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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
Given how their hobby is banging anything that moves while their husbands are on deployment, I'd send a bunch of Boris to hang out at the bars just outside larger bases. Then they build up a database of dirty pics and text them to the guys in the field.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 16 2018, @02:57PM
"banging anything that moves while their husbands are on deployment," and you still couldn't get laid? I'd probably be bitter too, if I were you.
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 16 2018, @03:00PM (12 children)
(Not to be confused with the nocturnal kind of emissions.)
Even if a phone were completely secure, couldn't the mere presence of a phone in a place where you don't expect one, give away a soldier's position?
Could Russia be technologically capable of spotting GSM or LTE signals in an area where there should be none?
For some odd reason all scientific instruments searching for intelligent life are pointed away from Earth.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 16 2018, @03:09PM (11 children)
Yup. And, yup. If there is a charged battery in your telephone - it emits. And, it hardly matters which protocols the phone uses, or doesn't use. It emits. Determining which protocols the phone uses, and perhaps intercepting any communications from that phone are probably as well within Russia's technological reach as it is for the US.
The Army learned long ago to put some faith into wired communications, and to have no faith in radio. Radio is the least secure method of communications in existence. The only secure radio, or telephone, is a dead one. And, "standby" or "low battery consumption" or "airline" settings don't count as "dead".
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(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.
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(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]
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(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.
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(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.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)
eh? Why can't they just "encrypt" their radio chatter - there are more than 1 ways to secure something apart from just not using it.
The platypus is scratching the koala! I repeat, the platypus is scratching the koala! Roger out!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 17 2018, @02:29PM
Three problems with that:
1) Transmitting reveals your location. In an age of GPS that's not so much of a problem if you're at a fixed base where the enemy knows you are anyway. But if you're in the field - they broadly know where you were then and may be now.
2) You can derive intelligence about communications without knowing the content. If you link a pattern between a transmission on a certain frequency that always happens before action X (an artillery barrage, air strike, troop movement), then you can start making predictions. This carries over to length of transmission. If every single day the transmission is five groups, and then on one day the transmission is fifty groups, I can induce that on that special day more information needed to be passed. I might not know what it is, but I can speculate something is up and look for specific correlations for activity.
3) Similar to #2 but specifically to your example, use constant code signs (or code signs that change on a regular basis) then I can start to build a database of what those terms might mean. Unless you're using one-time pad technology with proper communication discipline.
But the thing is, they still do that when appropriate. (And it could also be used for a disinformation / counterintel technique as well). That could be the encryped RTTY that was referred to above.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @03:38PM
Can't talk right now. Got a bead on an Afghan boy right now. Will call you back after I wax him.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @03:51PM
Ever since First Chechen War have they used signals from comms equipment for targeted assassinations, that i know of.
Dzohar Dudaev (president of Chechnya, First Chechen War) was murdered by Russian government in a similar way in 1996.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @04:54PM
There is an old adage that "only connection secure of eavesdropping is a common idea connection"
Consider two cooperating parties on a same task.
They follow the same rules of making decisions and acting upon them.
If they need to make a plan, they know each and every maneuver by heart. So all possible plans are pre-coded in an indexed code book.
Let's assume that their situation awareness is complete (it is not but let's go with the assumption). On any development in the arena which does not have unambiguously single response, they both come to same conclusion that there is a choice to be made of how to cooperate on the next step, but they need to chose complementary actions.
Now, imagine if they had a shared random number generator which would make identical suggestion to both of them. Are you already guessing where this is going?
Yes, you were right, quantum entanglement - it can't deliver information from A to B, but it can deliver same random information to both A and B, with E learning neither the content of it, nor the fact that there was communication, nor the location of A and B.
You make your preparation such that you have many options of same worth, so that any of them would do, but the advantage is that you and your ally know which option is chosen, while your common opponent has no clue.
Now, it is a sort of placing faith in randomness, gambling with your luck, but like I said, preparation phase must determine choices of approximately equal worth.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday August 17 2018, @02:24AM
Solders have to leave their brain behind in a secure military storage facilities. Only military approved parts of the brain can be taken into the combat.
That's a short history of the military training anyway.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.