The Science of Battlestar Galactica

by Di Justo, Patrick

  Deception techniques are those in which a repeater receives a radar pulse, modifies or delays it, and then retransmits it back to the source. This technique can be used to change the apparent position or speed of a target. An electronic device known as a blip enhancer is designed to receive a signal, amplify it, and retransmit it back to the source, essentially making it appear that the radar has detected a much larger object. What might be the purpose of making a small object appear large on radar or DRADIS? In the attack on New Caprica in “Exodus, Part II,” a flight of Raptors launched two clusters of four drones with this type of technology onboard. It was a feint. The blip enhancers on the drones made it appear to the Cylons as if they were under attack by the battlestars Galactica and Pegasus, thus hiding Admiral Adama’s true intent.

  The decision to jam an adversary’s radar has the very same perils as that associated with using active radar—whenever one combatant in a conflict radiates energy into the environment, that serves as a beacon to the enemy. Anti-radiation missiles like the HARM can home in on a radar jammer just as easily as it does on active radar. Moreover, some weapons systems of today have “home-on-jam” capability. Once the weapon senses that it is being jammed, it switches its mode of homing—instead of using its own internal radar, it uses that which the adversary has graciously provided. Missiles with home-on-jam capability are significantly harder to defeat using ECM. Therefore, there also exist passive methods to fool both search and fire-control radar. Compared to denial jamming and the forms of deceptive jamming discussed so far, some methods of mechanical jamming are comparatively low-tech.

  Some rather low-tech devices can be used to reflect radar energy efficiently back to the source. This is called mechanical jamming. One radar countermeasure, called chaff, is used to create a cloud of false radar returns, usually to distract incoming radar-guided missiles. Chaff can be made of varying-length aluminum strips or metal-coated plastic or glass fiber. The length of the strips varies in order to reflect radar of different frequencies. Most warships, military aircraft, and even some ICBMs have chaff dispensers to fool incoming missiles. The warships of nineteen navies have Super Rapid Blooming Offboard Chaff (abbreviated as SRBOC or “Super-arboc”) launchers aboard. This fairly simple system is comprised of a mortar that launches a huge cloud of chaff up and away from the vessel, with the intent of creating the appearance of a larger, more tempting target when incoming enemy missiles have been detected.

  Decoys can be inexpensive stationary objects that readily reflect radar, or highly maneuverable autonomous flying craft. In either instance, they are designed to deceive an enemy radar operator into thinking that they are aircraft, and they can clutter radar with false targets. Decoys can be used to protect a convoy (like the Rag Tag Fleet) by creating too many radar returns, or they can make it easier for an inbound adversary to approach within weapons range. Some decoys can deploy chaff. Others even have the capability of performing deceptive jamming.

  Take six mirrors. Cement them together to make a hollow cube that has the silvered sides facing inward. Saw off a corner. You have created a corner reflector, or corner cube reflector, a very simple device that has the amazing property in that it will re-radiate nearly 100 percent of electromagnetic radiation directly back toward its source. Corner reflectors placed on the moon by the Apollo astronauts are used today for lunar laser ranging—in order for scientists to determine to within a few millimeters the Earth-Moon distance and to track the Moon’s orbital evolution. Corner cubes reflect radar energy efficiently, and in warfare can make an inexpensive decoy look like an attractive target. In the early stages of the attack on the Twelve Colonies, a Viper squadron from Galactica, with a Raptor for ECM support, approached a wing of Cylon Raiders. After processing the DRADIS signals, the Raptor’s ECO, Helo, determined that the ten inbound Cylons were really only two in number—the Raiders may very well have deployed decoys with blip enhancers or corner reflectors to achieve this advantage. Had the Viper pilots known that there were only two Raiders, they would have approached more rapidly, less cautiously, and the Cylons may very well not have had time to implement their electronic attack.

  There are also countermeasures to thwart missiles that employ passive homing, in particular heat-seeking missiles. When heat-seekers were first developed, an aircraft with such a missile on its tail could climb toward the Sun, a much greater source of infrared radiation than an aircraft tailpipe. Often the missile would attempt to home in on the Sun—with predictable success. Today missiles are smarter, and deceiving heat-seekers can be a much more difficult task. Instead tactical aircraft and ships are able to launch flares. Flares burn hotter than a craft’s tailpipe or a ship’s smokestack, and provide tempting targets for a heat-seeking missile. In the Miniseries, when Helo told Boomer to “drop a swallow,” the object that their Raptor deployed looked suspiciously like a flare that aircraft have been using since the Vietnam War to foil heat-seeking missiles.

  ELECTRONICS IN THE SPACE ENVIRONMENT

  Since we speak of “the vacuum of space,” we think of space as empty. It is and it isn’t. There is very little matter in space, but it is full of the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and an entire zoo of high-energy fast-moving subatomic particles—both forms of ionizing radiation. This presents a technological hurdle in the design and operation of electronic equipment.

  If a single high-energy charged particle like a cosmic ray impacts a conductor, it can ionize thousands of atoms, freeing thousands of electrons and causing electronic power surges. In the case of solid-state and digital circuitry, this can cause wildly inaccurate results and often physical damage to the equipment. The solid-state circuitry of today’s spacecraft is, therefore, protected from the space environment by radiation hardening. Radiation hardening, or simply rad hardening, is a way of designing electronic components and systems that makes them resistant to damage or malfunctions caused by EM radiation and high-energy subatomic particles.

  Even then, solid-state memory chips are subject to single-event upsets, or SEUs, where a high-energy charged particle can literally “flip” a bit—causing it to change from 0 to 1 or vice versa. The first 0/1 bipolar flip-flops were observed on a spacecraft in 1979, though there is evidence that they occurred on other spacecraft long before that. This phenomenon was used as a plot point in the webisodes “The Face of the Enemy,” when a single-event upset in the portion of a Raptor’s memory storing jump coordinates caused the Raptor to jump to an indeterminate location in space, stranding its crew and passengers. Ironically, on June 4, 2008, while the “Face of the Enemy” webisodes were being written, an SEU made the nightly news when it briefly halted the operation of the Mars Phoenix lander!

  You cannot shoot what you cannot see, and some craft, like Chief Tyrol’s Blackbird, can defeat radar simply by their composition or physical geometry. The term “stealth,” or low-observable (LO) technology, covers a range of techniques used to make aircraft and ships less visible, or ideally invisible, to radar and other methods of detection. Craft like the F-117 Nighthawk have very angular surfaces whose shapes efficiently reflect incoming radar energy, but simply not in the direction back to the source. Some stealth craft of today have skins made of material that reflect some incident radar radiation from their outer surfaces, and the remainder from the inner surface. The thickness of the skin is then “tuned” so that both reflections “cancel” each other out by the process of destructive interference. In some cases, as was the case with Blackbird, craft are simply made of materials that simply do not reflect radar (see the chapter 21 sidebar, “Finding Materials to Make the Blackbird”).

  Perhaps the ultimate in ECM, though, is electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. EMP is a high-intensity broadband pulse of electromagnetic radiation that can rapidly produce destructive power surges—surges that are both too rapid and too intense to be shielded by normal surge suppressors—in electronics and electrical systems like computers, radar, communication systems, electrical appliances, and automob
ile ignition systems. EMP damage can range from a brief functional interruption to a complete system burnout. Although lightning is one natural source of EMP, the most common source of destructive EMP is a nuclear explosion. In order to provide a sense of scale, a large nuclear detonation over the state of Kansas, at the elevation of the International Space Station, would affect electronic systems over all of the continental United States, and much of Canada and Mexico.

  EMP can be generated by non-nuclear means. NNEMP (non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse) generators currently exist, and can be carried aboard bombs and missiles to create all the electronic effects of a nuclear detonation without the radioactive fallout. Recall that when Raiders attacked Colonial One in the miniseries, Apollo simulated the electromagnetic signature of a nuclear detonation with an electromagnetic pulse generator. Recently, it has been reported that the U.S. military has successfully managed to create EMP grenades—which would be extremely useful for covert and special force units.

  Electronic Counter-Countermeasures

  The term “electronic counter-countermeasures” (ECCM) refers to methods that eliminate or curtail the use of ECM by an adversary. ECCM is generally synonymous with “resistance to electronic jamming.” Some modern radar, called frequency-agile radar, has the ability to continuously change the frequency on which it operates. This would defeat spot jamming, and potentially even sweep jamming.

  A common technical criticism of Battlestar Galactica has been the use of corded phones on a technologically advanced battlestar capable of faster-than-light travel. This is actually an effective method of ECCM, since communications over a wire are far more resistant, though not entirely impervious, to electronic interception and tampering than those sent via wireless methods. Fiber-optic communication is even better. Case in point: there exist weapons in today’s militaries (for example, the TOW missile and the Mk-48 torpedo of the U.S. military, or the Chinese Yu-6 torpedo) in which a weapon, once deployed, pays out a wire en route to its target—allowing jam-resistant control of the weapon until its terminal phase. Wireless intraship communications would allow the Cylons a cheap and easy source of SIGINT.

  ELINT and SIGINT

  Intel can also be gathered from any EM signals broadcast by an adversary like DRADIS, microwaves, or digital data communication—known as electronic intelligence (ELINT). Signals intelligence (SIGINT) refers to intelligence gathered passively through intercepted electromagnetic signals. That can be through interpersonal communications—like telephony or Galactica’s wireless—in which case this is known as communications intelligence (COMINT). Recall that in the episode “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down,” Apollo and Beehive were dispatched to intercept an inbound Cylon Raider. Apollo appeared to damage a Cylon Raider in a dogfight, and the Raider kept trying to jump away, only to jump to another nearby location still within the Fleet. Colonel Tigh said that “this is our perfect chance to get some intel.” In that case, he meant ELINT: “Order Apollo to close with the raider, but do not engage. Put a Raptor in the air. As long as that thing’s flopping around out there, tell them I want to suck in every electronic signal that thing makes.”

  By determining the frequencies on which Raider electronics operate—the spectral signatures of its communications, search DRADIS, fire-control DRADIS, even spurious emissions from various subsystems—Galactica may be able to develop more effective electronic countermeasures for future engagements. In fact, recall that Starbuck and Tyrol attempted to analyze electronic emissions to determine how the Raider’s FTL system worked.

