Bombs and rockets – Page 37 – a sibilant intake of breath

Editing video using still photos

Recently, there was controversy about a doctored photograph showing four Iranian missiles launching, whereas the original apparently showed three and one on the ground. Errol Morris discussed the images on the website of the New York Times.

Photo and video editing are nothing new, but some new software seeks to make the former much easier. It combines video data with that from still photographs in order to accomplish many possible aims. For instance, it could be used to improve the resolution of a whole scene or elements within it. It could also correct for over- and under-exposed regions. Of course, it could also facilitate video manipulation. The skills and software required to edit still images are increasingly available. Combine that with this software and you could empower a slew of new video fraudsters.

It will be interesting to see what kind of countermeasures emerge from organizations concerned about data integrity. One route is forensic – identifying markers of manipulation and tools for uncovering them. Another relies on requiring technologies and techniques for those capturing and submitting video. That could involve the expectation of multiple independent photos and videos produced from different angles using different equipment, or perhaps the widespread deployment of timestamps and cryptographic hashing to strengthen data integrity.

Knickbein

During the Second World War, the German air force used a system called Knickbein to guide bombers to targets in Britain. Essentially, it consisted of a two radio beams which the planes could fly, allowing them to drop bombs on blacked out cities, deal with bad weather, and otherwise manoeuvre accurately. The beam to one side broadcasts ‘dot’ signals, while the other sends ‘dash’ signals. Hearing a continuous tone means you are in the middle. Hearing one or the other tells you to divert your course somewhat. Intersecting beams over targets told pilots where to drop their ordinance:

Estimates of the accuracy of the Knickebein suggested that it was capable of putting a 300 m x 300 m box around an intended target, which when saturated with bombs from a mere 40 aircraft would put the bombs down on average 17 metres apart.

The beams were 400-500 metres wide and were in operation (at a frequency of 31.5 Hz) as of 1940.

The British came up with progressively more sophisticated means of blocking the technology. Operation ‘Headache’ sought to jam the beams using radio chatter, itself produced using “modified hospital electro-diathermy units used for cauterising wounds.” Later, more sophisticated approaches were employed. According to David Khan, the British were eventually able to ‘bend’ the guidance beams using transmitters of their own, causing bombers to “unload most of their high explosive… into empty fields and the Channel.” A jamming system used against the more advanced Y-Geraet system in 1941 apparently prevented 80% of bombers employing it from dropping their bombs at all, as they were prevented from getting accurate ranging signals.

No doubt, dramatically more advanced systems and countermeasures exist today, in spite of the existence of cheap and accurate satellite-based positioning technology.

Bletchley Park today

Bletchley Park, the English manor where codebreaking was undertaken during the Second World War, has been falling into disrepair due to lack of funds. This seems especially ungrateful, given the extremely important role the signals intelligence developed there played in the war. In particular, the decipherments helped to clear the Atlantic of U-boats, keep the United Kingdom supplied, and eventually shift the people and equipment required for D-Day and the retaking of the continent.

Work done at Bletchley was also important in relation to the emergence of modern computers. If there are historical sites worth preserving, this is surely one of them. Thankfully, the Heritage Lottery fund now seems likely to provide funding.

The fact that the codebreaking work done at Bletchley was not publicly announced until the 1970s makes it doubly important to tell the story well now. For decades, people who worked there had to respond with awkward silence when asked how they contributed to the war effort. Their extraordinary contribution deserves to be well marked today.

Dating with carbon-14

When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere, they produce a radioactive isotope of carbon called carbon-14. This carbon gets absorbed from the atmosphere by living things. Once they die, they stop absorbing it. Since it continues to undergo radioactive decay after death, the ratio of carbon-14 to ordinary carbon declines in a predictable way in dead organic matter. This is the basis for radiocarbon dating.

When the great powers started testing nuclear and thermonuclear bombs during the Cold War, they doubled the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere. One consequence is the need to avoid contamination when radiocarbon dating. Another odder consequence is that you can determine the age of any person born since the tests began by looking at how much carbon-14 is in various layers of their tooth enamel. You just need to know whether they lived in the northern or southern hemisphere.

