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Babur Cruise Missile - Database

Ok let me rephrase my question. Why TERCOM face difficulty in recognizing Flat surfaces like of desert. First Iraq War showed that problem.
I dont know if TERCOM is hampered by Flat terrain of deserts as navigation system,but it doesnt make sense that a missile will fall opff the sky simply because it could not match ground contours.Cruise missiles dont primarily rely on TERCOM as navigaion system,as they have INS and some form of satellite navigation system.?The main purpose of TERCOM is stealth.....It is common sense that Flat terrain will effect the Missile's radar avoidance capability as it does not have any land features to blend into and hide behind.
A flat surface almost kills the whole purpose of Terrain hugging...that is Radar avoidence.
It is plausible that the americans fired their Cruise missiles via Zagros Mountains for this reason rather than TERCOM failure above flat desert?
 
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I dont know if TERCOM is hampered by Flat terrain of deserts as navigation system,but it doesnt make sense that a missile will fall opff the sky simply because it could not match ground contours.Cruise missiles dont primarily rely on TERCOM as navigaion system,as they have INS and some form of satellite navigation system.?The main purpose of TERCOM is stealth.....It is common sense that Flat terrain will effect the Missile's radar avoidance capability as it does not have any land features to blend into and hide behind.
A flat surface almost kills the whole purpose of Terrain hugging...that is Radar avoidence.
It is plausible that the americans fired their Cruise missiles via Zagros Mountains for this reason rather than TERCOM failure above flat desert?
Please do not jump to conclusions without seeing any actual data. No terrain is completely EM 'flat'. What the radar altimeter system does is to measure any terrain return to see if it matches a certain threshold and compare that threshold against record.

GPS is for general positioning and less accurate in altitude.

Terrain Following (TF) and Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) are two methods of radar avoidance, not low radar observability. TERCOM have the advantage over TF of low EM signature because the only EM emissions are from the radar altimeter, which is pretty much straight down, perhaps one degree ahead. TF have the advantage over TERCOM of no terrain record required but that the system must have active radar transmissions for several degrees ahead of the aircraft to calculate approaching UNKNOWN topographic features. Both methods must be able to deal with sudden EM changes due to terrain changes. If flat topo is detrimental to TERCOM then it must also be detrimental to TF and I would not be here today because I was on the F-111.

So I really do not know the source of the accusation that somehow desert terrain will fail cruise missile using TERCOM.
 
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Please do not jump to conclusions without seeing any actual data. No terrain is completely EM 'flat'. What the radar altimeter system does is to measure any terrain return to see if it matches a certain threshold and compare that threshold against record.

GPS is for general positioning and less accurate in altitude.

Terrain Following (TF) and Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) are two methods of radar avoidance, not low radar observability. TERCOM have the advantage over TF of low EM signature because the only EM emissions are from the radar altimeter, which is pretty much straight down, perhaps one degree ahead. TF have the advantage over TERCOM of no terrain record required but that the system must have active radar transmissions for several degrees ahead of the aircraft to calculate approaching UNKNOWN topographic features. Both methods must be able to deal with sudden EM changes due to terrain changes. If flat topo is detrimental to TERCOM then it must also be detrimental to TF and I would not be here today because I was on the F-111.

So I really do not know the source of the accusation that somehow desert terrain will fail cruise missile using TERCOM.

No i know what i am talking about..
You are a very knowledgeable member and i wont enter into a useless argument with you.

The point of last few comments was about uses of TERCOM in a cruise missile,and if TERCOM failure can crash a missile while it has other means of Navigation in place? and i think you have answered the question...
 
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Ok this video is of Raad missile,but listen to what the news caster says...
This missile and presumably its bigger version Babur are equipped with National command authority's automated strategic command and control system (Now what the hell is that?).
The news caster goes on to say that due to integraiopn of this system the missile's path can be observed all along until it hits the target.....
 
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Ok this video is of Raad missile,but listen to what the news caster says...
This missile and presumably its bigger version Babur are equipped with National command authority's automated strategic command and control system (Now what the hell is that?).
The news caster goes on to say that due to integraiopn of this system the missile's path can be observed all along until it hits the target.....

