[HN Gopher] Boeing Wonderland: The Fake Cities on America's West...
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Boeing Wonderland: The Fake Cities on America's West Coast (2013)
Author : NaOH
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-11-05 19:10 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (warfarehistorynetwork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (warfarehistorynetwork.com)
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Tldr: not Eureka of tv show fame
| dartos wrote:
| I miss the 2000s procedural sci fi detective shows.
|
| I have fond memories of watching Fringe and Eureka with my dad.
| tomrod wrote:
| Hear hear.
| tomcam wrote:
| Sigh. I have fond memories of watching Fringe and Eureka with
| my kids.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Can re-appaer again. If Russia won't be stopped, a war with
| Russia and Chine will be imminent.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They'll be vastly less effective in the age of precision guided
| bombs and missiles. The locations of the existing factories are
| already well known and not disguised and China/Russia can use
| their satellites to find any new built factories as well.
| 7952 wrote:
| Yes, even if it looks natural on visible light bands it won't
| on infrared or synthetic apeture radar imagery.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I assumed the latest weapons are GPS guided, and just zero
| in on a long/lat coordinate. Though I guess that would be
| vulnerable to jamming/deception so maybe they _do_ use
| visual guidance systems.
| alephxyz wrote:
| Strategic and cruise missiles are meant to operate in
| doomsday scenarios without active guidance and instead
| use a combination of inertial navigation, celestial
| navigation and terrain matching.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Infrared can be fooled with low tech fire pits or more high
| tech infrared lamps
| ponector wrote:
| Jamming makes precision guided munition not so precise. For
| example Excalibur shells are useless in Ukraine.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It hasn't stopped threats like ATACMS or other precision
| munitions. The larger the munition the better the guidance
| stands up to interference up to cruise missiles that can
| use terrain following or inertial guidance to strike quite
| precisely without needing GPS at all.
| carabiner wrote:
| You don't even need guided bombs. Dumb bomb targeting is
| highly accurate today. The computer will show on the HUD
| the impact point of the bomb based on aircraft velocity,
| altitude, drag characteristics of the bomb etc.
| Brybry wrote:
| Ukraine and Russia both actively use wooden, inflatable, and
| painted decoys in the current war. [1][2]
|
| China's ICBM silo fields are almost certainly a strategy of
| mixed decoys and real silos. [3][4] China builds new silos
| under inflatable domes so you can't easily tell via
| satellite. [5]
|
| Decoys and camouflage are very much so still a thing. I don't
| think they would persist if they were not cost effective.
|
| [1] https://read.bradyafrick.com/p/russia-adds-decoy-
| aircraft-to...
|
| [2] https://iari.site/2024/10/13/the-strategic-role-of-
| decoys-in...
|
| [3] https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1212340/chinese-
| icbm...
|
| [4] https://fas.org/publication/a-closer-look-at-chinas-
| missile-...
|
| [5] https://fas.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/05/OrdosSilos-2002x8...
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's easier to do with dedicated military facilities than
| it is with factories and particularly in the Chinese silo
| examples they can't hide they're building something there
| just disguising what it's purpose is. It's a lot harder to
| do that with a factory where you need to fake a lot more
| signs of life, material deliveries, workers, finished
| products rolling off the line.
|
| I'm not saying decoys as an entire category are dead just
| that disguising factories like the US did in WW2 is
| unlikely to work well in the modern world. We're way past
| the age where you can hide a whole huge factory. Imagery is
| just too good to hide something that large with that much
| activity around it.
| Brybry wrote:
| Ukraine's still building stuff somehow though.
|
| Like here's a Sep 2024 source[1] (but anonymous) that
| says while some factories are underground others are "at
| ground level, but duplicated and others even camouflaged
| behind huge sets. The location of these factories is top
| secret."
|
| Could be propaganda though. I doubt we'll really know
| until after the war ends.
|
| [1] https://archive.md/uZLFi#selection-999.23-999.155 ( h
| ttps://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2024/05/09/663b9bc3fd
| dd... )
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Next stage thus? built standardized stockpiles, store in the
| middle of nowhere in containers, assemble on route.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| It has been demonstrated time and time again that the
| simplest implements of war are always the most effective.
