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Caelia

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Those other threads had gotten moldy and old. So here is a new one.

Ask yer military related questions here and hope for an answer! If you feel you can answer a question do not hesitate, this thread is open to all.
 
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Is it plausible for someone to hack air-to-surface missiles and Ashm missiles in flight? In a recent BBC action thriller called something like Deadly Force, an American Software Engineer manages to do just this. If one had the knowhow and the backdoor codes, could this be plausibly done on not just an individual basis, but on a strategic level?

Secondly, munitions. Would a trained armed force be aware if they were equipped with nothing but duds/fake bullets? Let's say they are armed just before a major crisis. Could they realistically have time to determine if they were firing blanks or not?
 

Caelia

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In flight? Doubtful.

On the ground though? It's possible.

Hacking will be one of the primary tools for air defense suppression in the near future (and likely to some extent already) as improved radars are becoming harder and harder to suppress through jamming alone. From what I have gathered the capabilities will be employed primarily through existing and planned EW platforms using hostile radar/comm apertures as a point of entry (very sneaky like) and using specialized scripts to allow "non-specialists" to infiltrate and disable air defense/communication networks on the battlefield.

Hacking of some kind was an essential part of Israels air raid on Syria's nuclear reactor. Syrian air defenses were reportedly entirely unaware there were Israeli aircraft in their airspace until they were gone. So it's not just pie in the sky.

Anti-ship missiles are less likely though. They are generally not as heavily networked and automated as air defenses though the networks and radars used to target them might be vulnerable.

Please don't take this (everyone!) as a carte-blanche to go LOL HACKING IM INVISIBLE. You can legitimately use it in a war RP (because it is quite real) but show some discretion. At minimum try and have a good explanation of how you know enough about the enemies networks to have a chance of executing the attack.
 

Ashkelon

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So I must be blind or something, because I didn't see this thread earlier. T_T

I'll just make some copy pasta here.


- Technically completed, 1000 functional units produced, screwed by politics
- Retired
- In production
- Dunno about the status of this, else I'd be running with this: - In production

If I could, the MQ-9. Else, the MQ-1.


As to what Yujin said in the other thread, I would say it's not that I'm tech geeking about as it is sort of a personal quirk of mine to really want to know certain specifics. Bad habit of mine. Although that also said, I'm more used to tactical scale movement, and it would take me a bit of a while to slide to the strategic and operation-sized RP. Not that I'm resistant, since that would be stupid on a site like this, but well, at the moment, my equipment-involved RP is... pretty small scale.
 

Caelia

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Tentatively I don't see any problems with you using most of those.

My only quibble would be with the KH-11. American Spy Satellites are rather hardcore and would be difficult for anyone who isn't America to pull off.

I will point you towards Israels highly capable but less extravagant satellites as an example of what would be more appropriate:


These are fairly representative of what everyone who isn't America uses.
 

Khemia

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If you need information on how to counter satellites, do ask. There are multiple Air Force veterans and ROTC in my department who either worked in, or are training for, military satellite operation. I've already been told numerous ways to counter satellites (including minimum wattage required to disable something like the early block KH-11's) so I feel I could speak with some small amount of authority on the matter.
 

Thaumantica

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If you need information on how to counter satellites, do ask. There are multiple Air Force veterans and ROTC in my department who either worked in, or are training for, military satellite operation. I've already been told numerous ways to counter satellites (including minimum wattage required to disable something like the early block KH-11's) so I feel I could speak with some small amount of authority on the matter.

OPSEC
 

Caelia

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Srsly.

As cool as it is I don't want anyone posting anything that isn't strictly public domain.
 

Khemia

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DISCLAIMER: Wall-of-text caused by Aspergers! :smug:

I wasn't planning to cite specific examples, nor was I planning to do anything that would damage the integrity of my countries national defense. It's not something I can't find from a google search, it's just a guy who helped run said satellites is fairly better at verifying stuff than some .com. So, because I sincerely don't want to give the impression that the information I'm providing is damaging to national security, I'll cite examples from credible sources to back up claims and rumors I hear from USAF guys, anything I can't back up could just as well be a conspiracy theory as a fact.

So... I think it's fairly common knowledge that the Chinese have been using lasers to blind/track satellites since 2006, and possibly as early as 2003... .
A lower-power (30-watt) laser intended for alignment of the system and tracking of the satellite was the primary laser source used during the test, and it appeared that this lower-power laser was sufficiently powerful itself to blind the satellite temporarily, although it could not destroy the sensor.