Sire you forgot, you already discussed this thing in this thread

http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakist...-succesful-test-fire-hatf-viii-raad-alcm.html

Page 1,4,5,6
 
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Sire you forgot, you already discussed this thing in this thread

http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakist...-succesful-test-fire-hatf-viii-raad-alcm.html

Page 1,4,5,6

Yes,in that thread we werent even sure why Pakistan tested that missile again...and nobody seemed to grasp the concept of
"strategic command and control system"..
Such a system needs secure duplex messaging service......Pakistan may have various methods to do that...Is Link 16 part of it?
But here we can say for sure that the communication between RAAd/Babur Missiles and Commanders is Via Beidou satellites,and hence the accuracy..
TERCOM is provided by terrain contour maps generated by Suparco...
The SUPARCU website shows a very large area,about 2000 Km around Pakistan,of which they have extensive satellite imagery data...Yet the Cruise missiles of Pakistan have 700 Km range....
We can assume that this is associated with Beidou giving Limited coverage at the moment but soon it will be global and Pakistan will have the ability of making a Missile Guidance system of longer range...
Does Pakistan have the engine for a long range Cruise missile?
There are many unanswered questions..still.

Anyway here is the satellite data Acqisition Zone of SUPARCO,of which they have extensive terrestrial information and imagery..

acquisition-zone.jpg
 
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No i know what i am talking about..
You are a very knowledgeable member and i wont enter into a useless argument with you.

The point of last few comments was about uses of TERCOM in a cruise missile,and if TERCOM failure can crash a missile while it has other means of Navigation in place? and i think you have answered the question...
If TERCOM actually caused a cruise missile to crash, then it is from either a poor implementation of the method, which would cause the entire program to fail in the first place, or a unique anomaly. Like I advocated -- more data.
 
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If TERCOM actually caused a cruise missile to crash, then it is from either a poor implementation of the method, which would cause the entire program to fail in the first place, or a unique anomaly. Like I advocated -- more data.
May be you are not understanding the original question,or we didnt put it the right way.....Obviously a TERCOM in Tomahawk cannot be of poor quality,but the many Iraq war documentaries we watched on Nat geo or other channels did say that in the initial wave of attack on Baghdad almost all the Tomahawks were fired from Persian gulf flew via the zargos mountains,instead of flying directly over the desert to Baghdad which was the shorter route.
Do you think this flight path for tomahawk was chosen for stealth or TERCOM accuracy? or both?
 
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Here are some websites stating smae or similar things about Tomahawk


Weapons - Trainor On The Tomahawk | The Gulf War | FRONTLINE | PBS
Q: What's the problem with the guidance system of the Tomahawks?

Trainor: The Tomahawk missile was a cruise missile. And it was designed to follow specific terrain features. With using satellite photography we would get the picture of the ground and this would be digitized in a form that could go into a computer that would be in the Tomahawk missile, so that when the Tomahawk was fired it simply would match what was in its program with the terrain features on the ground and follow it like a roadmap to its target. Now the problem in the Gulf War was that the desert region over in Kuwait and in Iraq was so flat that there were very few signposts. So what the Navy did was make use of the programming that went over Iran, where there were mountains, the Zagros Mountains, which gave a very clear identifying signal. And they had programmed the missiles over the Zagros Mountains long before the Iraqi crisis. This was the route that the Tomahawk missiles were going to take when they went into the Soviet Union if there had been a war with the Soviet Union. So they simply took that and modified it so that when the missiles were halfway up the Zagros Mountains on the course to the Soviet Union they'd make a left turn and go the east towards Baghdad. So in that sense all they had to digitize was the space between where the left turn took place and Baghdad. And that's what they did and that's the way the missiles were fired.


This is a piece written in 1998
Picking Smart Weapons: From Atoms To Bits - Chicago Tribune
Picking Smart Weapons: From Atoms To Bits
April 24, 1998|By Bart Kosko. Bart Kosko is an associate professor of electrical engineering at University of Southern California and author of the cyber-thriller novel "Nanotime."

How smart is it to shoot smart weapons at Iraq? Does the United States still hold a working monopoly on smart technologies? Can Saddam Hussein hit back with his own smart technology?

Smart weapons have grown smarter since the U.S. first fired Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraq in 1991 (and again in 1993). Those dumber missiles could not find their way over the featureless sands of the desert. They instead had to invade Iran's air space and fly over Iran's Zagros Mountains. Then their on-board computers could match their stored terrain maps against the rich mountain features below.
 
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Safriz, i always wonder... How babur gonna workout if it has to pass over thar or cholistan desert? Pakistani mission planner must have thought of this and may have chose the path which Babur will follow avoiding desert terrains...
 
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Safriz, i always wonder... How babur gonna workout if it has to pass over thar or cholistan desert? Pakistani mission planner must have thought of this and may have chose the path which Babur will follow avoiding desert terrains...
No the missile wont fall off the sky over cholistan as alternative more reliable navigation methods are available for babur,such as Satellite navigation via Baidou and inertial navigation.\the only thing that may be compromised is the missile's stealth as there are not many land features in a desert like cholistan for the missile to blend in and hide behind,and the sand of the desert may not allow missile to fly too low as sand ingestion will certainly effect engine.
But a course can be made round the larger more permanent sand dunes,so much that an observing enemy Radar cannot have a continuous lock on the missile and it keeps losing the missile.

The Tomahawks we were told on Nat geo and Discovery channel being Fired Via Zargos Mountains instead of Iraqi Desets were in 1990-91.
Back then GPS had about 15 meter accuracy in 2D positioning and in 3D, or the height data was much less accurate,in the order of 50 meters,and a missile flying say 50-100 meters above flat desert wont be stealthy,and since it was the first wave of attack the commanders may not be wanting to take risk and make absolutely sure that the missiles remains as stealthy as possible.
This is the video footage of Tomahawks from back in 90s.


at the end of the video the reporter says that two missiles fell off target and have caused civilian causalities...That was the 1990s technology.
Things have improved since then.
The main improvement has been in satellite navigation accuracy,available SAR data and computational power available..Now even countries like Pakistan can create very accurate TERCOM maps and , sending a missile over Desert shouldn't be a problem any more.
 
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Stop making up things that you do not understand. Sand dunes movements are nowhere as RAPIDLY mobile as sea states. It does not 'need' a specific type of cruise missile. Yours is a made up 'fact'.

You should educate yourself on the desert and correct your thoughts instead of wanting to sound professional and knowledgeable with no avail; Cruise missiles need to follow a programmed route of the terrain and the desert terrain with its ever moving and form changing sands according to the winds is just not programmable, so in reality one does not need such sophisticated missiles to fly over a desert area nor is it practical in a desert war.


Wind and sand create majestic dunes
that are constant but ever-changing.
They move across the deserts,
sing to the wind and
inspire our creativity!

Sand Dunes - Phenomena of the Wind! (DesertUSA)
 
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As far as satellite radar imagery is concerned,china has many SAR satellites,
Yaogan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
in addition to that there are commercially available SAR sats which sell radar imagery..
How to Buy : Astrium GeoInformation Services
Imaging Notes Magazine ||

Dear Brother,
Satellite Images are available to even common person from Google Earth and Google Maps etc. but this is not something that is enough to guide a Missile TERCOM or navigation. for this we need military grade imaginary.
SUPARCO have given the 2014 as the year for the launch of our first Remote Sensing Satellite System (PRSSS):
http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakist...an-remote-sensing-satellite-system-prsss.html

this will help to get what we need in satellite imaginary for missile guidance via TERCOM.

As for now, Pakistan have an agreement with China and we have access to Military Grade Images from Beidou Navigation System. It is not that we can use ANY commercial satellite provided images for this operation as they will lack the details and precision required.

Currently the Beidou coverage area is as:
800px-Beidou-coverage.png


it is reported that by 2020 it will be transformed into a complete Global Navigation System.
so what i think/assume is that after the launch of PRSSS, we will have coverage of our immediate area of concern via our own satellite and for global navigation, Pakistan may well adopt the Beidou-2 navigation system.

for the ever changing desert profile, this is not a big problem since the missile is fitted with multiple guidance systems, the inertial guidance being the main system and supported with Satellite Guidance system.

regards!
 
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