"UAVs, not going to have a free ride forever" Topic

Acknowledging that TMP members tend to be predisposed to seeing UAVs/drones/whatever taking over the battlefield, I thought this was an interesting little glimpse into a possible future.

link

Probably worth remembering that in the few real-world conflicts where UAVs/drones have been used against anyone with anything resembling a decent air defence system, they tend to come off worst. Take a look again at the youtube video of the Russians cleaning out those Georgian UAVs for instance.

Indeed people are pretty well blinkered about current ops where the use of UAVs is invaluable, however the AD threat against them is low.

On the manouvre battlefield against an army with an AD capability low flying slow UAVs will not last too long. And of course what do our cloud punchers practice against, UAVs!

Tally Ho!

Currently UAV's are "slow" flying platforms, so they are only useful when you have control of the sky. The next generations will be faster and better able to survive in combat.

Besides this vulnerability is nothing new, some drones were shot down by door mounted MG's on helicopters sneaking up on them during the conflicts in Yugoslavia.

Put them in an environment with a MANPADS threat and see what happens.

It would be rash to assume that if "faster", more "combat capable" UAVs are deployed, anti-aircraft defences will not be improved to cope with them.

The article hints at another system that can shoot down rockets and mortars. I have been expecting this type of defensive weapon for a while. Right now everything seems to be vulnerable to some random mortar fire. Heck, they talk about shooting down artillery shells in David Drake books, among others. There have also been books that basically told of the demise of combat aircraft due to ground based laser systems being able to kill to the horizon.

Six words. Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

Bzzzt.

UAVs are nothing more than a reusable stage for a missile, basically. If they get shot down regularly, then we'll just switch back to missiles.

Ground based lasers shooting down aircraft might make Ogre a reality.

HI All

Israel is already deploying systems to shoot down mortars and short range missiles. Such as Iron Dome.

Some UK and USA bases in Iraq and Astan also use garrling based systems to shoot down mortar shells.

Six words. Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

Seven.

:)

I thought the US Army had already successfully tested a LASER based system against an artillery shell.

Doug

I thought the US Army tested the ground mounted 20mm against mortars in Iraq?

I learn something new at least once a week.

Call me a luddite, but I have always felt the move to UAV's beyond the recon and light strike role to be misguided. It may be I have a hard time thinking of a future where manned aircraft are a thing of the past, but I simply cannot embrace this new move towards a pilotless future.

As collins mentioned above, the real test will be a very real war against a first-world opponent with a state of the art air defense system. Though UAV's by their very nature can be built smaller and stealthier, it will take that kind of conflict to truly see where the technology stacks up.

The problem is that if the enemy air defenses are good enough to challenge your UAV fleet then it will *massacre* your manned aircraft fleet.

UAV are the way of the future, period. *Because* of the increasing potency of aerial defenses, not in spite of it. As air defense systems become more and more capable, sending manned aircraft up against it will look more and more like murder. If a UAV is shot down you dust off the replacement craft and prep it for the next mission.

-Will

Without wanting to push this into the Blue Fez territory, it is the body count that generally restricts wars. If the system sufficiently remote, or even automated, where is the 'it's time to stop and talk' line?

Geoff, I think we'd see a progression of asymmetrical warfare similar to what we've seen in the Middle East, but probably aimed at the home front of the opposing nation.

When the insurgency in Iraq realized that "stand-up" fights with Coalition troops were basically fruitless due to the disparity in both troop quality and technology, they turned to IEDs and suicide bombers in an effort to weaken the political will of a force they couldn't defeat through conventional means.

If two nations were locked in a struggle between robotic forces that could be easily replaced and whose loss represented no real political impact, I believe one or both nations would turn to attacks against the other nation's civilian population, either through direct military attack (nukes, bio-chem, etc.) or state sponsored terrorism and espionage. This would switch the focus from the bloodless robotic war to a test of political will in the face of civilian casualties at home.

I doubt that spilled hydraulic fluid will ever be enough to resolve a human war. Blood is required.

However, mall UAVs are bloody difficult to detect, let alone hit!

