Perpetual Defense Thread (Defense & non-commercial Space Nerds ITT)
- Thread starter PsionEdge
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More than going with radar tracking alternatives?
I have no expertise here, but if this is specifically for anti-ICBM duties then it doesn't need decoy detection anyway right? I wasn't aware any true ballistics had decoy capabilities, many were just inert kinetics at that.
I think you have that backwards. Missiles with ballistic warheads often utilize decoys, since it’s cheap and easy to put a decoy on the same ballistic path. Iran’s simpler ballistic missiles generally have decoys, as an example. The missiles with warheads that can maneuver in terminal phase don’t usually have decoys because the decoys would have to have the same maneuvering capability, and that’s a lot of mass to spend on a decoy.
If literally 8 fucking GALLEY OVENS cost $110M to develop.... you're doing it wrong.
"Wrong" very likely meaning "totally fucking ripping off the American taxpayer", of course.
I guess that's my question then, how commonplace are decoys on true, long range parabolic or hypersonic ICBMs? The hypersonics I read up on were kinetic and had self maneuvering to aim, but that was about it. For example I can't imagine flares keeping pace with a hypersonic payload, so a basic cheap heatseaker to me seems the best option. But I wouldn't know.
It has to pass Mil Std certifications, and all the paperwork that follows. Supply chain certification, etc. Not to mention it will be bought in 8 units every 5 years if you are lucky.
Speaking of the ovens, or more precisely washing room and bunks, USS Ford is finally home after almost 1 year deployed.
Pretty much every MIRV/MRV-equipped ICBM will carry some inflatable decoys in the empty space between RVs - they don't weigh much, and they're considered more-or-less indistinguishable1 from the actual warheads until they reach the upper atmosphere on the way down.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine revealed that the Iskander-M tactical ballistic missile is equipped with up to 6 deployable countermeasures designed to decoy incoming missiles.
1 - a lot of money was spent as part of SDI on ways to differentiate between inflatable decoys and RVs in space; it's possible someone came up with a method that worked but it's classified as a result.
Multi-sensor fusion for discrimination was one of the key methods used if you had multiple sensors available, either on board or external sources. (which is why I asked about a 2 color seeker, decoy may look real at one wavelength, but doesn't at another.
A couple of my my guys (they worked for me at this time the paper was published, I changed roles since) wrote a paper on how to best combine data from multiple souces. It was presented at a IEEE Aerospace conference. The paper is generic and talks about how to get the best result out of combining multiple sources for any application.
EDIT: Only one worked for me at the time of publishing, the othre had worked for me for a while prior to that period. Some really smart guys.
EDIT2: second guessed myself on adding something, so linking to something slight different. A lenghty dicussion of penaids, and a simpler Wikipedia reference.
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To expand on that, the trick is that ballistics spend such a small time in the atmosphere on terminal approach, that identification, targeting/prioritization and (most typically) interception occur above the atmosphere. So the decoys don’t have to mimic any atmospheric effects of the actual warheads. Decoys can be light, inflatable, lack re-entry heat shielding , etc. They quickly fall behind the warhead(s) and burn up once getting in the atmosphere. Even for an interceptor capable of atmospheric interception, the target identification and prioritization would occur at the exo-atmospheric stage, so exo-atmospheric decoys would still be useful in potentially sending interceptors in the wrong directions.
Doing it wrong - absolutely, ripping off (as in overcharging/corruption) while possible, it's unlikely. That's how utterly broked the US DoD acquisition system is. The one thing they are very thorough about it is validating costs/charging. DCMA is constantly auditing rates and ANYTHING on a government contract is open book to the government. I bet you anything at least $11milllion of that was pure financial oversite - absolutely nothing to do with development itself. I know of one recent program with a total contractor headcount of ~95 had 11 DCMA people auditing that program on a constant basis. DCMA is not part of the government project office and is frequently at odds.
$110 million sounds absurd to me as well, but the government loves to go after contractors that overcharge and it impacts abiltiy to get future contracts. In general, it's a particularly stupid Program Manager that tries to "cook" the books. We get a breifing at least once a year about how contractors are fined/punished (with concrete examples). Turns out 4/5 times were not intentional. Either misunderstandings or incompetence.
Don't get me wrong, it does happen, but actually doing something illegal to get paid more almost never happens (I infer "ripping off" to mean literally cooking the books to gain illegal profit).
I've been doing this for 36 years and have not once seen a deliberate attempt to rip off the customer. Ok, I need to caveat that, - rip off financially. I have seen a couple of senior folks try to pass off failed requirements as a functioning system. Each and every one of them lost their job.
Add in the possibility for multiple re-entry vehicles, and decoys are even more effective at consuming enemy defenses.
Which is also why the only interceptors designed to use atmospheric drag to filter out inflatable decoys before starting the engagement (Sprint and HiBEX) had such insane performance (100g & 400g acceleration off the pad, respectively)
Incidentally I noticed they are still investigating the cause and origin of the laundry room fire too.
