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 AustonT wrote:
bwahahahahahaha. What's your Naval War College class number Lord Nelson?

Why did I ever expect that you'd actually provide an argument with substance?

For example, you can simply use slave computers to overload the system, and keep trying at a password or whatever blocks the way until you get in.

Assuming:

1) The system allows remote login at all.

and

2) The person who designed it was an idiot and didn't make it so that after X number of bad guesses the system locks you out.

and

3) The system allows passwords that are short enough that brute forcing it is even remotely possible.

And co-ordination's really going to be a problem?

Yes, because "hacking" is more complicated than just accumulating a certain number of units of hacking skill and rolling a hack device check. Your "team" is probably going to consist of 10 people doing useful work while the other 990 just get in the way.

No, I'm not an expert, I'm simply saying that from what I know it wouldn't be unreasonable for a government with the resources that a country with nukes is likely to have to manage to get inside the security

It would be unreasonable because only an idiot would design an ABM control system that can even be accessed remotely, and you'd have to be even dumber to design one that couldn't do a complete hardware reset to instantly regain control.

 p_gray99 wrote:
Yeah, getting into the system is a little difficult. But once that's done, it's a simple case of getting through masses of firewalls etc. Again, I'm not an expert, and yes knowing a programming language means I'm not an expert on security but equally I don't know nothing. For example, you can simply use slave computers to overload the system, and keep trying at a password or whatever blocks the way until you get in. And co-ordination's really going to be a problem? If you're going to train them to hack a computer, you have the time to teach them a little co-ordination.

And my last comment was basically saying all the systems are likely to have the same defenses or at least similar. Hack one, you're not too far away from have multiple systems.
No, I'm not an expert, I'm simply saying that from what I know it wouldn't be unreasonable for a government with the resources that a country with nukes is likely to have to manage to get inside the security. And even if this is extremely unlikely, it's possible and a simple way of getting past the anti-nuke defenses. Which means you don't want to rely on them alone.

OT: Once you learn Python... learn some PERL... wicked scripting language.

 Peregrine wrote:
Why did I ever expect that you'd actually provide an argument with substance?

It's a reasonable point. No other navy in the world stands a reasonable chance of conducting naval operations against the continental United States not because of our land-based defenses but because of - you guessed it - our fleet superiority.

You all are working with a nuke hitting the ground. You can shoot a nuke with a ABM on its dowward trajectory. What will truly screw the USA is a nuke strike above like in the stratosphere (or something) EMP coverage across the US. That will totally shutdown the US.

 AustonT wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:To those with the gall to actually post here that we still use horses and bayonets in the military.

I consider the fact that I'm not posting a string of well deserved personal insults a mitzvah.

The point raised by the president was that we no longer need a vast fleet of warships, that aircraft and aircraft carriers changed the entire course of naval warfare in the second half of WW2 and that large fleets have not been relevant since.

Yeah someone should go tell all those other ships to retire cause we are only need aircraft carriers!
Or maybe in the half century since WW2 it's been painfully obvious that a large fleet is necessary to a nation straddling two oceans on a planet with more water than land.
Also known as "Dur"

Also, stop being pedants.

And it's back




@matty

Spoiler:

stupid Brits with their horses and bayonet charges. Where do find the gall?

Yep, pedantic.

The president was referring to the differences in methods of conflict over the last century, we don't employ cavalry charges or send men over the top with fixed bayonets to die in droves to machine gun fire because the methods of waging war are changing. We've even see a significant change to the relevance of armoured divisions and large standing armies vs small elite forces in certain theatres. These can be considered to be outmoded warfare concepts.

But by all means post pictures of men in uniforms sitting on mules and consider yourself the victor.


... No, that's it!! You're still wrong because they're mules not horses!! (see how annoying that is?)

 Seaward wrote:
It's a reasonable point. No other navy in the world stands a reasonable chance of conducting naval operations against the continental United States not because of our land-based defenses but because of - you guessed it - our fleet superiority.

Correction: no other navy in the world stands a reasonable chance of conducting naval operations against the continental United States because of geography. You can dream all you want about your paranoid fantasy where an attack could happen at any minute, but the reality of the situation is that there's no viable strategic goal that includes a naval attack against the US. An invasion is impossible, and just bombing random targets without invading only gives the US justification for obliterating your military with land-based bombers. Now, maybe I'm just a liberal traitor, but I don't really see why we need to spend obscene amounts of money on defending against an attack that's never going to happen.


