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Subject: Network Invasion In modern warfare!
jessmo_24    4/10/2011 5:15:23 AM
Airborne jammers are an invaluable tool for the military, but they are fairly blunt instruments. The plane that the Navy currently uses for most of its jamming duties, the Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler, is described by its maker as having a fairly predictable set of abilities: The Prowler’s primary role is to protect fleet surface units and strike aircraft by jamming enemy radar and communications. The secondary mission includes electronic surveillance. And that’s what it’s been doing, since 1971: screwing with radar systems in a support capacity, like a sort of target electromagnetic noisemaker. Its technological payload is long overdue for an upgrade, as is the plane that carries it–something the Department of Defense is well aware of, and is taking action to address. Just this month, in fact, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced his intentions to accelerate development of a “new generation of electronic jammers.” What he’s talking about is the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) development program, an initiative to create new jamming technology to be carried by F-18, EA-18 Growler and F-35 jets. Primarily, this program is intended to bring basic jamming capabilities up to date, and to design equipment suitable for newer generations of planes. (The EA-6B is four decades old. (But a secondary (and much more interesting) capability of these new jammers is something called network invasion–a technique by which actually hijacks enemy communications systems, rather than just interfering with them. Aviation Week, via Danger Room, reports that the NGJ will include tools similar to those tested as part of an Air Force/BAE effort that demonstrated its first effective capabilities over five years ago. The program is called Suter, and its capabilities, according to an Aviation Week piece written soon after the third version of the technology was demonstrated, are impressive: Suter 1 allowed U.S. operators to monitor what enemy radars could see. The capability enables U.S. forces to assess the effectiveness of their stealth systems or terrain-masking tactics. Suter 2 permits U.S. operators to take control of enemy networks as system managers and actually manipulate the sensors, steering them away from penetrating U.S. aircraft. Suter 3 was tested last summer to add the ability to invade the links to time-critical targets, such as battlefield ballistic missile launchers or mobile surface-to-air missile launchers. This represents a fundamental shift in the role of jamming technology, from an reactive tool that allows other pilots to carry out a mission more easily, to an active tool capable of disabling–and potentially controlling–enemy facilities. Technology in the same vein as the NGJ has already been deployed, to apparent success. In 2007, Isreali bombers destroyed a Syrian nuclear materials site, without triggering any alarms in the country’s Russian-designed air defense system. How? By “directing data streams” into the missile defense systems emitters, the Israelis were able to “invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions so that approaching aircraft can’t be seen.” Less jamming, more hacking; less blunt physical force, more digital finesse: this is actually pretty good indicator as to where all military hardware is moving in the future. So In theory, If all of your command, control, Spotting, passive detection and even the Lorries themselfs are all connected, It would only take 1 single point of entry to screw up your IADS!
 
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jessmo_24       4/10/2011 5:16:53 AM
This part got me
 
(But a secondary (and much more interesting) capability of these new jammers is something called network invasion?a technique by which actually hijacks enemy communications systems, rather than just interfering with them.
 

Aviation Week, via Danger Room, reports that the NGJ will include tools similar to those tested as part of an Air Force/BAE effort that demonstrated its first effective capabilities over five years ago. The program is called Suter, and its capabilities, according to an Aviation Week piece written soon after the third version of the technology was demonstrated, are impressive:

Suter 1 allowed U.S. operators to monitor what enemy radars could see. The capability enables U.S. forces to assess the effectiveness of their stealth systems or terrain-masking tactics. Suter 2 permits U.S. operators to take control of enemy networks as system managers and actually manipulate the sensors, steering them away from penetrating U.S. aircraft. Suter 3 was tested last summer to add the ability to invade the links to time-critical targets, such as battlefield ballistic missile launchers or mobile surface-to-air missile launchers.

This represents a fundamental shift in the role of jamming technology, from an reactive tool that allows other pilots to carry out a mission more easily, to an active tool capable of disabling?and potentially controlling?enemy facilities.

Technology in the same vein as the NGJ has already been deployed, to apparent success. In 2007, Isreali bombers destroyed a Syrian nuclear materials site, without triggering any alarms in the country?s Russian-designed air defense system. How? By ?directing data streams? into the missile defense systems emitters, the Israelis were able to ?invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions so that approaching aircraft can?t be seen.?
 
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jessmo_24       4/10/2011 5:17:27 AM
This turns passive detection on its head!!
 
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Reactive       4/10/2011 9:30:19 AM
Less jamming, more hacking; less blunt physical force, more digital finesse: this is actually pretty good indicator as to where all military hardware is moving in the future.