That was an extremely interesting read, thank you! It does seem a bit foolish for Russia to expose that capability given the lack of need and that the hardware will end up in the hands of western powers.
The hits to US Navy just keep coming. A couple of EA-18 Growlers were colliding at an air show. 4 ejection seats shown firing and parachute deployed. That's what USD 160 million out?
Using an especially rare and expensive type for this sort of work was needlessly stupid. Surely the Navy has some older Super Hornets they could use for airshows instead.
The Navy literally has a team of Hornet pilots who do nothing but fly airshows.
To be fair, I don't see any evidence that these Growler guys were going to do more than a formation flyby. But still.
To be fair, I don't see any evidence that these Growler guys were going to do more than a formation flyby. But still.
The crew in the bottom Growler are really lucky the top one ended up with the nose offset enough that they could eject without being launched straight into it.
That has never mattered. On CV-66 we had a Tomcat catch the wire wrongly, it was not quite teetering on the side of the flight deck. Haul it on deck with the crash crane? Hell no, it was pushed over the side to the bottom of the ocean. Years ago I was hanging out with an elderly Korean War veteran. He was Army. He told me the story of when they were going to ship all their jeeps back on the flightdeck of a carrier. They loaded the fleet of jeeps, went out to sea, filled all the gas tanks on the jeeps and then pushed them all over the side.
The Tomcat I can understand since it interferes with flight operation. The Army Jeep though? It's just pure spite to the high command.
Those missiles had to be traveling through the lower atmosphere at such high speed that they used ablative heat shielding! They also didn’t have the accuracy, at the time, to do the “hit a bullet with a bullet” thing, so used a high-neutron nuclear warhead. The missiles traveled so fast that the radar used to illuminate the targets had to be extra-high-powered, so the missiles could pick it up through their own plasma sheath. Crazy!
Had me going for a sec wondering what a sports-wear/sneaker brand would have to do with the German army. It's about "the Puma" (IFV), not Puma (the brand).
As with everything else in U.S. society, the "little guys" who attempt to game the system or, worse, make simple mistakes, get a ton of bricks dropped on them, while the fat cats who used connections in Congress to ensure appropriations passed for expensive systems, or who ensured that a competitive bid process wasn't, or who benefit from inflating costs so that more House Reps benefit from money being spent in their districts, suffer from no oversight whatsoever.
Everything I was talking about was with Lockheed, NG or Boeing. They have a shit ton of oversight. That 95 person program was one of Lockheed's. I really don't know where you're getting your information.
I want to be clear, I am not defending the big guys, there have been some contemptible crap, but they have very little opportunity to get away with much and I much more interested in what's really happening, good or bad, than some meme about the entire industry is corrupt and out to fleece the American public. For every story you read about a failed program, there are successful ones. The lions share of the ones in the press as too expensive, or contractor incompetence are simply due to the broken acquisition process. Program financials and execution are held at the program level, and that means middle management except for really, really large programs. Executives, at least at some of the biggest defense companies I have worked with/for don't have the ability/authority to screw around with overcharging the customer or lying about the product.
#1 cause of failed/overrun projects is again - the acquisition process
#2 is customer scope creep and no grasp of the technical challenges
#3 is poor contractor program management
somewhere further down the list is screwing over the public, cheating, lying, overcharging, etc. Do not get me wrong - it happens, but it is far rarely than everyone not in the industry thinks.
"Why is General Dynamics charging the gov $10K for a hammer?" - well because the customer mandating meetings (i.e. labor costs) and reports costing $500K in labor. Then they mandated full MIL-STD-810 testing that costs a fortune in labor and lab costs (well not so much for something as small as a hammer, but it still costs a ton). So delivering ONE hammer ended up costing $10Million so they have to sell 10,000 hammers to get the cost DOWN to $10K each. If the DoD wants a $20 hammer, then they should buy AS-IS from a wholesaler/distributor.
If by "Full MIL-STD-810 testing" you mean that they mandated every single test - someone was doing it wrong. The intent is to select the appropriate tests from the array, not perform the entire array.
Admittedly the last time I did MIL-STD-810 testing was back in the late '90s using an even older version of the spec because the contract documents specified MIL-STD-810B instead of the then-current version for some reason.
There's also just straight up incompetence. When I was at one of the companies listed in your post, somebody somewhere managed to buy a load of counterfeit ICs which resulted in all of us having to watch some incredibly racist training videos about the production and identification of fake chips. Apparently, Mr. Chang, complete with straw (rice paddy style) hat, takes his enormous bucket of de-soldered ICs down to the Yangtze river and gives them a good soak to get the serial numbers off...
There was also the time when someone in my department managed somehow managed to buy counterfeit Baofeng radios - apparently the cheap Chinese radios weren't cheap or Chinese enough; or the time one of the companies involved in the Crowsnest radar forgot that an ASW radar might need a waterproof cover...
Concur, incompetence certainly belong on that list.
In general my point is that the meme is that the companies are solely out they to rip off the people or the government, and that is incorrect. It would be very short-sighted of them to do so, not because they are inherently ethical (what company is?). Popular belief is that fraud is taught and encouraged at MIC companies and it's a very common practice. It's not.
