OT, but a spooky concept

On Apr 28, 3:05�pm, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message

dakotatelephone...





On 4/28/2010 9:10 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
"Pat �wrote in message
thdakotatelephone...
On 4/28/2010 5:58 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

No nation has have enough manpower to search such well placed shipping
containers all over the world. �And even if we did, the container can
still
be well placed on a train or truck, which makes your search orders of
magnitude more difficult than "just" searching the well placed
containers
on
every cargo ship on the planet.

Yeah, but without info on where it's getting launched from and where
it's
supposed to go, the cruise missile is going to be completely lost on
exiting the launch tube.

Russian version of GPS (Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System, or
GLONASS).

All great minds think alike, don't they?

�From above:
� � The onboard control system includes a barometric altimeter
� � used to maintain altitude in terrain-following mode
� � (making the weapon stealthier than designs which rely on
� � radar altimeters),

As long as you fly high enough that will work, also providing you don't
cross a weather front while the missile is on the way to the target and
have the barometric pressure change on you.
People who have seen Tomahawk cruise missiles in flight at night have
noticed that there are red flashes of light coming from the underside from
time-to-time. Besides its TERCOM radar, it appears it's using some sort of
LIDAR to monitor its height above the ground and check out the terrain
under it without becoming a radar emitter.

Considering how good the Russians are with laser technologies, I'm sure they
have something similar. �If the Russians would export that technology is
another question entirely.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Why send a cruise missle when all anyone really needs to do is ship
the container to the target and have GPS detonate it automatically
when it arrives????

Note unfortunately this includes terrorists shippng a nuke chemical or
bilogic bomb to any target in our country

On 4/28/2010 9:10 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
"Pat wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
On 4/28/2010 5:58 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:


No nation has have enough manpower to search such well placed shipping
containers all over the world. And even if we did, the container can
still
be well placed on a train or truck, which makes your search orders of
magnitude more difficult than "just" searching the well placed containers
on
every cargo ship on the planet.

Yeah, but without info on where it's getting launched from and where it's
supposed to go, the cruise missile is going to be completely lost on
exiting the launch tube.

Russian version of GPS (Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System, or
GLONASS).


All great minds think alike, don't they?


From above:
The onboard control system includes a barometric altimeter
used to maintain altitude in terrain-following mode
(making the weapon stealthier than designs which rely on
radar altimeters),

As long as you fly high enough that will work, also providing you don't
cross a weather front while the missile is on the way to the target and
have the barometric pressure change on you.
People who have seen Tomahawk cruise missiles in flight at night have
noticed that there are red flashes of light coming from the underside
from time-to-time. Besides its TERCOM radar, it appears it's using some
sort of LIDAR to monitor its height above the ground and check out the
terrain under it without becoming a radar emitter.

Pat

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

"Rick Jones" wrote in message
...
In sci.space.history Jeff Findley wrote:
My thoughts exactly. The video screams "Rogue nation! Protect
yourself from the evil United States with our new terror weapon, a
cruise missile in a shipping container!".

Make certain though you pay extra for top-stacking on the container
ship with nothing on either end of your container. Which will of
course make them a little more conspicuous.

No nation has have enough manpower to search such well placed shipping
containers all over the world. And even if we did, the container can
still be well placed on a train or truck, which makes your search orders
of magnitude more difficult than "just" searching the well placed
containers on every cargo ship on the planet.


Right. We have to wait for it to be launched.
And we do have a ...plan!

US Army Space Master Plan

Future Scenario

"In a future small, regional conflict (2020), a threat force launches
a theater ballistic missile at US/coalition forces using a Transporter
Erector Launch vehicle (TEL). The Space-Based IntraRed Sensor
(SBIRS) System detects the launch and tracks the missile
through burn-out, providing data to the Joint Tactical Ground
Station/Multi-Mission Mobile Processor (JTAGS/M3P).
The JTAGS/M3P predicts the trajectory path from SBIRS data
and passes that information to missile defense interceptors.."
"The SR tracks the TEL when it begins to move to its
hide site, and passes the track information through the
Distributed Common Ground System to either the Joint
Operations Center or the Joint Air Defense Operation
Center for assigning a weapons platform to the TEL.
Space Radar continues to provide track information
to the assigned weapons platform while it is enroute,
enabling the weapons platform to quickly locate and
kill the target."
http://www.smdc.army.mil/FactSheets/ASMP.pdf







Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon

In sci.space.history Pat Flannery wrote:
There's another way of checking your height that the Germans came up
with in WWII to allow their aircraft to fly at low altitude in foggy
conditions. The aircraft was equipped with a compressed air driven
pulsed whistle that was pointed downwards, and a microphone that
picked up the echo of the whistle off of the ground and
automatically figured out altitude by the shifting frequency of the
returning echo as the downwards signal and its echo interacted. This
was displayed on a gauge for the pilot, and it proved possible to
fly the aircraft with extreme height accuracy at low altitude by
this means. Good pilots could even determine their height just by
the sound they would hear coming out of the receiver microphone.