Oh yeah, and also because no other country spends enough on their navy to make anything but a pointless suicide attack against an alternate US that bought land-based defenses instead of the world's largest navy.

@falcon I don't need a substantive argument to counter the garbage you have posted ITT. Mirth and derision will suffice

@MGS QQ more
That is all

We're all victors at the end. Like I said before Only one unit still use horses






As for the bayonet. I used that sucker plenty of times. Mainly on removing either russian or US concentina wire out from under and around my MRAP. Look at the pic posted of current bayonet. You can see the locking nub and insert hole on the blade itself where it can turn into wire cutters.

 Jihadin wrote:
We're all victors at the end. Like I said before Only one unit still use horses






As for the bayonet. I used that sucker plenty of times. Mainly on removing either russian or US concentina wire out from under and around my MRAP. Look at the pic posted of current bayonet. You can see the locking nub and insert hole on the blade itself where it can turn into wire cutters.

Actually the last U.S. Cavalry charge was in 2001 I believe, Army SF attacking a Taliban stronghold with the Northern Alliance.

I remember that but its no factor. Cav charges are now done with M1's and Bradley's..throw in some Apache and Kiowa Warriors...thats a modern day cav charge....ccccaaaaaaavvvvvvvvv...anyway...what the SF did is...well their SF...they are allowed to be crazy and do missions thats off the wall....except bringing strippers in Bagram Afghanistan to dance at their NCO club on Camp Vance......bastards never invited me.."snif"

 Peregrine wrote:
Correction: no other navy in the world stands a reasonable chance of conducting naval operations against the continental United States because of geography. You can dream all you want about your paranoid fantasy where an attack could happen at any minute, but the reality of the situation is that there's no viable strategic goal that includes a naval attack against the US. An invasion is impossible, and just bombing random targets without invading only gives the US justification for obliterating your military with land-based bombers. Now, maybe I'm just a liberal traitor, but I don't really see why we need to spend obscene amounts of money on defending against an attack that's never going to happen.


Oh yeah, and also because no other country spends enough on their navy to make anything but a pointless suicide attack against an alternate US that bought land-based defenses instead of the world's largest navy.

Did that geography not apply during the '40s, in your view?

And no. It's not geography. It's the fact that we have the most powerful fleet in the world. I do not think an attack could happen any minute. I also don't think a fire's going to break out in my domicile anytime soon. Doesn't prevent me from keeping fire extinguishers around, and rope ladders on the third and fourth floors. It would make even more sense to take those precautions if fire extinguishers and rope ladders were an active deterrent against fires breaking out.

If you truly believe land-based bombers are our answer to everything, we need to have another, much longer discussion. We use carrier air wings for a hell of a lot, and before you start, no, those other ships in a carrier group aren't just along for the ride.

I cry if both candidates get 269 on electoral votes..

 AustonT wrote:

@MGS QQ more
That is all

Post more inane gak and I'll see what I can do.

Riverdance?

I tried to stay away from this thread, I really did.

But to those who are attempting to rebut the President's statement:

"You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. It’s not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s ‘What are our priorities?’”

... with images showing horses, mules, bayonets and/or combat knives...

The point.

You missed it.

To those who didn't - should I laugh or cry?

Answer:

Scott....no one feels guilty......

Scott wrote:
I tried to stay away from this thread, I really did.

But to those who are attempting to rebut the President's statement:

"You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. It’s not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s ‘What are our priorities?’”

... with images showing horses, mules, bayonets and/or combat knives...

The point.

You missed it.

To those who didn't - should I laugh or cry?

Answer:

Was the point that the Navy doesn't have horses and bayonets? Or that we had aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines in our 500 ship navy?

 p_gray99 wrote:
I don't know much about these defense systems, but how many systems are they run on? Is there one master system? Because if so, it'd only take one hacker a few seconds to get in, if they knew what they were doing, and they could shut down the whole thing. While that isn't likely, prove that, say, Korea isn't training hundreds of hackers to take down all the systems at once.

