Russian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a very bad idea:
It’s been a nightmare scenario for U.S. commanders for years: An amphibious readiness group sails stealthily towards its objective, one reckless Marine or sailor goes topside and uses a personal cell phone to check Facebook, revealing the position of the assault ship. The Chinese or Russians quickly detect the cell phone signal in the middle of the ocean and realize they can’t miss. The enemy fires its anti-ship ballistic or cruise missiles at Pfc./Seaman Schmuckatelli as he posts a meme and suddenly the entire ship along with thousands of sailors and Marines are lying on the ocean floor.
To some, this type of scenario may seem as hyperbolic as warnings that wearing white socks in combat could give away your location to the enemy, but Russian troops in Ukraine have shown the perils of using cell phones in modern-day warzones.
The Ukrainians claim to have killed 12 general Russian officers since late February, in part because the Russians have resorted to using cell phones when their communications systems break down.
“It is not hard to geo-locate someone on a phone talking in the clear,” retired Army Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, told the New York Times.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @02:41AM (1 child)
frosty catastrophe
(Score: 3, Touché) by captain normal on Monday May 16 2022, @03:20AM
Was that sent from your i-phone?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @03:28AM (2 children)
Also very hard to commit warcrimes, and get away with it, when every there has a phone and apparently can't stop talking pictures.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 16 2022, @03:41AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sticXkHxZC4 [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday May 16 2022, @01:17PM
Getting away with war crimes has always depended on winning. The evidence the victors use is always sufficient for them to reach the decision they choose to reach.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @03:55AM (1 child)
Who will be the first to invent the smart bullets that home in on 5g phone signals?
(Score: 5, Funny) by stretch611 on Monday May 16 2022, @04:38AM
Why, the anti vaxxers of course; this way they can stop Bill Gates's microchip from tracking everyone.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @06:57AM (8 children)
I remember my dad talking about how many times cigarettes did in platoons of men, as a non smoking enemy could smell a lit one a mile away.
And here the tobacco companies were giving them away, knowing how addictive they are, so as to generate a market for them from the boys who did make it home.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Monday May 16 2022, @07:18AM (7 children)
Cell phones and cigarettes seem like things that would get your ass beat by your squadmates if you used them in the field.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday May 16 2022, @02:24PM (6 children)
Seems reasonable to me. I have some doubts about the smelling a cigarette from a mile away notion. A lit cigarette is very visible in low light situations, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Monday May 16 2022, @08:38PM
Could be a figurative: "We saw them (smelled them) coming a mile away" is a pretty common idiom; rather than a literal "we could smell cigarette smoke at a range of one mile".
(Score: 3, Informative) by alabaster_crone on Monday May 16 2022, @08:41PM
The old WWII saying was that "three on a match is bad luck". A match burning long enough to light three cigarettes was enough to let a sniper draw a bead.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 16 2022, @09:14PM (3 children)
A non-smoker can smell cigarette smoke from a reasonable distance, but its direction is harder to tell. If the breeze is constant you could say, "aha they're upwind of me," but how are you gonna know how far upwind, really, with enough precision to be militarily useful? Also, how can you be sure you're smelling the enemy's cigarettes and not those smoked by your comrades?
A lit cigarette makes more sense as something that puts a target on your back. I have read that at times and in some places soldiers smoked their cigarettes with the lit end inside their mouths to avoid giving the enemy something to shoot at.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fraxinus-tree on Monday May 16 2022, @09:52PM (2 children)
A non-smoker (me) did a number of times smell a cigarette a kilometer away in a forest enough to track the smokers down and kick their asses for fire safety and youth-no-smoking policy reasons. They never believed it was the smell that unmasks them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 16 2022, @11:40PM (1 child)
Sure, because you were moving and could turn to where the smell was strongest. But could you have smelled it the first time and called in a mortar salvo or other artillery and told them exactly how many yards they were out from your position? Or, if you wanted to approach and shoot them (ie., if they were soldiers) could you be sure that you would see them before they would see you?
