Any Cyber Warfare Experts?

[Bill Greenwood]

Centuries ago much of warfare was naval and armies. Then the airplane was invented and became in some ways as important as either of the other two. WWII still saw naval battles but aircraft carriers became the main ship rather than the battlehships like WW I.
Korean War was again a land and air war and in Vietnam the air war was huge, even though dominance there did not give the U S victory. The Cuban missile crisis was resolved by the threat of air war, the threat of both bombers and missiles.
So now we are at another stage of air war, while both fighters and bombers like B-52s are important, so much firepower is missiles, and in smaller stages use of unmanned drones in combat. I saw a recent article which said that we might be near the time when no more manned fighters would be developed. Hope not.
Anyway North Korea has done another missile test and like the last one it failed and blew up quickly.
When the reporter asked a defense dept spokesman if the U S caused the failure, the answer was a version of no comment. So, I wonder do we really have the technology to disrupt an enemy missile launch? I hope so, but not sure how it can be done? Do the cyber waves or whatever it takes come from a satelite or from a ground facility nearby? Or were the missiles just flawed?
Obviously I dont know much about high tech stuff, can barely use a cell phone but someone here may have a good explanation.
If airwar is indeed shifting again from B-17 and P-51 to B-52 and missiles and now to high tech, is the day of the pilot phasing out? Will we someday have a warbird museum with computers as part of the display over airplanes?
P S , I can sure fly a plane better than operate a computer, but again there are young folks who are great with computers, even simulators but not actually pilots.

[Frank Giger]

Bill, there are a thousand ways to "cyber" the enemy.

We seriously put a dent in the Iranian nuclear program by putting a virus on little USB thumb drives and making them available to Iranian scientists and engineers. It only took one of them to plug it into a computer connected to their network.

Hell, one of the Russian surrogate groups got Podesta's email username and password by sending him an good looking email saying his account was hacked and to follow the credible looking link to change it - which involved him entering his username and password, of course. No "hacking" required, just a good old fashioned phishing attempt.

Rocket science is, well, hard as rocket science.

[Floatsflyer]

We seriously put a dent in the Iranian nuclear program by putting a virus on little USB thumb drives and making them available to Iranian scientists and engineers.

History says the Israeli Air Force bombed the crap out of the Iranian heavy water facility. Actually, they did it twice. And that "put a dent in the Iranian nuclear program" to say the least.

[Frank Giger]

Yep. I was referring to one of the last bits of "cyber" warfare against the Iranians.

[rwanttaja]

History says the Israeli Air Force bombed the crap out of the Iranian heavy water facility. Actually, they did it twice. And that "put a dent in the Iranian nuclear program" to say the least.

Yes, but politically, like the case Frank referred to, a cyber attack is better. There are no radar traces showing where the attack came from, there's no chance of having one of your aircraft shot down to produce hard evidence of your involvement, there's no chance of having one of your pilots paraded in front of the international media.

All you do is have a man walk across routes the targeted personnel might traverse, and dribble infected thumb drives out of a hole in his pocket.

Personally, I kind of doubt the North Korean rocket failure was from a classic cyber attack. Injecting a virus to scramble/encrypt data on an operating system is one thing, but one's not likely to re-write code sufficiently to allow passing normal pre-launch tests, initial flight, THEN destruction. You'd need a spy on-site to do that, and it'd be very hard for them to cover their tracks.

And, there'd probably be better things they could do than have a test missile blow early after launch.

We use "Rocket Science" as a euphemism for something extremely difficult because it IS extremely difficult. "There's a fine line between a bomb and a rocket...and the finer the line, the better the rocket." The US has blown up a lot of rockets over the years. Building/designing space systems isn't easy OR safe, even today. Scaled Composites has had four people killed in the past ten years, and I suspect they're quite a bit better than North Korea.

Ron Wanttaja

[Bradley Coleman]

I'm no cyber warfare expert but I'm in the Air Force for Cyber Security.
While unlikely that the U.S. got involved in disrupting a test flight, it's certainly possible but EXTREMELY difficult. It was more likely to have been a failure on their part.
Secondly, cyber attacks can take place through many different avenues so it would depend on what was being done.
Lastly, you probably won't see museums about the computers as much as you will about people and how we used them.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that a cyber attack cannot be traced. Although very (very) difficult, it can be done if the attack is continuous. It's even harder if it's only done once and physically (i.e. USB drive).


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[CarlOrton]

Did anyone see the story (can't remember where...) claiming that the missile was designed to blow up at that altitude? And that the altitude (again, can't recall) was just the right height for an EMP burst? So that's why NK was claiming success.

[Bill Greenwood]

What I was thnkging of was some interference with the missile as it was launching, by some sort of electronic or radio wave direclty tageting the missile rarther than a virus that was put into their computer system. I dont know at all if such an attack is techinically possible, and the people who may know dont seem to be talking. And perhaps my term of "cyber" is not the most accurate.

[LooneyBird]

Bill if you are suggesting a laser or radio/microwave weapon, I would highly doubt it. The physics involved allows it to be possible, but the amount of energy it would take at that distance is more than all our aircraft carriers could put out. The energy density falls off by the square of the area for the beam at a cubed fall off for the distance covered. That is why the navy weapons are currently defensive in nature, as the incoming missile gets closer the energy stopping it is growing exponentially to failure.

Have a great day.

[rwanttaja]

Did anyone see the story (can't remember where...) claiming that the missile was designed to blow up at that altitude? And that the altitude (again, can't recall) was just the right height for an EMP burst? So that's why NK was claiming success.

For EMI, you don't need the rocket to detonate, just a warhead. Could have verified that with a single discrete on the down link changing when you get to the design altitude.

Ron Wanttaja

[rwanttaja]

Bill if you are suggesting a laser or radio/microwave weapon, I would highly doubt it. The physics involved allows it to be possible, but the amount of energy it would take at that distance is more than all our aircraft carriers could put out. The energy density falls off by the square of the area for the beam at a cubed fall off for the distance covered. That is why the navy weapons are currently defensive in nature, as the incoming missile gets closer the energy stopping it is growing exponentially to failure.

Agreed. Another possibility would be intrusion on the command link. But that's tough to do covertly.

Ron "MIJI" Wanttaja

[Bradley Coleman]

While we do have technology that does "shoot" electronic interference, it's only small scale and primarily for use against small drones at a relatively close distance. Like you said, any technology that could possibly exist on a scale big enough to be effective on a missile or rocket would be above top secret at the Pentagon level and like anything else only people with the need to know would have access to such info.


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