keys).
>>

What makes any infrastructure system vulnerable is the presumption that it will 'always be there', in both time and space, as an attackable IW target.

You have to FIND the drone before you can kill it. And from height, with modern FLIRs, the horizons are pretty damn wide for an amateur.

>>
However you point that "You don't need to hijack the handoff, all you need to do is dislocate the mission" is completely valid - it would be FAR easier to block transmissions between systems than to intercept, decode, alter, etc.
>>

In OEF, the average for fragged mission (Fragmentary Order, as part of the daily Air Tasking Order) sorties averaged 26 minutes. Unfragged was anywhere from 11-17 hours out.

USAF shooters in particular 'wouldn't waste' a PGM without target confirmation and this meant /added time/, even if they were right overhead.

Comparitively, a 30 second disruption is meaningless.

Men die in war. That's a given. But if you give the enemy half an hour to /walk away/ from the small ambush they've set up, you not only slaughter your own for _nothing_. But you feed their free-kills-for-fame-and-glory coup factor in continuing the war.

What's more, a _UCAV_ (UAVs are unarmed) that is on station, can SEE THE FIGHT DEVELOP. Long before first contact.

>>
Again I don't believe it's all that vulnerable from a information "trust" point of view, just an information delivery reliability point of view.
>>

RF will return from half the distance at which it will reach and ONE QUARTER the distance at which it can be heard. If you have a megawatt class transmitter (as all the new AESAs are headed towards) vs. some putz with perhaps a 25kw jammer, and the antenna on the receiver aiframe is polarized to reject all transmissions except from bearing X and elevation Y, just the height-from-ground on the receiver is going to be enough for an intelligent receiver system using spaced stripline antenna suite to reject the poseur.

>>
More info? What do you define as "breached"?
>>

The nice thing about my system is that the operator cannot 'breach' the commsec because the operator _doesn't load the mission tape_. He says 'bomb the following coordinates' and the console translates this into key crypted go codes.

Similarly, the drone doesn't have clue one what 'Apple' means. Only it's internal comms translates the meaning.

And because there is no OBSERVABLE action from which to pattern a response, it's very hard to say what Apple means now. And utterly irrelevant to what it -will mean- the next time you send the same go code.

>>
I still strongly believe UAVs will never play a primary role in combat. Great for fixed ground targets, and especially good where you don't want to risk big dollar planes (and pilots) over high-risk airspace to bomb a bunch of bunkers etc, but that's it.
>>

Then you have absolutely no damn idea why U_C_AVs are vital to prosecuting a modern war.

1. You can't hit targets you aren't over-X terrain channelizer or activity hotbed to acquire and where there are DOZENS of such 'collocation' TCT modifiers in a given threats battlespace; you have to _saturate_ with the cheapest, most endurant, system you can.

2. With small IAM and world wide media, one can no longer simply bomb the crap out of a society until they give up their strongman rather than face living in stone age conditions. Indeed the entire notion of wasting a bomb on an _empty_ structural target which you /know/ has zero military value is instantly obsolesced when you can hit the warfighter IN THE FIELD. Because the loss of that warfighter renders the politician or commander who controls him worthless _just as fast_ as the use of C2 and infrastructure hits to 'demoralize = demonize' him in the face of his bankers if not his people. You literally cannot inspire a war when your field commanders are DEAD.

>>
As for AI etc, well I hate the term. Computer software, whether classed as AI or not, is ultimately just a bunch of algorithms. "AI" used, well the ones with any reliable results, are typically based on quite simple learning systems for extremely specific tasks and on strict parameters. It's a VERY, VERY long way off doing anything other than maintaining an aircrafts attitude and following flight paths (the best it'll do is probably learn to cope with difficult environmental conditions).
>>

I don't think I said AI. I said autopilot. I know how limited an 'expert system' can and must be and while it is fully possible to design UCAVs to be fully autonomous in many roles (ironically, A2A first and foremost) I am willing to accept that MITL for Gen-1 is 'wise' from the political as much as technological standpoint.

That said, there will be elements of the /internal/ mission hardware which function with near-AI levels of auto target classification and tactical analysis (is this target worth reporting now or do I wait?) and the very functional effectiveness of this (machine optics can recognize target signatures on a detector-pixel-by-pixel basis /long/ before they are obvious on a tiny 5X5 or even 6X8 inch MFD) will go a long ways towards minimizing the data choke and securing the bandpipe of remote systems operation, simply because the amount of time spent in active transmission will itself be minimized.

CONCLUSION:
None of the above is 'beyond the SOA'. In fact much of it is already applied or soon will be in the JSF. The difference is that the airpower advocates like to minimalize the functional effects of low mission and DCO costs + long endurance as 'secondary to the MITL effect' of can-do-everything systems design. And by doing so, they simply assure that a jet with the same basic MEP of aperture+pylon+LINK as _any UCAV_ would also have to have. Is further ruined by the assumption of 'fighterism' which adds air to air capabilities and manned-structural/control redundancies utterly needless in a _bomber_ airframe.

We've lost the war in Iraq. Any reasonable assessment of why that is will have to START with the number of overhead sorties available, on a day to day basis, to generate ISR targeting as well as direct support for troops at risk. Hopefully the _underemphasis_ on the 'must be at the fight to win it' will be reassessed on a total sorties generated and total airtime spent at the target area basis of redefining how we win the fights that matter.

Rather than plan for the high intensity campaigns which simply don't occur.


KPl.

 

[gf0012-aust]

How many times was a Predator 'intercepted', at height, by a SAM in OIF? In Kosovo? 'Intercepting' a prebriefed mission upload being impossible at the electronic level, most particularly if they don't know where the farking thing _physically_ is.

Something highly probable in a _UCAV_ designed for D1/R1 penetration.

The simple fact of the matter is that the USAF was against arming UAVs in 1996. And we missed UBL, twice, because of it. The USAF now 'likes the Predator!' (with gritted teeth) but only because it is non-threatening powered sailplane technology in an age defined by multiple hundred-foot-second EM globals that make anything NOT jet powered with swept wings either 'sufficiently stood off' or _a designated morte_.

Since the UAVs are sent in to do the dirty dumb dangerous mission set /anyway/ (the fast jet jockeys being too busy coordinating their next round of golf or too scared pissless to volunteer the UAAU sortie) it is hardly surprising that they get shot down.

But if you pull some Sky Knight teeth and let a _UCAV_ be designed as it should be (LO+DAS+GBU-39+EOTS/XTRA), most of the 'intercept' problem goes right the heck away.

I'm talking about risk mitigation - and yet you're taking a flippant attitude because you assume that I'm a manned platform fanatic - I'm not. I'm pointing out issues of risk. What you seem to be so blase' about is apparently not what others dealing with unmanned platforms think.

Tell me how. Tell me how you intercept a line of sight comms system equal to the RF equivalent of a pocket-sun with a total synch-to-burst interval of perhaps 4 seconds sending a datapacket that comes down to maybe 10 operative words in a go-code list that WILL NOT REPEAT FOR A **MILLION TIMES**?]

for the last 5 years USAF and DSTO staff have been looking at australian tech that is based on light beam transmission. I think we and they might have a clue as to whats going on.

which means diddly squat all when all the damn assets are 'little green car' isolated on the same bloody base where everything is ALSO 'walk it out to the airframe' _secure_ because they do it with MANNED ASSETS already!

huh? no, it demonstrates a confidence level in the sanctity of the system - and which is incidentally the same procedures that the US uses for particular data sets.

Bluetooth the sucker! Bypass the morons who exist to reinforce their own corrupt mission role.

Bluetooth comms to a UAV? Its short range to a radii of feet/metres. Bluetooth what?

Which is your way of not-explaining why it DOES WORK.

again, these processes already exist - and they are no guarantee of total and safe compliance. Apart from the fact that some comms is actively hopping, there are some hardwired assets that forcibly change their access codes every 5-15 minutes (eg). Its not a new technique. Its process intensive.

How many megawatts behind the transmitter? How close did the monitoring agency 'know' it was to the spoofed receiver? Yes, there will be synch intervals. NO there doesn't have to be a 'reply, in stream' to associate a broken LINK disruption with. Because the reply can either be staggered in time or go _up_ to a satellite or pseudolite.

All's that drone has to do is take dictation.

And if you can't spot the UCAV because it is BOTH optically and RF _LOW OBSERVABLE_, to the threshold extent which a 20nm glidebomb allows 'effective invisiblity', how much do you really expect some Afghan dushman on his bloody damn camel is going to to be able to rig a solution with _his_ 'COTS from Gateway' hardware?

and the US is always going to be going to war with an unsophisticated player?

And so rather than have effective, proactive, 'test to see how much the bad guys know we know' COUNTER INTELLIGENCY EFFORT you choose to limit yourself to bombing static structural targets /which we all know/ is -so sucks-to-excess full at winning day to day wars with monkey forces that are about as technologically sophisticated as an orangutuan on LSD.

But can at least vanish in a flash amidst a horde of other swing-armed 'innocents'.

again - do you think that all of your future opponents will not invest in hi quality counters? assuming that all of your future enemies will be simian in technological motor skills borders on hubris.

Rather than /assign expertise/ to a bunch of needled necked pencil pushers 'at a conference you dare not name', why not APPLY your own in defining exactly wherein the system as I described it is non functional, STARTING with locating the drone and obviating the sender on a target signature to broadcast mode basis of 'who's on first' predefinition of the hack?