Of course, there are usually easier ways to determine the age of a living or dead human. This is just a demonstration of the extent to which the nuclear age is literally imprinted upon all those who live within it.

Oil’s next century

With oil prices at levels rivaling those during the crises of the 1970s, virtually everyone is clamouring for predictions about medium and long-term prices. Those concerned about climate change are also very actively wondering what effect higher hydrocarbon prices will have.

In order to know what the future of oil looks like, answers are required to a number of questions:

How will the supply of oil change during the decades ahead? How many new reserves will be found, where, and with what price of extraction? How much can Saudi Arabia and Russia expand production? When will their output peak?
How will the demand for oil change? How much and how quickly will high prices depress demand in developed states? What about fast growing developing states like India and China?
At what rate, and what cost, will oil alternatives emerge. Will anyone work out how to produce cellulosic ethanol? Will the development of oil sands and/or oil shale continue apace?
What geopolitical consequences will prices have? If prices are very high, will that prove destabilizing within or between states?
Will the emerging alternatives to oil be carbon intensive (oil sands, corn ethanol) or relatively green (cellulosic ethanol, biomass to liquids)?

Of course, nobody knows the answer to any of this with certainty. There are ideological optimists who assert that humanity will respond to incentives, innovate, and prosper. There are those who allege that oil production is bound to crash, and that civilization as we know it is likely to crash as well.

Mindful of the dangers of prediction, I will hold off on expressing an opinion of my own right now. The magnitude of the questions is far too great to permit solution by one limited mind. What contemplating the variables does allow is an appreciation for the vastness and importance of the issue. Virtually any combination of answers to the questions above will bring new complications to world history.

Rommel and cryptography

One of the most interesting historical sections so far in David Khan’s The Code-Breakers describes the campaign in North Africa during WWII. Because of a spy working in the US embassy in Rome, the American BLACK code and its accompanying superencipherment tables were stolen. This had a number of major tactical impacts, because it allowed Rommel to read the detailed dispatches being sent back by the American military attache in Cairo.

Khan argues that this intelligence played a key role in Rommel’s critical search for fuel. His supply line across the Mediterranean was threatened by the British presence in Malta. Knowledge about a major resupply effort allowed him to thwart commando attacks against his own aircraft and turn back two major resupply convoys. It also provided vital information on Allied defences during his push towards Suez.

The loss of Rommel’s experienced cryptographers due to an accidental encounter with British forces had similarly huge consequences. It cut off the flow of intelligence, both because of changed codes and loss of personnel. As a result, the Allied assault at Alamein proved to be a surprise for Rommel and an important turning point.

As with so many examples in warfare, this demonstrates the huge role of chance in determining outcomes. Had security been better at the embassy in Rome, Rommel might have been stopped sooner. Had the German tactical intelligence team not been intercepted, Rommel might have had detailed warnings about Alamein. The example also shows how critical intelligence and cryptography can be, in the unfolding of world affairs.

Destroying Iraqi RADAR in 1991

Anyone who has been trawling the internet in a search for information on the suppression of air defences during the first Gulf War might be well served by this article. In particular, it goes into a lot of detail about the location, identification, targeting, and destruction of Iraqi RADAR installations using weapons like the American AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) and the British ALARM (Air Launched Anti-Radiation Missile). The article highlights how the use of Soviet equipment by Iraq made this a kind of test situation for NATO versus Warsaw Pact air defence and attack equipment.

What this suggests is that the NATO-Warpac central European air battle would have probably followed a similar course, leading to the defeat of the Communists’ IADS within a week or so, in turn leading to air superiority in the following week, as the Communist air forces would have withered under the fire of the Allied counter-air campaign. Fortunately this never had to happen and the world has been spared the inevitable nuclear response to the lost air battle and hence total conventional defeat through attrition by air.

Not a very comforting conclusion for the world at large, though no doubt gratifying for all the companies that built American planes and missiles and things.