I dunno. In my mind's eye the idea is that smoking a cigarette exposes you to sudden death from a sniper. That makes sense if they zero in on the glowing red bud at the end of the cigarette, but using smell alone doesn't seem to make sense.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:39PM
It doesn't need to be instant to be effective. If a scout can follow the smell back to the source so they can call for an artillery strike, or even just report enemy movement, then that's all they need.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hopdevil on Monday May 16 2022, @07:14AM (4 children)
This is probably one of many articles being pushed onto the internet/major news outlets in order to divert attention away from the intel provided by the US Intelligence Community
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @07:56AM
Just goes to show what an idiot you are.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Monday May 16 2022, @08:37AM
It may come as a surprise to you but the US Intelligence Community is gathering data from phones too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday May 16 2022, @08:40PM
I believe the primary misdirection is its still classified how effective this scheme is:
... But he's actually 100 miles away because they're GPS spoofing his location or outright hacking a phone emulator or just risk shitposting and running for it. Now they turned a $50 android phone into a $5M smoking hole in the ground. Repeat that enough times and you win the economic/logistics war.
The other strategy is self defense. Say you know for a fact that 0.1% of privates are morons whom will shitpost on tindr or grindr or whatever while out in the field. Fine. You got herds of cloud computer power, generate, say, ten times as much fake traffic via emulated shitposting. Eventually the enemy will stop drilling grindr shitposts when 9/10 are fake.
Can you imagine working in counterintel in 2022 and being told you job is to post dick pics using Pvt Schmuckatelli's cell phone while it sits in its faraday cage surrounded by SDR generated spoofed GPS transmitters? Meanwhile you're posting dick pics but your bunkmate has the shittier job of paying for posted propaganda claiming "all location data is 100% true all the time"
posted from my iPhone at coordinates 50.4501° N 30.5234° E 100% honest trust me no bullshite thats my coordinates uh huh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:13AM
It's probably old news for the Russians as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_Dudayev#Assassination [wikipedia.org]
And others: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/03/kill-the-messenger/ [foreignpolicy.com]
Probably still works though. Also many of those at the top get used to their immunity to rules but haven't built enough immunity to missiles and bombs.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @08:21AM (9 children)
If they're just targeting any cellphone in the area then maybe the Russians should go buy a big bunch of cheap Chinese phones, scatter them in various places and get them to power up and shutdown at various times. The battery life on some of these can be more than a month if you don't have them on all the time.
I'm pretty sure Chinese phones are much cheaper than missiles.
If it's based on the voice/conversation that can be faked too - would take a bit more effort though.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @12:30PM (4 children)
You know, these troops are taking over Ukrainian areas and these areas are run by Ukrainian telecoms. And then they are roaming with their phones?? It's quite easy to connect the dots here.
It wasn't long ago that the FitBits and others were outing Americans on their secret bases. This is not a "Russian fail", more of a general army fail in an interconnected world. Since every cellphone that is on can be located to a few dozen meters ..... do I need to continue? This is not super-duper-high-tech-James-bond tech here.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases [theguardian.com]
Why? They could just mimic 1000s of fake sims. And maybe they do, but then to verify these things, you need to do actual reconnaissance. Keep in mind that we are subject to Ukrainian propaganda too -- we don't see any failures on Ukrainian side, only the "laughable Russians" -- that in itself is propaganda.
Anyway, there is the reality on the ground. Ukrainians are not welcoming Russian forces and not giving up their nation. For the rest, who knows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @02:00PM (1 child)
A real military has other methods of communication other than stealing cell phones and hoping that nobody is listening in.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday May 16 2022, @05:18PM
Do you even try to read the source material or do you make all your statements based on a few lines of summary?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 16 2022, @08:46PM
Speaking of misdirection attacks, if I was a local farmer pissed off enough to tell someone what I saw, I'd ask for a favor like asking for one of the disinformation services to do their usual job of propaganda by releasing a "news story" about how nobody saw nutthin and all those invaders got drilled by playing farmville on their phones. Yup it sure wasn't a pissed off local or a humint spy or a local hired for menial labor, yup it was farmville that killed all those generals... Everyone trusts their propaganda sources, right? Those guys would never lie to us.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:50AM
Sure is. And phone systems are built with the ability for the local authorities to easily tap. People may remember that in 2005, the Greek government discovered that the local phone system (IIRC made by Ericsson) had had the taps turned on by parties unknown, and was tapping a selection of VIPs (including the PM).
I'm sure the Russians know how to do that too, but it only works when you have access (direct or hacked) to the telco's system. So probably only in the areas where they have complete control, and don't have to spend their time dodging incoming. Fortunately, the Russian military comm system seems to be garbage, even generals seem to use cheap Chinese comm gear so that they have something that at least works. And Russ soldiers are as addicted to their cells as Americans.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @01:05PM (3 children)
Perhaps any phone that works comes with a billing plan. The phone companies, even in these parts of the world seem pretty pickey about getting paid?
Alternatively, look back in time at where the phone has been.
I wonder where this all is heading. The Russians clearly didn't take it seriously at he beginning. A bit like Hagar the Horrible, off to rape and pillage, then back for supper.
The Russians say they are concerned about having a bunch of NATO troops just over their border, this seems BS:
Nato purpose is not to take stuff. It is to prevent stuff from being taken. Hitler showed that you can take Europe like a sequence of falling dominos, but Nato requires you to take them all at once. A much harder thing to do.
The performance of Russia in Ukraine shows that if Nato wanted to, they could easily take Russia, but they don't and won't. The Nukes are part of it, but Nato is strong enough to make peace instead of war.
If Putin's goal were for Russia to be safe and properous, he would just move back from the border and then Nato would be able to do the same. Instead, he does the opposite and complains of the outcome.
He either has another goal, or his thinking is wrong.
BTW: for a sustained peace, Ukraine should not ask for things to be back where they were the day before the invasion. That would leave a ready for another invasion army on the border. Both sides need to move back from the border proportionally.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Monday May 16 2022, @01:50PM (2 children)
> Both sides need to move back from the border proportionally.
Maybe this won't work as you expect it. One of the sides is notorious of breaking their promises and then making official rhetorics out of any reality explaining the other side did it instead. So any such agreement will result in lawless strip in Ukraine with roaming little green men making again what they always did before. My bet is on a strong border control, both military and on immigration/contraband from the worker's paradise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @04:40PM (1 child)
"Maybe this won't work as you expect it."
I can see that if the Russians can't restrain themselves from the little green men plan, then the proportional response is as you suggest.
If they eventually figure out that life is better without the LGM, then both can withdraw. The Russians seem slow learners in this regard.
More interestingly, the number of opposing forces poised just outside Russia in the New Nato North should depend on if Russia becomes smart enough to learn that with Nato less forces deployed on the border makes Russia more secure. More Nato forces on the border doesn't risk an invasion, but rather some sort of mistake with bad consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:46PM
Russia has restrained itself from that exactly once in the last thousand years, and it was only the direct threat of a third Russian massacre by Finland that made it stick.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @11:35AM (7 children)
>> Pfc./Seaman Schmuckatelli
Why does the Italian have to be the stupid one? Not all Italians are dumb... some are smart enough to be mobsters. #ItalianDefenseLeague
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @12:43PM (3 children)
He's only half Italian. The other half is Jewish. A proud product of the American Melting Pot. ;-)
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Monday May 16 2022, @01:58PM
Now I need a "Funny Troll" mod.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday May 16 2022, @02:28PM (1 child)
You jest, but there's precedent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Lansky [wikipedia.org]
2021 Movie, "Lansky": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5078852/ [imdb.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday May 16 2022, @03:14PM
Okay, he's not half Italian / half Jewish, but he was a member of the Jewish mob with strong influence in the Italian-American Mafia.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @03:34PM (2 children)
You must have missed the memo. Jews and Italians are white now and targeting white people isn't racist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @06:00PM (1 child)
"targeting white people isn't racist."
That has never been true, but I guess when your white privilege gets a teensy weensy bit revoked it might feel like you're being discriminated against. And that totally sucks, ideally no one should feel fear or shame over their biological properties which is why I must give you this advice: Reals over feelz! If you're gonna whine about discrimination make sure you have the facts straight and not a Karen level whinge job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:36AM
Someone obviously doesn't really understand their own ideology...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday May 16 2022, @12:31PM (5 children)
Well, Russia is generally showing the world how *not* to wage a war.
That said, I'm not sure how much better Western militaries would do. The US, for example, certainly showed how *not* to conquer Afghanistan, and definitely how *not* to withdraw.
