Mobile Targets From Under the Sea An MIT Security Studies Program Conference
Abstract
This report is in part a summary and in part a reaction to a conference held in December 1999 by the MIT Security Studies Program. The conference looked broadly at two questions. Why mobile targets? Why from under the sea? Operation Allied Force demonstrated some important facts about our current military posture, and particularly about our strike warfare capabilities, that hint at answers to these two questions. First, Integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) guidance will soon solve the fixed target problem. What does this mean? If the U.S. military is vigilant and aggressive in developing and protecting GPS/INS, it will be able to guide weapons of any range, precisely, night or day, cloudy or clear, to any point on the surface of the earth. When the target being attacked is fixed at the point the weapon is aimed at, it will simply be a matter of assigning the right payload to assure that the target will be within that weapon's lethal radius. Second, the mobile target problem is far from being solved. One definition of the mobile target problem is those circumstances in which the attacker cannot be certain his target will be at the point of its most recent detection when the weapon he aims at it arrives. In this category of targets lies the bulk of an opponent's military forces, which remain still for much of the time, but which move enough to make them mobile by this definition. During Allied Force, Serbian army and police forces engaging in ethnic cleansing operations faced little opposition from allied air forces, even though the latter enjoyed complete air supremacy by most definitions of that term.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA454546
Entities
People
- Owen Cote
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology