Could anyone explain how the link between ground controller and UCAV works, eg what form of communication?
My concern is that the uplink be disrupted just imagine a proud squadron of UCAV's fly off to battle and oops the jamming switches on and they all plumet to the earth :shudder
This may be far fetched but feel free to enlighten me O knowledgeable ones.
Robsta83,
Humans are more vulnerable to 'jamming' than electronics are, if only because voice is the most responsive of tactical communications formats but also the biggest band and transmission length hog of the ether.
Given nobody has 'publically' created a system which can sample and emulate a given speech pattern within a short period window, there remains the viability of 'knowing your friend' by the sound of his voice.
But if you can't hear /anything/ you remain screwed.
Now, having said that, anything which lights off can be smoked. This includes jammers with sufficient output to threaten standard UHF comms. Indeed, it is vastly more common to have your own team saturate the useable bands than the enemy.
OTOH, if the spectrum goes completely white and you remain afraid of the ability of your UCAV force to sort sheep from goats*, there is still no reason you cannot use you skybots as recoverable cruise missiles, destroying static targets.
Wars are won by making it clear that your enemy cannot live if he continues. The easiest way to do that is to target FIXED infrastructure like power plants, oil refineries, water treatment sites and TV/Radio broadcast towers. Yes, even Yugo factories.
"It's all good" then being the operative tense because anything you do to a 'faceless enemy' which does not /quite/ take his life directly, is justifiable on the the notion of a demonizing propoganda in place against 'the system not the people'.
And unless your enemy can target overhead surveillance and NAVSTAR, he cannot prevent you from sending your bots in to pin-tail-on-donkey using predetermined radar or optical fixpoints to correlate own positioning with those of the satellite surveyed targets. Accurate within inches and typically passive so 'unjammable'.
Past this, you have to realize the Penlight vs. Search Light effect as well. Jamming being best applied when 'spot' targeted both by frequency and directional strobe location. If the threat is stealthy, stood off and operating pure-passive in what is called 'broadcast mode' (ala TV reception) you cannot direct anything directly at it.
OTOH, the majority of what is called the 'CDL' or Common Data Link architecture is oriented towards the X and Ka bands (moving away from UHF and even C band which are now garbaged up by civillian comms). X band is specifically that used by fighter radars and these units base power output and antenna gain levels are _very_ high.
Even as they are directional.
Given that any RF transmission will travel roughly four times as far as it will generate a return on, the ability of a 'jammer' to defeat a searchlight on the horizon with a penlight of equivalent power is very limited. Not simply by it's own ERPs level shortfall, but because the message RECEIVER can say "I will accept no transmissions from below this relative local horizon angle and azimuth bearing".
The question then becomes one of the UCAVs sending up their own "I am here." location to a satellite or pseudolite (HALE type UAV acting as an 'instant orbit' comms relay at 60-70,000ft). Which then is fed across a secure network to a CAOC or similar (ground or airborne) command asset that decides what modified action, if any, needs to be taken. This then is fed back up to an emitter (in secure airspace with a LOT of power) which talks to the drone because it /knows/ (from the satellite/GPS feed) where it is in the sky.
And 'talking' between aircraft using CDL type architecture is _very fast_. As fast or faster than a T1 connection over landline. 70MB worth of radar map in 2-3 seconds speedy.
Last but not least, there are a lot of anti-hack mods you can put into play.
1. Bury it in noise.
ISISOIRWRUIWROWI(F)()*(
SF@#$FWFOWR@$@SDSAASFER@PPASLE)
Somewhere in there is a key phrase 'Apple'.
If you can find it, you know that the enemy has just told it's combat unit to 'do Apple'.
2. Single Use Go Codes.
Say Apple means go to waypoint X and hold there. Does it mean that for every UCAV out there? No. Will it mean that for THIS drone if you send the command again? No. Not for at least a million times. Such is the advantage of a digital memory able to store and annotate HUGE lists of 'do this' coded commands. It need never obey the same command again. Go to waypoint X and loiter might be 'Sea Breeze' next time.
And so, EVEN IF you (as an opfor 'bad guy') could sample the threat commo traffic linearized far above you and find the correct go code, it would be useless to you. Because it is already out of date and in any case will never work on the UCAV twenty miles away because _it's_ go codes for traveling to Waypoint X might be 'Cheerful' and 'Nougat'.
And as soon as the next mission comes round, these codes will be different for each airframe (via a new DTM mission tape) _again_.
3. Moating and Time/Spatial constraints.
If ALL contact is lost (say from damage detected during every 2-3 second diagnostic check) the UCAV can be told to go to a safe recovery area and either land or be ditched/range safed with a redundant emergency alternative (a laser code flashed through the MAWS/DAS apertures for instance).
If it does so, none of whatever death and destruction that it is carrying will be activated (as armed weapons) because such an event can ONLY happen if the skybot is 'across a certain line' called a Fence and 'in a certain opening', called a gate or time window. As to internal mission orders allow it to enable it's weapons. AT ALL OTHER TIMES the weapons system is deactivated. Indeed, it cannot even /send/ a firiing impulse to the ordnance because the circuit to do so is physically or electrically isolated.
CONCLUSION:
Netcentricity has reached the level where it has effectively removed the need for the human element from the pointy end of the killchain if for no other reason than that said human _cannot_ effectively warfight without full digital connectivity to his supporting missions. Digital text, images, video. All of which can be better seen and survivably interpreted OUTSIDE the cockpit than from within it.
Man is not necessary to drop a bomb on a static target, 'smartly'. Cruise missiles have been proving this since the late 60s.
With homing heads, hunting ARMs (ala Delilah) can reliably hit 'jammers', even if the ability to send the FIRE! command is itself blocked.
Man cannot hit a time critical (mobile) or micro-signature/collaterals buried targetsets that typify modern war without the aid of electronics and digital comms spreading out the ISR net to help find them. He will simply never detect them.
For 'other reasons' (signature survivability and political correctness in the face of loss) man is an impediment to combat aircraft design and useful warfighter doctrine.
It's time to pull man from the monkey-presses-button part of the equation and put the electronics in the pointy end where they will do better because they are cheaper, more effective and more numerous. While suffering no more and probably less ill effect from 'jamming' than we do.
Certainly, UCAVs will NOT 'fall out of the sky'. Because any weapon which could do that (HPM) could equally do it to a manned platform.
KPl.