Surely if 'everybody knows everything' applies then there is no natsec or proprietary prohibition against a 'general point by point counter argument' as I have given you?

well, let me genuflect before you as I'm obviously in the imperiouis gaze of someone who knows it all - and here I was thinking that there was always more to learn. The willingness to dismiss others who run contrarian to your view is always a way to demonstrate open and honest analysis - NOT. Do we just accept everything else you say as gospel and assume that anyone who might offer the merest glimpse of a question is a luddite?

So if an F-117 (or an F-22 for that matter) loses all onboard comms, it is 'obligated to scream help' when the digital tether dies 30 seconds out from target in the heart of the threat WEZ?

Riiiight.

By your definition, it's no wonder 'everyone knows everything' about our commsec, as every jet out there must be a veritable lighthouse of overactive emissions.

well, its pretty apparent that sarcasm is prefixing your capacity too look at the crux of my message - UAV's that go into a disconnect do go into a pattern of recovery behaviour - and that pattern if intercepted is identifiable. whether that safety mode is significant and/or compromises other assets is always going to be mission specific. trivialising it doesn''t lessen the reality of it.

Water doesn't take to RF very well. Last I heard, ELF was still at about 1/mbit second and 10MW per sending. Of course even this has more relevance than 'sound as an omni sample' when compared with directional microwave half a dozen /miles/ above the terrestrial ferrets listening post.

thats probably why NAVSEA have been working on blue laser comms and pulsed comms for the last 8 years - but hey thats a sub issue and what would I know.

Apples to Orangutuans.

seriously sport - you need to develop some manners and learn how to debate without resorting to a real time demonstration of simian behaviour. It's an example - all examples are relevant.

Oh please. Go outside. LOOK THEE THE HELL UP.

Is the sky raining airliners on you Chicken Little? No?!? How many contrails? 1? 2? 5?

again - learn to debate without resorting to infantile responses. its not needed - and does nothing to contribute to an attempt to debate at a quality level rather than that of an idealogue.

We've heard this ridiculous excuse one too many times now. It's not true. It /hasn't been true/ since the late 60s when Firebees and their derivatives provided the only really useful NRT recce data availaible amidst a veritable horde of 'hours later' manned recce assets.

funny that both DARPA and NAVSEA regard bandwidth management as an issue - are Grumman blowing smoke up our fundamentals when they give us the GH debriefs about existent problems in coping with what data to collect, what to send, and how to send it so that its intelligible?

It's time to stop listening to the manned airpower 'purists' that would screw the world to keep their jobs. And HAVE LOST ANOTHER WAR to prove it.

well, your assumption is wrong - I'm not a manned power purist - and the people talking to us about GH and Mariner are obviously unmanned advocates. I assume that they're trying to get their solutions in place - we don't have a manned mafia talking to us about UAV's and BAMS. In fact BAMs was a RAAF driven concept.

I guarantee you it was one man fewer than /should have/. Because UBL would never have been given a 'walk' if 20 UCAVs had been swarming all routes into and out of TB.

you use what you have - you shrink the decision making loop as much as possible. eg the Russian unmanned solution was to use a Toschka battlefield rocket launched within 15 minutes of triangulation. 50km/15 mins and one dead Chechyan leader and support staff. You "run what you brung"

Riiiight. Do be sure and stop by the O'Club to get your free bell ringer.

Myself, it's obvious that the technical solution will _never be found_ so long as the folks in charge are able to compell a refusal to look for it.


KPl.

seriously - you need to work out a way to have a discussion without coming across as a pontificating "know it all".

the whole idea of generalised discussion is to test the water, test concepts within a legitimate discussion range and to get your point across so that free exchange occurs rather than becoming an exercise in adversarial combat.

if the answers were that easy - then we'd be way past test and theory and into GA release. Its an evolving technology - and will always be an evolving technology as the solutions are finessed and as the enemy becomes smarter.

I'd hate to go into any form of combat assuming that because I loved my technology and loved the methodology behind it that the enemy was just sitting there ready for a pasting as they were "orangutans"

 

[Big-E]

UAV flights can be pre-planned just like waypoints are added to an aircraft computer before a mission.

Pre-planned does not just mean waypoints... it means actual engagement of air or ground targets. That process will always be at the hands of an operator. Unmanned will never truly be unmanned. It isn't a fire and forget weapon.

 

[Ths]

Smitty: I don't think it is a either/or.

The F-18 for the USNavy are probably due to unexpected wear and tear.

Can the US (and their allies) afford sufficient number of F-35? Of course not; but the alternative is to let the opposition breathe again, and that is even more expensive.
Jimmy Carter let the US military decay in the teeth of Soviet armaments race - hoping the the Soviets would see the light that they were ruining themselves, they didn't. It was just in time Ronald Reagan said: "To hell with the balance of trade." A great part of the current foreign debt problem is due to Carter as he probably postponed the Soviet collaps and made it more expensive for the USA as Reagan had to start at a lower basis.

