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Communications Networking Television The Military

How the Super Bowl Will Reach US Submarines 142

Posted by samzenpus from the davey-jones'-locker-room dept.
Velcroman1 writes "Ever wonder how troops serving abroad in remote locations and even underwater might get to watch the Super Bowl? The very same highly advanced technology used to pass classified drone video feeds will be deployed this Sunday to ensure U.S. troops can see the Super Bowl — - no matter how far away from home they are. The broadcast is the result of a unique media, government and technology partnership with the American Forces Radio and Television Service, Raytheon and the U.S. Air Force. The Global Broadcast Service (GBS) may be normally used to disseminate video, images and other data, but major sporting events have been broadcast over it as well. The system will be 'as small as a laptop, and [equipment] the size of a shoebox and umbrella' yet 'in other places will be projected onto large screens in hangers' like aircraft carriers out at sea, explained Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems' chief innovation officer Mark Bigham."
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How the Super Bowl Will Reach US Submarines More

How the Super Bowl Will Reach US Submarines

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  • Go Niners! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by saphena ( 322272 )

    Go Niners!

  • FARTS (Score:4, Funny)

    by petteyg359 ( 1847514 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @02:18PM (#42779453) Homepage

    Ought to rename it Forces of America Radio and Televsion Service.

  • Sounds like a movie plot (Score:4, Funny)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @02:23PM (#42779499) Journal

    All the military guys and resources are busy with the game. Time for the surprise attack.

    • Yeah, also how are they broadcasting through water, or are all the subs going to surface simultaneously? I mean I know the cold war is over but...

      • Re:Sounds like a movie plot (Score:5, Informative)

        by milkmage ( 795746 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @03:09PM (#42779791)

        periscope depth?

        "The game will be received by a small antenna on masts, transferred to a receiver and then relayed to flat panel screens throughout the ship or submarine."

      • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines [wikipedia.org]

        Using a little imagination, a sub commander can rig up a flotation device, attached to a mast. The mast is weighted at one end, the antenna positioned at the other end. The boat can stay submerged just as deeply as the length of the coax permits.

        Or, to save a little trouble, the mast might be affixed to an existing buoy, or maybe even an oil rig that might be conveniently located. A sub operating in the vicinity of a surface force task force might

    • Good point. McDonalds will have burger flippers on duty, but the Navy won't have anybody manning the sonar screens.

    • All the military guys and resources are busy with the game. Time for the surprise attack.

      From who? I mean, who is there that both wants to attack the US, and has the resources to win any kind of real fight, even if they have surprise?

      • The Canadians. No I'm not joking. All they need to do is take the ICBM fields and they aren't a bad joke anymore.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They'll 'jam' them with maple syrup!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dins ( 2538550 )

          The Canadians. No I'm not joking. All they need to do is take the ICBM fields and they aren't a bad joke anymore.

          Bring it.

        • Re:Sounds like a movie plot (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jd2112 ( 1535857 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @04:51PM (#42780377)

          The Canadians. No I'm not joking. All they need to do is take the ICBM fields and they aren't a bad joke anymore.

          They sent us Celine Dion and Justin Beiber. I think that counts as a declaration of war.

          • The surprise really will be complete. Everybody treats this as a joke.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cito ( 1725214 )

            Canada, the only country that has burnt down the White House and beat the U.S.

            of course we lost Vietnam pretty much, but Canada sent the harsh message by burning the White House.

            • the only country that has burnt down the White House and beat the U.S.

              Im fairly certain that was the british.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Cito ( 1725214 )

                On June 2, 1814, Sir George Prévost, Governor General of The Canadas, had written to Cochrane at Admiralty House, in Bailey's Bay, Bermuda, calling for a retaliation against American depredations against non-combatant civilians and private property, as such acts at the time were considered to be against the laws of war. On July 18, Cochrane issued orders to Cockburn informing him that to "deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages...You are hereby required and directed to destroy and lay was

                • From your link, that was the british:
                  Having destroyed Washington's public buildings, including the White House and the Treasury, the British army next moved to capture Baltimore, a busy port and a key base for American privateers.

                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington [wikipedia.org]

                  The war of 1812 was between the US and Britain; AFAIK "Canada" didnt exist as a separate entity for quite a while after that war.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Cito ( 1725214 )

                    Yea the whole thing was British led, but the fight was about Canada, a commonwealth of the british.

                    Canadian troops sided with british and beat US troops at every turn. leading to the US defeat and the burning of the capital not once, but twice

                    another anecdote from history

                    "Attempts to invade Canada during the War of 1812 failed even more spectacularly. An early attempt to invade failed before it began when Gen. William Hull, reportedly frightened into a state of near incoherence, surrendered his entire army

          • They sent us Celine Dion and Justin Beiber. I think that counts as a declaration of war.

