- Reaction score
- 1,824
- Points
- 1,160
aesop081 said:WTF ?
Well put.
aesop081 said:WTF ?
Kestral said:There is no reason that a UAV can't be a combat capable aircraft.
They could fire air-air missles, air-ground missles, air-sea surface missles...
I_am_John_Galt said:Let's compare "combat capable": the biggest, latest and greatest UAV (Global Hawk) carries max. 3,000 lbs of ordinance (and you would need some thing pretty close to a full-sized carrier to launch it) ... an "old-tech" Harrier carries 5,000 lbs + 2 X 30MM cannons ... which would you rather have on your side?
To even get close the development costs would be unimaginable (for Cdn, defense budgets, anyway).
I_am_John_Galt said:I still think that Jamming and Hacking should be a legitimate concern against any techincally-competent enemy.
48Highlander said:It all depends on what you're looking for man. An M1A1 Abrams carries quite the punch, but you probably don't wanna use it if you're trying to sneak up on 2 or 3 guys sitting in a trench. The HMG fires 12.7mm rounds, but we give riflemen a 5.56mm rifle. Bigger isn't always better. I know you flyboys are very protective of your toys (and goddamn I mis flying) but relax, noboy is advocating taking them away from you. UAV's have uses for which they're better suited than regular aircraft, and vice vera; for the best effect you want to have both available.
whiskey601 said:Jamming maybe, but probably not hacking through a brute force attack because the wireless data encryption keys can be changed for every mission if need be, just like the one time encryption pads. Spoofing and overloading the rx might be a problem if the host platform is located near shorelines with multiple sites for tx. Instructions for manoeuvring the bird might not be received correctly, in which case the bird would revert to a pre-programmed flight path and and rtb.
I_am_John_Galt said:That's kinda my point: with the $$$ spent on a UAV-only carrier, you would be trading-off a lot of other capability ... taking helos off the ship, you'd be losing it completely.
I_am_John_Galt said:Don't kid yourself: as it stands, AirSnort (for one example) can hack 128-bit wireless encryption in under a second! (and that's only what a total "non-nerd" dork like me knows about) ...
I don't think our thinking is really that far apart: a number of smaller UAVs makes a lot of sense (as I mentioned above) ... larger ones, with yet-to-be-developed "combat capability" anywhere close to existing technology would have to be as big as manned aircraft.48Highlander said:Agreed, losing helos on ships would be bad. However, we already have ships which can carry helos, and none that can carry UAV's. And considering that the army has helos, and can deploy them from ground bases, and also considering the fact that UAV's are a lot smaller (therefore a ship could carry more of them) and more in tune with the type of support ground troops require, I'd say we could afford to build the next generation of ships without helo capability if it meant we'd get UAV's.
Well, I'm not a security expert, but I know for a fact that AirSnort can break 128-bit encryption in under a second (once packages have been gathered): I pointed this out not as a direct threat to UAVs (they couldn't possibly work on 802.11), but rather to illustrate a 'big picture' truism: no system, no matter how well secured, is 100%. Most people accept that 128-bit encryption is pretty darn secure, but any idiot can download something like Phlak and gain control of almost any system they can get their hands on.Well first off, it takes much longer than a second. Airsnort monitors transmission packets and uses them to figure out the encryption key. That means that breaking the encryption depends on the ammount of traffic flowing through the network. The method relies on a flaw in the way that the 802.11 protocol is designed, rather than being able to "brute force" a 128 bit key. Considering that UAV's wouldn't be using the 802.11 protocol, Airsnort wouldn't work, and similar methods might or might not be effective. Secondly, 128 bit encryption is old news. Even civilian applications these days are more and more using 4096bit encryption. Proprietary military protocols would probably use an even longer key for encryption, and the actual transmission method would (I would hope) be more secure than a civilian protocol. So a hostile power would, first, have to figure out the properties of the transmission protocol being used, second, figure out a weakness in that protocol, and third, assuming they've found a weakness, monitor the transmissions long enough to gather sufficient packets to help them break the encryption. All in all, they'd be better off shooting rounds randomly into the sky and hoping they hit the darn thing.
No: it has probably never happened. But how often has it been tried? And "never has" is nothing like "never could". I hope I'm being paranoid, but sometimes paranoid works.Ex-Dragoon said:Can you give an example the last time a UAV was jammed or hacked?
I_am_John_Galt said:Well, I'm not a security expert, but I know for a fact that AirSnort can break 128-bit encryption in under a second (once packages have been gathered): I pointed this out not as a direct threat to UAVs (they could possibly work on 802.11), but rather to illustrate a 'big picture' truism: no system, no matter how well secured, is 100%. Most people accept that 128-bit encryption is pretty damn secure, but any idiot can download something like Phlak and gain control of almost any system they can get their hands on.
Agreed, losing helos on ships would be bad. However, we already have ships which can carry helos, and none that can carry UAV's. And considering that the army has helos, and can deploy them from ground bases, and also considering the fact that UAV's are a lot smaller (therefore a ship could carry more of them) and more in tune with the type of support ground troops require, I'd say we could afford to build the next generation of ships without helo capability if it meant we'd get UAV's.
I_am_John_Galt said:As far as I can tell, the idea of a "dedicated" UAV Carrier is a white elephant: if you want to go to the time and expense of building a smaller (~escort) Carrier, why wouldn't you build one with combat aircraft? Are we seriously discussing a 15,000t "Recce ship"?
OR, why would you want to push helos off the decks of other ships, in favour of aircraft that would reduce your SAR, ASW, etc. capability (and would require additional crew and training in the case of having both helo + UAV)?
OR, why would you build an Amphibious Assault Ship with no CAS capability whatsoever?
I can see how incorporating a few UAVs into a battle group would make some sense, but this looks to me to be more of a solution in search of problem than anything else ...
I still think that Jamming and Hacking should be a legitimate concern against any techincally-competent enemy.
Ex-Dragoon said:You left out Mine Warfare Matt.