One possible RPV that could do the job.
Posted on 02/24/2003 1:18:27 PM PST by FairOpinion
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:35:35 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Might recommend a mask in case you hit the little bugger, but better than spraying your entire city with Saddammabugs, eh.
All victims in the region take doxycilin and fully recover, attack fails.
Of all the things we need to worry about, this is pretty low on the list.
One possible RPV that could do the job.
Of all the things we need to worry about, this is pretty low on the list.
Replace Anthrax with weaponized smallpox and they might as well have dropped nukes.
Or the deck of a ship...
In a 1995 issue of Albania Briefings Mr D publishing one of the first pictures of a US Predator drone as it based from Gjader, Albania to conduct reconnaissance against Bosnian Serb mobile forces during the Bosnian war. Iraqi drones much less sophisticated now than even those early US models. Launching such an attack would be impossible for a team of Islamic entente sappers in the US.
Much more likely is a Kamikaze style wave of hundreds of drones being launched against US troop buildups in Kuwait. Armed with chemical weapons, only a handful of these getting through would put the US into a real jam. Current air-defence systems in place are not calibrated for such slow moving targets -- what is needed of course are scores of the old Quad fifties to negate this threat in theatre...
Iraqi drones attacking the US mainland? Someone needs to double check and make sure this isn't an early April 1st hoax...
The forces of freedom on the move. Europe trembles.
Might recommend a mask in case you hit the little bugger, but better than spraying your entire city with Saddammabugs, eh."
I've already got my own - BUMP
but I could use a 10 gauge...
First, UAVs can be knocked down fairly easily with a concerted effort--and the right weapons. As I recall, NATO lost 16 UAVs in Kosovo, including U.S. Predators and a high-speed Franco-German model (CL-228?). Most of the losses occured in an area where UAVs operated frequently. The weapons of choice were anti-aircraft guns (23/60 mm, along with heavy machineguns), or man-portable SAMs. One area in southern Kosovo was nicknamed "the triangle of death" because so many losses occured in that area.
Secondly, the Serbs understood the importance of UAVs before the war began, and made a concerted effort to engage them. They even staged an air defense exercise to refine their anti-UAV tactics. However, despite these losses, the UAVs still "got through" and accomplished their mission.
I'm not sure how much credence I put in these Iraqi UAV reports, but clearly some bigwigs are worried. My biggest concern is that our air traffic control/air defense system is simply not geared for slow-moving, low-flying targets. A UAV with a Predator signature won't even register on radar at low altitude, because of its low RCS, its slow speed, and ground clutter. Additionally, we have virtually nothing to engage them with, aside from a few Stingers and Avengers now deployed in the D.C. area.
Not if there's a swarm of them!!
Peters said in order to go undetected in the air, the UAVs would have to be small -- and therefore would not be able to carry too much of a harmful substance, and they would have to fly over densely populated areas if they want to achieve maximum casualties.
But because many large metropolitan areas such as Washington have air traffic watchers keeping an eye out for any nearby planes that have not filed a flight plan, the UAVs likely would not succeed in a large-city attack.
Actually, I disagree about the difficulty of detection.
Air traffic control radars typically operate in a "interrogate-response" mode. The ground based radar set sends out a interrogation pulse. Transponders aboard military, civil, and most general aviation airplanes receive this signal, and broadcast a coded response containing the aircraft's tail number and (usually) altitude.
ATC radar can operate in a "skin-paint" mode, which is the classic "radar" where the unit detects radio waves reflected from Things In The Sky. In addition to aircraft, the skin-paint mode also detects flocks of birds, rain, and sometimes anomalous propagation or more succintly, thin air. In addition, the lack of altitude and ID information places a severe workload on controllers. Therefore, primary radar wasn't used that often. Perhaps it is nowadays, but I have no knowledge of that.
Now, this discussion does not touch on military or police air-defense search radar, of which I have zero knowledge.
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