Some tech questions

Joat42 wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Don't know if they are still doing it but back in the 50's and 60's the USSR would decide that they didn't want people to use various frequencies and hook up massive power sources to transmitters and essentially blot out the frequency with interference. Some of the rumors were that these were ones use by things like Voice of America or for clandestine transmissions to agents- that sort of thing.

Look up Duga or Russian Woodpeckers, most of these where just immensely powerful over-the-horizon (OTH) radars.

The US has a couple hidden in plain site as well . but these are really just long baseline backscattering devices.

Theemile wrote:The US has a couple hidden in plain site as well . but these are really just long baseline backscattering devices.

There's a question whether that kind of jamming can work with a technique like direct-sequence spread spectrum. Since it's not a single frequency or a narrow band, you'd have to jam the entire spectrum, which means a great deal of energy.

Frequency Hopping SS is the simplest, but it's still a discrete set of frequencies. Yes, modern transmitters could use thousands of different discrete frequencies, but jamming all of them is a much simpler problem than jamming a full wideband channel.

DSSS was original designed by the military as both a technique to defeat jamming and to hide the transmissions in what appeared to be noise in the first place. The story goes that when the RN used it in the Falklands War, the Argentine Navy was completely baffled how the Brits were communicating in the first place, since they couldn't detect a transmission at all. (this may be apocryphal)

Playing "mini-RFC / ATC simulator programming" author type... I'd guess that at some point, the pulses could be futz'd up enough to mess with attack missile targeting. And program a simulation assuming that to be true. Problem being...

Even the best tech isn't all that great at detecting RMN/GA ships when thy are playing "holes in space", and it doesn't take a lot of pulses to reprogram the Apollo(s).

The 23-E is still immensely better at downrange targeting than anything else... and at some point the Foraker/Hemphill duo is going to up the accuracy gains even more. So I don't know HOW you figure out which pulses to scramble from where before a bunch of gigaton warheads start raining on your defensive parade.

SharkHunter wrote:The 23-E is still immensely better at downrange targeting than anything else... and at some point the Foraker/Hemphill duo is going to up the accuracy gains even more. So I don't know HOW you figure out which pulses to scramble from where before a bunch of gigaton warheads start raining on your defensive parade.

Well, the first rule of space warfare: "if brute force isn't working, you're not using enough of it."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The 23-E is still immensely better at downrange targeting than anything else... and at some point the Foraker/Hemphill duo is going to up the accuracy gains even more. So I don't know HOW you figure out which pulses to scramble from where before a bunch of gigaton warheads start raining on your defensive parade.

Well, the first rule of space warfare: "if brute force isn't working, you're not using enough of it."

"Overkill? Are any of the enemy still alive? Then it wasn't Overkill - it wasn't even enough kill!"

Joat42 wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Don't know if they are still doing it but back in the 50's and 60's the USSR would decide that they didn't want people to use various frequencies and hook up massive power sources to transmitters and essentially blot out the frequency with interference. Some of the rumors were that these were ones use by things like Voice of America or for clandestine transmissions to agents- that sort of thing.

Look up Duga or Russian Woodpeckers, most of these where just immensely powerful over-the-horizon (OTH) radars.

The USSR jammers of BBC/VoA did not work. Look no further than the Chernobyl disaster. 75% of 180 tons of irradiated Uranium was at minimum, by eyewitness accounts, sent into the atmosphere(greater volume than every single Nuclear bomb ever exploded by an order of magnitude or two if not three). VoA was "jammed" as soon as the disaster happened by USSR government, but people in Kiev could STILL get it but noisily and knew to stay indoors even though their government told them nothing for days while they listened to classical music instead of regular programming, all their buses/truck drivers disappeared, and the fancy cans on top of the Communist pile sent all their children to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Either USSR Jammers were pitiful, or jammers are not exactly all they are cracked up to be for a human brain computer to distinguish words in a language they DO NOT know even through jamming noise.

Relax wrote:Either USSR Jammers were pitiful, or jammers are not exactly all they are cracked up to be for a human brain computer to distinguish words in a language they DO NOT know even through jamming noise.

Well, the inverse square law is a bitch.

Theemile wrote:"Overkill? Are any of the enemy still alive? Then it wasn't Overkill - it wasn't even enough kill!"

Overkill is less of a problem than underkill...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:"Overkill? Are any of the enemy still alive? Then it wasn't Overkill - it wasn't even enough kill!"

Overkill is less of a problem than underkill...

"That which does not kill you has made a serious tactical error..."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:"Overkill? Are any of the enemy still alive? Then it wasn't Overkill - it wasn't even enough kill!"

Overkill is less of a problem than underkill...

Unless you do not have ammo resupply before the next engagement.