As to UAC's. In so far as aircombat, they are very much a pie in the sky. You don't gamble the nations security on even the best of theories.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

GF0012,
>>
I'm talking about risk mitigation - and yet you're taking a flippant attitude because you assume that I'm a manned platform fanatic - I'm not. I'm pointing out issues of risk. What you seem to be so blase' about is apparently not what others dealing with unmanned platforms think.
>>

Maybe because I don't /insist/ of seeing them 'in a new light' which suddenly ups the requirement for constant-tether ops but merely enforces the same data-useage as is already present within manned users of netcentric comms. If the UCAV is autonomous-as-silent but for random interval reporting of targets of interest that _it_ sees from multiple tens of miles slant-out then the opportunity for exploiting the LINK is itself minimal.
The Red Baron himself said: "Let them go out and tool about as they wish, given only that, when they find an enemy, they attack him. Anything else is rubbish."
While you obviously cannot be completely random in your coverage, with the example I made of 'what to do with 200 sorties in a single coverage day' on a 15 vs. 6 hour mission window, you can achieve a great deal more offset-from-this-road and around-and-around-this-city than is now possible with manned systems.

>>
for the last 5 years USAF and DSTO staff have been looking at Australian tech that is based on light beam transmission. I think we and they might have a clue as to whats going on.
>>

Does it go through weather? The farthest I've ever heard one of the new DP laser designators working is on the order of 25nm. Does this mean you have to adhoc a network using node:node extension? If the answer is 'No and Yes' to each, then the technique is _worthless_ as a replacement for RF based comms and you are better off solving what you know as the extant problem rather than adopting new ones.
This is NOT applicable to the manned/unmanned issue because the baby onboard will simply -never- gain enough endurance and flight-hours cost trading to be leverageable against the robot.

>>
huh? no, it demonstrates a confidence level in the sanctity of the system - and which is incidentally the same procedures that the US uses for particular data sets.
>>

So effectively what your saying is that your argument is bunk and you know it because the ONE THING that airpower-to-the-rear /allows for/ is the collocation of logistics and mission planning in a centralized C4ISR junction that _is secure_ whether the up and away birdie is robotic or not, the nest is unassailable as a common tranfer point of 'one plan, jointly held'.

>>
Bluetooth comms to a UAV? Its short range to a radii of feet/metres. Bluetooth what?
>>

Bluetooth as an _adhoc network_ which is specific to the application.
Which was the original definition of the term.

>>
again, these processes already exist - and they are no guarantee of total and safe compliance. Apart from the fact that some comms is actively hopping, there are some hardwired assets that forcibly change their access codes every 5-15 minutes (eg). Its not a new technique. Its process intensive.
>>

Which is your way of admitting that it works because it is not simply 'process intensive' it is isolative to the lines of sight and rate of use that you can in fact implement a sampling and corruption/jamming scheme against.
i.e. No Bogeymen. Just the fears of the mighty manned air uber alles groups to admit that what they themselves _depend on_ /everyday/ is in fact the superior basis of a robotic equivalent which functions better without their direct presence cludging up the system.

>>
and the US is always going to be going to war with an unsophisticated player?
>>

And the U.S. is always going to be so stupid as to fail to take out IW exponents of a 'sophisticated' threat with whatever means are necessary?
Not least of which is a 'silent running' initial EM usage posture that equates every _truck_ to a high altitude cruise missile with landing gear and separable sub warheads?
Also-
>
ESM is an important technology for UCAVs in the SEAD mission. In 1990, the state-of-the-art in combat ESM was the Litton Amecom ALD-11, a system that weighed more than 700kg and cost tens of millions of dollars, but could locate and identify a radar emitter in real time. Smaller, compact radar warning receiver (RWR) systems could provide only a rough bearing measurement. In the past few years, however, the EW industry has made great strides in creating small, low-cost receiver systems which provide full-scale ESM capabilities for the weight and cost of an RWR.

The UCAV system is intended to use co-operative tactics to locate and destroy targets. Although their ESM sensors will have some ability to provide precision location data, a pair of UCAVs will be able to pin down a target's position more quickly and more accurately if they each detect it from different angles. Operational UCAVs will use a 'spotlight' synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to help positively identify targets and further refine their location data: tactically, it may make sense for one UCAV to pop-up and image the target while its robotic wingman delivers the weapon. The key, says Col Leahy, is to make sure that the UCAV team can do this within a timeline defined by the threat's ability to move. Block 2 tests will cover preemptive and reactive SEAD; the latter tests will include manned aircraft to show that the UCAV can effectively escort the manned strikers.
>
http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/idr/idr010504_1_n.shtml

Lest we forget that the /original/ mission of the type, before the USN and USAF -bastardized- the original DARPA effort was already 'emissions intensive' as a function of hammering whatever dared raise it's ugly head to be nailed.

>>
again - do you think that all of your future opponents will not invest in hi quality counters? assuming that all of your future enemies will be simian in technological motor skills borders on hubris.
>>

I think that the Air Power Services would sell us a bill of goods on the necessity of being able to face the 'ultimate threat' while continuing to lose the 70%-of-all-real-wars-are-LOICs majority of battles because they cannot secure OUR forces with constant, saturative, overhead presence against /barbarians/ whose notion of 'tech savvy' is a Samsung video recorder to bounty-proof their sniper kills.
That said, there will ALWAYS be tit-for-tatting.
Ultimately, the only way to secure the system front-end-to-back will be with TRUE AI driven internal-to-airframe command capabilities that apply cognitive verifications to scenario models in determining 'good target or bad' without external handhold on the leash.
But for now, the basics of 'fly to X look at the ground and send me any contact reports' is inherently achievable and SIMPLE because 'the threat' has a damnable time defending even the 20,000ft bubble of airspace right atop his hairy head. And we can see him 20 miles down range of that.
What junior doesn't know is physically tracking his sorry ass, he WILL NOT 'look for' as an EM spectrum threat. Most particularly when he /still/ cannot get the LOS look angles to pick up the _intermittent_ LINK traffic directly.

>>
well, let me genuflect before you as I'm obviously in the imperious gaze of someone who knows it all - and here I was thinking that there was always more to learn. The willingness to dismiss others who run contrarian to your view is always a way to demonstrate open and honest analysis - NOT. Do we just accept everything else you say as gospel and assume that anyone who might offer the merest glimpse of a question is a luddite?
>>

The problem with accepting 'expert' opinions is that they will seek to reinforce the system which taught them and funds them to find opinions in agreement with their own establishment beliefs.
The sadness is that you attempt to flip the very logic I used against your torpid argument and assume that nobody notices the casual brush off by which you 'skip the details' of what data security in a 'milspec' TACTICAL environment really comes down to.

>>
well, its pretty apparent that sarcasm is prefixing your capacity too look at the crux of my message - UAV's that go into a disconnect do go into a pattern of recovery behaviour - and that pattern if intercepted is identifiable. whether that safety mode is significant and/or compromises other assets is always going to be mission specific. trivialising it doesn''t lessen the reality of it.
>>

Only if the idiots who use them enforce a manned control function which itself is less a redundant safety factor than a moronic excuse to justify their own cockpit-presence _vulnerability_.
You have to see the victim to dazzle his RF reception with enough power to 'override the shine' of a megawatt class antenna. Even one several hundred km away from the receiver. You _cannot_ hear comms which are X/Ka as primary CDL bands linearized away from your intercept receivers. If the platform is itself LO and stood off, HOW DO YOU POINT THE JAMMER?
Furthermore, losing LINK for 30 seconds is /nothing/ if it buys you an SDB or JCM to the forehead for your troubles /and then/ the aircraft goes right back to defending the force or attacking the threat IT CAN SEE because they are predictably following a physical approach path that intersects with the sensor graze it has preestablished at a given target area. Or the ground forces whose own routes and phaseline objectives are 'known to us'.
Humans being such bloody slow herd animals that they have no damn clue how LONG they are _dead_ before they ever get into position to threaten or choke-navigate another agent or terrestrial object under COP'd observation. That window is what WE would use to decide when and whether they got to die before they proved their intent by attacking. As an alternative to 'dying tired' when they got back to whatever intermediate staging point gives the most-witnesses to their ultimate victimization.
TERRORISM IS AN OPERATIVE TOOL THAT WORKS BOTH WAYS.
With UCAVs-as-COP we can simply be a little more selective in it's application.

>>
thats probably why NAVSEA have been working on blue laser comms and pulsed comms for the last 8 years - but hey thats a sub issue and what would I know.
>>

Indeed, you attempt to divert attention with unrelated secondary subjects while defrocking yourself of secondary relevance to the _topic at hand_. Namely that underwater comms comes with preconditional environmental restrictions that /completely/ invalidates the application of RF and RF security measures.

>>
seriously sport - you need to develop some manners and learn how to debate without resorting to a real time demonstration of simian behaviour. It's an example - all examples are relevant.
>>

Only when they are cogent to the discussion at hand. Rather than PROVE why your distractory debate tactic is so applicable, 'through further elucidation' you choose to insult my intelligence further by assuming a Miss Manners lecturing tone. Prove What You Say Or Go The Bleep Away.

>>
again - learn to debate without resorting to infantile responses. its not needed - and does nothing to contribute to an attempt to debate at a quality level rather than that of an idealogue.
>>

Except that it's completely on-topic relevant to your notion of what has now (in desperation) branched from /spectrum security/ to -airspace usage- rules. Prove What You Say Or Go The Bleep Away.

>>
funny that both DARPA and NAVSEA regard bandwidth management as an issue - are Grumman blowing smoke up our fundamentals when they give us the GH debriefs about existent problems in coping with what data to collect, what to send, and how to send it so that its intelligible?
>>

Global Hawk is a strategic intelligence gathering platform whose singular _Non LO_ presence and constant, high datarate, handoffs make it an obvious target for counter exploitation.
It is also a generals toy because it simply is not available in the numbers at the band use pipe width to cover wide areas _instantaneously_ as a function of mosaic vice spotlight/swath ISR.
If you want to prosecute TCT targets as they come to bear under your sights, you had damn well better BE THERE with the aperture _prepointed_ to see them come into view. Where that happens _passively_ (relative to open-channel relays vice mission tape annotated targets) on a LO asset in the confusion and EM saturation of a full scale tactical air action, ALL the preconditions which effect GHawk go right the hell out the window.
So stop baby and bathwatering me because it is /yet another/ apples to orangutuans argument you preach to cover up the whining of "Please, don't slay our heroic images!" Skyknight defense.

>>
well, your assumption is wrong - I'm not a manned power purist - and the people talking to us about GH and Mariner are obviously unmanned advocates. I assume that they're trying to get their solutions in place - we don't have a manned mafia talking to us about UAV's and BAMS. In fact BAMs was a RAAF driven concept.
>>

Of course you are. Because you assign comparitive value to an endurant single-aperture approach against _high signature value, open background_ targets as a HIGH INTENSITY based approach to an unattractive ASST mission which would otherwise be flown by 'unattractive thus unaffordable as soon as possible' P-3/P-8 type assets.
Attempting to cross polinate the conditions of one mission set to another while 'pretending to care' about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT operating scenarios of cheap-airpower-NOW as a tactical, armed, standoff presence over an active battlefield is indeed moronic.
Because one is a 'pure' ISR mission with matching banduseage and datarate saturation problems. And the other threatens the manned airpower uber alles idiots as a direct 'road recce' kill system replacement.

>>
you use what you have - you shrink the decision making loop as much as possible. eg the Russian unmanned solution was to use a Toschka battlefield rocket launched within 15 minutes of triangulation. 50km/15 mins and one dead Chechyan leader and support staff. You "run what you brung"
>>

Rumsfeld used that argument and look what it 'brung' him to. The sad part being that a UCAV is STILL closer to the 'ideal platform' to run a COMINT system with sufficient vertical look angle to find a satellite phone in between the hills and valleys that the AfG billy goats spring so merrily. The Russian approach, aside from being typical Tzar Pushkan in it's sledgehammer-a-gnat COSTS would never have gained the look angles to isolate the signal using ground based RDF intercept.
OTOH, a manned tacair asset doesn't carry such an intercept system simply because, with babies onboard, _it just isn't there long enough_ to create timeless (seamless overlapping corporate as constant monitoring) as much as 'timely' data sample. In furtherance of which a FLIR or Radar patch map might confirm that there are 'no collaterals in a stone age society who just happen to be innocently employing 21st century mobile communications'. Said no-innocents as 2-eyes-on targeting rule the Russians are ALSO not saddled with.
More easily defeated distractory debate tactics. I'm disappointed with you.

>>
seriously - you need to work out a way to have a discussion without coming across as a pontificating "know it all".
>>

Hey, when you /refuse/ to reply on topic with disproofs to the SPECIFIC methodologies I have outlined, who are you to blame me for being impatient with your own 'delay, digress and sideline' psychologies?

>>
the whole idea of generalised discussion is to test the water, test concepts within a legitimate discussion range and to get your point across so that free exchange occurs rather than becoming an exercise in adversarial combat.
>>

BTDT. Doesn't work. The 'pontificating' comes from manned tacair bigots who give one pat-pat (there there teddy bear) liners about how it can 'never be so because', and then refuse to explain _in depth_ why their response never applies to the specific scenario and commo architecture I have just outlined. The Reason Being that there IS NO EXCUSE for what they deny solely to maintain a Skyknight aristocracy of 'just the way it is thanks' inefficient, ineffective, NON FUNCTIONAL airpower. It is staticist and establishmentarianist to the worst possible degree.
At which point 'generalized' discussion becomes synonomous with a way to bury legitimate followon supplantation systems under a mound of unrelated 'baseline technologies not applications' BS.

>>
if the answers were that easy - then we'd be way past test and theory and into GA release. Its an evolving technology - and will always be an evolving technology as the solutions are finessed and as the enemy becomes smarter.
>>

...

 

[Kurt Plummer]

...

