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.
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.==
Russia too has missiles which goes the sinusoide path on hypersomic speeds in the stratosphere. Anyway the new russian airaircraft missiles catch them. Simple if AA missile goes 1 km/sec no airplane may get away of it. But even 20 years old S-200 could do it. That is why United States did never send no aircraft over Soviet Union.
Modern Russian S-400 missiles can go 3-5 km/sec in stratosphere. So you see.
Accualy new american ABM missiles may do same speed like S-400. SO no wonder that no airplane can get away.
The technology that our governments have available is way beyond most people’s comprehension, ==
But what if dish connected with targeting computer by optical wire or coaxial cable as it is in the russian AA eqiupment. How you would tamper in it?
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.==
I work in IT too. And I know that if you do not know the command structure then you can’t do nothing. Simply the military computer won’t understand you. But in those military OS even command structure is the secret. And it is changed time to time. The all internal trafik is encrypted so as the data on the hard memory. You can do nothing.
If possible, it is no doubt classified. I remember hearing rumors around 20 years ago about how Russian spys could read a Magnetic Disk drive from outside a building. I think it had something to do with RF frequencies and/or noise bleeding around. Don't know how you could write on a magnetic disk drive remotely. But man the problems that could cause. Yikes.
I remember hearing rumors around 20 years ago about how Russian spys could read a Magnetic Disk drive from outside a building. ==
Fairy tales for sure:). One friend once worked into the so called “post box”. It is the jargon nick for secret research intitute. He told that they had there the metallic net inserted into glass of thier windows! It is for shielding any radio band. Not mention those windows were tri-packed and had special rough covering to refuse the laser reflection. To read the data from thier disks one can if he was been doing the reading sitting before display in thier display room. From outside it was impossible ever. Not mentioning thier computers were not connected to no network. And thier displays has no writing devices in it.
Correct. Just like viruses that tell you “critical system error” when you don’t really have any such thing. They are made to appear “real”, but are only BS to trick you into purchasing software that just invades your system even further.
Smoke and mirrors.
If you beam a radar wave at me, when it bounces back, your equipment provides a profile of the returning waveform and the profile’s deformation is seen by the operator and interpreted.
What if I absorb the wave so it does not return? Or I return it with deformations that do not give a large enough or recognizable profile???
We aren’t ‘jamming’ their signals, we are just changing what they think they see.
“think it had something to do with RF frequencies and/or noise bleeding around.”
Very perceptive. That is why DOD computer rooms have shielding.
Rus, Dwolfe
As I’m reading this it would appear that the raid used a combination of tactics.
The Datastream that is mentioned may well have been a sidelobe injection to misdirect the analog systems.
the analog systems are more prone to getting hit by this.
doing the similar trick to a digital system entails literally getting inside of the other guys controll systems.
The reason the Syrians and Iraninans are pissed is it appears, key appears, that the raid was pulled with some combination of bunnies out of an unspecified hat.
The Russians tend to build reliable battlefield stuff but and here is the real drag they are hitting again,
against NATO std, western stuff the stuff doesn’t get the job done.
r
We aren’t ‘jamming’ their signals, we are just changing what they think they see.==
If you arenot completely radio black (nonreflecting) then together with your fake signal the radar will get its own genuine reflected signal. It will be difficult but the radar computer may solve the problem to find the real signal. Radar will think that your fake signal is just a electromagnetic noise.
Secondly the passive radio home device of the AA missile may home on any kind of the radio signal ever. SO if your e-ware transmitter on the airplane will just emit the fake signals for radar it will be enough for the homing device to take the direction for missile. And anyways your e-airplane will not avoid the missile. It is sitting duck:).
And yet,
the IDF and American support snuck in totally undetected and bombed the heck out of the base in Syria.
the IDF and American support snuck in totally undetected and bombed the heck out of the base in Syria.==
That is why I think that Syrians were shy to shoot down the american e-war airplane. This won’t work in the real war.
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