Syrian War: News #19

I don't ever remember saying on this forum the shooting down of a civilian airliner is right.

Your government said it was good... they gave the ship commander and weapons officer medals for doing an excellent job above and beyond the call of duty...

However, that incident was a hot post mess of confusion and guys not sharing information with each other.

It was an incident the commander of the ship created himself.

The AEGIS cruiser is an information processing centre... if any vessel in the region had a complete picture of air, sea surface and undersea, it was them...

The Soviets themselves destroyed one or two civilian airliners on accident.

By mistake, not by accident... that was the Ukrainians that shot down that Israeli airliner with their S-200 missile... and of course that Malaysian airliner they shot down with a BUK.

The aircraft the Soviets shot down entered their airspace and did not respond to communications... after half a century of the US sending converted bombers on missions to penetrate Soviet airspace to test defences and trigger radar and intercept responses... not really the same thing as going to a foreign country, illegally entering its waters while firing upon its naval vessels and then shooting down passing airliners inside their own airspace.

Unless you are trying to say we did that on purpose, you need to keep quiet if you have nothing productive to say other then.

The way the guilty were treated, I would say while there is no evidence it was done on purpose, there is no remorse, and you certainly didn't act like what happened was wrong.

I believe secretary of state George Bush snr said at the time.... "I don't care what the facts are... America is not to blame..."

"US IS EVIL BLAH BLAH BLAH".

You could use that as your signature...

this dude deserves a month long ban

I really don't like giving bans, and very much try to avoid doing so whenever I can.

I certainly wont use a ban to censor someone... he is free to hold any opinion he likes, as is everyone here.

The last one I gave was to Miketheterrible, which annoyed me to do.

Generally I agree with him most of the time, but rules about respect are important... the job of mod is not easy and I do not take it lightly... it is like bringing up kids... you need to know when to use a slap, and when to use a word... there is no manual and every kid responds differently... hit some kids and you lose them forever... others all they need is that short sharp shock to realise we aren't buddies and I have a responsibility to keep things working properly.

This is a forum for discussion. Not fight club.

Personally I think it is better to talk about things than try to pretend alternative views don't exist. I don't expect to change his view and I rather doubt he expects to change mine, but it is important... in fact it is healthy to hear from differing points of view...

@Nomadski, it is much better to fit more powerful and better quality cameras and fly at higher altitudes where engines are not hear and UAVs can barely be seen even without camouflage...

Dust and smoke are issues close to the ground so unless we are talking about unmanned ground vehicles the solution is SWIR sensors as well as MMW radar sensors.

I can hear prop engines at great distances

Is that when the aircraft with them is cruising or coasting at high altitude or is it when those props are running at full power during takeoff and climbing...

High altitude may cause problems for glide munitions accuracy or short range rocket reach for horizontal attack . Low altitude necessary sometimes for small target or in low cloud ( frequent problem with laser guided ) or ground dust or smoke conditions .

High altitude gives more energy to penetrating bombs and more room to glide... launching rockets at low altitude will give away the presence of the UAV straight away... releasing small guided bombs from 12km altitude and they wont know what hit them.

Even missiles like the command guided Shturm and Ataka could be used to extended ranges with the right equipment... launched vertically downwards from 12km altitude they would likely accelerate rapidly to 600 to 700m/s and with a pull up could probably engage targets at 8-10km horizontal range quite easily and very cheaply.

SWIR eliminates problems with water vapour for thermal imagers (ie rain and cloud are no issue... SWIR can also see through glass and water so they don't need expensive Sapphire lenses to operate) Combined with an onboard MMW radar with near photographic views of the ground day or night... combined with IR and digital TV the view should be amazing.

Another factor is that a very high altitude aircraft means the view does not constantly move and change angle like a lower altitude view... which can be more useful for planning and observation.

An interview with a typical mother is as good a place to begin as any. She described what happens when her family hears an American drone hovering somewhere overhead. "Because of the terror, we shut our eyes, hide under our scarves, put our hands over our ears," she told her interviewer. Asked why, she said, "Why would we not be scared?"

