At 02:07 PM 2/7/01 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm curious.  With Chinese military officials speculating they are going
>to be at war with tiawan within 5 years, and the US indicating that their
>missile defense shield may be deployed on tiawan...  (and let's leave the
>political discussion out of this, please :-)
>
>Are there other methods of knocking out or disabling a missile in flight
>without being close to it?

Particle beam weapons, powerful X-ray lasers, other high-tech stuff, some
of which would have to be located in space.

>Do any modern missiles use GPS, and if so does the US have the capability
>of performing real-time modification to the GPS signal?  (I'm thinking -
>determine the trajectory and most likely target, then change the GPS
>signal incrementally so that the target is now located in the ocean - this
>would work well for multiple missiles on multiple targets (sure, we moved
>New York to Michigan which knocked california's missiles into the ocean,
>but is that *really* an improvement?  MI may not think so... ;-))

I doubt modern missiles would use GPS. I happen to know someone who
used to design parts of missiles in (unnamed foreign potential foe) but
they're not talking. ;-)

>What are typical guidance systems used for missiles?

Inertial guidance, I think. Cruise missiles, IIRC, use a combination of
stored patterns of landmarks and inertial guidance. I've worked with
star-trackers which apparently have similar applications for the military.

>I'm assuming there are accelerometer/gyro guidance, but can that be very
>accurate?  Are ground based radio systems in wide use?  Is Russia's GPS
>equivilant system in use at all?

There are export controls on very accurate intertial guidance systems,
IIRC, the ones used in commercial airliners are deliberately degraded
so they cannot be used for such purposes effectively.

>Anyway.  Just some musings I've been having recently...  I suppose this
>has a lot to do with robot guidance, as well....

<political>
I don't think that China has any real intention of attacking Taiwan,
unless they were to foolishly declare independence. The US star wars
program is provocative and deprives them of their only defense, which
would be to nuke LA or NYC with one of their few available nukes,
clearly a suicidal path for them. The article you cite seems quite
unbalanced to me, maybe you can put that publication in perspective?
</political>

The problems with the relatively small production disruptions due to
the earthquake in Taiwan (the earthquake was centred near Keelung,
out at the airport in Taipei Hsien, and nowhere near the science park in
Hsinchu) were troublesome. A war would cause huge disruptions in the
economies of the West. I believe it would be avoided by negotiation.

Best regards,

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Contributions invited->The AVR-gcc FAQ is at: http://www.bluecollarlinux.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
(like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics