Israel used electronic attack in air strike against Syrian mystery target

Aviation Week ^ | October 08, 2007 | By David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie

[major_gaff]

How can you lock on to the Prowler to shoot it down when you are entirely electronically blind? I was in VMAQ-2 during my tour in the Marines and in that time thru war games to our raid on Libya, no Q2 pilot was ever acquired by enemy radar that I ever read about in our after actions reports. That being said, I doubt EA-6B squadrons are assisting the Israelis.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Did I say prowler escorted? I said that some pobably presumes that american aircraft did jamming.

What other American aircraft is a dedicated jamming platform, not simply SPJ, Ivan

[A.A. Cunningham]

What Det?

[Garvin]

Electronic Warfare (EW) is a wonderfully thing. It can change the battlefield dramatically.

[RusIvan]

How can you lock on to the Prowler to shoot it down when you are entirely electronically blind?==

It is my radar maybe blind so jammed. But.. My harm missile will home on its emitting source very easy. The head of my missile just homing on any source of electromagnetic waves so on the jamming waves of this airplane emitting.

[STD]

Your assumption that an American A-6 was involved in jamming is completely false. I know exactly what happened and how it was carried out. BTW, we haven't even used terms like jamming or emmitting for 15 years. The equipment that was used includes many off the rack devices available at you guessed it Radio Shack!

However, you need free enterise and the knowledge required to connect the subunits, but that's easy compared to flying in a SDB from 70km out. Next thing you need is a map and a ruler. Remember that the smaller unit side of the ruler is metric. After you measure it off, then you can report back to this forum.

[Kevmo]

bmflr

[UCANSEE2]

virus is a slang term for a type of computer program that evades detection, and passes control of the operating system software to the invading program for whatever purposes the programmer has decided to use it for.

The most common reference to virus is to Windows based operating systems because they are the most prevalent and part of public awareness.

They can be written for any computer, in any operating system code that exists.

If you read the articles that have been posted, the statements are made that they “injected a data stream”.

Syrian AA radars are run by computers. YES??????

[steve86]

Fairy tales:) Use your brains please.

No, very real and very functional. Ironically, analog components are not vulnerable to the Suter techniques, but of course are susceptible to good old fashioned jamming.

[UCANSEE2]

I truly enjoy discussing this subject with someone who has a contrary point of view.

I don’t know where you live, or if you are Russian, a patriotic Russian, a communist, or an immigrant to a non communist country.

I do respect your point of view, and also believe you should be shown a certain amount of respect for your bravery in posting on this forum and ‘sticking to your guns’.

I am not agreeing with your suppositions, and I don’t expect you to blindly accept mine either.

Many here think you are misinformed about the abilities and or shortcomings of Russian and American technologies.

Many here are just as misinformed about the same.

There are very few ‘experts’ as much of this technology is kept out of the public domain, but everybody is allowed the same freedom to speculate, and this includes you as well.

I have had many ‘debates’ here on FR, on a variety of technical subjects. Sometimes I am right, sometimes I am wrong.

Most people think that ‘being right’ is very, very important. So much so that they cannot admit it if they are not.

How sad. I do not give much value to being right, as it adds nothing to me personally.

But, when I am wrong, I easily accept being so. When I find I was wrong, I then have the opportunity to learn something new. That is why I value the discussions here on FR so much.

Welcome to FR, and may we all learn from the exchange.

[justa-hairyape]

RusIvan actually does have a point. Has me perplexed ever since I read about it. How do you inject a virus through a radar dish ? This is simply not Independence Day here (the movie). The radar sensing device would have to possess a remote control access algorithm. This in effect would be triggered by a specific data stream or access code. Why anyone would allow a radar defense system to be remotely controlled or remotely serviced from a radar target is beyond me. Perhaps there was an algorithm in some stolen firmware that the Russians had not recognized. Perhaps a backdoor failsafe. Wonder if the Russians made all their solid state gear or they had some of it manufactured by the Koreans or Taiwanese, like everyone else nowadays. The leak here could be disinfo and if there was actual hacking done, perhaps it was done to their internal network (or the communication from their central control to the radar missile station). That way they would come at the individual missile defense radar station from a central network. That connection would be assumed to be secure and would have remote control algorithms and remote control maintenance routines. At any rate, my computer engineering skills are 12 years out of date.

[Eye of Unk]

The secret side of Vista in the right hands.

[RusIvan]

Your assumption that an American A-6 was involved in jamming is completely false. ==

It is not my assumption. The article is assuming this.

[RusIvan]

If you read the articles that have been posted, the statements are made that they “injected a data stream”.

Syrian AA radars are run by computers. YES??????==

Yes. But it is the special computers run by the special operating system. This system is absolutely not known on west. AFAIK it is early some clone of Unix. Stripped off network capability whatsoever.
“datastream” mentioned in artile as I understand is the datastreams inbetween AA battaries. But AA node itself is completely autonomic. So it can shoot at will to any target it sees. Later russian models can shoot during the accual moving on road.
Usually any battery and any warhead on its missiles has the few channels to accquire the target data. The radar is only one of them. Usually it is: the radar as active then just passive triangulator for any radio source in the ski then infrared scanner then ultraviolete scanner and so on. The homing device chip on the AA missile just votes in between all of those channels data.
What does it mean for example.
If e-ware aircraft emits the jamming noise then it perfectly seen by the passive radio triangulator and the missile homes on this source. If it stopped to emit then the radar became operational (not jammed anymore) in instant and the warhead switches on its feed and still approaches the aircraft. In vicinity of the aircraft the infrared scanner starts to work. So anyways the e-aircraft won’t get away from missile. Since it is not very manuvarable then as I said it will be the sitting duck.

[UCANSEE2]

You seem to have answered your own question.

You don’t want your manpower sitting in a trailer under the dish, as the dish is the first thing that will get noticed and attacked.

So, you must connect to your dish(es) somehow, and I kinda doubt they used wires.

Our UAV’s are controlled by guys sitting somewhere in the U.S.

If the enemy had the means, they could take over our UAV’s, but they don’t.

[UCANSEE2]

We have a plane that is the successor to the U-2 that does this, and it flies too high and too fast to shoot down or catch.

We actually have technology way beyond the scope of what the general public can imagine in their wildest dreams.

So do some of our ‘enemies’ and neither will put it to use unless necessary. Using these technologies would expose them and render them more or less useless, in a sense.

I can tell you that the Russians used a particle beam weapon to shoot down one of their old satellites, and did it over the U.S. where we could see it. The inventor defected and was helping us build one so we could put them back in check.

Now, here is the part you won’t like and probably will not believe. This happened over 25 years ago. I watched it happen.

[UCANSEE2]

“But it is the special computers run by the special operating system. This system is absolutely not known on west. AFAIK it is early some clone of Unix.”

We have teenagers that hack into our best DOD computers.

Nothing is impenetrable. Any operating system can be taken over simply by the fact that it is an OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE and a COMMAND is a COMMAND. The OS doesn’t know where the commands come from and doesn’t care.

Computers do what you tell them to do, if you know how to tell them. Believe me. I have spent most of my career making computers do exactly what I am asked to make them do.

Computers are only capable of doing three things, actually.
Reading, writing, and comparing binary digits. They can only do one type of math with these skills and that is that they can add two binary digits. (by comparing, then writing)

They can’t even subtract. They have to use addition to subtract.

[Kenny Bunk]

A.A., Isn't it probable that this is a bit of an intelligence coup, as well as a hardware/software triumph?

After all, during the great escape of Soviet Jews to Israel, the KGB managed for a time to flood the zone with their agents. It's logical to assume that the Mossad was also able to use their new Russian emigrés as assets, too.

Perhaps this helped them develop specific spoofs for infiltrating specific systems. Maybe we were flying top ECM cover, maybe not. Whatever really happened, we'll never know. The Russians will be ready with fixes next time, but they will be the fixes for this time.

Right now, the most dangerous job in the ME must be "Russian SAM Trainer/Technician," or maybe "Russian Arms Salesman"!

[UCANSEE2]

How do you inject a virus through a radar dish ?

You don’t.

You inject the virus into the data stream that goes from the dish to the operator’s console.

If the operator console is connected to the dish via network connections, well......

If connected via radio-telecom, well.....

If connected (as many of ours are) via microwave, well.....

I think you get the picture now. It’s actually quite easy, since not much is hardwired anymore.

I don’t have to tap into your phone line to listen to your phone calls, because eventually your phone call is transmitted via RF signals somewhere down the line.

Our electrical power, water, and gas substations are controlled by main control centers via.... the internet.

Even with that, somewhere along the line all internet connections are beamed through RF (usually Microwave).

Did you know there is a layer in the upper atmosphere that you can beam signals into and they will travel all the way around the world?????

Most people think you can only go horizon to horizon by bouncing off the upper atmosphere, which is normally how it is done.

The technology that our governments have available is way beyond most people’s comprehension, and is kept from them because we (the general public) cannot be trusted with it, and the potentials for major disaster are way too great.

[justa-hairyape]

So when the speculation says inject a virus, what they really meant was inject a fake all is clear radar feed. Some of the control stations could have also had the ability to move the radars or change settings within the radars, so where those opportunities presented themselves, some viruses were injected, which really were compromised remote commands. That is some intricate work. Definitely a hack. True viruses however would allow for some spectacular effects. Like for example, firing their own missiles at their own radar stations or at their own scrambled jets.