The secret side of Vista in the right hands.
Posted on 10/07/2007 11:53:36 PM PDT by jdm
Mysteries still surround Israel’s air strike against Syria. Where was the attack, what was struck and how did Israel’s non-stealthy warplanes fly undetected through the Russian-made air defense radars in Syria?
There also are clues that while the U.S. and Israel are struggling in the broader information war with Islamic fundamentalists, Tel Aviv’s air attack against a “construction site” in northern Syria may mean the two countries are beginning to win some cyberwar battles.
U.S. officials say that close examination of the few details of the mission offers a glimpse of what’s new in the world of sophisticated electronic sleight-of-hand. That said, they fault the Pentagon for not moving more quickly to make cyberwarfare operational and for not integrating the capability into the U.S. military forces faster.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said last week that the Israelis struck a building site at Tall al-Abyad just south of the Turkish border on Sept. 6. Press reports from the region say witnesses saw the Israeli aircraft approach from the Mediterranean Sea while others said they found unmarked drop tanks in Turkey near the border with Syria. Israeli defense officials finally admitted Oct. 2 that the Israeli Air Force made the raid.
U.S. aerospace industry and retired military officials indicated the Israelis utilized a technology like the U.S.-developed “Suter” airborne network attack system developed by BAE Systems and integrated into U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle operations by L-3 Communications. Israel has long been adept at using unmanned systems to provoke and spoof Syrian surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, as far back as the Bekka Valley engagements in 1982.
Air Force officials will often talk about jamming, but the term now involves increasingly sophisticated techniques such as network attack and information warfare. How many of their new electronic attack options were mixed and matched to pull off this raid is not known.
The U.S. version of the system has been at the very least tested operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last year, most likely against insurgent communication networks. The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions where approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages that allow a number of activities including control.
Clues, both good and unlikely, are found in Middle East press reports. At least one places some responsibility for the attack’s success on the U.S.
After the strike, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan reported that U.S. jets provided aerial cover for Israeli strike aircraft during the attack on Syria. Similar statements of American involvement were made by Egyptian officials after the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel.
More interesting is the newspaper’s claim that “Russian experts are studying why the two state-of-the-art Russian-built radar systems in Syria did not detect the Israeli jets entering Syrian territory,” it said. “Iran reportedly has asked the same question, since it is buying the same systems and might have paid for the Syrian acquisitions.”
Syria’s most recent confirmed procurement was of the Tor-M1 (SA-15 Gauntlet) short-range mobile SAM system. It uses vehicle-mounted target-acquisition and target-tracking radars. It is not known whether any of the Tor systems were deployed in the point-defense role at the target site struck by Israeli aircraft. If, however, the target was as “high-value” as the Israeli raid would suggest, then Tor systems could well have been deployed.
Iran bought 29 of the Tor launchers from Russia for $750 million to guard its nuclear sites, and they were delivered in January, according to Agence France-Presse and ITAR-TASS. According to the Syrian press, they were tested in February. Syria has also upgraded some of its aging S-125s (SA-3 Goa) to the Pechora-2A standard. This upgrade swaps out obsolete analog components for digital.
Syrian air defense infrastructure is based on for the most part aging Soviet SAMs and associated radar. Damascus has been trying to acquire more capable “strategic” air defense systems, with the country repeatedly associated with efforts to purchase the Russian S-300 (SA-10 Grumble/SA-20) long-range SAM. It also still operates the obsolescent S-200 (SA-5 Gammon) long-range system and its associated 5N62 Square Pair target engagement radar. There are also unconfirmed reports of Syrian interest in the 36D6 Tin Shield search radar.
There remains the second mystery of the actual site of the target and its use. Israeli news reports contend it was a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in north central Syria, and not Tall al-Abyad farther north. The site of the attack has been described as a transshipment point for weapons intended for the Hezbollah in Lebanon to restock missile stores that were used in last summer’s fighting with Israel. Others contend it is a site with nuclear materials that may be associated with Iran’s nuclear bomb program. Mentions are also made of a North Korean ship arriving in Syria only days before the attack and the presence of North Korean workers in Syria for several months.
“There are always indications the North Koreans are doing something they shouldn’t, Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency (NGA), told Aviation Week & Space Technology in response to a question about the shipment of nuclear materials from North Korea to Syria, which were subsequently bombed. “They are a high priority. We work as a key element . . . on the trafficking of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and high-interest arms shipments anyplace.”
It’s part of a growing NGA role in spotting the proliferation of weapons technology “which may be coming from East Asia to the Middle East . . . that we don’t want to cross borders.” Other crucial boundaries for surveillance include the borders in all directions in Afghanistan and Iraq—which includes Syria and Iran—as well as semi-governed areas such as the Horn of Africa. The use of automation to aid rapid analysis is improving, but that’s being balanced by the fact that “the sheer volumes of data we are ingesting now . . . continue to increase by a couple of orders of magnitude on an annual basis,” he says.
What other American aircraft is a dedicated jamming platform, not simply SPJ, Ivan
What Det?
Electronic Warfare (EW) is a wonderfully thing. It can change the battlefield dramatically.
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.
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.
bmflr
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??????
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.
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.
The secret side of Vista in the right hands.
Your assumption that an American A-6 was involved in jamming is completely false. ==
It is not my assumption. The article is assuming this.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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"!
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.
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