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from the tracking-device-which-also-happens-to-make-calls dept.
Soldiers stupid and disobedient enough to carry their own tracking devices into the field on operations are teaching their units harsh lessons when entering combat. The Association of the United States Army, the U.S. Army's professional association and lobbying group, has an article on how mobile phones are used against soldiers carrying them in the field. This includes, but is not limited to, psychological operations, artillery strikes, monitoring, or all three at once. Given the lax discipline about leaving the mobile phones behind, the attacks built on phone info have been increasingly successful both physically and mentally.
[Ed Note: The second link details how Russian backed separatists are using advanced EW and psyops tactics against the Ukrainian Armed Forces]
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday August 16 2018, @03:56PM (8 children)
My uncle retired from the Army as a communications instructor sometime around 2000. Ok, its been 18 years and things change but he went through a conversion of military POTS to systems augmented by and then primarily using essentially battlefield cell phones.
I don't hear what can be positively identified as military activity on HF radio anymore and I do remember that in the 90s. Now I can see a handful of sweeping signals that I think are military over the horizon radar and there are a few RTTY signals outside the amateur bands that appear to be encrypted (my RTTY decoder will train on it and get sync but only garbage characters come out); interestingly when Syria started to escalate a few more of those non-decodable RTTY stations showed up. Apparently EAM still runs on HF and people can hear the test messages if you go out to look specifically for them.
I've also heard that on the battlefield now any transmitter that keys up will have incoming artillery in a matter of seconds.
Did the military give up on RF based communication systems because of further advancements in RF direction finding?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 16 2018, @04:19PM (4 children)
I couldn't say what the military might be attempting today - I'm certainly not "in the loop".
Physics haven't changed in the past ten years, nor in the past 110 years. If you transmit, you are visible. If you are visible, you may expect incoming fire, depending on your perceived value to the enemy. That lesson was learned prior to World War 1. But, succeeding generations often choose to learn from their own mistakes, rather than learn from history.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday August 16 2018, @04:41PM (3 children)
That is true but the state of the art in radio direction finding has definitely changed as technology has progressed. Thirty years ago I would say that it is possible to have a full X/Y coordinate on any arbitrary transmitter in a few seconds in a space the size of a battlefield if there was enough interest to justify the expense.
Today I say that if I felt like making that system its only a couple thousand dollars and I could do it for fun. And I might. Minus the artillery.
What it takes is GPS disciplined clocks allowing phase coherent operation of receivers that encircle the area you want to locate things in. Time difference of arrival can then be used to get the bearing between two receivers and multiple intersecting bearings provide a specific point. It really is available with off the shelf gear right now to any hobbyist.
What I hear is that foxholes aren't just for humans anymore - the modern foxhole might hold a radio and antenna so all the RF radiates up into the sky so only satellites can hear it or they want to bounce it off the ionosphere and do some near vertical incident skywave communication which would get them out about 30 miles but would show the point of transmission as the place it bounces off the ionosphere.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 16 2018, @04:54PM (2 children)
Modded up for having spelled it out more precisely than I would have tried. I'll just rely on an analogy. Aboard ship, it's "lights out" at dusk. No lights allowed on deck, for any reason. It only takes the faintest of glows to reveal your location to any enemy within line of sight.
Any enemy equipped with the correct receiver will spot you in a heartbeat if you light up any electronic gear. It's not all that different from troops equipped with IR vision goggles. All you need is the right kind of "eyes" to see electromagnetic emissions. Give those eyes binocular (or trinocular or more) vision, and the target's ass is grass.
Kinda puts a new "light" on this song, ehh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deB_u-to-IE [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:13PM (1 child)
A ship of decent size is going to be loaded with radar. It really doesn't matter if you add a bit more. You're long past the point of hiding. Protection is active, for example the CIWS, which itself has radar. You might as well issue cell phones to everybody, with the caveat that they must authenticate the ship's cell tower.
The biggest ships have far more than the faintest of glows, in the form of afterburners.
I'm sure it's different if you are special forces disguised as local fishermen.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 17 2018, @01:30AM
Loaded with radar, yes. Just because I have a dozen (or more) transmitters doesn't mean they are radiating. The ship's personnel has complete control over that radiation, beginning with the off/on state, as well the strength of the signal. The ship that has light discipline for night time cruising also has radio discipline for 24/7 stealth cruising. To see me, you are going to have to use active detection methods - which means that I can see you. The moment I know you are around, you are a target. The flashlight is in your hand, and your heart can't be very far away.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday August 16 2018, @10:08PM (1 child)
You may want to read about "spread spectrum".
The point is to widen the signal until it's showing up near the noise floor, nearly impossible to pick up unless you know where and how to amplify/filter. You won't notice any activity unless you have some pretty serious equipment in your setup, and triangulating the source is also extremely tough.
That's pretty standard for stealth planes comms. I don't know how pervasive it is elsewhere, but I can imagine they ultimately want it for everyone with a uniform and radio.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 17 2018, @03:23PM
Not quite on point to spread spectrum, but there are digital amateur radio modes as well which can be decoded when not audible (signal below noise floor). The mode Olivia in addition to others. I remember the weird feeling I got the first time I saw text being generated on my display and I was listening as hard as I could but only hearing static noise over the headphone monitor. It felt like information was coalescing out of nothing. :)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 20 2018, @03:12PM
For the US, check out Wikipedia on MUOS [wikipedia.org] I'm sure HF still exists as a backup, but with propagation issues it was always dicey even in its heyday. If UHF, narrowbeam/narrowband uplink, and broad satellite downlink cuts it, that wins.
This sig for rent.