Russia, however, seems intent on making every mistake in the book: poor logistics, poor intelligence, poor strategy, poor training, poor troop discipline. On top of all that, they have obviously done an equally rotten job on the political front, having turned their country into an international pariah.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by looorg on Monday May 16 2022, @01:06PM (2 children)
Not sure. This seems to be the same superpower-proxy-bullshit as we have seen for the last half century. They don't really want to do war with each other so instead they are content with fucking the other one over when they are at war (or whatever they like to call it at the time). Afghanistan, first the Russians get there and the US fucks them over. Then when the US takes their turn the Russians do all they can to fuck them over in return. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq etc the list just goes on. The Ukraine is just another brick in that long running game. One of them does something and the other one just instantly supports whomever is there to fight back with guns, training, resources of some kind etc to totally fuck over the other power. They have no interest in this being a short war, they want to prolong that shit for as long as they can to make the other one bleed and suffer.
That said yes it does seem that this wasn't planned or executed very well. One clearly wonders what they thought would happen. But I guess they figured that this kind of annexation freedom special operation thing (or whatever they call it now) has worked fine in other former soviet republics and nobody have really cared all that much. Mostly cause it has been so far away but now that it's a bit closer it has become a big problem. But still one wonders what their planning looked like? They assumed the west would stop at sending a strongly worded letter to the UN as per usual or something? Seems like they are now instead funneling in massive amounts of resources (money, weapons, volunteers etc). So that the operation isn't going according to plan is one thing. But I doubt Russia is really going to lose, they might not just win as much as they had hoped they would.
Also the reporting we get here in the west seems very one sided. It's hard to take most of it very seriously. So far this (and last) week Putin has had several deadly diseases, there is a military coup in the making, he is going to get assassinated any day now, the war is going to shit, there is going to be some Stalin-like-purge to correct this. All the while the Ukrainian side are apparently now winning the war, I suspect from how the reporting goes that their army will be at the gates of Moscow before the end of summer ...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @05:30PM
I was thinking the same thing at the beginning of March. But what is happening on the ground now doesn't really support that conclusion. Russian troops, who were always poorly prepared for this fight, are now refusing to attack and fragging their officers. Meanwhile, their officers seem committed to throwing any troops they can actually get to fight into doomed offensives. Something has gone wrong in their chain of command that not only doesn't allow them to admit defeat, it doesn't even allow them to regroup until they are better prepared. If they keep going this way, their army will completely shatter.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 16 2022, @08:49PM
From the "two weeks to flatten the curve" department.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 16 2022, @03:23PM (1 child)
That is what the Western media coverage is saying, for sure... What is the picture from sources like RT? Yes RT is biased, but...
The proof will be in the timing of Russian withdrawl. In the meantime, media spin will be fierce on both sides.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:08PM
RT aren't biased. They are liars of the worst sort. Nothing of value is lost by ignoring them.
(Score: 1) by Improbus on Monday May 16 2022, @07:30PM (3 children)
He leaves his phone at home.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fraxinus-tree on Monday May 16 2022, @09:32PM (2 children)
... and then loots one from local civilians because his goverment-provided 1970s-era communication is even easier for the enemy to track. It sucks to be a Russian soldier in 2022.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:11PM (1 child)
1970's communications equipment actually worked. If Russia had that then they wouldn't need to steal cellphones from civilians.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Wednesday May 18 2022, @10:49AM
... for some meanings of "worked". E.g. you hear your peers, but everyone in or near the line of sight hears you as well, using $30 equipment. No identification of the correspondent, so everyone having the $30 equipment can spoof everyone else as well. Both sides speak the same language. Also see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_finding [wikipedia.org] . Some people in UA are good at this (so are some RU people, but it doesn't matter now) - up to and including giving coordinates directly to the artillery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @09:24PM
"mom? mom! yeah i gotta duct tape my phone to the drone now. keep talking."
-
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 16 2022, @09:32PM (3 children)
Meanwhile we've been reading for years how the war planners want to equip every soldier with cybernetic prosthetics, exoskeletons, and the like. Doesn't that also paint a big target on the soldier's back?
It's almost as if going low-tech will confer a new advantage on ground troops.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Monday May 16 2022, @09:38PM (2 children)
Modern electronics (if sane and up to applicable standards) is rather hard to be detected out of its unintended EM radiation.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 16 2022, @11:42PM (1 child)
I think part of the cybernetic package is that you are connected to command via telemetry and comms, which would have to emit some kind of ack to handshake with base. Unless they're using quantum entanglement or something.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Tuesday May 17 2022, @06:05AM
... and here comes Starlink: 1-2 angular degrees of beam towards the sky. If you are not in the beam, it doesn't radiate much.