They name it after a bat or something?-) Don't the margins start to
get small as the vehicle approaches the speed of sound?

Our first attempt at TERCOM guidance (called ATRAN at that time)
went clean back to the Mace cruise missile of the late 1950's:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-13.html Nice idea, but
how were we supposed to get good radar maps of territory on the
other side of the Iron Curtain?

By RB-57 and later U-2 right?-) Or perhaps by bribing a few Aeroflot
baggage handlers with cases of Vodka to put special luggage in the
holds of Aeroflot flights?-)

rick jones
--
oxymoron n, Hummer H2 with California Save Our Coasts and Oceans plates
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

On 4/28/2010 9:56 AM, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

Also, don't know how seriously the tractor trailer idea was
considered,
but the circular railroad was.

Circular but also just putting them on freight trains out west.

They were thinking of putting some of those up here in North Dakota; I
assume they would have been kept at one of our SAC bases (Grand Forks
and Minot) and sent on their way if things started heating up.
Security was always a problem with the train-launched missile idea, as
their paths could be be predicted fairly easily due to the scarcity of
railway tracks up here.
The idea of putting missiles on trains goes clean back to the German
V-2, where a large train was going to move around six V-2s as well as
all their support equipment, crews, and alcohol and LOX supplies.
The missiles could be launched directly from their flatcars (using a
exhaust deflector mounted under a hole in the flatcar that shot the
exhaust flames out to either side clear of the ground so as not to
damage the tracks) or dismounted from the train and moved to launch
sites alongside the tracks. By the time the first train had been
finished and was ready to go, allied air attacks had so severely damaged
the German rail network that the plan was abandoned. I don't know if any
test launches were made from the train or not, though photos of it:
http://www.v2rocket.com/start/others/helos005.jpg
....show it with operational camouflaged V-2s in the elevated position.
There are a pair of interesting photos of the Russian SS-24 rail-mobile
ICBM he
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RT...urg_museum.jpg
....and he
http://www.ausairpower.net/RT-23-SS-...pel-TEL-1S.jpg
Either the one at St Petersburg has had a fake RV added to make it look
more impressive, or the RV was transported separated from the missile
itself and only attached just before launch.

Pat

On 4/28/2010 10:02 AM, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:


In fact, I believe it's not unheard of for shipping containers to have a GPS
system built in so they can report home where they are.

In many cases, this being "Just off the coast of Somalia". ;-)

Pat

On 4/28/2010 11:05 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:


Considering how good the Russians are with laser technologies, I'm sure they
have something similar. If the Russians would export that technology is
another question entirely.

There's another way of checking your height that the Germans came up
with in WWII to allow their aircraft to fly at low altitude in foggy
conditions. The aircraft was equipped with a compressed air driven
pulsed whistle that was pointed downwards, and a microphone that picked
up the echo of the whistle off of the ground and automatically figured
out altitude by the shifting frequency of the returning echo as the
downwards signal and its echo interacted. This was displayed on a gauge
for the pilot, and it proved possible to fly the aircraft with extreme
height accuracy at low altitude by this means. Good pilots could even
determine their height just by the sound they would hear coming out of
the receiver microphone.
One problem with barometric height keeping is that you need to have
accurate elevation maps of the terrain between the launch point and the
target, so you can tell the missile how high it should be at any point
on its course. Otherwise, you just end up making it fly clear of the
highest point of elevation on the way, and at other points it will be a
lot higher in altitude and a easier target for AAA and SAMs.
Bringing this right back on-topic for the newsgroups, this Shuttle
mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle...graphy_Mission
Had as one of its aims getting extremely accurate radar maps of the
Earth's surface...that could be used to generate data that could be fed
into the guidance systems of cruise missiles so they could fly their
missions with great assurance of the terrain details and heights under
them to compare to what their onboard sensors were showing.
Our first attempt at TERCOM guidance (called ATRAN at that time) went
clean back to the Mace cruise missile of the late 1950's:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-13.html
Nice idea, but how were we supposed to get good radar maps of territory
on the other side of the Iron Curtain? The guidance system was modified
to an inertial one in fairly short order.