Hacking does not work like that. If hackers could just get into a secure system in a few seconds, Bank of America would be giving it up to every hacker in the world.

 p_gray99 wrote:
Yeah, getting into the system is a little difficult. But once that's done, it's a simple case of getting through masses of firewalls etc. Again, I'm not an expert, and yes knowing a programming language means I'm not an expert on security but equally I don't know nothing. For example, you can simply use slave computers to overload the system, and keep trying at a password or whatever blocks the way until you get in. And co-ordination's really going to be a problem? If you're going to train them to hack a computer, you have the time to teach them a little co-ordination.

No. You can't. Its real simple. If you don't want to have your computer hacked by someone from Korea, you don't put it on the Internet. Companies use this practice all the time. You can expect secure computers with nuclear launch codes to utilize the same basic practice.

Said hackers would need the following info to hack into that computer
* To be on the network. This would likely require being on site or having VPN access from social engineering. You don't just 'get through firewalls' to do that.
* To know the IP of the server to be hacked. What good does it do hacking the wrong machine.
* To have the machine your hacking not have the latest patches to avoid OS hacks.
* To know the application that you want to hack. You got to know what port to go after.
* To know the OS of the machine your trying to hack. How good are your skills with mainframes? There is a reason banks still use em.

And then you need to try to use login/password attempts to get into said application. Most accounts on secure systems are locked after a few failed attempts. But even if that was not the case, you would have to wait while you tried a dictionary hack, then a brute force hack attempt. Those take a long time to process.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
OT: Once you learn Python... learn some PERL... wicked scripting language.

Perl is a great language. I still use it when I want to parse text out.

Do you write code?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Yes, because "hacking" is more complicated than just accumulating a certain number of units of hacking skill and rolling a hack device check. Your "team" is probably going to consist of 10 people doing useful work while the other 990 just get in the way.

Honestly the best way to 'hack' that kind of a system is to offer the mainframe developer $30,000,000 or so to betray his country. Just do some social engineering -- buying the engineers some beers until you find the ones that are disgrunted enough to do that. You don't even have to have the security clearance to meet up with engineers during lunch break to hang out and such.

That's really the problem with security. You can make a system idiot-proof, but then the world just makes a bigger idiot. Dummies opening attachments, putting passwords on post-it notes stuck to their monitors, etc...

 AustonT wrote:

Scott wrote:
I tried to stay away from this thread, I really did.

But to those who are attempting to rebut the President's statement:

"You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. It’s not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s ‘What are our priorities?’”

... with images showing horses, mules, bayonets and/or combat knives...

The point.

You missed it.

To those who didn't - should I laugh or cry?

Answer:

Was the point that the Navy doesn't have horses and bayonets? Or that we had aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines in our 500 ship navy?

No - that we don't have enough dirigibles or Kamikaze Highlanders, duh.

Man, I wonder if Romney will find a reexamination of air craft carrying dirigibles...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Find=fund

From which to deploy our Kamikaze Highlanders? Boy, I hope so. The Japs won't know how to respond to that threat.

 labmouse42 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
OT: Once you learn Python... learn some PERL... wicked scripting language.

Perl is a great language. I still use it when I want to parse text out.

Do you write code?

Yup... all the time.

Lately, we have interfaces between our various heterogeneous systems...

The logging "alert" capabilities from a vended application sucks... as in, it'll only log it. We need to know when a certain error occurs and page/email the local staff of the problem. Been working great

Next agenda is to determine if logic can be defined to "fix" and "replay" the failed messages.

The look I get from the vendor... priceless .

 Peregrine wrote:

Nuclear anti-ship missiles are a good way of removing pesky carrier groups.

And a better way of making Tianjin the next Hiroshima.

 Peregrine wrote:

...and eventually someone pushes too far and the world ends.

What do you think Chinese nuclear capability amounts to? They can't even draw even with the US in a nuclear exchange.

No nuclear conflict between the US and China ends the world, and the idea that it would happen, even in the event of a major naval conflict, is ludicrous. The US won't use nuclear weapons because our conventional forces are superior, the Chinese won't use use nuclear weapons because our nuclear forces are superior.

 Peregrine wrote:

Why did I ever expect that you'd actually provide an argument with substance?

Wait, you're complaining because someone else hasn't provided a substantive argument?

 AustonT wrote:
@falcon I don't need a substantive argument to counter the garbage you have posted ITT. Mirth and derision will suffice

@MGS QQ more
That is all

I love how certain individuals on dakka can admit in print that they are consciously not trying to add anything constructive to a discusssion and are in fact intentionally attacking others and yet their posts are allowed to stand and the poster allowed to continue to troll away...

