Army Cyber Institute - HF radio can take up slack, ARS contributes

This article is a bit behind the state-of-the-art. High speed data over HF is at least a couple of iterations behind what is mentioned here. Sure, HF is a key resource for auxiliary, tertiary and sometimes primary data communications on the military playing field. But Amateur Radio? Uh, nope. If we're gonna be relevant, we have to be willing to work on the (relatively low) level we occupy .... there can only be one boss. That's why many (well, some) EMAs are saying "Thanks, but no-thanks" to AR groups. We MUST improve this model guys!! I have stopped asking. I'm now BEGGING! We're far too talented and too motivated to just sit on the sidelines. That old phrase, "national resource" comes to mind. We are. We should strive to stay that way. Just my 2 cents.

 

Two comments if I may - years ago, naval communications (actually joint and allied systems) did what was called "HF Contingency" work, where it was assumed in the exercise that satellite comms were denied. We did this with what was then "short haul HF" frequencies .... long before anyone started tossing around "NVIS" as if it is something new. As I recall, these exercises were quite successful. It was real work (compared to satellite links) but it was the kind of thing guys I exercised with thrived upon. The point that AR operators (and MARS, I think he said) could be "instructors" is a great idea. Keep in mind that the military branches have been teaching communicators and maintainers about HF for 100 years ... and mastery is based on quite a bit more than a 50-question multiple-choice test. So some guy stumbling around with his Extra ticket - or even his MARS authorization - can probably learn more from these guys than he can teach. Either way though, it's an opportunity for an Amateur Radio "win". Yep - 2 more cents.

 

g3mck, after an emp how many modern solid state rigs will still be working? May be there is a good case for keeping some hollow state gear in the shack. keep them filaments lit!

 

I would be surprised if EMP does as much damage as people think it will. I have a feeling only the front end of radios directly connected to antennas within a certain radius of the blast would actually suffer damage. And I also wouldn't be surprised if lightning protection systems afforded some level of protection to those radios. The fact that most radios are in a metal enclosure acting like a Faraday cage is also a plus.

There are those that feel that every piece of electronics around the entire globe would be completely destroyed by EMP and I just think that's unrealistic. The truth may be somewhere in between, but there are so many variables it is most likely impossible to tell until it actually happens.

If in fact being "disconnected" is the protection- the backup radio really doesn't need to be an old boat anchor... it just needs to be an SDR thrown in a sealed metal box. (Don't forget to throw a solar charge controller and an inverter in that box as well.)

Of course, the biggest threat is to computers, WiFi, cell networks, and industrial control systems connected to those networks.

Let's not forget that lightning is a form of EMP and we protect against that all the time.

 

EMP is subject to multipath like all RF. That means there are volumetric regions of 'shadows and light' of enhancement and nulls, even over less than millisecond time scales. Direct exposure with no reflections is the costliest to RF. Most exposures will experience some multipath and that means the 'kill rate' on unshielded electronics will be high but far from 100%. Even some shielding of equipment not 'online' will further reduce kill rate.

Airborn exposure is the most severe.

Anyway, the topic is dealing with showing HF has certain underappreciated capabilities that may be prove useful with the application of modern technologies (waveforms; digital modes; antennas, etc). The message is that we are likely to see re-kindled interest in HF, and that hams are a valuable source of those 'skilled in the art' on HF and HF use.

IMO, that is true, in pockets, but much of our practical (ham) experience is routed back in the past. As in all innovative endeavors, there are leaders and users. Don't confuse the two

EMP at HF is harder and less effective to implement than just taking out or jamming sats, IMO.

Reminds me of OMEGA and its demise. Now we need it more than ever.

73
Chip W1YW

 

I mostly agree, but to put this in perspective, the military and government does have a use for talent that knows the basics of radio communications. Appliance operators aside, the AR community does supply us with folks with a decent baseline knowledge that saves us time in training. There's nothing like teaching NVIS techniques to folks who have already experienced it in some state QSO party. While AR doesn't have a direct role to play in government commo, the skills in the ranks have great value to us.

 

Maybe 75-80 years ago, WWII. Or in the fictional movie Independence Day.

But in the modern era, the DoD is much more likely to turn to its contractors, not go directly to soliciting random individual hams. Now, theoretically the contractors could put out an appeal for hams, but again I expect they'd rather do a bunch of expensive studies and then get a multi-tens of millions dollars contract to train HF ops themselves.