At our local MANPADS range, the British Army fires Starstreak HVM MANPADs all day long at high-speed, radio-controlled aircraft which are about six feet wide. But they very, very rarely bring one down. To them a 'hit' is scored when you get the missile to within five metres of the target (as real aircraft are a lot bigger).

In Angola in 1987, the South Africans employed Seeker UAVs as artillery AOPs during Operation 'Modular'. It took FAPLA ages to even notice it was there, but even then expended sixteen SA-8s at it before bringing it down, plus god-knows how many MANPADS (they had everything up to SA-16) and 23mm shells.

Laser weapons have become a vast sinkhole in which to lose massive amounts of R&D funds. All but the most basic, short-ranged UAVs have become exactly the same sort of opportunity for defense contractors to swill at the public trough.

Anyone who has been around military testing probably has a very good idea of the conditions under which these "demonstrations" are accomplished.

Anyone remember how we "won" the Cold War? It was by bankrupting the opposition. We're well on the way to doing it to ourselves with unnecessary technology.

There can be no such thing as a bloodless war, for the exact reasons that Ambush Alley Games lays out very clearly. Has no-one read the classics of asymmetrical warfare? Pick up Asprey's 34-year-old "War in the Shadows". Oh, yes: and read it.

Allen

Agreed, they will not have a free ride, but they will challenge the air defenses of many nations, including first-rate ones, when fielded in large numbers (relatively easy to do, since many are fairly inexpensive).

How many times do you think that laser can fire, before it is out of juice, unless hooked up to a power grid, or nuke powerplant?

Also, a lack of missiles and ammo for the air defense guns will hamper their ability to fight back, assuming the drones are fielded in substantial numbers.

The Israelis used drones, followed up by real aircraft to wipe out the Syrian Air Defense network in one of their last major skirmishes.

Send in the drones to get them to light up their search and fire control radars, and then pound them into submission with air to ground ordnance. Long-range artillery can be called in too, once the defenses are located, for an even safer way to destroy the air defense perimeter.

Give the drones weapons, and you up the ante even more, since they can't be ignored in order to target the manned aircraft.

Ground air defenses are fairly fixed in terms of position, while aerial drones and aircraft can attack from any angle, and if used at low level, may be able to sneak in under the radar of the defenders. Sure, mobile sites can move, but they need to shut down their equipment to do so, making them even more vulnerable to attack (they'll need to turn off some units, while keeping others up, in order to provide air defense for the air defense units moving to new positions).

My guess is in any war, or skirmish, air defense units and radar stations will be priority targets for manned and unmanned aircraft, for centuries to come.

Mount a few air-to-air missiles on the drones, to target enemy helos, and aircraft, and their pilots will be more worried about self-preservation than targeting small, annoying little drones, especially once they perfect the swarm control feature (being worked on now).

Game over…..

Lets see the Germans and Japanese thought it was unfair that the US would use so much artillery instead of sending in the infantry. Now it is unfair that the US uses so many UAVs instead of sending in the infantry. The US has always had a tradition of using material instead of blood to win wars.

In war one moves forward not backward. No one has suggested we trade assualt rifles for flintlock muskets. Its the same with drones. No one is going to design new manned fighters, the F-35 will be the last manned fighter built by the US. After all the weapons used to take out enemey AA are cruise missles and HARM, which are nothing but drones.

Patton had it right. Your job is to make the other SOB die. Better a million dollar drone dies taking out the enemy then one American. Or dont you care about our sons and daughters?

I'm not so sure the F-35 will be fielded, or if it is, it will be done in very small numbers.

The F-16 can carry more weapons, is much less expensive, and can perform most of the missions better than the F-35, with the exception of being as stealthy, and not having a STOVL capability.

While the latter is very useful, especially for the Navy and Marines, I'm not sure it can be justified in the current economic environment.

I'd rather have a full squadron of A-10's for the price of one F-35. No doubt, the older, more rugged bird will be much more survivable, if actually hit in combat.

