Meet the Men Who Deploy Airstrikes 311
Lanxon writes "Wired followed US Army Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner into Afghanistan to see first-hand the tools, tactics, and pressures involved in coordinating military airstrikes. This lengthy piece explores the people and technology involved in high-risk airborne warfare, from their perspective. From the article: 'Strapped to his chest, Rosner carries a handheld video player called a "Rover," built by L3 Communications, a New York-based defense contractor. The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of dollars, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft. With his Rover, Rosner can see everything a pilot sees, from the pilot's perspective. On his back he carries a radio programmed with secure frequencies that tie him directly to the pilots overhead and to his unit's headquarters, several miles away. At the headquarters, another JTAC monitors a bigger, more sophisticated video terminal that displays the same video Rosner sees, plus other data.'"
"Secure" frequencies? (Score:5, Interesting)
I love all the self-promotional talk about how awesome these weapons are, I'd love to see what would happen when they deploy their unencrypted video streams and "secure" radio transmitters against an enemy that at least have weapon systems designed in the last 20 years. These "secure frequencies" would be like a huge flashing beacon when fighting an enemy that doesn't rely on AK-47s and blending in with the civilian population.
Re:"Secure" frequencies? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) A large number of UAVs were found to be transmitting their video streams completely unencrypted.
2) I didn't mention cracking the encryption, I did however use the description "huge flashing beacon" which implied that when facing an enemy that's not stuck in the middle ages it may not be such a good idea to have troops in the field use radio communication at all unless absolutely necessary since the radio signals will be "like a huge flashing beacon" to the enemy who will be able to figure out where the troops are.
'secure frequencies' (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Conveniently timed propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
Wired is not exactly known for getting U.S. military exclusives, so no doubt they jumped at this chance. But the text of the article was actually no more technical than I would have expected from some random NYT stringer. Secure frequencies? I think he also got a little confused about the strict meaning of "going kinetic." A Wired reporter got this story because he would be unqualified and uncritical.
Even if you fully support (ahem) "bringing democracy to the people of Afghanistan," you can't seriously claim you just read anything but a military press release.
Re:"Secure" frequencies? (Score:5, Interesting)
its the 3 on a match principle if you are transmitting for more than 30 seconds at a time on a radio
YOU HAVE BEEN FOUND AND WILL MOST LIKELY BE DEAD IN THE NEXT 30 SECONDS
and this has been true for the last like 20-30 years
the trick is not to intercept and decode the signal its to find the transmitter
why do you think that most semi fixed transmitters have a way to separate the antenna and the actual transmitter??
Re:"Secure" frequencies? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, crypto hardware that outpaces anything you've ever heard of? Give me a break. They wouldn't need something we've never heard of to be secure, though; that's not really the issue. The issue the GP alludes to is that all of their operations depend on functioning radio links between different forces that are difficult to maintain even without sophisticated enemy action (the Taliban opposition faced by NATO today is even more primitive than what the Soviet Union fought in the 80s, and that was hardly a modern army).
Re:"Secure" frequencies? (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need any decryption or code-breaking to get a quite valuable piece of information from a transmission--namely, that there's a guy with a transmitter, and he's right exactly >here.
Re:U.S. Air Force Sergeant, Not U.S. Army (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure what airman ran over your dog, but you seem to have quite an axe to grind. I would certainly like to hear you tell Curtis LeMay or Robin Olds that they weren't in a real service.
By the way, when you say you can "deliver payloads anywhere in the world" - I assume you mean, after the USAF has achieved air superiority? And while the USAF provides your information through AWACS/JSTARS?
We ALL have a job to do; people need to get over their service rivalry and realize that.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I'm an officer in the USAF.)
Re:Oh (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a draft, but the boys who became the politicians managed either to avoid it or to get their dad to have them assigned to cushy, safe reserve jobs at home.
In a further touch of irony, the few politicians who *didn't* dodge that draft and signed up then had their patriotism questioned by the supporters of the draft dodgers, because they dared speak out against torture or war.
Re:"Secure" frequencies? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's very handy to be able to destroy a target with hundreds of thousands of dollars of missiles from thousands of miles away. It is, unfortunately, very cheap to buy rocket launchers in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they can change position in minutes: they're natives, they live there, they can leave weapons on the ground and walk away while the next few guerrillas take up arms and start shooting. And it's cheap to train up a few idiots to pop up on a rooftop, shoot weapons, and run away: the Afghans developed it to a high art against the Russian army while the older of us Slashdot readers were kids.
Re:War is and always has been economically-driven. (Score:5, Interesting)
And what is the economic gain in Afghanistan?
Re:Oh (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I have been an Independent my whole life. I sound like a Democrat because the impact of the Republican policies of blocking all attempts to wean America from foreign oil, "flood-up/trickle-down" economics, deregulation, and inequitable free trade have so damaged America that I had no choice other than to recognize the fact that the Republicans are the greatest threat the American people have faced in our entire history.
Sure, the Republicans have seen to it that some few Americans have vastly increased their rate of wealth accumulation, but they've done so by taking it out of the American people's hide [benatlas.com].
I am, in fact, a six-year Army veteran; when the right - the Republicans - began to try to transform America from a democracy into a hereditary aristocracy of a few wealthy and many, many poor (to include such abominations as naming corporations as super-citizens with the rights accorded to a real American citizen multiplied by the wealth they can bring to bear) they named themselves my enemy according to the oath that I swore.