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Why the Navy Is Relying on WWII-Era Communications
The U.S. Navy, anticipating a future when a high-tech enemy could read its electronic communications, is going back to a hack-proof means of sending messages between ships: bean bags. Weighted bags with messages inside are passed among ships at sea by helicopters.
In a future conflict with a tech-savvy opponent, the U.S. military could discover even its most advanced, secure communications penetrated by the enemy. Secure digital messaging, voice communications, video conferencing, and even chats could be intercepted and decrypted for its intelligence value. This could give enemy forces an unimaginable advantage, seemingly predicting the moves and actions of the fleets at sea with uncanny accuracy.
Last week, a MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter delivered a message from the commander of an amphibious squadron to the captain of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. The helicopter didn’t even land to deliver it, dropping it from a hovering position before flying away. The message was contained in a bean bag dropped on the Boxer’s flight deck.
The bean bag system, as Military.com explains it, is nearly eight decades old. The system dates back to April 1942, when a SBD Dauntless dive bomber assigned to the USS Enterprise was flying a scouting mission ahead of the USS Hornet. Hornet, about to launch sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers on a raid against Japan, was traveling in extreme secrecy to preserve the element of surprise. The Dauntless pilot encountered a Japanese civilian ship and, fearing he had been spotted, dropped a message in a bean bag on the deck of Hornet.
[...] Bean bags aren’t the only old tech the Navy is bringing back. In 2016, NPR reported that the service was reintroducing sextants as a navigational tool for officers. The U.S. armed services are heavily reliant on the satellite-based Global Positioning System for navigation, making jamming or spoofing GPS signals a major priority for adversaries. If they’re successful, the military must be able to navigate from Point A to Point B the old fashioned way—by sextant if necessary.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:03PM
I am not so very sure of that formula. Long range and firepower, along with speed, will always be important factors in the formula. The number of those ships will always be important, as well. But, today, we have some crazy idea that we can put ships to sea with only a small number of men, and lots of electronics.
A King class guided missile destroyer can be operated by a crew of about 75. But, in actuality, we had a crew of 350. We simply didn't NEED all those men, just to cruise around, display the flag, and challenge Soviets wherever they could be found. But, we had 350, all the same. That's because, if and when the shit hit the fan, we could expect casualties. I never researched the Navy's formula, but it appears that the Navy decided something like 4 to 5 times the number of required personnel was about right. Supposing the ship suffers an engineering casualty, and one of the boiler rooms loses all it's on-duty personnel. During GQ, or combat, that would mean that slightly less than half of all the boiler tenders aboard ship were gone. You still need engineering personnel in the still functioning boiler room, and you need personnel in the non-functioning room, to try to bring the boilers on line again.
Today's "philosophy" of putting minimal personnel aboard ship is very likely to lead to the loss of essential personnel in a first encounter with an enemy. Your power plant (probably gas turbines, today) can operate with only six personnel, so you are assigned ten. A casualty to the engineering spaces kills or disables six, and you're left with four. But, but, but, you REQUIRE six people!!! Guess what, Mate? We're screwed!
What are your options then? You may (or may not) have a couple semi-qualified persons aboard ship, who were working toward their Surface Warfare qualifications, so you draft them. Or, you fish among the minimal labor pool, for some unqualified personnel that you can bring up to speed quickly. Hmmmm - maybe.
I'll say it again - PEOPLE win battles, and people win wars. To a large extent, things are decided according to who can lose the most blood, and still keep on fighting. Automated warfare sounds cool and all, but we ain't there yet.