I think the point several are trying to make is that UAVs can't do everything. They can't hold ground. That will still take a person who is vulnerable to getting shot and blown up until we get Skynet and the T-600's up and running. That will solve all our problems.

The ground/water based drones that are inline with the eye in the sky drones will be the interesting point for me.

Sky drone picks a target and establishes a SPOI (significant point of interest) and the low level drones close in to investigate.

A working drone that can handle water, ground, and limited air conditions would be most likely…not transformers by any means but made with tools to meet these conditions.

Especially small ones…imagine hundreds of cluster drones dropping in to a SPOI, and you are the SPOI…I am thinking cat sized.

Tasers, marking tools (chemical perhaps), cameras, etc..

"The US has always had a tradition of using material instead of blood to win wars."

"Or dont you care about our sons and daughters?"

Wow. Just… wow.

I know.

Doug Redshirt, I feel your name is making light of the sacrifices by our sons and daughters in the Starfleet Security Services. Don't you care about them?

I think the key point isn't that drones are invincible or that a determined enemy won't find a way of interfering with/destroying them. The key is that as our IT improves, eventually drones will be MORE effective than manned vehicles. And potentially, infantry too.

The biggest arguement to make here is that every manned weapon has to carry 150-200 pounds of person, plus their life support and control systems. Fighter aircraft are already capable of maneuvers which would kill their occupants-- unmanned variants would therefore be more effective.

The biggest argument for manned solutions is that remote control can be interfered with and AI is not as effective as human judgement. The former will likely always be an issue, but the latter will eventually disappear.

Ok. How many Ryan Lightning Bug recon drones were used over North Vietnam (some of the most intensely-protected airspace in the world at the time)? According to wiki, nearly 3500 missions flown in South-east Asia (China, DPRK and Vietnam combined), with a loss of 578 (total of accidents and shot down).

Now, take that very same airframe and put a Tomahawk's nav package into it instead of the cheap and primitive one from a target drone. Call it $1.6M in 2008 dollars (most recent year avail for inflation numbers). That's a lot cheaper than even a broken-down F16A with a recon pod under the wing. It's cheaper than the recon pod. It's even cheaper than the total death benefits paid to the survivors of the pilot's family.

Drones will be used. I'm still not convinced about autonomous armed drones, but autonomous-until-permission-to-fire is already here, and autonomous recon has been a fact since 1964.

I agree that drones has come to stay. But I can see the raising of cheap ways of AA artillery in order to deal with tactic and microtactic ucavs and uavs. after all, maybe spending one stinger in on microuavs is just overkill, and a victory for the enemy as probably the microuav is a lot cheaper than the stinger. if the stinger can lock in a so small thermal signature.

So I can see a new rol for AA hgms, probably with small aa gun director…. even shotguns to shotdown microuavs..

Of course, there will be soon microuavs with an air superiority role, in order to take on enemy microuavs or tactic uavs…

and of course, very soon the uavs will be more aware of the battlefield… with laser detectors, radar warning systems, etc…

You all need to read "Wired for War" to get an idea of where all warfare robotics is headed. I don't agree with the "It's the best thing since sliced cake" attitude some have toward robotics, but, they have their place and then some. Better to have a drone drop down towards the target and get the bombs on target that have a zoomie sit at 20,000+ and say they can't go lower and, oh, here comes the payload and it should be on target (within acceptable limits).

"I'd rather have a full squadron of A-10's for the price of one F-35."

Amen, bruddah.

I realize the USMC is all about flexible usage when it comes to our aircraft selections, but why we never hitched on to the A-10 waaaay back when I will never fathom; I mean, we're talking arguably the pinnacle of Close Air Support.

Surely we could find SOME way to adapt them for carriers, folding wing tips, reinforce the landing gear, tailhook, voila!

I wonder if THAT was the deal-breaker?

Strictly speaking the light is oscillated by the radiation.

But the acronym isn't as good.

I'm sure the A-10's could be fitted out for carrier service, since they are flying tanks.

