Cyprus-Forum.com

[repulsewarrior]

...here is an interesting take on this incident,

http://asbarez.com/171755/turkey-is-the ... -on-syria/

Turkey is the Biggest Loser in the US, British & French Missile Strikes on Syria

[Paphitis]

Yes it can navigate over the sea, with Inertial Navigation.

TERCOM is only for Vertical Navigation but it can also navigate horizontally through 3D countour modeling of the terrain providing that the modelling is entered into its data base which it should be. It then plots itself on the map and cross checks with INS and GPS or INS alone.

TERCOM, INS and GPS are completely independent but TERCOM is mainly used as a terrain radar so that the Missile, or Tornado or F-111 can adjust its altitude. It doen't follow contours just works out how high it should be and it can plot itself on a 3D model or contour map. It's a terrain following map.

Over the ocean, it simply would detect the terrain as Sea Level and adjust its altitude accordingly. If the Missile flies over the Troodhos, then the TERCOM will increase its altitude and follow the contours of the terrain so that it doesn't hit the ground until it gets over the peak and then it will follow the contours back down as it passes over the other side by decreasing its altitude.

INS is completely self contained. Inertial Nav is accurate to within a few metres, on its own.

GPS relies on a constellation of satellites for its accuracy. The US military will have pretty much dead on accuracy. Civilian use of GPS has triangulation errors which means its not as accurate and the Americans dfo that so n one can use their satellite Constellation against them (such as terrorists). But its still pretty accurate.

Cruise Missiles are not reliant on GPS alone. Even though the chances of GPS getting hacked by anyone or jammed has never happened before. If it does happen, it would cause mayhem because aircraft on RNAV Approaches would start to fly into mountains and buildings. Civil Aviation would be bought to its knees.

No, it's not!
I know you frequent the aviationist forum where 99.999% of the members are apologists of the Tomahawks but even there you can hear people saying it's not accurate.
With GPS aid, yes the rocket can hit with a + or -1 m accuracy, however with INS alone there's no way to hit that accurately.

It looks you made up your mind based on INS used in commercial airlines that mostly travel in straight lines.
The Tomahawk however doesn't travel in straight line.
Still you will find that a plane traveling from Cyprus to London may end up to + or - many km from the airport assuming it depended on INS alone. Gyroscopes, are just a mechanical devices (albeit linked to electronic) and as such produce an error in every measurement. These errors add up to the next and next and the next. Depending on the number of changes in direction and the distance from the target they may end up to hundreds of meters away from target.

Now if you read the history of these missiles on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)
You will notice that they were always vulnerable to GPS-jam.

So how could this GPS-jam force the missile to possibly end up in the desert?
One very simple way is knowing the maximum deviation from position the INS computer would accept the GPS signal as been real instead of fake. In this case the jam would provide the rocket a GPS signal that is off by the maximum error accepted by the INS system. Notice the INS system always calculates the position based on the PREVIOUS position. It doesn't really know it's exact location, it's just a series of calculations each one based on the previous one. And from one position to another it accepts some error compared to the GPS signal.
Give it that error constantly and the rocket will never realize it was guided by a false GPS signal.

In any case you can look at the damage caused by those missiles. The Tomahawks alone should produce 1/330th of the damage of Hiroshima bomb 103X450/ 15 Ktons of the Hirishima bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy

Does the damage on just one building plus 2 abandoned airways equal to that???
Hell no!

All Missiles are vulnerable ti jamming.

Which is why the Tomahawks have inbuilt redundancies like INS and TERCOM. The Americans are probably the best in the world when it comes to jamming, and the S400 is very easy to jam up. A lot more easier than GPS because they rely on Radar for target acquisition.

A Cruise Missile isn't a taxi and neither do they have GPS units the civil world is use to. And the Americans would have secured their system as much as possible.

If the Russians applied some jamming system, and 1 didn't get to their target, then where did these missiles go to?