Dakka moderation ftw...

 dogma wrote:


No nuclear conflict between the US and China ends the world, and the idea that it would happen, even in the event of a major naval conflict, is ludicrous. The US won't use nuclear weapons because our conventional forces are superior, the Chinese won't use use nuclear weapons because our nuclear forces are superior.

I think unless someone makes a seriously bad mistake (the reactor in a sub goes critical off someone's coast etc - and even then... ) the chance of a nuclear conflict between the US and China is practically zero.

Firstly, even if you are argued about MAD or not, the impact would be such that the world's economy would go into immediate and significant decline, bringing in an era of hardship for the developed world. Both China and the US are making far too much money for any kind of conflict to be conscionable - politicians on both sides might make noises, the occasional bit of sabre rattling, but then the shipments of flatscreen TVs continue. Even if, again, there was some kind of accident both sides would back-peddle to make sure it doesn't escalate - see for instance the US accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (which would be hilarious in its incompetence, if it were not for human lives being lost).
China also doesn't have a history of aggressive expansionism in the same way that Europe and the US do - we are not likely to see conflicts outside of China's immediate vicinity.

Regarding the main topic, does it not bother many Americans that Romney seems to have changed his policies so much on his run to the presidential candidacy? He changed his stance on abortion, and previously brought in an insurance healthcare plan that acted as a template for Obamacare - yet he has since claimed that he will dismantle the healthcare system if he comes into office. How can anyone voting for him know what he is really likely to do?

From a purely selfish, UK-orientated view, I think most people with a knowledge of politics are hoping that we have another 4 years without a Republican government in the Whitehouse. Simply because an attack by Israel on Iran is that much more likely should Romney become president, as is a conflict in Iran; the latter we would probably end up getting drawn into again.

 Seaward wrote:
Did that geography not apply during the '40s, in your view?

The chances of a successful invasion of the US in the 1940s were exactly zero. Our navy was important, but as a tool for power projection and invading foreign countries, not for defense.

And no. It's not geography. It's the fact that we have the most powerful fleet in the world. I do not think an attack could happen any minute. I also don't think a fire's going to break out in my domicile anytime soon. Doesn't prevent me from keeping fire extinguishers around, and rope ladders on the third and fourth floors. It would make even more sense to take those precautions if fire extinguishers and rope ladders were an active deterrent against fires breaking out.

Except let's say in that analogy fire extinguishers cost you a million dollars each, and the chances of a fire are reduced to less than the chances of your house being destroyed by an asteroid impact. Do you still feel that it's worth having them?

If you truly believe land-based bombers are our answer to everything, we need to have another, much longer discussion. We use carrier air wings for a hell of a lot, and before you start, no, those other ships in a carrier group aren't just along for the ride.

We use them for a hell of a lot of ways of fighting foreign wars, never for defense.

 CT GAMER wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
@falcon I don't need a substantive argument to counter the garbage you have posted ITT. Mirth and derision will suffice

@MGS QQ more
That is all

I love how certain individuals on dakka can admit in print that they are consciously not trying to add anything constructive to a discusssion and are in fact intentionally attacking others and yet their posts are allowed to stand and the poster allowed to continue to troll away...

Dakka moderation ftw...

True. They are slacking.

Why, they haven't deleted your post as off topic spam!

Wait... Gah! The irony!

Something really really wrong if the US Navy is on the defense

 Jihadin wrote:
Something really really wrong if the US Navy is on the defense

So you admit that the navy exists to be an offensive weapon then? Good. Now we can get back to debating the wisdom of increasing our debt to obscene levels to keep having that offensive weapon.

 CT GAMER wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
@falcon I don't need a substantive argument to counter the garbage you have posted ITT. Mirth and derision will suffice

@MGS QQ more
That is all

I love how certain individuals on dakka can admit in print that they are consciously not trying to add anything constructive to a discusssion and are in fact intentionally attacking others and yet their posts are allowed to stand and the poster allowed to continue to troll away...

Dakka moderation ftw...

 AustonT wrote:




Thanks for the funny, I needed that...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jihadin wrote:
Something really really wrong if the US Navy is on the defense

you'd be on the defense too if you had a procurement record like the USN.