The most difficult part (other than fighting the Navy brass who will say it's not a purpose-built, gold-plated navy jet project, so it will never work) will be the new landing gear, and the additional bracing for the tail hook. Probably not too hard to install, given the size of the airframe, although the payload capacity will be slightly less (still much better than a navalized F-35).

Apparently, even the Taliban believe in drones, since I just saw footage of an R/C offroad racing car on TV, fitted with C-4. Apparently they found it in Pakistan, along with a laptop PC armed with C-4 too.

I'll bet most of our squads on the ground don't have C-4 equipped R/C 4x4 drones. I'd like to see each squad with at least two $100 USD R/C aircraft fitted with C-4 as well as two R/C 4x4's also, in order to help take out targets of opportunity too.

Not sure why, since that would seem to be easier for us to do than the Tali's in a remote area of a foreign country. Then again, they are closer to China, where most of the stuff is made now.

Hopefully, that will be rectified soon.

Drones like the Predator and Reaper have a good track record and have proven their effectiveness in decapitating the leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Of course, they're not used on the conventional battlefield where they can be shot down, but rather as aerial assassination platforms by the CIA and the US military.

The controversy with them is that they 'desensitize' us to killing due to their typically high collateral damage and many in the military believe that it is not a 'noble' way to wage war because it takes away the risks of losing lives for the user. Okay, I'll stop since I'm now in CA territory.

When then-BG Scott Wallace commanded the NTC, a few of us (I was his G-2, for my sins) joined him on a flight down to the Intel School at Huachuca, where they were testing the then-rather-hush-hush Predator. We got some pie-in-the-sky briefings and then went back out to the airfield. The Predator was supposed to take off while we watched, but it was busted. Count one armor-cavalry general not very impressed; he did use it on the invasion of Iraq, though.

When it came out to support some of the AWE rotations, the OPFOR had little trouble deceiving it with some very simple countermeasures. Count this heretical old intel (and former armor) guy as totally unimpressed. For what it cost, it ought do be able to do a *lot* better. At least be able to make waffles or something…

Allen

The waffle maker is in the next upgrade, but the food items will cost aprox $10,000 each, still cheaper than current US procurement systems though.

Drones are currently about dreams for the future and colonial style police action against inferior opposition (instead of gunboat diplomacy we now have drone diplomacy? :) ).

As noted though they have been used to spot AA installations prior to attack with manned aircraft (most notably in Iraq).

Whats interesting about drones is the tech isn't as restricted as it is with top of the line airplanes so other countries are looking to produce them as well, indeed in many cases are integral to other countries drone programes already.

"the OPFOR had little trouble deceiving it with some very simple countermeasures"

Deceived the drone or the payload/Imagery analysts? When it boils down to it much depends on the quality of the person looking at the picture and their ability to dtect and recognise the enemy and anything that may indicate that the enemy is there, has been there, is not there and any changes that may be important.

Tally Ho!

If we are to believe the Internet press, US forces in Iraq have been using privately purchased R/C model cars as basic 'recon' vehicles within a few months of the latest unpleasantness.

Just drive it up and have it shove that suspect camel puckey around – if its a b.o.m.b. then it either goes off or you get to see the wires, if not you just have to hose down the toy car

"Deceived the drone or the payload/Imagery analysts?"

The operator and analyst are part of the system.

You don't need to spend anything near the amount of money a Predator costs to put a sensor over a target. So if the human eyes using the sensor can be easily fooled regardless of the cost of the platform, anything spent over the most basic cost is waste.

That, of course, is the goal of the development and procurement system: generating the greatest possible cost, preferably through multiple iterations of systems.

I'd tell you the story of teaching maneuver brigades at the NTC to use imagery, but it's too depressing.

Allen

Absoloutly,

so besides the capability of the sensor the linch pin is the person looking at the screen, training and experience become vital, as does theability to think laterally, know what happens on the ground and why- the list goes on.

As for teaching the "end customer" until they are properly educated in the whats and nots of a system it will remain depressing !

Tally Ho!

"…know what happens on the ground and why…"

There is the great gaping hole in imagery analysis. That's why I spent years bringing groups of CIA and DIA chair-bound analysts out to the NTC to observe realistic, large-scale maneuver formations, to find to our horror that many had never seen a tank up close before.

Our best success was years before the first time national imagery was used in training at the NTC, which didn't happen until it became necessary to show during the Advanced Warfighting Experiments that national imagery could be interated into intelligence at the brigade level, and units would take the trouble and expense to establish field SCIFs at Fort Irwin (since the SSO worked for me, we had to certify them--another long story, which if told fully, involves CI agents, MPs, and senior intelligence officers from the MI School bailing out of windows to escape them…).

Long before that, we stumbled across some National Guard RF-4C crews down at what was then March AFB who were looking for training missions. Since their photo imagery was not sensitive, we (meaning the OPFOR brigade--more on that in a minute) would schedule them to come up and fly photoreconnaissance missions over the NTC. Our imagery analysts would drive two hours down the hill to look at the photos. They'd FAX up a verbal summary to go to the brigade intel trainers (with the Blue force), then would courier the actual photos up the hill, and they'd get passed to the unit out in the box just in time to use in their planning cycle. It was a remarkably efficient process!

The reason the OPFOR was doing this was because the 177th Armored Brigade (later the 11th ACR) had a full-up separate brigade/ACR S-2 section, which included imagery analysts. Ours were pretty experienced, but more importantly, they knew the terrain and the "flow" of battles at the NTC, so they knew what they were looking at. The trainers on the Operations Group side had no way of accessing imagery to pass to the unit being trained.

We took this up a step for a couple of years when the Navy wanted to play as well. Carriers would deploy out of San Diego for training missions, and their photo-recon birds would come up and zoom over the NTC. We would actually put an OPFOR imagery analyst out on the carrier for the duration of the exercise (I forget how many analysts got to claim carrier landing experience as a result), and he or she would coach the Navy analysts on what they were seeing. By that time, we had things in place so that the imagery was passed electronically to our SSO, then picked up and hand-carried to the unit in the box.

When guys with Blue experience at the NTC talk about how "rigged" the battles were for the OPFOR, they probably don't know that for years, we had OPFOR guys and gals processing imagery of OPFOR defenses and laager sites and delivering it tohe Blue S-2s. And a lot of Air Force and Navy folks got good training out of it, too.

That's the "plus" side of the story. The other side starts with the fact that altough the RF-4Cs went off to Desert Storm, they didn't come back. They're not in the inventory any more. More later, if anyone is interested.

Allen

It's interesting to think back to the folks who made that all happen, by the way. I've been laid back in the desert for ten years with nothing to do with all this, but I don't matter. The major who was the OPFOR brigade S-2 who kicked this off and made things happen has been retired for years; he's playing Warhammer Ancient Battles. The chief warrant officer who *really* made things happen in practice has been retired for years and is busy protesting the expansion of a "detainee" facility in the Pacific Northwest. The staff sergeant who led our imagery analysts and did most of the training of the USAF and NAVY personnel (and unhappily did a couple or three carrier landings himself) retired before I did.

Yes it's been twenty years, but the thought of some very aggressive, problem-solving, can-do intel folks sitting home all these years, when they *know* how to look at things in the desert (and the California desert was *not* the only one we looked at), sorta chaps my shorts.

Allen

That is one advantage of the UK system, the Payloader Operators are all gunners, have a good tactical awareness of both "blue" and "red" force tactics at all levels, as indeed do the IAs who carry out further work where required. A great help was that many have Desert Hawk (Mini UAV) experiance where they were deployed on the ground with the troops in contact.

Tally Ho!

For a short while, one or two of our heavy battalions would come out equipped with a very similar system to Desert Hawk: larger than the current Raven, and not anywhere near as insanely expensive: about $4K per vehicle as I recall.

These were given to the battalion scout platoon, and being scouts, they quickly learned how to make maximum use of it. They were a Good Thing, and Cheap, and so naturally, they were discarded in favor of something much more lucrative for the defense industry.

Allen

Soon there will be anti-UAV UAV's and then two guys half a world away will be playing video games against each other. The history of UAV dogfighting will read like the first year of WWI air combat.