  Our characters were excited about the prospect of gathering ELINT from the Cylons, and it turns out that the Cylons were every bit as excited to get ELINT and SIGINT from the Colonials. It turned out that before jumping away, the Raider sent a broadcast home before being destroyed. The Raider was never severely damaged; it was collecting intel on Galactica. So apparently EW is not so much as a “cat-and-mouse” game as it is a “cat-and-wounded-bird” game.

  CHAPTER 27

  How Did the Cylons Infiltrate the Colonial Computer Infrastructure?

  If you’ve got a certain mind-set, it was the most frightening part of the miniseries: a squadron of Viper Mark VIIs is en route to intercept an inbound Cylon armada. Just before the fighters come into range, the Cylons broadcast a signal and the onboard computer in each Viper shuts off power to the entire craft. The Vipers are dead in space, unable to fire their weapons or even maneuver. The pilots are massacred, and the Colonial Fleet has lost their first line of attack, just like that.

  The Cylon secret weapon, we learn later, was a back door inserted into the Command Navigation Program (CNP)—the operating system for nearly everything that flies in the Twelve Colonies—by a consultant working for Dr. Gaius Baltar, the software’s designer. A consultant who, unknown to Baltar, was Number Six, a humanoid Cylon. Having Number Six insert a secret switch into the CNP software was not a requirement for the successful Cylon attack, but it made things a lot easier. Her position as a consultant to Baltar (who was himself a consultant for the defense establishment) would likely have allowed her to learn the operation codes that controlled the computer processors on craft ranging from Vipers to battlestars—information that was likely passed back to the Cylons through Cavil.

  Cylon model Six.

  Cylon model Six.

  A back door is a way for an unauthorized user to gain access to a computer system. It can be as simple as deliberately inserting a special hidden user name and password into the login procedure. Usually, user names and passwords are encrypted and kept in an external database, which makes it easy for authorized users to be added to the system and expired users to be deleted. To create a back door, the programmer simply adds code somewhere along the authentication sequence saying that the user name X, password Y, is always welcome into the system. User name X never shows up on the list of authorized users, and remains active even if the entire user list is trashed and replaced. Anyone logging in with user name X is usually going to be given the same access to the system that the original programmer had, which is considerable.

  Other backdoor schemes involve subverting the entire process of writing computer code. You’ve no doubt heard over and over that computers understand only ones and zeros. How, then, do programmers tell computers what to do? Do they write an incredibly long series of ones and zeros into the computer?

  Years ago they did, but not anymore. A simple computer program looks something like this:printf(“Hello, Worldn”);

  Even if you know nothing about computer programming, you could probably guess that this program prints the phrase “Hello, World” somewhere, either on a screen or to a printer. It’s also pretty obvious that if you can understand a piece of code, a computer can’t. To get that program in the example into a form the computer can use, the code has to be “translated” using another program called a compiler. The compiler takes the code and, in a few seconds, turns “Hello, World” into “01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00101100 10010111 01101111 10010010 01101100 01100100.” Thanks to the work of the compiler, the computer is now ready to run your program.

  It is time-consuming but not very difficult to write a compiler. It is a standard assignment for undergraduate computer science majors. It is also easy to modify a compiler to compromise whatever it compiles. This is one of the most insidious ways to attack a computer system—all the code the programmers wrote is absolutely clean, yet every piece of software written on that system has a security hole, added by the malicious compiler. This method is so intelligent, logical, and destructive that it just might be what Six used against the Colonial defenses.

  Galactica was being decommissioned and turned into the Colonial equivalent of the USS Intrepid in New York City or the USS Midway in San Diego. She was immune to the Cylon backdoor attack because her computers were extremely old, non-networked, and running legacy software. The non-networked part is the most important, because when computers are linked together, an attack against one computer be
comes essentially a simultaneous attack against all of them. A network isn’t a requirement for viruses to spread, but it makes the attack more efficient, and allows the virus to co-opt more of the computers quickly.

  For this reason, and because Galactica computers had been networked and compromised during the First Cylon War, which led to a significant loss of life, Commander Adama vehemently insisted that the computers on Galactica would never be networked as long as he had anything to say about it. And because this is television, as soon as he said that we all knew that there would come a point where the computers would have to be networked.

  Back doors were one way for the Cylons to gain access to Colonial computers, but not the only way. Forty years prior to the events in the miniseries, the Cylons looked more like “walking chrome toasters” than supermodels, so Cylon agents would be comparatively easy to identify. While giving a tour of Galactica, Aaron Doral, who we discover later is a humanoid Cylon, says: “It was all designed to operate against an enemy who could infiltrate and disrupt even the most basic computer systems.”

  Doral’s statement implies that the Cylons are capable of accessing nearly any Colonial computer remotely—given time and reasonable proximity. The Colonials had given up trying to compete against the Cylons in computer technology, and it was generally assumed that if the Cylons wanted to hack into a computer, they were going to get in. How did the Cylons gain remote access to Colonial computers during the First Cylon War?