* Posts by richiel

5 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Oct 2010

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

richiel
Go

Yay ! Blasting Illiteracy Can Actually Succeed

After debunking the RR "you can't have catapults without a nuclear reactor" and "Harrier is better than Tornado because of AMRAAM", we have good results.

- F35 Tailhook instead of VTOL. Cheaper, less dead weight, simpler technology, more payload.

- Torndao still there in case a *real* threat has to be tackled (such as a Tu95 or Su-34 airbase to be taken out, defended by S-400 missiles)

- Tornado still there to stop the Tu95/AS-4 Kitchen (look it up, much better than the New World Crap missile tech) 600kms north of Aberdeen

-In emergency, the terror threat is fought by police and visa authorities, as it should be.

Google Android chief smacks Steve Jobs with Linux speak

richiel
Grenade

The Free World Is So Fragmented !

Too many opinions, too many parties, too many exccentrics.

In Contrast to that, the Soviet tyranny was very easy to use. Shut up and suffer or open your mouth and die. Imagine how that simplifies your life !

Hail To The Steve, Our One And Only Dictator. Hail !

UK promises 'transformative' cyber security programme

richiel
Go

@Colonel

Rest assured that other (ex-) officers aren't highly competent in technical subjects either. At least YOU want to learn something instead of repeating just the marketing rhetoric of a certain aircraft engine manufacturer.

Unfortunately, the answer to the problem of cyber warfare is to educate the officer corps, as the answer of the mechanized warfare problem was to educate officers in mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering. It is not sufficient to "educate technicians".

Nelson did learn navigation by sun and stars; he was taught projectile ballistics. YOU will have to learn C programming if you want to be a first-rate cyber warfare officer. Five years of frustration mixed with some feeling of accomplishment lie ahead of you.

The best route of action is to visit the next university and talk to a good computer science prof about getting a solid software engineering education *for your officers* instead of your "technicians".

Suggested reading:

http://www.nongnu.org/c-prog-book/online/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_analysis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDBMS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Suite

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SE_Linux

These are just *required* subjects but by no means sufficient to understand cyberspace technology thoroughly. Still, it will take you at least three years to grasp with a very good teacher. But you haven't become an officer to just devour the cocktails.....

now, Go to the library. Linux and gcc are free to download.

richiel
Go

Oh, Colonel, I forgot

* Boolean Algebra

* Shannon's stuff (cryptology, entropy and channel coding - also an eyeopener to signals people (!!))

* Ciphers

* Feistel Ciphers

* RSA

* Hashing algorithms like SHA

* DES/ 3DES

* GnuPG

* TOR

* Steganography

Maybe you just move to the Cotswolds for the next five years. There's a building who allegedly houses MODers who already have quite a few of these qualifications.

MoD braced for painful weight-loss surgery next week

richiel
Go

The Defence Of Britain

What kind of Threats does Britain face ?

A - Nuclear Ballistic Missiles comning in from any trajectory.

B - Cruise Missiles, nuclear-tipped or not coming from from the sea. Especially the Tu-95 "visits" coming down along the nowegian coast are a clear threath and provocation.

C - Potential amphibious landings from the European continent.

D - Threats to British shipping and lines of communication in choke points like Suez, Aden, the Malakka Strait and the Street of Hormuz.

E - Threats to allies like Estonia, Saudi-Arabia, Oman from powerful neighbours. Note that these threats are no longer clear threats to "Britain".

How to deal with these threats taking into account the current armory:

A - SLBMs and in the future potentially road- or rail-based ballistic missiles as a cheap, indigenious replacement. If the russians can do that, Britain can do it too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topol_M

B - Eurofighters combined with upgraded ADV Tornadoes. The latter need the same Radar as the Eurofighter and new missiles. The airframe itself is the best solution to the long-range, supersonic cruise-missile threat exemplified by the Tu95 Bomber and its cruise missile weapons. Swept-Wing Technology allows for long loitering or patrols, combined with supersonic "dashes" to get into the shooting position to intercept the latest russian cruise missiles.

The Eurofighter complements this anti-bomber capability with the most agile fighter of the western world and would fend off any fighters attacking British forces. Both Tornado and Eurofighter could be further upgraded with thrust-vectoring technology developed by MBB/Rockwell in the X-31 project.

An affordable AWACS solution would be the medium-sized Saab ISR aircraft to defend British airspace. A330 MRTT tankers are force-multipliers to keep EFA and Tornado fighters far away from British beaches fueld for sorties of 8 hours and more. The Tornado concept of pilot and WSO makes even longer patrols far norh of Scotland possible, as one crew member can relax while the other one monitors the aircraft.

C - The RAF and the RN have sufficient weapons systems to make such an option virtually impossible. Frigates, Tornado (using the combat-proven Exocet system) and Eurofighter would screen the coasts. In addition to that, British Army tanks would quickly crush any "stealthy" invasion.

D - These problems can be solved without the cooperation of any large, belligerent nation by the EU themselves. Imagine Iran trying to choke the Hormus strait. German submarines would respond by sinking any large vessel in the strait, while French, German, Italian, Spanish and British fighter/bomber aircraft would attack surface targets. Meanwhile, a German-led tank army would be assembled (taking one year or so) in Saudi-Arabia to slash deep into Iran, conquering Teheran in less than one month. If we made it to Stalingrad, Tehran will be a holiday trip. There exist more than 3000 Leopard main battle tanks around the globe and plenty of seasoned tank commanders up to general rank in Europe.

Large armoured attacks against Egypt, Lybia and Somalia would work the same way.

E - The deep-strike capability of the Tornado bomber would be used to hit targets deep in well-defended airspace (e.g. S-400 defended airspace) in support of these allies. The concept of terrain-hugging is still valid against seasoned operators of the latest air-defence systems. Incompetent Arab operators of Russian air defence systems do not make a counterargument. The Tornado loss rates in iraq were as high as expected in a conflict with the warsaw pact. Operating at higher altitude against seasoned russian and NVA radar operators would have been simple suicide.

Where does this leave the aircraft carrier ? It leaves it to large, belligerent nations who want to quickly leash out at supposed or real threats, without much political investment. If there is a problem anywhere, the EU can fix it with a large-scale, common response which will take about one year to deliver the Hammer of 2000 Leopard, Leclerc, Merkava and Challenger tanks attacking simultaneously. During the time of armour build-up, diplomacy can run its course, which is exactly what is required instead of "shooting out of the hip".