| glitchc wrote:
| This is a silly statement given that guns beat arrows and
| arrows beat rocks. I believe you meant something more
| specific. What we are seeing in Ukraine is a war of
| attrition.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Has it? Small drones be they for surveillance, dropping
| munitions or for suicide runs seem like they've been quite
| effective in Ukraine.
| astrodust wrote:
| Ukraine has also been vigilant in making hyper-realistic
| wooden replicas of various types of equipment, some even
| including heating elements in them so they look correct
| on thermal cameras.
|
| If you've seen how glitchy/blurry the drone footage can
| get with jamming, it'd be easy to be fooled by a decoy.
| talldayo wrote:
| You'd think that. One of the biggest takeaways from WWI
| (and undeniable takeaways of WWII) is that complex weapons
| work better. Chemical attacks could kill thousands of men
| without risking a single life on the behalf of the
| attackers. Tanks and armored vehicles were protected from
| any of the simple implements that infantry could carry, and
| forced a complete rethinking of battlefield strategy. The
| concept of air superiority began to define who advanced on
| the ground, and the modernization of naval forces
| revolutionized the tactics used in standoff warfare.
|
| It's comforting to repeat humanist aphorisms like "war
| never changes" but the reality of the matter is that
| 100,000 people had never died so quickly in any age before
| the atom bomb.
| immibis wrote:
| There will be no war between Russia and the USA for the next
| four years since the USA will just give Russia whatever it
| wants.
| mjevans wrote:
| I'm hopeful that 'business' will prevail and #47 goes
| merchant of death mode to sell to those we'd like to see
| remain countries.
| gedy wrote:
| Putin made all his moves against Ukraine during Obama/Biden
| and Biden/Harris terms and was mostly unchecked (especially
| Crimea) so I've never understood this opinion.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Here's hoping Russia and/or China never launched any satellites
| to image the area before your re-appearing camo is installed.
| krisoft wrote:
| That plus that they haven't heard of google maps.
| krisoft wrote:
| Zero chance. This is what nukes are for. If China or Russia is
| hitting millitary strategical targets in the continental USA
| they will be nuked. If they can still hit the USA after that
| with vision guided weapons then somehow all legs of the triad
| has failed.
|
| There is no possible scenairo where it would make sense to
| camuflage these factories again.
| ano-ther wrote:
| Fascinating. Funny side effect:
|
| > Warner Brothers executives later insisted that their own lot
| receive the "Kelley Treatment." They decided that their sound
| stages looked too much like aircraft hangers from the air, and
| feared that Japanese bombardiers, fooled by the Clover Field
| camouflage--or by Lockheed's, only three miles to the north--
| would bomb their studio instead!
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| I find romance when I start to dance in Boeing Wonderland
| BrentOzar wrote:
| Physical honeypots.
| blululu wrote:
| This cool. I grew up about a mile from one of these plants and it
| is wild to see the old photos. A story from my grandfather
| (probably not true) is that the week after Pearl Harbor Jack
| Warner had someone paint on the roof of the Warner Bros Studio
| something like "Hirohito, Northrop is over there". When Jack
| Northrop heard this he was furious and gave Mr Warner one of the
| rare verbal lashings of his life. As a token of remorse Warner
| offered to lend the studio's staff to help camouflage the
| aircraft plant.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I wonder if the directions to Northrop were painted in English
| or in Japanese.
|
| I lived in Burbank for a few years and one of the early days of
| living there I did a history of the city kind of rabbit hole.
| The large amount of camouflaging was one of the things that I
| learned about that really stood out as something that unique to
| being on the West coast during that time.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| The very first name that came to my mind was Jasper Maskelyne. He
| led British camouflage efforts during WWII, and sure enough,
| while they don't come right out and say it, the mention of him
| studying British work makes me think that Ohmer must have worked
| with him.
| tomcam wrote:
| Jasper Maskelyne understood misdirection. He was one of the
| most famous magicians of the age.
| kmoser wrote:
| Related to that: during WWII the US commissioned a fleet of
| inflatable decoy "tanks"
| https://ghostarmy.com/bio/f/Equipment/418. They were built by
| the Patten Company (no relation to George S. Patton, different
| spelling), and in the early 2000s I rebuilt the Patten
| Company's website. They have since removed that historical
| footnote from their site but you can probably find it on the
| Internet Archive.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| If we relate this to the modern political world, isn't this the
| sort of thing that makes groups like Hamas disgusting?
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(page generated 2024-11-11 23:01 UTC)