How would Sun Tzu deal with drone swarm attacks? He

On By gyonas6 Comments

In my last post, I imagined that a potential strategic threat from swarms of drones could be developed from existing technology. I speculated that a cargo ship in a harbor could deliver biological agents or radioactive clouds to large coastal cities. Such an attack would best be prevented through deterrence, but it might be difficult or impossible to determine the attacker. The counter to this strategic threat is certainly knowledge of enemy preparations and real time intelligence. We would need a declared policy in regard to such a strategic attack and we would need to figure out how to convince any adversary that we know more than they know.

A more likely near term threat would be on the theater battlefield where drone swarms could threaten land warfare systems, including armored vehicles. Even a heavily armored tank would e vulnerable to even a small explosive charge if delivered down the barrel of the main gun.

A recent article in the C4ISRNET reported that Russian engineers have proposed a concept called Flock-93 that would employ “hundreds of drones, each armed with an explosive charge” to attack “terrorists and high-tech adversaries.” The application of drones to theater warfare seems to be likely and the counter measures already suggested include “jammers, lasers, high power microwaves” and more speculatively even counter-robot swarms. Can you imagine a future war where the sky over the battlefield is filled with thousands of drones and counter drones?

The battlefield of the future will also be complicated by the dependence on C4ISR and use of attacks against information and surveillance capabilities. But, as the TV infomercials say, “But wait, there’s more.” We already anticipate that space-based sensors and communications will be relied on and will be vulnerable to attack at the earliest stage of a conflict. Even before that, both sides in the conflict will heed the words of Sun Tzu, the 512 BCE Chinese philosopher who wrote in his classic work, “The Art of War,” “All war is based on deception.”

One of my favorite quotes from Sun Tzu is: “To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” If the reader is familiar with my book, “Death Rays and Delusions,” you will recall that I believe the Soviet Union provided the mechanism for its own defeat. I quoted a scholar of Soviet history, Vladimir Zubok, who wrote, “The strangest empire in modern history committed suicide.” The noted American historian on the Cold War, John Gaddis, agreed with my claim that the “Soviet Union might have been more interested in confining Soviet testing” than in worries about our testing of our space-based weapons.

So, getting back to Sun Tzu’s response to drone swarm attacks, the key will be to convince the adversary that the future application of such technology will be futile and even self-defeating, so they should not even try. The future is likely to be dominated, as always, by a mind war that I believe has already begun.

A simple, low cost, really nasty new weapon system

On By gyonas8 Comments

Precision drone attack damage of Saudi Oil facility

Could low cost, fairly low tech aircraft defeat the very expensive missile defense system of Saudi Arabia?  Of course not! No way, I thought, since the Saudis rely on our technology and we have spent billions and billions on missile defense since we began the SDI program in 1984.

I never gave this possible threat much thought until the Saudis’ giant oil facility was attacked with high precision on Sept. 14, causing enough damage to measurably reduce the global oil supply.

Yes there was a fairly modern missile defense system in place, but the attack came from tens of small low-flying drones and cruise missiles proving that the best defense against the wrong attack is useless. It looks like I was not the only one surprised since Israel, who should have been the most alert to such threats, has just announced they are reacting to this event. (“Netanyahu seeks billions to fund Israeli defense against Iranian cruise missiles,” Haaretz, Oct. 07, 2019.) Even before that, the Russians announced in Izvestia that their small multi rotor drones “will perform not only reconnaissance missions, but also strike targets with miniature bombs.”

I recall that when the SDI was created, the secretary of state raised the issue of cruise missile defense, but his question was never seriously answered and we focused on the Soviets’ huge investment in intercontinental ballistic missiles. So this new threat is not so new, but I hope the new aspect of swarms of low-cost drones is now being taken seriously.

This wake-up call up call should now be loud and clear, but even worse than we expected, since even though the cost of cruise missiles is very high, the technology and cost of swarms of drones has become very attractive worldwide to even capable individuals. It is now realistic that many of the world’s soft targets, such as cities, are vulnerable to attack. But certainly we could use electromagnetic weapons to jam, confuse, take over or destroy the guidance and communications of drones, high power lasers to destroy their delicate components or just plain old intercept missiles and anti-aircraft guns to blow them out of the sky, so not to worry.  We could even deploy our own swarms of defense drones to attack their offense swarms.

Well, it is not that simple since the real issue is the cost exchange, and the low cost and tactics available to giant swarms of drones could reduce the effectiveness of most of tomorrow’s technologically available defenses.

In addition, there is the element of surprise, demanding an early warning detection and tracking system, as well as the reality of exhaustion of the defense against fake or real repeated attacks. But we know that each low-cost drone could only deliver a pound or so to a target, so what is the big deal? Well, maybe the drones could target critical parts of our exposed electric grid, or maybe disperse biological agents along major streets, or target large sports events with hundreds of grenades or just go after parking lots at crowded shopping centers? The implication of such terror weapons are frightening to say the least.

Certainly Israel has some not so friendly neighbors, and their enemies must be preparing such killer drone swarm attacks, but we don’t have such problems from our neighbors .…  unless the drones are delivered from ships near the big cities near our coasts.

So what to do about all of these new concerns about a threat that might be more likely than intercontinental missile attack that attracted our defense community for decades?  I am sure the Pentagon, the labs and the defense industry are working to figure out our response. Of course, the threat will evolve as well as the defenses, and we need to also prepare for simultaneous info and space attacks, so we may look on the simplicity of the good old days with nostalgia.

 

Brilliant pebbles

Space is a dangerous place.

On By gyonas3 Comments

The trouble with good ideas…

Brilliant pebbles are a really good idea, at least some scientists think so. No one doubts that the technology exists now to deploy thousands of small missiles (called brilliant pebbles) permanently orbiting the planet. These missiles coupled to an extensive space based satellite sensor constellation could automatically go after and intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles shortly after they lift off in their very visible boost phase. Burning boosters are very vulnerable to a high velocity collision with even a light object, and the boosters would come crashing down together with their lethal payloads possibly not even far from their launch area. Assuming that the sensors are operational and not spoofed, the automated decision process is reliable and most of the so called pebbles are in good working order, this low earth orbiting cloud of defensive missiles would greatly contribute to our defense against the ever greater proliferation of ballistic missiles and some of these might even have nuke payloads.

Some cost estimates of this defense investment do not seem unreasonable … but wait for the rest of the story. Any competent adversary who had counted on achieving a convincing threat would not be so happy with our deployment and would know far in advance about our plans and observe our deployment process. They might complain about our “militarization of space” and even threaten to put a stop to our bad behavior before we got too far into our plan. They might even do something nasty just to get our attention, and they might even use anti-satellite methods to harass and even destroy our early deployments. They might even start deploying their own missile constellation to tag along closely with our defensive missiles, and we might tell them to stop that and ask them to back off.  If we hurry up and get going before they can do too much, we could get our convincing defensive capability in place and declare our ownership of space and not allow further deployments of means to attack our purely defensive missiles. They might then turn their military investments to high power lasers on the ground that could over a period of time harass, blind and destroy our missiles and sensors. It turns out that low earth space orbits can be a very dangerous place if ground based high power lasers exist, but wait there are clouds that could get in the way, so they might not have the freedom of action they desire.

Another approach to laser deployment could be on high altitude aircraft that could operate above the clouds and conveniently track and shoot up at satellites. The laser power supplies would be chemicals that would have to be replenished, but there could be multiple aircraft, and the adversary could take their time to mess up our deployment. But wait there would be more to this story since we could attack the large, slow and vulnerable aircraft with our advanced fighter planes and their lasers that shoot toward satellites would provide them with no protection, so they might use their own advanced fighter planes to attack ours. By then we might have our own high power lasers on our fighter planes and we could defeat their lower power lasers, while they try to use their anti-satellite missiles against our purely defensive pebbles.

But wait, they might not be ready to start a space/air shooting war and instead attack our extensive but very vulnerable electric grid using their cyber weapons, which would trigger our own cyber-attack on their command, control, communications, intelligence (c3i). They might then try to destroy our c3i so we would no longer be able to manage the rapidly deteriorating chaos of our purely defensive pebbles. Somebody might even try to nuke somebody, or maybe their terrorist buddies could dump biological agents in a few of our cities, since nobody is managing the chaos, and things might get really messy real fast. Oh well, brilliant pebbles seemed like a good idea.