Pat

On 4/28/2010 5:05 PM, Rick Jones wrote:


They name it after a bat or something?-) Don't the margins start to
get small as the vehicle approaches the speed of sound?

I've been digging through my books for where I originally came across
it, but no luck yet. Knowing the Germans, it would indeed have some code
name associated with it.
The thing was primarily supposed to be used during landing approach in
bad visibility or at night, so the aircraft would be flying slow enough
that speed of sound concerns wouldn't be that big of a problem.
One offshoot of the technology was really novel... and shows a basic
flaw in a lot of German wartime research, in that it was too clever for
its own good: mount receiver microphones on bombs and drop a series of
them on a target.
The first bomb hits the ground and detonates as usual; the sound of the
detonation reaches the second bomb while it's still descending, and
causes it to detonate just above ground level, so that its full blast
effect isn't weakened by being buried in the ground. Bomb three hears
bomb two going off and then detonates itself, also above ground level,
and so on till all the bombs have detonated just above the ground.
Sounds great till you realize that what will really happen is that if
the bombs aren't falling at just the speed of sound, they will start
going off higher and higher in the air.
....so, you now have to individually set time delays on each bomb in the
series to be dropped so that it will go off at the same altitude above
the ground when they are dropped sequentially.
Now, that's already pretty involved, but it's about to get worse.
Because how fast they are going on impact depends on how high the
aircraft that dropped them was flying when they were dropped, so now you
have to figure that out also and adjust the individual timers for that
variable.
Then there is the altitude above sea level of the target where the bomb
will be hitting, as that will affect the air pressure, and that the
speed that the bomb will accelerate at after dropping...and the speed
the sound wave of the detonation will travel at through the variable air
density, plus of course the initial detonation wave will be supersonic
due to the use of high explosives in the bomb, then decelerate as it
travels.
Then don't forget to account for the air temperature of the target area
itself, because that will vary how dense the air above it is, and that
will have to be used to adjust the figures for the height above sea
level of the target for both acceleration and sound wave propagation.
So, step one of planning a bombing raid is to get out your pencil and
slide rule and a whole pile of paper, as well as elevation maps of the
target and air density graphs of altitude versus temperature.
Step two is to say "Zur Hölle mit dieser Scheiße!" and screw elongated
fuze rods into the noses of the bombs so that they will all detonate
just above ground level. Oddly enough, that replaced the microphone
method of detonating them.

Our first attempt at TERCOM guidance (called ATRAN at that time)
went clean back to the Mace cruise missile of the late 1950's:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-13.html Nice idea, but
how were we supposed to get good radar maps of territory on the
other side of the Iron Curtain?

By RB-57 and later U-2 right?-) Or perhaps by bribing a few Aeroflot
baggage handlers with cases of Vodka to put special luggage in the
holds of Aeroflot flights?-)

Some info on that he http://7499thgroupreunions.com/TacMslSpt.aspx

Pat

On 4/29/2010 12:32 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
One offshoot of the technology was really novel... and shows a basic
flaw in a lot of German wartime research, in that it was too clever for
its own good:

BTW, another very complex German WWII bomb design, though this one
actually worked as intended: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWsnfK-MeCE
During the war, these were considered inhumane and fiendish Nazi
weapons...so after the war, the US copied them:
http://www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usa6/bfly/index.html

Pat

On 4/29/2010 12:32 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 4/28/2010 5:05 PM, Rick Jones wrote:


They name it after a bat or something?-) Don't the margins start to
get small as the vehicle approaches the speed of sound?

I've been digging through my books for where I originally came across
it, but no luck yet. Knowing the Germans, it would indeed have some code
name associated with it.

If nothing else, I did dig up the info on the acoustic bomb fuze, which
was designated the BAZ 55A and built by the Rheinmetall-Borsig company.
It was supposed to detonate the SC250 (thin casing, 250 kilogram weight)
bomb it was screwed onto the nose of at an altitude of 20-25 meters
above the surface. Despite the problems with the concept, it was
actually put into use in the summer of 1944, though I've never read
about how successful it was at controlling the bomb burst height.
One interesting factor was the forward speed of the aircraft dropping
the bombs meant they would fall in a long horizontal line, so the path
from one explosion's shockwave to the acoustic fuze of the next falling
bomb was diagonal, not vertical.

Pat