Which is why people talk L16 when TTNT is already at twice the data rates. Why it has taken TWENTY DAMN YEARS longer than it should have to open up the radar bands to 'more than targeting' directional, high data rate, commo channelizing. Why nobody will acknowledge what EIGHT BOMBS ONBOARD /means/ relative to this scenario-

>
Traffic Jam
The result was a traffic jam of aircraft clogged up in CAS stacks. Frustration abounded. While the overall volume of strikes in the V Corps area was high, and increasing daily through March, it was taking too long to run air strike missions in that area. Some aircrews were turned back without dropping their bombs even as commanders worked to increase the pressure on the Republican Guards and other units.
>
http://www.afa.org/magazine/june2004/0604marine.asp

As well as to future 'alinear' ops in which there is NO FSCL/BCL or SCAR capability to coordinate CAS or Kill Box fires in because the DAMN MONKEY JETS ARE NOT THERE TO LOITER ABOUT PLAYING KILLER SCOUT.
You cannot 'go deep and hit everywhere' at a /tactical level/ without adopting UCAV as the Mohammed Ali approach to being both the butterfly and the bee _on scene_. With an asset that has the legs and absent pee-interval to generate targets on a mosaic basis of total coverage over time.
This is so /blatantly/ obvious that wasting a fools money on the JSF as the kill-chain ultimate effector is just a Complete Joke.

>>
I'd hate to go into any form of combat assuming that because I loved my technology and loved the methodology behind it that the enemy was just sitting there ready for a pasting as they were "orangutans"
>>

Do not mistake 'respect' of your enemy as an opponent with the excuse to endorse yourself as the weakest element of a COMBINED ISR/Strike system which is the only way to /find/ the man to kick his ass to begin with. In this, I think 'Geronimo' had some _really good lines_ for the kinds of battle we now fight:

>
I just figure you're a real sad case. You don't love who you're fighting for... ...and you don't hate who you're fighting against.
...your Apache rides a horse to death and eats him and steals another. I mean, the horse is just mobile food. I've chased them when they made 30 miles a day on horse and foot. Hell, they can live on cactus, go hours without water. I mean, one week of that would kill your average trooper.
I hear you can track as good as any Apache.
That's right, but there's only one of me and square miles of Apache country.
No one knows why the One God let the White-Eye take our land. Why did there have to be so many of them? Why did they have so many guns, so many horses? For many years, the One God made me a warrior. No gun, no bullets, could ever kill me. That was my power... Now my time is over. Now, maybe, the time of our people is over.
>

A contempt of your enemy does not relinquish your respect of his fighting methods. It provides an insight into how to destroy them. IF you have the /guts/ to become 'more than one tracker' as a function of changing your own ways of fighting to defeat his. As you fight the war you have.

CONCLUSION:
As I have long foreseen, given the arrogance of our assumption that these people were our equals and deserved to be be 'immediately emancipated' to more than the level which they _earned_ with civilized behavior, we have lost the war in Iraq.
It is only a matter of time before the 'terrorist' enemy shifts assets to AfG and begins a similar battle of 'attrition as a morality play' such as will make Chechniya look positively clean by comparison. While we have the marginal excuse that Iraq was 'not our war' by reason of false sureties of commitment, AfG, worthless hole that it is, is symbolic of the righteousness of outrage by which we dislodged the instigator of 9/11. Without success there, there will be no 'defining cultural moment' which puts the (Western) value of achieved goals in THIS life ahead of a martyrs blackmail in securing his place in the next.
Yet as we lose face in that place, as 'excesses and incidents' of desperation and frustration give focus to the accusations of an enemy that engineers them, our NATO 'Allies' and the consensus of moral right they represent will fade from us as they always have.
Our basein rights in the Russian Republics and flythrough equivalent over Pakistan will evaporate as easy-access assurance of overwhelming firepower. And we will again be left alone with a threat in whose constant veiled shadow we walk in open company.
At which point, victory will depend on the simplest of notions: Never Die For Nothin'. Never give an adolescent coup driven societal psychology a _single inch_ of free-kills-for-all ability to justify desultorily ambush and assassination as a sporting war. Not only against OUR forces but against those who measure our strength in defending them as a function of Hague Article 42/43 oversight of a defeated nation.
For those are the ones who must be hearts and minds convinced of OUR POWER before they consider applying 'our model' of alternate acceptable behavior to their present everyday exploitationist existence.
In this it is critical to acknowledge that insurgencies are built, not on the successes of the underdogs but the failures to kick them down and constantly beat and humiliate them before those from whom they would recruit. The populace of poor nations can afford but one overlord and they will choose the one whose surest victory will remove the need to support each, by turns of 'presence', in their lives.
The UCAV represents the ability to render that presence, _Continuously Overhead_ viable. At minimum exposure to ground forces. Maximum depth-of-play coverage on-approach by a 'maneuvering' enemy. And with short reaction to time-critical 'cross the border and wear new clothes' threats that vanish within seconds of the onset of their desultory attacks. Never holding ground. Never doing more than instigate terror as disruptive chaos.
SPEAK TO THAT URGENT NEED. With the kinds of equal-funded commitment that is being misapplied to the JSF as 'billions upon billions'. USING the commo architectural methods and doctrinal leverage as I suggested. And you can resolve the unmanned secure connectivity issue. Fail to do so and this nation will die in a pool of it's vented economic blood. As everything U.S. everywhere will become instantly victimizable based on our displayed failure to protect even ONE deployed force in the field.
From the simplest of threats. A gnat can't kill you until the drawn blood brings a swarm of it's fellows.

