BAE’s Suter program (http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003170.html) shouldn’t have been released into the clear.
For one thing, Remote Data Placement (RDP) is still in its infancy. I was under the impression that there were technological hurdles left to overcome.
For instance, consider how a simple hard drive works. Your computer has data. That data is sent to a controller. The controller tells the hard drive where, when, and how much to magnetize a certain area of disk. Poof, your data is stored on the hard drive.
OK, that’s all well and good. But if a disk is out in the open, not in a hard drive, not inside a computer, not inside a room, then magnetism (e.g. manipulated via laser heat or magnetic pulse or multiple-sourced polarized EM waves) can be directed at the same disk from a distance.
Poof, data is stored onto the disk from some distance away. Hey, it’s a neat technical feat for whiz kids to brag about.
...But it becomes problematic to perform RDP when the disk media is inside a metal hard drive...and even more difficult when the metal hard drive is inside a metal computer case...and more difficult again when the metal computer case is inside a hardened bunker. So useful RDP is a “future technology.”
Of course, data can still be manipulated over open wires like telephone lines (that’s not new), but that runs into routine checksum and static routines for data integrity...such that an ordinary home PC can routinely overcome a large amount of hostile RDP just as it filters out routine static.
But if the U.S. and/or Israel has overcome the hurdles above...it would be big.
Hostile foes would be forced to abandon electronic communications...possibly even having to abandon all computers themselves (which make all smart weapons possible).
If RDP is active in the field without any counter-measures, then our foes would be reduced to pre-1960 weapons technology and communications (even strong encryption would become problematic for them to maintain at any reasonable battle field speed) across the board.
ICBM’s would have to go back to analog targeting and release processes for warheads or risk being reprogrammed in mid-flight, jammed, or otherwise hijacked. Anti-aircraft missiles would have to go back to pure analog detection/targeting.
RDP would give us full knowledge of all electronic funds transfered. We’d have spyware in the very real sense of the term in every bank on the planet.
If we’ve got functioning RDP deployed today, that would place us at the electronic version of the 1945 Trinity test.
With something like a Patriot battery, all 3 components are co-located. But consider a distributed air-defense network. Or even one in which the local command/control node reports to a central command node. (Now who do we know that prefers centralized control? Hint, think Soviet era...) The reporting almost certainly is not hard-wired, land-line stuff. Particularly if you're designing a mobile system, or one that is supposed to survive battle damage to infrastructure, etc.
So there are a lot of comms going on via radio - computer to computer. This may include tracking messages from the radar computer back to the command site's computer - saying (in a formatted binary message) "Hey, I have a target at ..." It may also include requests to engage, authority to engage, etc. The command node may be able to direct the sensor to alter sensitivity, sweep different search sectors, go into a mode incompatible with picking up low flying aircraft, etc.
If you could electronically get on that same comm net's frequency, and you understand the message formats in use... And I assume they'd be encrypted some how... But suppose you could break into this... Then you'd own the radar, the command node, etc. You could push the radar around like you owned it. You could inject false targets, or cancel the reports of the ones the radar is sending.
Heck, you probably don't even have to be able to decrypt the traffic. Suppose you just "step on" the traffic enough, at the right times, to get the command node to reject all tracking messages from the radar? The radar is dutifully reporting seeing new targets, but the command node never gets an un-garbled message... Hence they never see it, never command the radar to go from search to fire-control/engagement mode... You sail through with the radar watching you with little interest, but the *system* ignoring you...
This is all just theory. If, if that is what happened, they'll figure it out after debriefing the radar crews: "How come you didn't order us to engage the targets?" - "What targets? How come you didn't report any?"
So yeah, it was a risk revealing such a thing is possible (if in fact it is). But the real bite in the shorts is that there may be no good remediation for it. Or maybe they didn't sweat revealing this capability 'cause they have something else up their sleeve too? Or maybe the remediation for this is worse than the effect, or can be taken advantage of in some other way. It is a game of cat 'n mouse, and the advantage is generally with the attacker, since they control the pace and the engagement and the defense is well, on the defense, reacting to the attacker.
So basically, maybe they didn't hide their aircraft from the sensors, or jam the radars. Maybe they hid their aircraft from the system, and in-effect jammed the system...???