Seemingly, all conventional military forces generally hold their opponents in contempt. In the summer of 2006 the Israelis showed classic contempt for Hezbollah irregulars in southern Lebanon and took a beating as a result. As a matter of fact the U. S. military because of its massive power often seems more xenophobic than most and has been known to extend its disdain even to friendly forces that are often superior in training and performance to our own. Hence this stupid notion in the Pentagon that ‘only’ Americans can do COIN.

From this most recent incident of the insurgents tapping into live feeds from UAV’s to the development of simple to exotic IED’s our opponents have shown themselves to be creative and possessing technical and tactical ingenuity. Since insurgents don’t have all the bureaucratic rigmarole to pass though in order to exploit an opportunity they can move quickly and effectively while we analyze and fiddle around and run a new idea or counter measure though a hundred different levels of command.

It would be nice to begin to see U. S. forces begin to show a little humility because without it they will be courting further embarrassment and make their jobs which are already complex even more difficult. We cannot despise our enemy’s courage, ability to learn and willingness to sacrifice. One would have thought we would have learned this lesson in Vietnam?

A friend of mine that now travels around for Janes Info Group told me there was something in the wind about this. This would now seem to confirm that.

Operation Anaconda: what a cluster that was. I know, I was watching it, but be that as it may, we can be just as agile as our enemy. The problem is, we know we don't have to be, and so we let some staff officer do a point paper on needing a high tech solution for a low tech problem.

This is a great blog. I've been watching it for awhile. Thanks for keeping it up and running.

“The hacking was possible because the remotely flown planes have an unprotected communications link.”

This is called listening, not hacking, which would entail the circumvention of actual security measures. So this is worse than hubris.

The bit about proprietary communications technology not being compatible with widely used encryption systems sounds off. Here's a helpful command:

cat comms.dat | gpg --symmetric --armor --passphrase 'encrypt your data!'

Breaking that stream, if someone had bothered to use it, would be hacking.

If I was operating a surveillance drone system with the full understanding that it was common knowledge (based on the incident surrounding what happened in Kosovo with the British fellow who looked in on some video) that the system could be hacked, I would probably move to close that loop.

Unless, of course, I wanted someone to see that it was being hacked.

The nice thing about turning on a satellite is that it creates a nicely triangulated point on the ground where it is located. That means, I would surmise, that anyone looking in on the frequencies where you could view surveillance video of a drone in flight in the open would show up on some other sort of overhead collection--say, a separate platform looking down for a VSAT pointed up at a particular satellite and connected via the same frequency as what the drone was using.

Now, I'm not a military man, but I would think that if you had said drone in the air, hovering near where said "hacker" was then connected to the satellite and able to receive the frequency of the video feed, I would *think* that that would indicate you had just found a bad guy. Does the surveillance drone not fly around in a preset pattern, trying to find "bad guys?"

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I know someone will, but that's a situation easily rectified that calls for a hellfire missile--or is that just too farfetched? Is there a ROE situation there that doesn't quite fit the situation?

Just my wild, uninformed guess.

getting your opponent to underestimate your intentions and not understand your capabilities. Cavalry hot shots are the most desirable types of cuckolds - their mobility makes them less aware of what is going on about them.

With the drones, by the way, how many Potemkin-enemies have we removed? Would we know?

"2001" should be "2002." But at least no general's name is misspelled.

First, I am not apologizing for the Pentagon. They let this loophole go for five years and didn't close it. That was dumb. What happened could have been far worse than it was.

While it is bad to underestimate the enemy, I think it is also bad to overestimate them as well. Yes, the insurgents were able to gain access to UAV video feeds. I think it should also be pointed out that it does not appear to have done them much good. The insurgents did not have the technical knowledge to exploit this loophole. They still got beat down in 2008 and they have had to switch tactics from bunches of little bombs to fewer big headliners to compensate for their losses they haven’t been able to make back. They just got to watch the beat down from a Predator point of view as well.

"Achmed! Come look at what Mohammed can show us on the computer! He's tapped into a Predator camera! Now we can see what the infidels are looking at. See? We can see our safe house from here!"

KA-BOOM!

Of course there is an answer. The American Stingers were issued to the Taliban via auspices of the Pakistani authorities particularly ISI. Today the Pakistanis would not want to sponsor that type of escalation against American aircraft even though they probably don't mind the killing of American and allied troops in Afghanistan. Iran will not sponsor that type of escalation nor would the Russians since it would not serve their larger interests. The Afghan Taliban just doesn’t have a large state sponsor other than the Pakistani ISI. They seem to be doing just fine without the larger firepower.

They obviously are not the slightest bit intimidated by muscle bound American or allied forces and will attack them when they see a tactical opportunity. We have massive military assets but they have persistence, situational awareness and intestinal fortitude. In other words they seem to have their hearts in the fight for the long run.
.

There is no greater disaster than underestimating your enemy, once you underestimate opponents or take your enemy too lightly, you will be in danger of losing your compassion, moderation, and non-competitive spirit. Regards Car Leasing

There is a saying forum among generals, It is better not to begin the battle but to wait for the other side to begin. It is better to retreat a foot rather than advance dizi izle an inch.