USAF CoS Prefers F-35, UAS and NGB. Also say USAF has enough TACAIR capability

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DarthAmerica 6/9/2009 9:13:05 PM

I absolutely hate everything to do with commo and crypto. I try to stay as far away from it as possible as I live in fear of commiting some sort of violation!!!! I did actually check I could say that before I did :) Which talking about FM's you might like this, Im sure you are pretty squared away on all your FM's but here is a link to where you can get all FM's which are released for public distibution on one DVD,it also has links to all the non public which you can access via AKO:

Complete Army FM's DVD....

Regards

Arty

Yeah I try always to stick to generalities here. Weather it's classification or civilian NDA you just never know when you go too far so it's just best to stay well clear IMHO. And I checked prior to my reply...;) Thanks for the link!

-DA

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warpig 6/9/2009 10:03:45 PM

We can change keys all we want or even scramble the algorithm til the cows come home, but when your HARDWARE is on the enemy workbench, he has a good idea of what your tech tree looks like.

Familiar to you would be, how our glide bomb kits work ore how our artillery fusing works. Some of those families trace their base design back to the American Civil War!

Engineers, (the good ones anyway) try to find a good solution and stick with it That goes for code logics HARDWIRED into our circuit cards as it does for how we design something as simple and critical as a breech block for new tube artillery weapon...

I'm not going to sit here and let some amateur aerially dismiss exploits we ourselves use every day to thwart our enemies.

We're immune because we can write a patch?

Ghostnet...

Battlefield network is battlefield exploit.

Its called the MIDWAY LESSON for a reason.

Herald

This is one of the reasons reading your posts is so exasperating. I am quite interested in reading what you have to say, but so often you seem completely oblivious to what others are actually saying, and you are arguing your own strawman opponent rather than the actual posts in the thread. DA took explicit and detailed pains on several occasions to make abundantly clear that he most certainly does not at all think we are immune to all threats to our C3 of UASs. Yet here you are once again charging off "proving" that we are not immune to all threats. Congratulations, you have proved what we all knew all along, and all previously acknowledged all along, including DA in this very thread. Still, I appreciate that the point is valid, and that you cited some interesting articles. Yes, you are right, there are threats. I certainly agree that China poses about the largest of these threats both in quality and quantity, fed in part by Chinese successes in foreign materiel acquisition and foreign materiel exploitation.

To Arty Engineer et al., I hope COMSEC procedures these days do a better job of discovering insiders like John Walker, because I'm thinking it's the "trusted agent" that's going to burn us most of the time, not the daily crypto load that might somehow be recovered from the wreckage of that MH-47 downed this morning (to make a hypothetical example, not that we actually lost one today).

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gf0012-aust AE 6/9/2009 11:36:24 PM

you can encrypt the links and force an immediate purge - but that does not alter the fact that there are systems in operation today, which the stakeholder has been advised is unimpeachable - and yet their own safety routines have failed. if your UAV defaults to a gate closed or gate open (whatever is the safety trigger) then no amount of purging and resetting will fix the problem. In fact, thats exactly whats happened. A UAV goes AWOL and people frantically try a mid air reboot or flash boot in the hope that "ET" will reconect

" Home" for a UAV sometimes defaults to heading west over the mountains - not doing a boomerang

As we move to a 25gb comms future, its even more of an issue. We're part of the US 2014-2018 vision, so they're not shy about telling us what does and doesn't work.

the reality is different from the brochure

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DarthAmerica 6/10/2009 12:49:00 AM

" Home" for a UAV sometimes defaults to heading west over the mountains - not doing a boomerang

As we move to a 25gb comms future, its even more of an issue. We're part of the US 2014-2018 vision, so they're not shy about telling us what does and doesn't work.

the reality is different from the brochure

GF,

Such issues happen and are more often than not isolated and subsequently fixed.

-DA

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Herald12345 How many lines of code to program an ant? 6/10/2009 2:41:22 AM

Something like 2.5 terabytes?

And we go whoopee over 25 gigabytes in a telemetry system?

Somebody has been smoking that hemp.

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gf0012-aust 6/10/2009 3:53:20 AM

Such issues happen and are more often than not isolated and subsequently fixed.

-DA

fixed is when you can replicate and isolate the problem.

a number of these issues and faults are in isolation.

quite frankly, if I had a software engineer or geek come to me and say that a problem was fixed when it was isolated and unable to be replicated - I'd sack him/her faster than a newborn bay could draw oxygen... I certainly wouldn't let him roll out the product in an active state and into complex conditions.

the people at the fighting end would back me up every time. bugger the contractor.

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DarthAmerica 6/10/2009 10:00:08 AM

Such issues happen and are more often than not isolated and subsequently fixed.

-DA

fixed is when you can replicate and isolate the problem.

a number of these issues and faults are in isolation.

the people at the fighting end would back me up every time. bugger the contractor.

Let me elaborate and put this in plain speak. The F-15 had a structural problem due to age that caused a crash. The USAF grounds the fleet, conducts analysis, finds the problem, since it's not isolated to just that aircraft and it could affect the whole fleet, the manufacturer has to apply a fix. This is done and the issue is resolved. If the issue is related to software. Data is collected, studied analyzed and perhaps we find that a 1 should have been a 0 and that is causing the problem. Again, it affects the whole fleet problem solved after patch. With a UCAV, strangely, one goes of on it's own and crashes. Cause unknown. All data is collected and no cause if found. What then? Well, if this happened to ONE single UCAV, then perhaps there was a problem unique to that particular aircraft. You try as much as possible to simulate the conditions in order to reproduce the problem. We run stress test on the platform in order to re-create the problem. Chances are if there really is a design flaw with HW or SW, you will see it. Fix and solve. Otherwise, logically there was something unique to that particular scenario that caused the crash and you may never know. What you do know is the frequency of the occurrence. From that you can make a decision on if the problem is likely enough to warrant more investigation. I deal with this everyday and this is how it's done. And this is not specific to unmanned aircraft. Manned commercial and military aircraft have crashed and people to this day have no idea why. You cannot engineer a perfect system. Nor can you always know if something will work. This is why you have to determine probability and decide what is acceptable. If I lose 30 UCAVs every 500,000 flight hours, is that ok? How about 10 in the same period. These are the decisions that must be made.

Can't make a perfect machine. But we can make them good enough to fight with. Look at missiles. Even when they have .8 or .9 pk some still miss. But men rely on these machines everyday to do their job. This is no different except that the platform comes back.

-DA

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DarthAmerica 6/10/2009 10:39:28 AM

RE: Ant Code

Something like 2.5 terabytes?

And we go whoopee over 25 gigabytes in a telemetry system?

Somebody has been smoking that hemp.

Two things. First, it's a good thing all we want to do is attack SAMs, shoot missiles at stuff and fly rather than simulate the life of an ant. And it seems like that task is well on it's way...

Boeing X-45A Unmanned Aircraft Demonstrates Autonomous Capability

"The X-45A proved it could autonomously react to a dynamic threat environment while engaging a priority target," said David Koopersmith, Boeing J-UCAS X-45 vice president and program manager.

St Louis MO (SP) Jun 28, 2005
A Boeing X-45A unmanned aircraft completed its 52nd flight recently, demonstrating its ability to adapt to a realistic and changing wartime operational environment.

During the test flight, a Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) X-45A departed from NASA¿s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., climbed to 29,000 ft. and entered the base¿s test range.

While flying the mission, several simulated Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) emitters were activated and the unmanned aircraft autonomously created its own flight plan to remain out of lethal range of the simulated SAM sites.

Always managed by the pilot-operator, the X-45A then attacked its simulated priority ground target and showcased the ability to suppress enemy air defenses. Once the aircraft had conducted a simulated battle damage assessment, the X-45A safely returned to Edwards.

