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A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

texasmonthly.com

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Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#21

Post by girvo »

relix wrote: post #2

Misleading title and very long article that boils down to: solo passionate inventor comes up with invention to reduce friendly fire, in one year, after suffering a friendly fire incident, and tries to get the military to adopt it, but the military does not want his particular solution. The only testimony about why the military is not interested in his solution comes from the inventor himself. The military meanwhile d…

You’re probably right, but military procurement is a slow moving, change and risk adverse nightmare too: that’s probably just as much the reason why he had little success, even if we do take him at his word.

Simply, he’s not Raytheon et al. It’s a rare piece of tech that any large military adopts from individual inventors.

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#22

Post by girvo »

datameta wrote: post #20
rickdeckard wrote: post #11

So he invented a home beacon which can identify each american vehicle/aircraft by strapping a wristwatch-size device to it which emits a signal on 13.5GHz (claimed to be a "low frequency" in the article). I can think of lots of ways this could go wrong. LOTS of ways really... Doing this right is by far not a task as simple as described in this long article.

Yeah, this part threw me off: > The system would work on a low frequency, 13.5 gigahertz, enabling it to penetrate dust, smoke, rain, bushes, trees, and even walls. This relatively high freq would be a poor penetrator of anything wouldn't it? And with high power usage to boot. Unless I'm missing something here

I think they mean “relatively” low frequency. Militaries stick to higher frequency bands to ostensibly make it harder for non-state actors and non-peer foes to use or modify COTS equipment or build their own to intercept it.

But yeah, even 13.5ghz would be subject to interference. Though the 35+ ghz the other companies are looking at sound even worse. They must know something we don’t, I think

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#23

Post by tomatotomato37 »

p_l wrote: post #13
b112 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you said as one possible path to "why", but one look at the history of the Bradley Tank shows how meaningless time/money can be in large orgs. Especially political ones. Couple this with big name/external validation, and the fact that the best and brightest techs don't flock to the military (too dogmatic)... The F35 is the new Bradley tank, and how much was spent? Anyhow, you're probably correct, bu…

The difference is that the Bradley was actually a good design - the main source of bad PR about the project is also the person responsible for significant portion of the cost overruns and problems.

The Bradley was such an atrocious design for it's intended purpose (an APC) that it managed to invent a new category of vehicle which turned out to be useful as a modern day cavalry.

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#24

Post by i80and »

p_l wrote: post #13
b112 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you said as one possible path to "why", but one look at the history of the Bradley Tank shows how meaningless time/money can be in large orgs. Especially political ones. Couple this with big name/external validation, and the fact that the best and brightest techs don't flock to the military (too dogmatic)... The F35 is the new Bradley tank, and how much was spent? Anyhow, you're probably correct, bu…

The difference is that the Bradley was actually a good design - the main source of bad PR about the project is also the person responsible for significant portion of the cost overruns and problems.

I'm interested in hearing more about this: I greatly enjoyed The Pentagon Wars of course, but I haven't heard a defense of the Bradley's development process yet

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#25

Post by TeMPOraL »

Aeolun wrote: post #16
h0l0gr4ph1c wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so the firing party has an active homing beacon, aimed at you, just before they are about to fire? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yep no problems with that approach at all

Can you avoid a hellfire missile if you know it’s coming? Those things use active radar themselves, or alternatively, follow a laser (presumably generally from the firing vehicle). I’m not sure if the temporary radar pulse is going to make much difference.

> Can you avoid a hellfire missile if you know it’s coming?

Not really, but if the aircraft launching that Hellfire announces itself like that prior to firing, just to check who you are, it may give you just enough information to fire at it preemptively, or at least know (or let others know) where to look for it.

It's not a problem if the US is fighting a technologically inferior opponent, but apparently (from what I've read on HN the other day), the US military is retooling itself towards competition with China, so they have to consider their technological trickery being used against them.

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#26

Post by datameta »

girvo wrote: post #22
datameta wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this part threw me off: > The system would work on a low frequency, 13.5 gigahertz, enabling it to penetrate dust, smoke, rain, bushes, trees, and even walls. This relatively high freq would be a poor penetrator of anything wouldn't it? And with high power usage to boot. Unless I'm missing something here

I think they mean “relatively” low frequency. Militaries stick to higher frequency bands to ostensibly make it harder for non-state actors and non-peer foes to use or modify COTS equipment or build their own to intercept it. But yeah, even 13.5ghz would be subject to interference. Though the 35+ ghz the other companies are looking at sound even worse. They must know something we don’t, I think

Perhaps those freqs allow more compact beamforming? Putting aside that I'm not privy to those companies' research I would bet on LoRa (or another sub-GHz low power modulation technique) coupled with crypto coprocessors. Super low-cost (crypto chip being the majority of the BOM), very long range (over 10km in open ares), highly secure. One downside would be low bitrate (.3 ~ 30kbits/s). With a worst case of maximum range and spread factor, even 37 bytes should be enough to trade unique signatures

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#27

Post by Aeolun »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
Aeolun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you avoid a hellfire missile if you know it’s coming? Those things use active radar themselves, or alternatively, follow a laser (presumably generally from the firing vehicle). I’m not sure if the temporary radar pulse is going to make much difference.

> Can you avoid a hellfire missile if you know it’s coming? Not really, but if the aircraft launching that Hellfire announces itself like that prior to firing, just to check who you are, it may give you just enough information to fire at it preemptively, or at least know (or let others know) where to look for it. It's not a problem if the US is fighting a technologically inferior opponent, but apparently (from what I…

> at least know (or let others know) where to look for it

I think this only works for the targeted party, which sends a pulse, which you could potentially triangulate on. The firing aircraft sends a very narrow beam of signal, so unless you have a specific setup to detect the direction of the signal, you’ll just know you were hit by an unidentified radio beam.

I’m not a radio expert though, who knows what I’m missing :)

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#28

Post by p_l »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #23
p_l wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the Bradley was actually a good design - the main source of bad PR about the project is also the person responsible for significant portion of the cost overruns and problems.

The Bradley was such an atrocious design for it's intended purpose (an APC) that it managed to invent a new category of vehicle which turned out to be useful as a modern day cavalry.

Except by the time Bradley design was finalizing towards prototypes, the new category was already defined. It was never supposed to be just another APC, because M113 was already known to be deficient, and the long and tortured process happened because Army didn't know the goal yet - and thus required exploratory work. And then BMP-1 kicked the anthill.

Re: A Fatal Error Inspired a Plan to Reduce Friendly Fire

#29

Post by p_l »

i80and wrote: post #24
p_l wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the Bradley was actually a good design - the main source of bad PR about the project is also the person responsible for significant portion of the cost overruns and problems.

I'm interested in hearing more about this: I greatly enjoyed The Pentagon Wars of course, but I haven't heard a defense of the Bradley's development process yet

Some good material to follow, beyond the publicly accessible history of the project (which is long, since the fact that M113 was deficient was known before the final direction of the replacement was figured out), using somewhat popular formats:

https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/erpmjm/having_j...

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/truth-to-the-pentag...

And finally a bit on the background of the Fighter Mafia member who wrote the black PR book that was used as basis for the movie (PhD thesis on the Fighter Mafia/Reformers and their influence in decision making in both USAF and elsewhere):

https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/38768/...

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