Read more:
Defense.org

While the sensor cannot be destroyed itself, many older satellites had something similar to a circuit breaker (I didn't bother taking notes on what he said exactly) which could simply be overloaded by a strong enough burst of wattage, turning the satellite off. I didn't ask, but I'm going to guess this was intended to prevent the satellite from being rendered utterly useless by random space anomalies and commercial signals. Turning the satellite off means it can be fixed. Breaking it means its space trash. Modern U.S. satellites now have redundancies and what not to overcome this problem, I won't go into any details about that, but the main point is that satellites are much more vulnerable than we as a public tend to think. You'll note that the laser used in the example I linked to was actually intended to track the satellite - the fact it was capable of blinding it is probably a blunder that just points out exactly how vulnerable satellites are. There are other countries developing laser programs, like India; these laser programs are intended to assist ASAT missiles in hitting their targets. Some speculation of mine is that you can fire enough wattage to disrupt a satellites ability to receive or send signals to its owners stations, since I doubt a satellite is capable of receiving an infinite amount of wattage. Modern stuffs' able to filter between commercial/junk signals and friendly military signals, though. But, like I said, throw enough signal at a satellite and it'll spend too much time processing through the signal to find the military signal. Same exact principle as jamming radar sites.

Now... to go into other things...

There are other ways to permanently destroy satellites which probably make more sense to the average forum-goer. Interceptor satellites can simply crash into other satellites, or you can throw an ASAT missile at it. These are a bit more high tech - but if we're allowing fairly advanced satellites to be operated by individual countries instead of being developed by Alliances like the EDF, then interceptor and ASAT missiles could be plausible as well. (Those IAI satellites were, no doubt, invented with foreign investment). And, every USAF guy I have spoken to has said that, if a major war between the US and another major country erupts, the first shots fired will be designed to eliminate satellite capabilities of each country. What happens after that, who knows, but I'm inclined to agree that targeting satellites would be one of the first steps taken in WW3.

(Hopefully I was vague and didn't say anything that can't be found online in this post, I will refrain from asking the boys in my department about anything they shouldn't be divulging. If anything I said is actually damaging, please do erase it.)

I should also note, on a tangent that I haven't talked to the Air Force boys about, that you can hack something through radio waves/lasers. Satellites are as vulnerable to cyberwarfare as public utilities and nuclear power plants, especially since something doesn't need to be connected to the internet to be hacked electronically. For example, in 2007 Israel used radio waves from air planes to turn off the entire Syrian radar network, hacking the Syrian radar network with their own radio signals. The reason they turned off the entire network, and not just one or two sites, was that the entire network was centralized and networked.

The whole "networked and centralized" thing being a vulnerability to hacking reminds me of BSG. It's old news for Kyiv and Kansas I bet. Probably something those who don't read sinodefense and defensetech don't know, though. There's other things that Israel uses, like Skyguard, which I am glad our forum hasn't begun to use. I've always found it endearing that, as a community in this current edition of roleplay, we've avoided wanking and getting the best tech the instant it comes out. So, I'd prefer to keep that spirit.
 

Caelia

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Older than one might think...


 

Khemia

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Yeah, the US has had ASAT stuff since the late 70's as well....

On a side note, Kyiv do you have any information regarding missile defense shields & how they work, how much they cost to build, how effective they are, etc.? Given Touzen and Vangala both have/are developing nuclear weapons, I'd like to know the likelihood that Yujin would be able to develop a missile defense shield; and how much coverage/how cheap/what technological limitations there are.

I know that other countries like Franken have RP'd developing and implementing them, but I don't think anyone has ever referenced a cost, or what technology is used exactly in them? I'm asking here because I'd like the info to be posted for public reference, rather than googling it and keeping it to myself. If I find anything later (tomorrow) I'll post details myself.
 

Caelia

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Let me get back to you.

Most of what I have is buried in my big pile-o-pdf's. Including one incredibly useful (if slightly pro-missile defense slanted) historical article that covered US developments in detail from the 1950's to the early 90's.
 

Caelia

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The google-fu is strong with me
 
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Since I could not get an answer elsewhere, here it is. What is a decent per soldier capita defence spending in US$ for both ground and air forces for both an 'average' Western-style (NATO) and Eastern-style (Russia/China) military force?
 

Caelia

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First you need to decide if you have a Cadre system (reservists will be retrained on activation, i.e. the USSR and most communist countries) or if reservists are trained regularly (America, Israel, most western countries).
 

Khemia

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Difficult question. Countries like Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, and other low population countries with high GDP's typically spend most of their defense budget on the Air Force (most bang per capita/dollar). So you get countries which extraordinarily large spending per soldier, because of maintenance cost and equipment for pilots and planes. For example, the Singapore Air Force is as large and as well equipped as the French one, despite it having a population a fraction the size. Most Western European nations also have very small standing armies, simply because the potential for conflict on the European conflict since the establishment of the EU is abysmally low. Compare that with Eastern European countries that don't have good relations with Russia, and the spending per soldier goes down because the numbers of soldiers go up.

This is an interesting read though which summarizes the basic costs of Infantry deployed in Iraq. Each soldier cost around $650k a year to maintain. It has charts etc. that breakdown how much money was spent on procurement, supplies, wages, etc. Good read. But as I stated above, that's for infantry. It doesn't cover the cost of maintaining planes, tanks, helicopters (bloody expensive things those are) etc.
 
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I am interested in both cases, to be honest, both out of academic interest as well as not. In addition, a non-mercenary military force is what I am talking about.
 
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