"The X-45A proved it could autonomously react to a dynamic threat environment while engaging a priority target," said David Koopersmith, Boeing J-UCAS X-45 vice president and program manager.

"Onboard planning and decision capabilities like these will make our next unmanned system, the X-45C, a highly survivable platform for the warfighter."

The first X-45C will be completed in 2006, with flight-testing scheduled to begin in 2007.

It will be 39 feet long with a 49-foot wingspan, cruise at 0.80 Mach at an altitude of 40,000 feet, carry a 4,500 pound weapon payload, and be able to fly a combat radius of more than 1,200 nautical miles.

The software used and tested on the X-45A may be offered as a candidate for functionality in the development of the J-UCAS Common Operating System.

Boeing began its unmanned combat aircraft program in 1998. The following year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force chose Boeing to build two X-45A air vehicles and a mission control station under the J-UCAS Advanced Technology Demonstration Program.

Winner of a 2005 Flight International Aerospace Industry Award, the J-UCAS X-45 program is a Boeing/DARPA/Air Force/Navy effort to demonstrate the technical feasibility, military utility and operational value of an unmanned air combat system for the Air Force and the Navy.

Operational missions for the services may include persistent st

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DarthAmerica Ant Simulation Context... 6/10/2009 10:53:20 AM

It can take 2.5 TB, OR MUCH LESS. It just depends on what we are trying to simulate and level of detail. An Ant's life is probably far more complicated than what we need UCAVs to do which has been demonstrated.

Speaking of robot versions of animals...

-DA

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gf0012-aust 6/10/2009 5:54:59 PM

I understand there is a resistance by some towards unmanned aircraft but some of these arguments are just throwing out random comments without regard to the fact that we are talking about progress over the next decade and what the actual intent is. COmparing a UCAV to an Ant without context is a huge strawman.

-DA

Personally, I don't give a flying ferk about the manned vs unmanned argument. Each has niche relevant capabilities as complimentary assets - they're both part of the fused battlespace that we're striving to reach.

I do however have great difficulties with what I see as a slavish defence of private companies and the technical promises made in the public arena when I know first hand that its crap. I've worked both sides of the fence. I deal with vaccuous promises every day, and every day I get to point out why material presented as proof of life is just colour and movement and regularly fails when put into real world situations. Keep sales away from engineers. Keep sales away from stars, keep sales away from the operators.

my only focus is to make sure the warfighter gets the best possible gear they can - if I believed half the nonsense that we got from vendors I'd be failing to do my job.

this is my last on this. irrespective of all the spin generated by companies on what they promote on the internet and media about what capability can be delivered - the test is the rubber meeting the road. Invariably, if we accepted half of the crap promoted by the vendors as gold release, we'd be up to our arse in crocs.

my point about the 25gig bandwidth future was not about volume of data. The US has made it clear that time and time again they can get data out - the issue is filtering and getting the right data to the right prosecution asset in a timely manner. As you would/should be aware. Tac comms does not chew gobs of bandwidth. weapons release does not require gobs of bandwidth, hell even getting images back from UAV's does not require gobs of bandwidth (now that Australia has happily released some CSIRO developed capability to the US) - that means that it aint the volume of data thats the issue - its the handling and distribution of it. We're not looking at micro management manipulation of an AI developed combat system - the issue of bandwidth gets back to smarter distribution and management of detail to the right warfighter at the right point in time. In a fused battlespace thats critical. You'd be surprised at how slow any system becomes once you have over 1500 conurrent events being managed and watched in real time. Let alone 100,00 discrete tracks. When you have 100,000 current tracks and a UAV with a nuke goes AWOL, then you have problems. I wouldn't want to do that today.

I get back to a very specific point - there is no way that the US is going to field a nuke on a UAV with the field demonstrated reliability of UAS in its fleet - and across a number of agencies. Ignore the media and public commentary - the real deal is how they perform operationally, and supposedly safe, electronically unimpeachable UAS are getting compromised today. In the future- maybe. Today or within the next 10 years? I highly doubt it.

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