US Begins Sophisticated Wireless Jamming Project 157
coondoggie writes "Looking to begin developing algorithms and other technology to automatically learn to jam certain new wireless transmissions that may threaten US military personnel, BAE Systems recently got about $8.4 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to begin work on what's known as the Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic Warfare (BLADE) system. According to DARPA: As wireless communication devices become more adaptive and responsive to their environment by using technology such as Dynamic Spectrum Allocation, the effectiveness of fixed countermeasures may become severely degraded. The BLADE program will develop algorithms and techniques that will let our electronic warfare systems automatically learn to jam new RF threats in the field."
Only $8 Million ? (Score:2)
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I wish they'd spend 8 million to get Cell phone jammers at theatres. If there is ONE place where reception should not be possible its half way into a great drama.
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You can buy cell phone jammers over the counter (where legal), and some places, theatres have them.
Fine dining restaurants should also have them, IMO. How important it is for you to be reachable shouldn't affect my being able to enjoy peace and quiet.
Re:Only $8 Million ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the "doctor" should get a phone that vibrates. With what he makes, I assume he could afford it.
Of all the times I've been disturbed by cell phones at the movies, symphony, opera or library, I very much doubt that any of the offending calls were of this "emergency" nature. Usually, it's just assholes being assholes.
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Please, if you are technically illiterate, don't make suggestions how to solve problems with technology.
If you are jamming cell phones, it doesn't matter if the phone has a vibrate option. It won't ring, it won't vibrate, it won't do anything, because some asshole has decided that nobody ought to be able to use a cellphone anywhere near him because he's so fucking special and his rights are more importan
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This is my point: jamming cell phones in order to keep entertainment and other "quiet" venues from being disturbed is a bad idea.
So the reason vibrating cell phones is not a solution is that you are too clumsy to properly operate the buttons. And you call me "technically illiterate".
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No, that wasn't your point. You responded to someone who pointed out that doctors really do need to get cell text messages sometimes and that jamming was a bad idea with the suggestion that doctors could afford a phone with a vibrate option. As if the vibrate option would somehow get around the jammer. Well, it won't. That's a stupid suggestion.
So the reason vibrating cell phon
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You know, I've often wondered how some people manage not to have any friends after being part of a community for better than half a decade.
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The problem isn't just ringing, but people picking up and speaking in a loud voice.
Kudos to those who discreetly look at the phone and then leave for a few minutes. But there are too many jerks and jerkettes who don't.
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I'm not in favor of jamming cell phones or banning doctors from public spaces, Obfuscant. I'm in favor of people using the tools they have at their disposal to avoid disturbing other people unnecessarily. Such as vibrating cell phones.
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You shouldn't wonder about a lack of friends. It's obvious.
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I just assumed that the AC was you. I'm still not sure.
Re:Only $8 Million ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit, the theaters and nice restaraunts should put up some sort of faraday cage. Nobody HAS TO be on call 24/7/365; the surgeon and the fireman should be able to have a replacement ready when he's at the theater or sleeping.
There didn't used to be such things as pagers, and folks got along just fine. There is no excuse for a phone to ring in a theater or (worse) in church, PERIOD. If you absolutely, positively HAVE to have you goddamned phone on 24/7, stay the hell out of churches, theaters, and any restaraunt that has wait staff.
YOU ARE NOT THAT GODDAMNED IMPORTANT. Nobody is.
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People used to get buy fine with horses too, lets ban cars!
Some people really do need to be on call. As one who is on call often I use the vibrate function and call them back after exiting the theater or restaurant dining area, no church for me so that not an issue. You are trying to solve a social problem with a technical solution, that never works.
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You are trying to solve a social problem with a technical solution, that never works
Social problem: your family is scattered all over the globe. Technical solution -- planes, trains, automobiles, telephones, and internet.
People used to get buy fine with horses too, lets ban cars!
Paris To Test Banning SUVs In the City [slashdot.org]
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That's right. Nobody has to be. But some people volunteer their time and services to help protect and serve the community. Like the SAR volunteer who drops what he's doing to come look for your 81 year old grandfather who has walked away from his assisted living center and it's 30 degrees F outside and he may die from hypothermia if he's not found. That call can come anytime of day or night, 24/7/365.24. When it happens, it's not just one person that needs to show up, i
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Also keep in mind that this was back in the day where you could most likely run around town to find the person in question. You could also be talking about minutes where nowadays it costs millions or someone their life. Things have changed, old man. Nice lawn.
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I'm not sure I follow your argument here. Big cities pre-date telephone, and even telegraphy. Never mind cell phones and pagers.
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TFA wasn't about cell phones, but the comment I responded to was.
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That's the cost of having children. I had the same problem when I had small kids, but I didn't expect everyone else to be inconvinienced because I was a dad.
And in fact, if you're getting out once a year you're getting out a whole lot more than I was ever able to.
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You ARE NOT God!
Of course not, and neither are you. If I pay to see a movie, I want to see the movie and not hear somebody's phone going off. I have the right to see that movie, and you have no right whatever to interrupt it.
You do realize people on organ replacement lists might like to go to a movie sometimes.
They can watch the DVD, or have someone wait in the lobby for them with a cell phone. Being on an organ replacement list doesn't give you the right to ruin MY experience.
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Camp 1: We should ban cell phones, or at the very least jam them so that they are functionally no longer a cell phone because those particular sounds offend my senses!
Camp 2: It is up to the individual to be responsible for their actions, so any interference at all is an offense to my senses!
Camp 1 is ridiculous, as the theaters and restaurants could kick out patrons who
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I'm in Camp 3: Ban stupid people. Since that's not feasible, beat them down and ridicule them as the scourge of society that they are.
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Camp 1 is ridiculous, as the theaters and restaurants could kick out patrons who make noise. They find it more profitable to not do that though.
It's more that jerks are likely to create a scene, which creates even more disruption than they originally did. Out of consideration for everyone, both staff and other guests pretend like nothing, but that doesn't mean they find the behaviour acceptable.
If you are expecting important phone call, please pay others the courtesy of going somewhere where it's socially acceptable, or at the very least turn off ringing and leave to take the call. And if enough people show that they can't be that considerate, ja
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Your probably one of the guys that complains and throws a tantrum if someone is having a conversation on a plane instead of bringing a $0.30 pair of earplugs.
Hate to break it to you, but the world is not your personal meditation chamber.
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Hate to break it to you, but the world is not your personal meditation chamber.
No, but some parts of it, I expect quiet. Like a mountain top, a library, my own office, and a fine dining restaurant. Jerks who ruin either experience by not giving any consideration to others are just that: jerks.
If I can't get away from your noise anywhere, you deserve to die. It's as simple as that.
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That doesn't change the fact that you argued against a system that still lets people have their contact with other people without noise. Obviously, your belief that the world should adjust itself you you is NOT just about noise. There are other mental disorders at work here.
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I say that doctors and other emergency workers who are ON CALL have no business being in a theatre or fine dining establishment in the first place.
If they're expected to be able to respond immediately, they should be where they can respond immediately.
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That's a choice they make themselves.
I shouldn't have to pay the price for them choosing a well-paid job with lots of inconveniences.
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With the proliferation of text messaging services and email push to cell phones, the use of dedicated pagers is on the decline. In our local SAR group, I am just one of about three people who still uses a pager and not have callouts come to my cell phone. Most people just don't want to carry two devices when one will do. I'd rather be able to leave my pager at home when I travel out of the area and not have callouts count against my text messaging limi
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You are so right.
That guy whose health depends on clarification from the Attending is just going to have to wait. That or the attending should just have to sacrifice their entire lives for their jobs-- it's not like you'll ever need their help, so why give them any sort of respect or dignity?
Yes, because after all they're at liberty to take a vacation on the other side of the world, go caving, go on a wilderness hike whilst on call. Oh, wait, no they can't. If they're on call their movements are limited already.
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There's a difference between being physically limited and being stopped because the restaurant owners are too afraid to do something about jerks. There are other ways to deal with them besides jamming everyone's cellphones, including those who are in vibrating mode and not bothering anyone.
I suggested above adding a ringing cellphone fee to the check (and warning about it on the entrance). If they see their bill going up 30% they might remember next time.
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More likely, they'll create a scene, and cause even more disturbance for everybody else.
Cause jerks are, well, jerks.
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No, but being able to answer a phone does not mean they should be trapped at home. They should use vibrate and take the call outside or in the bathroom. Stop trying to solve social problems with technical solutions. Fun hint, the folks you are complaining about are not folks on call, the ones you care about are kids and losers. To get rid of those, just boot them from the theater when they answer inside.
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Oh, God, please let there be an amendment to the Constitution listing "the right to never be annoyed by anyone else in public ever" so I can sue every asshole who chews gum or bumps into me or coughs loudly or, God forbid, looks at his cellphone because a message about his kids just came in and his phone vibra
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And you are probably one of the people who stuck his head out the window and shouted at Paul Revere to shut the hell up and let you sleep.
Expecting common courtesy is a two-way street, and much different than enforcing it. Common courtesy not only includes expecting someone not to have a ringing phone at a movie, but it includes ME allowing for the fact that THEY have a life, too, and that THEY paid for the movie, too, and that maybe the mes
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No you don't. You wish people'd be more considerate.
The difference is a cell phone jammer won't stop a PSP/DS/Watch/iPod etc.
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I don't wish for impossible things.
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But you do wish for foolish things? Much cooler.
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Hey! That's how I cook things that are too big to fit in the microwave.
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so why didn't he submit a proposal to the BAA? i mean, it's gotta be a simple solution, right? I'm sure all the military's worried about are non-adversarial civilian signals. I'm sure they're just worried about narrowband low power transmissions with a clear IEEE spec.
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Now I could have been mistaken but I thought this was to jam signals that threatened military personnel, and I made the assumption that they were referring to IEDs. I know that they do not depend on jamming signals for IR or RF missiles.
AFAIK they only use COTS components to create these IEDs, though I suppose they could use more sophisticated military grade comm systems. Heck even police departments are getting into more sophisticated realms w/ regard to radio comm.
But based on my knowledge of government
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Keep in mind that they want to jam ALL of the enemy (and civilian) wireless transmissions, but none of their own. That's a little more complukated.
Re:Only $8 Million ? (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually pretty complicated. I used to be a military communications officer, so I have some idea of what they're trying to do here. The way modern military radios work is they take an entire spectrum and jump frequencies around a hundred times a second (that's what the US radios do, I assume enemy technology to be on par) based on an algorithm, a frequency plan, and a randomly generated salt which is a shared secret between all the radios. Unless you have all three pieces or you can use something like this adaptive "smart jammer" they want to develop, you can't jam the radios without jamming the entire spectrum. That's possible of course, but a) it takes a lot of power and b) it typically jams your radios too.
The trick here is that you don't want to create a radio "dead space" you want to jam enemy communications while leaving your own untouched. Your friend created a broad spectrum jammer. It crudely killed anything in the immediate area that was trying to use any frequency close to the one he was broadcasting on. Since there's a fairly limited number of channels that wifi runs on, and they're published frequency ranges, it was fairly trivial to scan each channel (which a WAP is doing anyway) to jam the correct one, or just broadcast on all of them. Now imagine your trying to jam a device that can use any frequency in the VHF range, has a list of 10,000 freqs it may be using, is changing freqs once every .001 seconds, and is jumping in away that appears random without the algorithm and salt. You probably have the algorithm, but the salt is only stored on secure devices that self wipe after either a certain number of failed password attempts or any attempt to access the internals. On top of that, since the enemy is almost certainly using more than one channel to communicate, you have to sort which devices are one which channels. All of which are that complicated. Finally, you have to do all of this without impacting your own communication systems which are doing the same thing on the same freq band.
Still seem easy?
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Jam everything but the channel in your time splice. (Almost certainly harder than it sounds)
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That'd be hella complicated. One thing to remember here is that a radio net is a shared resource. Only once person can talk at a time. With a large unit, say a Division, it's impossible to allow any percentage of the necessary traffic to happen on one net. Therefore there are many nets. Each one is created by using either a different freq plan or the same freq plan with a different salt (so the radios are rarely if ever trying to use the same freqs). Very large commands have two dozen or more nets for
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Yes.
Take an array of directional antennas, figure out where the target signal is coming from, and throw a missile at it.
Signal jammed.
Repeat until there are no more signals to jam.
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+1 awesome (from a former signal jammer here)
Re:Still seem easy? (Score:2)
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Right, but wouldn't the very behavior of such a system betray what THEY were using to communicate? It seems like it would only take a few minutes to find out which parts of the spectrum DARPA's machine had whitelisted, and then you could simply jam only THAT.
Sounds like a relatively stupid idea to me.
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Except that "whitelist" is constantly changing (every .001 seconds, apparently) and is as predictable as the frequency-hopping devices, which, unless you have the three components the gp mentioned, is rather unpredictable.
Re:Only $8 Million ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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DARPA does basic research. that's actually fairly sizable. the effort will likely focus on the basic science and technology implementation. when the "System" gets funded, expect 3 more zeros at the end.
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8 million dollars will pay a few salaries for a year - rule of thumb at my work is each engineer costs 250-300k per year, in terms of space, equipment, salary, benefits, infrastructure. So, figure that pays a team of 10-12 people, with plenty of money left over for some hardware purchases for a prototype.
The summary is pretty clear that this is "to begin work on developing" a new system, it's not for the entire system - think of this as proof-of-concept phase. Somebody has a few smart ideas and says, "if
In an industry that already spends billions (Score:2)
Jamming has been going on since the second day after radio was developed. New technologies are developed to adapt to jamming conditions, then jammers get more complex to go after the new tech.
I learned many jamming techniques and countermeasures in a few graduate level courses on receiver design back in the mid 80's. What was being done was very complex, and we were only exposed to the "SENSITIVE NOFOR" security classification of what was going on. "Gating" a radar was developed back in WWII, frequency hopp
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Indeed that is nuthin' in the world 'o Defense Contracting. That wouldn't even cover the cost of documentation alone.
To quote one of the jamming targets (Score:3)
"I've lost the bleeps, I've lost the creeps, and I've lost the sweeps!"
(or watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXKOsajNZY4 [youtube.com])
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This video contains content from mgm, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
Sigh!
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They're censoring Spaceballs in your country? That's obscene!
May the farce be with you.
BLADE (Score:2)
Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic Warfare (BLADE)
Acronym fail? Or did they realize quickly that BLAEW would be pronounced "blew" and saw what happened when the FBI created the WTF?
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Behavioral Learning for ADaptive Electronic warfare
Military-types like to get creative with which letters they pick for their acronyms.
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Behavioral Learning for ADaptive Electronic warfare, and yes, even a bureaucracy can learn to avoid being embarrassed in public.
Besides, this is the DoD - they want an acronyms that sounds like a weapon anyway.
Re:BLADE (Score:4, Funny)
I'm convinced that they come up with the acronym first and then backronym it into a phrase. The military acronyms usually have names that an 8-year old would think are pretty cool for some GI Joe toys.
The thing I still wonder about, though, is whether they first pick the acronym, then pick the phrase, then invent a need and a project to fit the phrase.
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Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic Warfare (BLADE). Acronym fail?
No, it's a case of bending the name or the way the acronym is made up, to make an acronym sound clever. So it's "Behavioral Learning for ADaptative Electronic warfare".
Uncyclopedia calls it a case of TTHTMAFPCW [wikia.com]. The US government has been trying really to TTHTMAFPCW lately ("USA PATRIOT Act" for instance)...
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Does it make those who deploy these systems Blade Runners?
Warfare is their business, and therefore redundant (Score:2)
So they can leave the Warfare out. Or is there an 147st Mobile Pizza Baker Infantry? Or a 139th Airborne Flower Pickers? Warfare is the military's core competency, so they can leave it out of the acronym.
Plus, folks with lots of weapons can choose whatever acronym they damn choose.
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No, this is a military-style acronym, where you drop words that don't fit and use abbreviations instead of initials where convenient, just to get a cool-sounding word.
Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic warfare. BLAdE.
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"Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic warfare"
Then why not just go with:
behavioral learning for adaptive elecTRONic warfare" => TRON
and called it a day? Way more hip than blade...
Personally, though I think...
behaVIoRAl LeaRning for ADaptIve electrOnic WarfARe. => VIRALRADIO
is more memorable than yet another "BLADE" system.
Where is ... (Score:3)
... Hedy Lamarr [wikipedia.org] now that we really need her?
Old Technology in a new dress (Score:5, Informative)
This technology has been around since the 60's and was used before the Vietnam war, as well as during the Vietnam War makes this non-news.
Do a little research and you will find out that during the Apollo moon mission that Army Intelligence at Ft Hood jammed a frequency outside of the listed bands. Apparently they were field testing high powered multi-frequency jammers before being deployed into Vietnam. The field manual was very light and they were instructed to avoid certain bands that were coded red. It turned out to be a private frequency for NASA, which caused a two minute loss of communication with the Apollo team. The reason they knew about the Apollo comm link was two truckloads of intelligence spooks arrive at the site of their outpost. They were interviewed and informed that they had inadvertently knocked Houston's comms down and caused a two minute panic because the primary frequency and the backup frequency were unavailable for communication with the Apollo astronauts.
VFW halls, best halls.
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Not to mention Picard and his crew used this to weaponize the Enterprise's deflector dish to weaken the Borg.
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The occasional EW mishap is legendary, fleeting, and cautionary. Everything from NASA to AT&T has been hit by this. British telecom has a few stories to tell, as well as most of Europe. Darned pods go off at the drop of a wrench.
But this is definitely NOT something that's been around since the 60s. We think of EW traditionally as an anti-radar weapon, until we realized that jamming communicaitons from the radar to the launch control trailer was just as effective at neutralizing SAM threats. Still p
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The occasional EW mishap is legendary
I most certainly did NOT jam the Ft. Stewart, GA Burger King drive through for two hours in 1996.
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Pfft. You can jam drive-throughs with a car battery and a bracelet.
Now shutting down the phone systems in East Anglia in 1974, that was purely an accident. The water main incident was an accident too.
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I also claim no part in accidentally jamming the Deutschewelle re-broadcast of the 1991 Super Bowl...(that is indeed far more impressive than jamming the Burger King from a mile away!)
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That wasn't an accident. Deutschewelle ran that as a test to validate their system to jam BBC Radio 1-3. Sadly, it failed. They ignored BBC Radio 4 for obvious reasons.
And we still have Serie A on the air, in some small part due to that failure, no doubt. Cannot someone devise a system? Please? Spark gap? Numbers? Darts? Please?
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Tell ya what... I don't fell like typing my response to a previous and similar comment out again, so click my name and read it. Suffice to say this is WAY more complicated. Modern frequency hopping radios are impossible to jam without taking out the entire spectrum. Which tends to screw with friendly comms.
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Yep. I did this in the eighties and it was pretty much the same thing. The only possible difference is that besides brute force jamming we also had to capture and analyze the signals (often bouncing and wobbling among several frequencies) and attempt to mimic them, in a short enough time to be useful. (Like, before the missile hits you.) My first programming job (all in assembler).
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During *which* Apollo moon mission? There was more than one you know. Not to mention that precisely none of the antenna's used were anywhere near Ft Hood. Not to mention that the terrestrial antenna's that were used were highly directional.
Why is this news? (Score:2)
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If you are putting our self-sacrificing service men and women in harm's way, you damn well better be doing EVERYTHING you can to try to protect them. This is a trivial amount of money compared to what we are pissing away every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if the desired goal is something of a long shot.
Agreed. So how about spending some money to keep our promises to take care of them AFTER their service is completed. Funding for various VA programs is pathetic, and every jagoff who utters the phrase "...our self-sacrificing service men and women..." should be ashamed to do so without acknowledging that fact.
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Agreed. So how about spending some money to keep our promises to take care of them AFTER their service is completed.
Why? They applied for a dangerous, dirty job and got paid for it. If you don't feel the existing pay and benefits are enough of an incentive to possibly be killed, DON'T JOIN THE MILITARY.
They should be treated like any other person who is permanently injured...apply for state and federal disability.
Somewhere in my garage (Score:3)
Somewhere in my Garage is an old Amana RadarRange from the 70s. I think the old leaky magnetron in it will sufficiently wipe out all RF spectrum for a 5 mile radius. I'll sell it to the government for only $1M Dollars! All you have to add is a burrito and a 120V power source and you're done!
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How much will this add to our national debt? (Score:2)
How about we concentrate on creating something like the Internet instead?
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Should have thought of that when they were building a supersonic VTOL stealth fighter, when they already had both transonic VTOL fighters and supersonic stealth fighters.
I guess you need both VTOL and stealth on your supersonic fighter jet for fighting some dudes hiding in caves.
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You have to understand that this kind of research is going on all the time. I was doing it back in the eighties for different kinds of communications. (Same issues though -- capture, analyze, counter, when the signal is encrypted and transmitting on multiple frequencies.) There's really nothing to see here.
Simultainous signal injection? (Score:2)
An existing encrypted/unencrypted wireless datastream received & retransmitted/boosted with data intact with additional "errors" inserted (wireless steganography) decrypted by a matching hardware unit, the enemy would have to jam their own frequency(s) to interfere.
Comments?
Hmmmm, seems like this could be.. (Score:2)
Something quite Orwellian, think about it, when a Gov. goes rogue the first thing they want to control is the information stream!
Like in Burma & Iran, the world could see what was going on, with this tech. you could seal up and keep secret the violent repression
of the civilian population!
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Um, no. Speaking as someone who used to do that kind of stuff, countermeasures are usually a lot more subtle than just pouring out huge amounts of RF.
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