I don't think we're going to see bunches of orange-vested "When All Else Fails" hatted, Go-Box carrying hams queued up at the gates of our military bases if an EMP or malware takes out our defense satellites.

 

Why would they?

DOD already has the operators with SECURITY CLEARANCE, equipment with encryption, and with towers and antenna arrays only a ham can have wet dreams about. Why would they want Sammy Hammy with a wire and a box?

 

FT8 is being used as a benchmark to show viability of an approach with NVIS and low power at HF.

No towers, No arrays.

Ultimately you want to be impervious to detection and to jamming in miltary usage. FT8 was not designed for that.

Ham radio was designed for being easily detected. The fact that we do that everyday now with modest antennas and low power was, presumably, eye opening for some.

The fact that HF may be used extensively in the future reveals a need for those who already use it. That is SOME 'Sammy Hammy's'.

 

Don't over look the link to the previous article referenced at the end of the OP.

Written by "WO-4 Kurt Stephens, USCG (Ret.), KB3UMN, is the CEO and technical director for White Wolf Systems, and Lt. Col. Bill Whittington, USA (Ret.), KJ4AYT, is the senior marketing director for the company."

In many cases members of the ARS are also the contractors offering such solution to the DoD. These are credentialed people, NOT Sammy Hammies

IMO the point of this article is to show the value of seriously supporting the non-professional resources, including the ARS, that have a long proven track record of providing useful applied scientific exploration, product development and technical training to the public, which if needed the government can rely upon and utilize.

ARES, RACES, NTS, MARS, etc, and other OTA activities, are not irrelevant, they have simply evolved a bit away from being a primary backup for infrastructure dependent communications to being even more useful and necessary as a test bed / simulation laboratory for potential new technologies, including "human factors".

 

If we get a nuclear EMP blast you might wished you had those old transmitters and receivers LoL

 

This has been discussed in Signal before. I've given presentations on current HF capabilities to military decision makers myself. The problem isn't a lack of infrastructure (equipment), it is a lack of training and command influence.

 

Regarding EMP, I wonder how many solid state transceivers would be working after an EMP blast? Maybe we need to keep some hollow state gear on hand. Keep those filaments lit.

73 Gerald G3MCK

 

This is a good paper done in the style you need to do in order to get things thought about above your pay grade. Those of you who have never worked in FedWorld at the ‘time to contract and spend money’ level may not realize how unique government contracting is. I know the DoD process is even more different; we all envied the endless deep dark pools of funding over there.

So my perspective is not a military one but I believe would fit. (I tried to serve, they didn’t want me.)

IMHO the government is not going to jump up and open its doors to non-professionals for military training. We in HHS sure didn’t for disaster response. Issues of confidentiality,guaranteed equal skill levels across all trainers, no management control over essentially volunteers, difficulty of integration into existing policies and procedures. Plenty more.

Could be done by contractors as someone suggested, but the vendor will face the same issues. Anyway other than our watered down to meaningless license exams there’s no way judge technical smarts. And my former employer loves testing to determine capability.

Imagine the look on the HR interviewer when ol’Hammy Ham shows up in his yellow vest. Or one of the ‘one day wonders’ that passed three exams in one day thanks to their memorization capability starts tackling a real technical evaluation test. (The contractor will more likely look to India lol.)

Actually, the problem more so (again imho) may be the examples in many Agencies where relying on volunteer non-professionals resulted in failure of a program.

I agree, I never understood why we disregard HF as a backup. Russia seems to get it, squeaky wheels and all.
Beware the military industrial complex, thank you Pres Ike. We continue letting them make decisions.

 

I recall an unclassified paper written in the mid 1980's that said that HF communications could improve under ionospheric disturbances such as an air burst. The paper was based on France's last air bust tests. I assumed it was specific to HF long haul, but that would still apply to NVIS. (I was a civilian low-level engineer for a system integrator at that time.)

The mid 80's was also when there was a push to radiation-harden equipment. The standing joke then was 'how do your harden the operators?'

The air burst itself tears off electrons from the upper atmosphere. The electrons spin around the earth's magnetic field generating the EMP event. It's unlikely that today's commericial, semiconductor-based equipment would survive. But tube-based equipment would.