Here is a cut and paste from a website that gives a simple explanation:



The hallmark of a cruise missile is its incredible accuracy. A common statement made about the cruise missile is, "It can fly 1,000 miles and hit a target the size of a single-car garage." Cruise missiles are also very effective at evading detection by the enemy because they fly very low to the ground (out of the view of most radar systems).

Four different systems help guide a cruise missile to its target:

IGS - Inertial Guidance System
Tercom - Terrain Contour Matching
GPS - Global Positioning System
DSMAC - Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation
The IGS is a standard acceleration-based system that can roughly keep track of where the missile is located based on the accelerations it detects in the missile's motion (click here for a good introduction). Tercom uses an on-board 3-D database of the terrain the missile will be flying over. The Tercom system "sees" the terrain it is flying over using its radar system and matches this to the 3-D map stored in memory. The Tercom system is responsible for a cruise missile's ability to "hug the ground" during flight. The GPS system uses the military's network of GPS satellites and an onboard GPS receiver to detect its position with very high accuracy.

Once it is close to the target, the missile switches to a "terminal guidance system" to choose the point of impact. The point of impact could be pre-programmed by the GPS or Tercom system. The DSMAC system uses a camera and an image correlator to find the target, and is especially useful if the target is moving. A cruise missile can also be equipped with thermal imaging or illumination sensors (as used in smart bombs).

[Paphitis]

And some more info of how the Tomahawk achieves its accuracy and it has nothing at all to do with GPS or even INS. It relies on TERCOM and Digital Scene matching:

The Tomahawk cruise missile (the BGM-109) is a 20-foot-long weapon costing $1.3 million. A booster rocket shoots the missile off a ship or submarine. Then the small turbofan engine takes over and the missile jets toward land, directed by its "inertial-guidance system" which uses sensors and gyroscopes to measure acceleration and changes in direction. Once the missile crosses the shoreline, a more precise guidance method, TERCOM, takes over.

TERCOM scans the landscape at set checkpoints, taking altitude readings and comparing them to map data in its computer memory. The missile moves at about 550 miles per hour, and can make twists and turns like a radar-evading fighter plane all the while skimming over the land at 100 feet to 300 feet.

After covering up to 1,500 miles the Tomahawk closes in on its target and a third guidance system then takes over: DSMAC (Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator). DSMAC snaps a picture of the target area and compares that data to a version in its memory. The computer then gives the wings and tail fins a final adjustment and takes the warhead to its target.

The Tomahawk and the Tomahawk Antiship Missile (TASM) are fitted on Iowa-class battleships; cruisers of the Virginia, Long Beach, and Ticonderoga classes; and destroyers of the Arleigh Burke and Spruance classes.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin ... ahawk.html

[Pyrpolizer]

...here is an interesting take on this incident,

http://asbarez.com/171755/turkey-is-the ... -on-syria/

Turkey is the Biggest Loser in the US, British & French Missile Strikes on Syria

Of course the writer is an Armenian(AR-MENIAN not AM-erican for the dyslectic of you) and sees only the things he wants to see

[Pyrpolizer]

And some more info of how the Tomahawk achieves its accuracy and it has nothing at all to do with GPS or even INS. It relies on TERCOM and Digital Scene matching:

The Tomahawk cruise missile (the BGM-109) is a 20-foot-long weapon costing $1.3 million. A booster rocket shoots the missile off a ship or submarine. Then the small turbofan engine takes over and the missile jets toward land, directed by its "inertial-guidance system" which uses sensors and gyroscopes to measure acceleration and changes in direction. Once the missile crosses the shoreline, a more precise guidance method, TERCOM, takes over.

TERCOM scans the landscape at set checkpoints, taking altitude readings and comparing them to map data in its computer memory. The missile moves at about 550 miles per hour, and can make twists and turns like a radar-evading fighter plane all the while skimming over the land at 100 feet to 300 feet.