So In theory, If all of your command, control, Spotting, passive detection and even the Lorries themselfs are all connected, It would only take 1 single point of entry to screw up your IADS!
 
 
It depends how resilient the software and operating system is, we know for a fact (you can even buy these online) that there are banks of unused, unpublished zero-day exploits for accessing by back door every version of windows from 3.1 upwards - the same goes for most other operating systems to, the more that software is expected to network and interface with other software, the harder it gets to plug every vulnerability, when used for hosting critical systems OS's like windows are very vulnerable - quite simply there's too many holes, which is incidentally why I wonder whether Windows was the right choice for powering the T-45 destroyers..
 
The other thing to note is that not every piece of software has these vulnerabilities, some are watertight and no amount of "hacking" is going to help, what usually seems to be the case is that in the real world people get lax about certain things, even security firms, even military firms, they could make their systems secure but there's not the level of oversight or ball-busting to ensure that it ever happens - it's simply a question of vigilence and development cost.
 
As an interesting example look at the recent case of hbgary federal (which supplied hacking and software development services to the us gvt), they needlessly took on a foe that then used a 16 year old girl amongst others to break into their website and leak their entire email database. If there is someone actively seeking a way in then there only has to be the slightest unpatched or untested bit of code and it's game over, that's why the use of network-capable and non air-gap protected software in critical applications should be sparing and coded in the more reliable (but costly and time consuming to develop) software environments.
 
R

 
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earlm       4/10/2011 6:03:55 PM

This turns passive detection on its head!!

No it doesn't.  None of this stuff we see is anything knew.  DRFM, cross-eye jamming, network intrusion, QWIP, all of it is the same stuff.  The terms Low Observables and Network Centric encompass all of it.  There's moves and countermoves and there's no magic bullet.  No system is invulnerable and there is no counter to LO and NCW except being better overall or trying to exploit the exploits and hoping for a negotiated settlement.  Whoever spends the most across the board of technologies will dominate in the Fanboy-centric "VS" world which is I have no respect for FS, BW, and the Keyons.  They can't handle the fact that the US absolutely dominates in the sterile world of "VS."  In the real world geography matters which is why the enemy is looking at AA/AD.  Two of the most interesting things of the last fifteen years are "Streetfighter" for the navy and Air-Sea battle.  Both are counters to AA/AD since that is what will happen in the real world.  Note that France's Rafale is a low cost attempt at countering the SAM part of AA/AD.  Also note that the write ups on Air-Sea battle don't mention details like QWIP which the Keyons are praying will detect the F-22 and F-35.  It doesn't mention Carlo Kopp's two pieces of flesh for fantasy, DRFM and cross-eye because they're just techniques of ECM which means there are countermoves.  Go ahead and tell a physicist that a signal that was generated by an antenna is the same as one that bounced off a surface after being emitted from a different antenna.  Who wins in that game?  The side with the best physics and the most money and experience.  Go ahead and emit massive signals from crosseye pods and see what happens.  Go ahead and rely on QWIP and see what you see compared to someone who has QWIP, AESA, and networking. 
 
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gf0012-aust       4/11/2011 5:31:51 AM


So In theory, If all of your command, control, Spotting, passive detection and even the Lorries themselfs are all connected, It would only take 1 single point of entry to screw up your IADS!

except networks aren't built with single level redundancy.  there is no such thing as a single point of entry which will compromise the entire grid to that extent.

the TADLs are separate from general data links etc... and land links are also airgapped.

and its not about hacking, its about mapping and pattern behaviour.

Jjamming is and always has been a part of the broader modern battlespace management set.


 
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Das Kardinal       4/11/2011 10:21:48 AM
This "Suter" tech sounds remarkable, but now that the cat's out of the bag, I'd expect the OPFOR to wise up and plug the most blatant leaks - I was going to say "the Cylon backdoor"... ;)
Of course, it won't help those third-rate old users of old Soviet SAMskis, but then they're toast against a Western AF, anyway. 
 
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jessmo_24       4/11/2011 3:29:55 PM
But the U.S. and israel have had a chance to poke around with most sams including the S-300.Doesnt it make a difference if you have seen under the SAMs dress?
 
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earlm       4/11/2011 7:01:17 PM
The S300 has been in Western hands for some time so I assume it's compromised.  The S400 is more of a mystery but evidently the main exploit is jamming its links with other systems.  The main exploit besides sending its location to an F-22 that drops a JDAM outside of its range I mean.
 
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