The Fallacy of the Last Move 2.0

On By gyonas2 Comments

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin putinannounced that Russia had developed the Avangard hypersonic vehicle that would soon be deployed and he claimed could defeat any sort of missile defense. The concept is a re-entry vehicle that would be launched on a ballistic missile and instead of continuing to its target on a predictable ballistic trajectory through space, it would dive down into the top of the atmosphere and glide to its target. It would glide along without propulsion and could maneuver over large distances so that interception would only be possible in the short time close to its eventual target. Such a maneuvering re-entry vehicle is not entirely new idea, but presumably the Avangard has solved the problems of targeting, maneuvering and high temperature materials.

 

If this technology is successful, then the warhead could be a nuke, or a high explosive or even a basket full of high density rods. The notion of hypervelocity rods is also not a new idea, and we used to call them ‘Rods From God’ (RFG) that could potentially strike any target on the earth with high precision and extreme lethality to any relative soft target such as an aircraft carrier or even somebody standing on the corner.  hqdefaultAnother application would be to strike a stationary high value target, say in a building, but with no collateral damage to the building next door. We used to call this a conventional precision strike on a time urgent target. The problem of getting to a target in a hurry is probably not the least of the limitations of such a weapon, since a precision strike would have to be accompanied by time-urgent precision decision making. The precision targeting would require time-urgent knowledge and might have to involve a close-in sensor that could perch and search before the weapon lurch. The aspect of very fast and very precise decisions probably requires that the entire process of reconnaissance of the area, surveillance of the specific target, target acquisition, target kill and kill assessment be automated. All of that seems very difficult, but certainly possible, and could mean that targets anywhere in the world would be vulnerable … unless they were underground.

Very impressive tunnel boring machines have been developed over the years, and a future of RFG weapons and societies hiding in tunnels is not entirely crazy. But wait there is more. If the only defense is the threat of a retaliatory strike, there would be no way to know if the warhead is a nuke or a conventional warhead. So a “relatively” limited attempt to bump off that bad guy on the corner could be misunderstood as a nuclear strike and lead to instant nuclear retaliation.  A predictable response to the Russian development would be our version of the same thing, and our similar programs are moving ahead with some urgency to catch up, so a future of unstable decision making on both sides is possible.

But what about the claim that no missile defense is possible? Back in the good old SDI days, we were concerned that ballistic missile countermeasures, such as decoys, could make defense against a large scale very competent attack ineffective, so we advocated boost phase defense to intercept the booster before it deployed re-entry vehicles and the inevitable countermeasures. I discuss this in great detail in my book “Death Rays and Delusions” available at https://www.amazon.com/Death-Delusions-Gerold-Yonas-Ph-D/dp/0692919554/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10EBJNPO83JNY&keywords=death+rays+and+delusions&qid=1560807394&s=gateway&sprefix=death+rays+and+%2Caps%2C182&sr=8-1. As I point out in the book, one approach to intercepting boosters would be fleets of small missiles permanently deployed in space and ready to be launched based on launch detection using space based sensors. This concept is being considered again, but my own preference to BPI is high power laser beams relayed by space based mirrors directed to the target, and projected from high power lasers on aircraft.

All of this discussion sounds a bit like the “fallacy of the last move” that I discussed in my Dec. 24, 2018, blog post (https://sdiguy.blog/2017/09/18/boost-phase-intercept-bpi-with-high-power-lasers-could-defeat-north-korean-missiles/), and the alternate path would be an arms control regime based on agreements and mutual trust that seems to be in short UN AGING 2050supply, so the weapons racing will likely just go on. I offered an alternate approach in my post based on my belief that we face the impending cash flow dilemma that I called the “Geezer Threat” caused, not by the much feared global warming, but what I think is more likely, global aging. The Soviet Union provided us with a good illustration that cash flow problems can destroy one of the most powerful empires in the history of the world.