Tabletop, I'm sure you are correct that will happen eventually, especially against 1st rate armies.

Interesting stuff aecurtis – would love to hear more.

Glad to see some are ultilizing the low-tech end of the spectrum, even on their own initiative.

A little R/C car, equipped with a small camera, and a way to feed the footage back to the local squad operating it could be very useful, especially in streetfights. They can probably serve as decoys as well, once the enemy starts figuring out what they are, and what happens shortly after they drive through their defensive positions.

No doubt, small aerial drones controlled at the squad and platoon level will be even more valuable.

Of course, dummy positions can always deceive the recon people, so that will need to be considered as well. Supposedly, the Serbs were very good at that, when going up against NATO.

Millions of dollars of ordnance were expended on cardboard and plywood targets, and SAM positions made from telephone poles. To deceive the I/R and ELINT people, small fires or heaters were used to make the vehicles appear as if they were running, and false radio signals were generated as well.

I'd suggest adding a small bit of plastique, or other explosive to the drones, just in case a valuable target of opportunity presents itself.

That will also strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, since they will come to dread the mosquito-like drone of gas and battery powered R/C vehicles. They won't know if they are merely observing, or will be attacked by them, so that should make them a bit edgier.

"…small fires or heaters were used to make the vehicles appear as if they were running…"

OK, you got me started.

The NTC OPFOR used DRTs (usually pronounced "Dirts"), meaning either "Divisional Reconnaissance Teams" or "Dismounted Reconnaissance Teams", depending on who was doing the 'splaining.

Bob Henry can tell you the details of how they operated, but in general, they were dismounted observer teams dropped off on ideal observation locations by BRDMs some hours before the mission, representing reconnaissance patrols from the OPFOR divisional reconnaissance battalion which had passed through the sector at the correct doctrinal time-and-distance interval before the lead elements of the first-echelon motorized rifle regiment which the OPFOR portrayed.

These observer teams would hunker down and keep eyes on the Blue defense, or watch for the lead Blue elements in a meeting battle/meeting engagement, report back to the OPFOR "divisional HQ", call for fires, etc.; all quite doctrinally correct, justified by… well, yours truly, most of the time, but with help from subject-matter experts like COL Dave Glantz, LTC Les Grau, and their British counterparts. But over time, the DRTs learned that they could be very useful in taking out some very expensive Blue force assets.

Brigades started coming out on rotation with first an attack helicopter company, or sometimes the better part of an aviation battalion in support. Apaches could be lethal in taking down a significant part of the OPFOR regiment before they even got into contact. But their selection of aerial battle positions was predictable, and over time the OPFOR regimental chiefs of intelligence got pretty good at templating where they would be. And lo and behold, these were often the same pieces of ground that made really good DRT OPs: high ground, with good visibility, and hard to get to.

So the OPFOR started sending out SA-14 MANPADS (MILES simulators, not the real thing) with the DRTs. Doctrinal? Well, there were enough in the divisional reconnaissance battalion to go around, and the OPFOR was meant to be an intelligent adaptive adversary. I liked it. Blue forces complained bitterly.

As a result, AH-64 crews would speed on out to their aerial BPs, completely fail to check the ground to secure the BP (or their ingress and egress routes to and from them), and before they were able to lay some serious scunnion onto the attacking OPFOR, they'd start blinking, having been "killed" by the OPFOR DRTs sitting in the rocks underneath them.

So this became a sort of cat-and-mouse game, with the smarter rotational units placing indirect fires on suspected (traditional) DRT locations, or occasionally sending out counter-recon elements. But generally, the OPFOR was pretty successful in taking out a bunch of Apaches most rotations, and their commnders loved it. One colonel who commanded the OPFOR brigade kept a daily tally of the "cost" to the US Army in quarter-million dollar increments (that being the price of an Apache early on). A $1,250,000 or $1,500,000 OPFOR day was pretty successful--and not uncommon.