That was an example, but honestly not uncommon IME. I know there was one missile there an EMI filter (it was a $150 part) manufacturer moved from US to Canada. Contractor proposed sampling the new locations out put and put it through a brief functional test. Nope, government wanted a full up requalification and they wanted 50 end items tested. That was a lot of money just because the factory moved, multiply that by the 1,000s of parts in a missile. By the way, that EMI filter moved two more times - once to Mexico (another full round of testing) and then to China (found alternative part).
Oh, and there was a government Parts Review Board that burned millions in labor signing off or modifying contractor proposed test for these items and then required any results to come back to the board for review. Is some degree of testing required for a changed part - sure., but the amount of $$ that went into just this Parts Review Board was crazy to me.
There is a very long list of stories I could tell about incompetence, government driven scope creep, poor management etc, but as for fraud? I can honestly say I've never witnessed or directly heard about one myself. Doesn't mean that they don't exist, just rare in comparison.
EDIT: My frustration is that the general public seems to be operating from misconceptions and if you do that, you're never going to fix the root cause. Fix the damn acquisition process and if the big Boeings, NG, LM's of the world don't make it as a result - so be it.
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Nah. It's all for profit to the MIC. The 'tackling fraud, waste, and abuse' claptrap has always been a lie. You can know this because the fraud, waste, and abuse is always omnipresent.
not that specific spec, but the number of times I've had to sit arguing to the gov that no, I don't need to review their entire list and justify each test choice was >0 and I guarantee you that was a LOT of hours.
It's official, Canada is entering negotiations with Saab to buy up to six GlobalEye aircraft for the AWACS role. Two years ago it would have been close to a shoe-in that these would be E-7s - unless maybe if Bombardier's lobby team got enough sway to to switch since the Global 6500 it's based on is Canadian made. I wonder if there are tea leaves there that indicate movement towards Saab for a Gripen order.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-negotiating-saab-globaleye-9.7213424
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-negotiating-saab-globaleye-9.7213424
Almost certainly it was because one person in-country didn't want surplus equipment on their books and be on the hook for disposing of it, and another person didn't want the equipment on their books when it came back to the US and be on the hook for disposing of it. So the equipment was loaded on the carrier and the captain was told to find an excuse to push them over the side well out to sea, like "we needed to clear the flight deck for emergency flight operations". Operational priorities, it's just a bunch of jeeps, so nobody cares, and now they're off the books. It's like when Major Buang landed a Cessna on the deck of the Midway during the Fall of Saigon, he only needed one helicopter moved to land on the deck, but the deck crew pushed $10 million worth of Hueys off the deck to make room, no one cared about the Hueys because the military already had so many of them. Major Buang provided a convenient excuse to get them off the deck.
Conversely, with the Tomcat it was almost certainly too risky to try and pull it back onto the deck. They have recovered aircraft (specifically another Tomcat) hanging off the flight deck before, so it can be done. https://theaviationist.com/2018/05/...-blown-off-the-flight-deck-by-another-tomcat/
Anything that takes space on a carrier is an obstacle. If it contained petrol it's a flammable obstacle.
It's surprising anyone wanted the Jeeps back in CONUS when they could have been left in South Korea. In the Korean war era there were so many WWII production Jeeps they had very little value. Shipping them back then storing them in CONUS would have cost more than they were worth. That they went on a carrier suggests the dumping was planned in advance at higher levels (unless the relative was an officer etc who would have seen any relevant orders).
Disposal of equipment accumulation was a problem. The US surplused vast numbers of vehicles in Europe and forbade them being returned because Jeeps and trucks etc would have flooded the civilian market. (That worked out nicely for Europeans who bought them surplus.)
The MQ-9B with GlobalEye pods has made its first flight with plans for completing a full evaluation by the end of the year. It is being branded as "LoyalEye" which implies that it would be a companion to a manned aircraft, like GlobalEye, but depending on how they communicate nothing says that they have to talk to an airborne platform. Because of power limitation on the drone it will have smaller detection range than GlobalEye but since it is cheaper you could have more of them in the air to cover the same amount of area.
Last I heard there's STILL traders working through New Old Stock US army jeep and truck parts in Europe. It's getting more scarce but it's not entirely done yet. A relative of mine bought a new, still wrapped in grease paper WW2 Willys jeep (in parts, in separate crates/boxes, most of them produced around late 1944 and early 1945, so they probably made it to the European theater after the war was already over) from a trader some 15 years ago which was one of the last 10 he had left. So he had 10 left some 70 years after the war had ended.
Those can't possibly be road legal under current emissions and safety standards?
They're road legal under old-timer exemptions (40+ years old). Actually registering one that never had a license plate before is the difficult bit in the Netherlands. I think he ended up building it on the registered/numbered frame (which is, legally, the car in the Netherlands) of a destroyed jeep someone was selling for cheap sans engine and 3/4 of the parts (that he didn't need anyway),