From: ke4zv!gary@gatech.edu (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Basement Cruise Missiles?
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 00:45:36 GMT


From ke4zv!gary@gatech.edu (Gary Coffman)

In article <1992Apr4.011600.9616@cbnews.cb.att.com> TWZ101@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>
>     QUESTION:  How easy would it be to build a cruise missile with the follow-
>                ing specs? (These are taken from the article).
>
>                ** accuracy to within ten feet of target when fired from a
>                ** use of GPS/gyroscopic homing with an autopilot
>                ** could be fired from a range of 300 miles offshore

An RPV with limited GPS, or even LORAN, guidance could be built for around
$100,000 by anyone but a US aerospace contractor. :-(

It could have a 300 mile range at slow subsonic speed and a CEP of a few
hundred feet. That's plenty good for a terror strike. That's all a third
world country could do against the continental US. Getting enough cruise
missiles within 300 miles of US shores to deliver a strategic blow with
conventional warheads would be impossible without being noticed far in
advance. Probably during the gathering of components to build the thousands
of cruise missiles.

>    My initial opinions/comments:
>                1. How would you get it offshore?  U.S. SOSUS nets make it
>                   difficult for subs, other recon/intel. efforts could foil
>                   surface launchers (what would the U.S. do, for ex., if a
>                   civilian yacht with two big rectangular boxes on its super-
>                   strucutre left, say, Libya and approached U.S. waters?).

Forget the yacht and think of a rusty tramp steamer that has touched at a
dozen ports since leaving Libya. Nobody would pay it any attention as it
steamed 300 miles offshore to it's next listed port of call in Mexico or
Canada.

>                2. AWACS planes with look-down radars could detect low-flyers,
>                   and could be stationed at key locations during a crisis
>                   situation.  F-15/AIM-7/AIM-120 could be shooter aircraft.

You'd need more AWACS and F-15s on station than we have available to protect
the US coastline. Potential targets stretch along the entire Pacific, Gulf,
and Atlantic coasts. Unless you knew exactly where the launch platform was,
you'd have to assume the attack could strike anywhere along the coasts. If
you knew where the platform was, you could just take it out before it fired.
Or if you're squeamish, *as* it fired. That only requires one aircraft, or
a shadowing destroyer with good AA.


>                3. Cruise missiles (accurate ones) must be more difficult to
>                   build than he says, or else more countries would already
>                   have them.  I know guidance systems and avionics are tricky
>                   to design and build.

Ten foot CEP is tough, but for a terrorist style attack, it isn't needed.
If the cruise carries a nuke, a 3 mile CEP is plenty to mess up a city.
V1 could do that on a good day. SCUD can do that on a good day. A cheap
pseudo-cruise could certainly be built to do that. A chemical warhead 
wouldn't need much better accuracy.

Picking the window of the White House that you want the missile to pass
through is golly gee stuff, but isn't really useful. For a third world
nation with delusions of grandeur, pinpoint destruction of selected hard
points in the continental US would be of little value. Only the US cares
about this capability so it can avoid the stigma of *again* using a nuke,
or chemical or biological weapons. A limited terrorist style attack on 
the US mainland would want maximum destruction. There's no way that a
third world nation could launch a big enough conventional attack on the 
continental US to have any strategic effect.

Gary


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