Forum: General F-35 Forum

Last edited by SpudmanWP on May 18, 2012 - 06:40 PM; edited 1 time in total

river_otter wrote:

If you knew the language the planes used to communicate in their AESA beams, you could spoof in fake signals with a relatively simple transmitter, and give opposing planes a false picture of the battlefield and what their wingmen are doing.

Speaking as a programmer, you are WAY over-simplifying it. What you are proposing is the equivalent of breaking into a VPN and stealing all the bank's money. Here are just two reasons why that is highly improbable.

1. Each AESA pulse could potentially be a different frequency and have embedded codes built into it. This would meant that any spoofed AESA signals would just be ignored because the AESA antenna knows that it did not send them.

2. Datalinks between fighters also update them on their locations and would offer a "checksum" to counteract any false radar data.

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Quote:

neurotech wrote:
If you knew the language the planes used to communicate in their AESA beams, you could spoof in fake signals with a relatively simple transmitter, and give opposing planes a false picture of the battlefield and what their wingmen are doing.

reply:
Speaking as a programmer, you are WAY over-simplifying it. What you are proposing is the equivalent of breaking into a VPN and stealing all the bank's money. Here are just two reasons why that is highly improbable.

I concur. I've seen enough bugs in the software biz to know that some interesting behavior is possible but there are limits, lots of them. Reviewing the details of software attack methods and vectors shows that in most cases attackers take advantage of deep knowledge of the entry port coms/supporting protocols/application plus some testing time with the target system is a required ingredient.

I have walked through lots of vulnerability attack chains (most software attacks are sequential events) and what stands out clearly to me is not how unbreakable and powerful hack attacks are, but how weak they are overall. Most attacks are a series of easily defeated exploits. Once you understand the threat and your vulnerability you can halt it fleet-wide rapidly.

I would suspect that a more realistic threat to your sensors would be something akin to a modern day ALQ-157 which takes advantage of deep knowledge of the physical and electronic behavior of a missile IR system. The attack method at work uses carefully constructed sensor input to defeat the system using programming it already has in it instead of a fanciful idea of injecting software somehow.

How 'Revolutionary' Is CHAMP, New Air Force Microwave Weapon? By David Axe November 28, 2012

http://defense.aol.com/2012/11/28/how-r ... ve-weapon/

"...Handicapping CHAMP
CHAMP apparently includes two major parts: a flying platform and an HPM payload that can be likened to a warhead. Boeing, Raytheon and the Air Force have been vague in describing the dimensions and capabilities of both parts, except to describe the platform as a "missile." No photos have been released, but artists' renderings show a vehicle apparently similar in size and shape to Boeing's Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile, which is 20 feet long and 25 inches in diameter.

The platform's dimensions matter because they place physical constraints on the HPM payload, which in turn can limit the emitter's performance. Schamiloglu says modern capacitors can be scaled down to the size of a book and still be militarily useful. The component that converts energy into its microwave form, meanwhile, could be as small as a soda can, he adds. Depending on the number of capacitors stacked inside the device, an entire HPM payload could fit into the same space as a cruise missile's explosive warhead...."

A long article - only two paras above. Go read.

spazsinbad wrote:

How 'Revolutionary' Is CHAMP, New Air Force Microwave Weapon? By David Axe November 28, 2012

http://defense.aol.com/2012/11/28/how-r ... ve-weapon/

"...Handicapping CHAMP
CHAMP apparently includes two major parts: a flying platform and an HPM payload that can be likened to a warhead. Boeing, Raytheon and the Air Force have been vague in describing the dimensions and capabilities of both parts, except to describe the platform as a "missile." No photos have been released, but artists' renderings show a vehicle apparently similar in size and shape to Boeing's Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile, which is 20 feet long and 25 inches in diameter.

The platform's dimensions matter because they place physical constraints on the HPM payload, which in turn can limit the emitter's performance. Schamiloglu says modern capacitors can be scaled down to the size of a book and still be militarily useful. The component that converts energy into its microwave form, meanwhile, could be as small as a soda can, he adds. Depending on the number of capacitors stacked inside the device, an entire HPM payload could fit into the same space as a cruise missile's explosive warhead...."

A long article - only two paras above. Go read.

Geez that's interesting!

Forum: General F-35 Forum

F-35 and Cyber Warfare