So it serves a psychological purpose of frightening your enemy and their family, but the purpose of war is not to make your enemy scared, it is to kill them and high altitude quiet murderbots last longer... it also means if there is a malfunction they can generally glide away from enemy territory to somewhere where they can be recovered or destroyed...

As some analysts noticed the aircraft appears to be armed with Hellfire missiles, even if the first images are a bit too blurry to say it with certainty. Indeed, the Predator seems to carry at least one AGM-114 on the left hand underwing pylon (the other one is barely visible and could be empty) but it could only be the effect of distortion due to the distance and the drone could also be flying with empty pylons (quite rare, because “pure” reconnaissance missions are usually flown without any pylon and a drone with both empty pylons would mainly point to the event that both missiles have already been fired).

Hellfire missiles are not ideal because they are not cheap, but they are the only suitable US anti armour missile for the job... TOW is wire guided so a launch from 4km up means the wire would run out and break just fired straight down before it hit the ground.

The Soviets had command guided missiles from the AT-2 Swatter, though the AT-6 Shturm, and AT-9 Ataka, and now the Krisanthema... for use against vehicles and rooms in buildings or MG positions or snipers, or indeed enemy artillery a Sturm missile with a HE frag warhead is plenty to get the job done... it is accurate and has plenty of range potential and does not drag a wire.

Kornet-EM would also be excellent for the job too, and so would SOSNA-R.

I rather think the best option if it enters use would be the guided systems for unguided rockets, particularly 122mm and 80mm unguided rockets... their flight path from a high altitude launch could be calculated rather accurately and there is a variety of warheads for a variety of targets for both rocket systems and their accuracy means they will likely hit their target even when fired from a lofted ballistic trajectory...

A lower altitude UCAV would be interesting... you could put armour on it, and make it electric, and fit it with even cheaper weapons like cannon, machine guns, and grenade launchers as well as rockets for direct fire attacks... in fact you could fit it with disposable rocket launchers like the RPG-22 or RPO which could be reloaded near the front line by landing there... Hand grenade launchers and even an array of 40mm grenade launchers all angled down could be used to saturate the enemy area with fragments...

How many expensive sensors and radar are needed, to target a single insurgent, hiding in a hole?

That is like saying a sniper doesn't need binoculars or a good rifle scope... if you don't equip the UAV with good sensors how are you supposed to find targets to hit... the UAV actually finds the targets for you so the better the sensors you fit the better able it will be to do that.

UAVs are reusable, it is not like you will need one for each target...

Putting camera and transmitter on UCAV, expensive enough!

Well that is the point... if you go super cheap you will end up with crap that needs to fly very low to do its job which means they will get shot down all the time because insurgents are looking for drones.

Spending more money getting a better quality product makes sense.

You get close, you can see through cloud, dust and smoke. I can hear single engine prop aircraft easily at 2 to 3 km.

At 10km altitude that is 3-4 times that distance and at that altitude it can throttle back and just glide for a it so it would be very hard to hear... even if it loses a kilometre of altitude or two it would still be safe.

Cruising. Guided munitions expensive. Free fall better, cheaper. No need for unreliable GPS.

GLONASS guidance should be relatively cheap, and optical guidance is getting much much cheaper... like the cameras in cellphones, they are tiny and can be a few dollars each....

Command guided is the cheapest guidance of all, as I mentioned the Shturm and Ataka missiles are from the 1980s and are still very popular because they are accurate and cheap... and supersonic, so you wont hear them coming.

Cheap electric motor, will make attack silent. They won't know what hit them! Cheaper unguided rockets ( horizontal attack) can be used to hit rooms in buildings. By accurate ranging. Light weight. Cheap.

It makes sense to have a variety of platforms... low flying models need to be protected and well armed but also need to be totally disposable and cheap... moving things are easy to see even with camouflage... the human eye is drawn to movement, so even if it is totally silent it will be spotted. Protection can make it rather hard to shoot down... but the point is that if the enemy are trying to shoot that UAV down then they will be firing their weapons... which means higher flying drones can detect muzzle flashes and hot barrels and missile and rocket launch sites... information that can be used immediately for attacks by lower flying UAVs, but also information going to HQ to mark enemy positions.