Now you may think that a little macabre. But the sad thing is that the lessons of securing routes and BPs was never adequately learned by the aviation community. So years later, when we went to another desert, we had some really expensive "OPFOR days", along with the loss of lives to go with the real aircraft losses. I do not belittle those tragic losses, but note that they were preventable, if aviators had taken their NTC experience seriously.

Right: fires and heaters. Hang on. I'm getting there.

A few years along, and some NTC training rotations turned into Advanced Warfighting Experiment rotations, where the Army would demonstrate the goodness of all their electronically connected sensors, command and control systems, and other expensive doohickies. Along with these they brought the Apache Longbow: a lethal nighttime killer, able to see out to ranges from which no enemy could touch them, and able to deliver massed Hellfire volleys… well, you all know the hype.

Now the OPFOR knew that Longbow companies were coming out on rotation. Don't let anyone lie to you: the OPFOR commanders who execute the missions don't know the whole scenario. They don't cheat. But they're not stupid. And they knew that the Longbows would be used for the deep fight, preferably to engage the OPFOR regiment while it was still on the march.

Now Fort Irwin is big, but not big enough that the OPFOR can come marching from all that many kilometers away. They traditionally parked in battalion-sized laager sites, all arrayed in march formation, typically three company columns abreast, a few kilometers from the Blue line of contact. They'd have barbecues the night before an attack, get some rest, then turn over the engines just before SP time and move out into the attack. They'd been doing it for years, and everyone knew they did, and had a darned good idea where to expect to see them once they moved out. (Unit S-2s came out with diagrams of OPFOR laager sites, as if that would do them any good…)

So, the first night the Apaches were likely to get into the fight in their deep battle mode, the OPFOR parked all their tracks up in little wadis--not in their nice neat parking lot formations--and shut them down so they'd be cold. (And it *was* cold: I can testify, as I was heading out to the box at about 0330 that morning in the G-2 open HMMWV.)

The attack helicopter company transited over us as we drove out, and we could see them with just marker lights setting up in their aerial BPs, at a good stand-off range from the perfectly templated OPFOR laager sites. When the "battle" commenced, the Longbows opened up on the laager sites with their MILES Hellfires, and suddenly the Eagle (aviation observer-controller) net was full of complaints about how they weren't killing anything.

Well, of course, the reason they weren't killing anything was that the OPFOR wasn't there. The OPFOR had had their barbecue, for sure, and had left those cut-down burn barrels, along with enough more to give the signature of three parked MRBs, burning down all night long. So they were nice and toasty to give the perfect heat signature of an entire MRR sitting parked in formation when the Apaches opened up. And meanwhile, of course, the OPFOR was quietly, and with cool engines, just slipping out of their wadis unseen and into the attack, which was completely and devastatingly successful.

There are more stories, especially about spoofing RSTA systems instead of crewed weapons systems, but my point is this: when your adversary is aware of your capabilities, it may not take him long to figure out countermeasures, and more importantly, to figure out how to turn your reliance on technology into a vulnerability.

Everything the NTC OPFOR ever did that was "sneaky" in this way was stuff that we had dug up out of open-source Soviet military periodicals, journals, and professional books. It wasn't what the Soviets called "native wit"; it was using documented principles and techniques of maskirovka. If our "U.S." OPFOR guys could read these and figure out how to apply them as effective countermeasures, so can any adversary.

All technology is vulnerable. Even the Death Star had a badly-designed heat vent! All the enemy has to do is identify it and capitalize on it.

Allen

Good anecdotes, Allen and interesting stories all.

The most thorough "proof" of how good the Serbs were at deception comes from the Serbs themselves, so we can be a little skeptical of the source.

"The most thorough "proof" of how good the Serbs were at deception comes from the Serbs themselves, so we can be a little skeptical of the source".

Not realy, we were on the ground soon after looking at what had been done, and letting the air forces, in their 5 star hotels, know that they had not bombed the VJ in oblivion, when the very few AFVs they had hit were, mostly, already disabled!

Tally Ho!

According to mates around towards the end/post the bombing campaign there were an awful lot of interested Russians checking out the results of all that ordanance :)