How could the effectiveness of guided weapons be reduced against a non-paranormal giant monster?

Question

How could the effectiveness of radar, heat seeking, or laser guided weapons be reduced during a battle between a monster the size of a 7 story building and the military of a small country.

The monster is purely biological, and has no paranormal powers or abilities, and would die quickly if hit with modern anti tank weapons because its armor is "realistic" and couldn't stand up to something designed to kill a tank for long.

Something that would force the military to use unguided weapons, wire guided anti-tank weapons with a human operator (The TOW, for example).

Maybe an environmental factor that could artificially constrain battles to being within visual range?

Answer 1

A lot of systems are looking for an infrared signature, or perhaps doing some image processing to identify the manmade object in a natural background. Since your monster is biological it has low thermal contrast and since it doesn't look like tanks or other objects that the automated systems were designed for, they need to be manually pointed or controlled.

Some systems use laser designators where an operator shines a laser on an object and the guided bomb is designed to hit the spot being illuminated.

For your creature, its skin/fur/coating is black because it evolved for stealth, and the structure of the skin/fur/coating traps the light very efficiently so the laser designators don't work.

For radar, you could also go the absorption route to minimize signal return, or you could have angular surfaces that reflect the energy up and away from the platform trying to shine its radar on the creature. Or if it is in a urban environment there could be a lot of radar clutter.

Environmental factors include smoke and fog, both can limit the effectiveness of modern weapon systems.

Answer 2

Counterfire.

The monster has acute senses. And even though it is big, it is fast. It can hear a tank missile taking off. It throws something to meet the missile - maybe a scoop of earth, or flying spikes, or projectile vomit or whatever works.

To hit the monster with something like a missile you need to get very close so it does not have time to react. Many of the antitank munitions do not arm themselves if they have not flown a certain distance, and then they bounce off.

Perhaps your humans set up a remote controlled missile launch station in the monster's predicted path. They neglect to set it up downwind from the monster. The monster has acute senses.

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Advanced armaments used up.

Has America almost depleted its supply of essential weapons for Ukraine?

Albert Einstein famously said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”...

In the world where this monster shows up, there has been a war. Or maybe the war is still going on. Sophisticated antitank weapons were largely used up early in the war; few remain. The industry to make more is also either gone or is devoting efforts to munitions that are cheaper and quicker to make.

Answer 3

Aluminum!

Okay, let me explain. All three of these guiding techniques you mention use a scanning method to track their target. And all of them can be countered with (relatively) simple approaches.

Laser Guidance: This uses a method called laser painting where you fire a laser at the target and then the missile (or what have you) tracks the target based on how the laser scatters off of it. If the target does not scatter the laser and instead absorbs it, then the laser guidance is mostly useless. Laser scattering materials include black aluminum.

Heat-seeking: Heat seekers, despite their name, do not actually seek out heat. They seek out infrared light, which is generated by heat. This distinction is important, because it is possible to block infrared light with a conductive metal, like say, aluminum.

Radar: Radar is surprisingly effective to use to guide weapons, but there is a caveat - radar sucks at distinguishing objects. In an isolated environment, (i.e. open sky) then yes, it is useful. If you're fighting a kaiju in a building-dotted landscape ... not so much. Also, radar can be tricked by scattering ions and ion deflectors all over the atmosphere. like say, aluminum. So the monster can belch clouds of aluminum all around it and the radar will be tricked.

Tl;dr - aluminum OP against detection methods, plz nerf.

Answer 4

Speedy flock of monsters

I live in a small country. Ok, let's suppose this thing is 7 stories high and it eats humans.

And it is not the only one. He brought his herd along, which was 300 individuals at first. Some 15-20 meters each, a herd of predators the size of a brontosaurus approaches my small country.

Fast and unpredictable

The Germans tried to use cruise missiles against them last night and failed. These beasts are agile, they are not moving in straight lines, like military vehicles and ships do. The herd behaves like a flock of birds, roaming around for food. These monsters need about 1600kg meat per day.

The herd now moves toward us. They appeared to have crossed the Polish border yesterday evening and then they did Northern Germany overnight. Alarms were set off, NATO fighter jets were deployed, some monsters were killed but it required low altitude flight and agility to keep up with them. No actual practice was ever done by the military, chasing monsters 7 stories high, running at about 200km/h.

Danger of collateral damage in a small country

In Poland and Germany, the damage done by the military far exceeded the damage resulting from the flock's presence.

In our overpopulated small country, the collateral damage problem will be worse and that prevented a quick response with our guided artillery. About 280 monsters reached our small country at noon today. The herd passed the German border near Klazienaveen and the population was not prepared for that. These monsters don't walk straight, they roam around and steal cattle, ravage houses, eat people. Multiple Dutch villages got rampaged by them, 60 folks died and about 200 people were wounded. Some are still missing. Their break for dinner was 2 hours later where I live. I managed to escape one.

When drinking or eating, they would be sitting duck for heavy weaponry. But.. how to attack these monsters when they are having dinner where the meat is, that is in populated areas?

They passed

Some experts in herd behaviour were consulted by our government and a military strategy was devised. But late in the afternoon today, the herd had already passed the Belgium border in the south. The government decided to cancel the whole plan and let Belgium solve their issue.

Answer 5

The creature lives underwater

Not only would this sidestep the square-cube size limitations that land-bound creatures have and enable the hypothetical construction of truly massive yet still biological creatures, it would also render most conventional weapons useless as they can't attack underwater.

No modern AT or AA weaponry is effective against targets under basically any depth of water and this includes everything from missiles to mortars to artillery. So long as the creature can withstand the shockwaves that heavy explosives can cause and dive more than 10 meters or so, it is basically insulated from everything a modern army can throw at it excepting:

• Truly big explosives up to and including nuclear ones (the creature would likely need to dive more than 10 meters to avoid these but still easily possible)
• Specifically designed underwater weaponry like mines, depth charges, or torpedoes.

Interestingly, such a creature could possibly even "defeat" the small country in the sense that it acts as a complete naval blockade, sinking all ships that approach its shores. Provided it alpha-strikes the likely small force of submarines and realizes that torpedoes are things it needs to dodge, there is very little that could reach a creature 100 meters down. It just occasionally reaches it's tentacles or whatever up to sink ships, and otherwise stays in the untouchable depths.