The Tomahawk and the Tomahawk Antiship Missile (TASM) are fitted on Iowa-class battleships; cruisers of the Virginia, Long Beach, and Ticonderoga classes; and destroyers of the Arleigh Burke and Spruance classes.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin ... ahawk.html

Sure but that's only used when they are close enough to the target to take photos and compare them with those stored in memory. Even an i7 computer could fail in delivering a confirmation fast enough.
The big question is what would the missile do if the computer won't be able to guide it to the exact pinpoint on target?
Do you think the missile would change it's mind and refuse to hit?

This reminds me of useless ad ins on various computer programs.

[Paphitis]

And some more info of how the Tomahawk achieves its accuracy and it has nothing at all to do with GPS or even INS. It relies on TERCOM and Digital Scene matching:

The Tomahawk cruise missile (the BGM-109) is a 20-foot-long weapon costing $1.3 million. A booster rocket shoots the missile off a ship or submarine. Then the small turbofan engine takes over and the missile jets toward land, directed by its "inertial-guidance system" which uses sensors and gyroscopes to measure acceleration and changes in direction. Once the missile crosses the shoreline, a more precise guidance method, TERCOM, takes over.

TERCOM scans the landscape at set checkpoints, taking altitude readings and comparing them to map data in its computer memory. The missile moves at about 550 miles per hour, and can make twists and turns like a radar-evading fighter plane all the while skimming over the land at 100 feet to 300 feet.

The Tomahawk and the Tomahawk Antiship Missile (TASM) are fitted on Iowa-class battleships; cruisers of the Virginia, Long Beach, and Ticonderoga classes; and destroyers of the Arleigh Burke and Spruance classes.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin ... ahawk.html

Sure but that's only used when they are close enough to the target to take photos and compare them with those stored in memory. Even an i7 computer could fail in delivering a confirmation fast enough.
The big question is what would the missile do if the computer won't be able to guide it to the exact pinpoint on target?
Do you think the missile would change it's mind and refuse to hit?

This reminds me of useless ad ins on various computer programs.

It's (TERCOM) used once it crosses the shoreline. DSMAC is what guides the missile to the target and through the window (it's that accurate).

And I am not sure where you get your information from. But if their flight time was only 15 minutes, then they would have covered only 135 nms at 9 miles per minute.

Some, if not most, were launched from the Mediterranean somewhere between Cyprus and Egypt.

A few were launched from B1 Bombers.

So some must have had a flying time of far more than 15 minutes.

But what is especially very impressive, is the way they coordinate all the Tomahawks, JASSM and Shadow to arrive all at the same time in a 2 tap configuration. All the launches would have been sequenced and the Missiles themselves can navigate to their target via a set of waypoints or some grid sectors on their moving terrain map.

It's amazing how it all works.

But what is apparent to anyone is the fact that these Missiles do not rely on GPS and have a number of redundancies built in, such as DSMAC, which is something I never heard of before.

I do know however that the Tornado, and the F-111 do not rely on GPS. They use it when they can if they have the RAIM (Integrity Check) but they follow a terrain following rada or moving contour map and plot themselves as they go and it flies the aircraft too like it flies the Cruise Missile.

[Paphitis]

And some more info of how the Tomahawk achieves its accuracy and it has nothing at all to do with GPS or even INS. It relies on TERCOM and Digital Scene matching:

The Tomahawk cruise missile (the BGM-109) is a 20-foot-long weapon costing $1.3 million. A booster rocket shoots the missile off a ship or submarine. Then the small turbofan engine takes over and the missile jets toward land, directed by its "inertial-guidance system" which uses sensors and gyroscopes to measure acceleration and changes in direction. Once the missile crosses the shoreline, a more precise guidance method, TERCOM, takes over.

TERCOM scans the landscape at set checkpoints, taking altitude readings and comparing them to map data in its computer memory. The missile moves at about 550 miles per hour, and can make twists and turns like a radar-evading fighter plane all the while skimming over the land at 100 feet to 300 feet.