KPl.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

Mod edit: I'm sick and tired of your racist and derogatory comments, towards ANYONE bar the US. I'm also sick of your ignorant and disrespectful attitude towards other posters. Continue it and you will be banned from here permanently. You won't take heed to warnings via PM, so HEED this. AD.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

THS,

>>
As to UAC's. In so far as aircombat, they are very much a pie in the sky. You don't gamble the nations security on even the best of theories.
>>

It never would be. It would be the 'legacy platform' (preferrable as a twinstick) running a spread of A2A UCAVs if not TurboAAM like a hunter runs dogs. With an 'if not in the air then through the HAS roof' endgame for even a half-million dollar MALI type followon.

That said, AIM-120D and Meteor would not evaporate. The F-22 would not instantly disappear. The ABL would not 'cease to be' as THE Air Supremacy tool to beat.

UCAVs can be dual-axis rated to G loads far beyond what _another missile_ could adequately track. They can make multiple passes which a conventional AAM /cannot/. They _do not_ have to carry more than a gun, if that, to still be rabid-lemmings monstrous threats. A single spun-detector MAWS-as-SAIRST 'each hemisphere' looking through a fixed aperture can provide equal if not superior dogfight tracking to a man and ALL his radar/EO/ELS gear, given only that a formation of 20 drones at 10nm spacing is pointed in the right general direction and can give a single tally ho/wl to bring down the pack.

NO GOLDPLATE FOR IT'S OWN 'MULTIMISSION = MANNED JUSTIFICATION' SAKE!

Your own coldwar economics argument proves how the U.S. is now in the position of /wanting/ the world to 'play along' and the world, busy making themselves rich under our aegis, is simply not interested in taking the bait.

Not everyone is as stupid as the Russkians once were. Including the modern day Russkians.

If we _insist_ on playing world cop and designated leg breaker, we'd better be willing to do one of two things:

A. Accomplish it on the cheap.
10 billion dollars buys 20,000 Turbo-AAMs, what realistic force
count of like-cost F-35s could /possibly/ compare to the 'free
kamikaze dive onto designated alternate target' FIGHTER force that
that kind of inventory provides as a dual role powered IAM/AAM?
B. Make the conquered pay tribute.
To justify the otherwise worthless existence of the military in
a "What 'peace dividend' if not for the ROW in exclusion of U.S.?"
world scene. Which is what Iraq should have been openly admitted
to the Arabs from the start. So that they 'each and everyone'
understood the costs of siding with those who instigated 9/11, as
shared-tarring 'religious endorsement'.

Faulty arguments based on specious logic, 'looking for a reason' to endorse manned air uber alles irrespective of the literal cost.


KPl.

 

[Big-E]

Why you /insist/ on applying the 'operator' certificate as proof of vulnerability without _addressing_ how a monkey force (or one in full-rout) that DOES NOT KNOW THEY ARE BEING TARGETED can attack the LINK architecture of an intermittent, crypto-secure and line of sight hard to target LO 'node' operating largely in dumb-terminal broadcast mode is what makes your argument specious and manned-centric bigoted.


KPl.

Your myopic view of future conflict is blinding you to the REAL threat. Those "monkey forces" are not the primary purpose of UCAV... it is to enter high-threat environments and carry out missions where lives need not be risked. Those future high threat environments will also be backed with similar technological capabilities that potentially can hack those safeguards. My point is that as long as the operator is still involved control can be lost. The only way to have 100% safety is to pre-program the ENTIRE mission... which will NEVER happen.

It's time to stop listening to the manned airpower 'purists' that would screw the world to keep their jobs. And HAVE LOST ANOTHER WAR to prove it.

It is your neo-con attitude that has gotten us into this quandry to begin with. Your ideological chums continue to feed the beast with laissez fair trade that will allow them to field technology that will cripple or even subvert your precious UCAV revolution. They continue to except that technology is the way to win ground wars when infact it is just plain manpower. Intelligence has put HUMINT on the backburner in favor of unmanned means. Quit trying to take people out of the picture... that is why we lost.