One interesting tactic was the use of Brunswick Tactical Air Launched Decoys. These simulated the appearance of incoming aircraft, causing Iraqi RADAR installations to ‘light up’ in order to target them. Sometimes, they would draw fire from surface-to-air missile batteries. Often, this would leave the former temporarily defenceless at a time when their position – and that of their supporting RADAR – had been revealed. Both could then be targeted by NATO aircraft. The ruse was apparently so effective that the Iraqi armed forces maintained the false belief that they had destroyed several hundred British and American planes.

There is also a fair bit of information about jamming and other forms of electronic countermeasures. All in all, it provides an interesting glimpse back into a period when conventional warfare against standing armies was something NATO still did.

Keeping the bombs in their silos

Back in 2005, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote an article in Foreign Policy about the danger of the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. The issue remains an important one: particularly given trends like Russia’s increasingly assertive behaviour (putting more nuclear weapons out where accidents or miscalculations could occur), as well as ongoing nuclear proliferation.

Writing for Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has written an article on steps the next US President could take to reduce ‘inadvertence.’ The danger of nuclear war may seem like a dated Cold War concern, but the sheer number of weapons on fifteen minute alert, the pressure on leaders to make an immediate decision when the military thinks an attack is taking place, and the growing number of states with nuclear technology all mean that it should remain a contemporary concern and area for corrective action.

Improvised explosive devices

The Washington Post has an interesting special feature on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the overall themes are quite common – Western forces are much less effective against insurgents than armies, low cost and low tech weapons can neutralize huge advantages in funds and technology – the specific details provided are quite interesting.

IEDs are apparently the single biggest killer of coalition troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Partly, that is the result of not having large enough forces to monitor important routes continuously. Partly, it is the product of the sheer volume of explosives available in both states. Partly, it is the result of assistance provided by other states or sub-state groups, such as Iranian assistance being provided to some Shiite groups. Explosively formed penetrators – capable of firing six or seven pounds of copper at 2000 metres per second – are an excellent example of a relatively low cost, low-tech technology that seriously threatens a force that is far better trained, supported, and equipped overall.

Seeing how total air superiority, expensive armoured vehicles, and sophisticated electronic countermeasures can be no match for some guys with rusty old artillery shells and some wire is a humbling reminder of the limited utility of military force. Ingenuity, practicality, and humility will probably prove to be essential qualities as the US tries to find the least bad path out of Iraq, and while NATO tries to salvage the situation in Afghanistan.

The Aragorn Fallacy

Watching films, I find myself very frequently annoyed with what I shall call The Aragorn Fallacy. The essence of the fallacy is to equate importance with invulnerability, especially in the face of random events.

Consider a battle that employs swords, spears, and bows and arrows. To some extent, your skill reduces the likelihood of getting killed with a sword (unless you are among the unfortunate individuals who find their line pressed into a line of swordsmen). No conceivable battlefield skill makes you less vulnerable to arrows (or bullets) once you are in the field of fire. As such, mighty King Aragorn is just as likely to be shot and killed as some forcibly drafted peasant hefting a spear for the first time. Sensible military leaders realize that their role is not to serve as cannon fodder, and that they needlessly waste their own lives and those of their men by putting themselves in such positions.

Of course, people will object, there have been military leaders who ‘led from the front,’ put themselves at points of great danger, and went on to high achievement. The problem with this view is that it completely ignores all the young would-be Rommels and Nelsons and Pattons who got felled as young captains or lieutenants by a stray bit of shrapnel or gangrene in a wound produced by a stray bit of barbed wire. With a sufficiently large starting population, you will always end up with examples of people who were reckless but nonetheless survived and thrived. The foolish conclusion to draw from this is that recklessness is either justified or likely to produce success.

Clearly, storytelling and life are different things. We admire superhuman heroes who shake off bullets and arrows like awkward drops of water. We may rationally accept that nonsense like throwing all your best commanders into the front line of a battle is strictly for the movies. The fallacy here is less that we believe these things to be true, and more that we feel them to be excellent. The grim fact that war is a brutal and largely random business sits poorly with our general affection for the things.