The Tomahawk and the Tomahawk Antiship Missile (TASM) are fitted on Iowa-class battleships; cruisers of the Virginia, Long Beach, and Ticonderoga classes; and destroyers of the Arleigh Burke and Spruance classes.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin ... ahawk.html

Sure but that's only used when they are close enough to the target to take photos and compare them with those stored in memory. Even an i7 computer could fail in delivering a confirmation fast enough.
The big question is what would the missile do if the computer won't be able to guide it to the exact pinpoint on target?
Do you think the missile would change it's mind and refuse to hit?

This reminds me of useless ad ins on various computer programs.

There are all kinds of inbuilt safeguards.

The Missile has to acquire a target, before the warhead is armed is one such mechanism. If there is no target, then the Missile will not hit. The target would have been uploaded beforehand and the Tercom would have to successfuly prosecute that target.

The missiles can also be scuttled by the Americans, or destroyed before they get to a target for whatever reason.

[Paphitis]

...here is an interesting take on this incident,

http://asbarez.com/171755/turkey-is-the ... -on-syria/

Turkey is the Biggest Loser in the US, British & French Missile Strikes on Syria

Of course the writer is an Armenian(AR-MENIAN not AM-erican for the dyslectic of you) and sees only the things he wants to see

That's also the case with the Russia Cheerleaders.

They see what the want to believe and wish to be true. Such as 71 out of 103 Cruise Missiles not getting to their targets.

Let me tell you about the Americans and their Arms Industry. If they had a Missile like the Tomahawk that proved to be a failure like this, they would be on their drawing boards yesterday learning from it, and they will address the deficiency. The F-35 project is actually running behind schedule on all aircraft deliveries because of ongoing development issues with the aircraft. Lockheed has a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of the products it delivers to the US Military and others around the globe. One mistake and the loss of reputation to them would be worth several Billions.

They also would not sell the product to their military unless it could deliver on its spec. In fact, the company that makes the weapon probably will not be paid.

The Americans would also not sell the missiles to arm Australia's Air warfare Destroyers and new Shortfin Submarines. In fact, Australia would have been informed immediately that this defence contract would be allocated by tender for the Americans to deliver a Missile that will meet Australia's requirements. Australia will issue those requirements as part of the tender. And the Americans will deliver and get paid. they always deliver. But dud missiles will never be fitted on the Shortfin or AWD Ships.

No one is worried at all with the Tomahawk. If anyone was worried, the Tomahawks would be replaced immediately or upgraded.

You would also see the entire USN come back to port to offload the missiles and replace them immediately but you never see that either.

There is also a very big issue at play here.

Russia and Syria have not even provided photographic or video evidence of a failed Tomahawk. Probably because none actually exist.

[Robin Hood]

Paphitis:

Out of your five preceding posts you have managed to re-explain everything I have already explained to you as if it was some sort of revelation only you have knowledge of. I told you how the Tomahawk guidance system works ..... and you then tell ME how it works!

Why do you always demand proof from others when you rarely if ever supply proof of your sometimes outrageous claims ............. invariably those being only your perception or opinion and we know you pay very little attention to either the detail from your sources or the accuracy of your derived statements.

As for your derogatory remarks about the S-400!

It is only in the hands of the Russian Forces and the only targets they have is coalition aircraft or missiles, which are NEVER aimed at them. So, for exactly the same reason YOU have not used your mighty and invincible arsenal of sophisticated attack/defence weapons against either Syrian or Russian aircraft and missiles, is because to do so would trigger an almighty conflict that would most likely end with the Planets destruction.

You are vastly over confident in YOUR military superiority and weapons capability ...... it’s all hypothesis. When YOU are on the receiving end and find out how good the Russian technology is and the capability of its weapons ........... it will be too late. But It will be the West that will create the conditions for a definitive test, not the Russians.

[Paphitis]

Oh silly me....but I don't really read your posts!

But you are right, the Tomahawks really do work. There is a big enough track record that proves this beyond any doubt.

What I would like to know now is whether the S400 actually works because there is no evidence or track record that it does.