            Someone sent us up Da Bomb.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by knapkin ( 665863 )
          You are making a ton of points, many well considered, a couple less so.

          1) F-35 and F-22 are wastes of money.
          I'd rate this mostly valid. The way those programs turned out in terms of waste is definitely a problem, however being able to decisively have air superiority is a need. While a Russian or Chinese war will not happen, proxy wars will, and we need to be sure that our fighters can dominate or at least compete. The generation prior to F22/F35 don't. Supporting a next-gen fighter is a good thing, s

          • 2) Our current enemies don't have fighters that can best our current fighters.
            I'd rate this invalid. We don't know who our next adversary will be, nor do we know from where they will equip. We need to be able to beat anything a country other than us can produce to be able to ensure the ability to take air superiority as a given

            So we need to keep pissing money away against some phantom boogieman, yea sure.

            Let me let you in on a little secret, your fantasy will NEVER play out. If Migs ever have air superiority over Seattle covering a troop landing then that's not the time we start worrying about Fighter development, that's when you start loading targeting data into the ICBMs and SLBMs.

            Nuclear weapons made this big military obsolete. For national DEFENSE all you need is a good nuclear stockpile for the major powers and a sma

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Dins ( 2538550 )

              For national DEFENSE all you need is a good nuclear stockpile for the major powers and a small conventional force to take care of things like Somali Pirates.

              Some good points all around here. I'll just comment on this point alone. What if someone invades you and you want to repel them but you don't exactly feel like starting a major nuclear exchange? That's when you need a bit more than a small conventional force.

              That said, my thoughts on the US military (yes, I am a US citizen) is that we should have a large enough force to defend ourselves against ANY invader(s). Then we need to keep that force home and stay the fuck out of other peoples' business. So yea

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jd2112 ( 1535857 )

      All the military guys and resources are busy with the game. Time for the surprise attack.

      Does it involve a blimp?

  • Sounds like a fantastic idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @02:26PM (#42779517)
    Let's just broadcast hundreds of gigs of known cleartext through our encryption stream - and announce in advance that we're going to do it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Qzukk ( 229616 )

      Let's just broadcast hundreds of gigs of known cleartext through our encryption stream

      No problems, the drone video streams are unencrypted [slashdot.org].

    • Any encryption that would be used (say AES-CBC) would be IND-CPA, which is resistant to known plaintext attacks. That is one of the most basic forms of security for symmetric encryption. Without it you have essentially nothing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        On top of that, it's unlikely that message length has any serious contribution to overall system integrity. The supersecret key is probably only used to exchange a randomly generated temporary key, meaning that even if you break that key, you have successfully discovered the key used solely to broadcast the Super Bowl. You now have a known-plaintext attack against the top-level key, but the value is again limited because your known plaintext is now limited to the length of the temporary key.

  • same highly advanced technology (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "The very same highly advanced technology used to pass classified drone video feeds"
    Ah, those video feeds. Everyone in the world will be able to watch the Super Bowl then.

  • will they get the ad's or will they be simsubed?

  • FTFY. The combination of the words "The," "Super," and "Bowl" is copyrighted by the NFL: anyone not paying royalties is commiting copyright violation by using it (which is why everybody refers ambiguously to "the big game").

    /OT-rant

    • Copyright Infringement Time!

      The Super Bowl
      The Super Bowl
      The Super Bowl
      The Super Bowl
      The Super Bowl
      The Super Bowl

      I have no problems with the military doing what they can to maintain or improve the morale of their troops. I know a handful of soldiers, and they're just trying to do their job and (as they see it) serve their country to the best of their ability. When I take issue with the policies of the military, I lay blame with the president and with congress.

      I do, however, have issues with the fact that my

    • Re:"The Big Game"* (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) * on Sunday February 03, 2013 @04:36PM (#42780301)

      FTFY. The combination of the words "The," "Super," and "Bowl" is copyrighted by the NFL

      Nonsense. It may be trademarked by the NFL, but it certainly is not copyrighted. If you want to complain about IP law, you might want to take a few minutes to learn the basics. Also, using a trademarked term to refer the the trademarked item is fine. It is only a violation to use it to refer to a confusingly similar item, or in a way that implies endorsement. So it is okay to use the term "The Super Bowl" to refer to ... The Super Bowl.

      • Well, I'll concede confusing "trademark" and "copyright," but it's not as easy as you imply: businesses may not refer to the game unless they have rights to do so (so, for example, a bar cannot say "come watch the [big game] on our flatscreens!" even though doing so in no way implies endorsement. So, the US military saying "we're broadcasting the [big game] down to our submarines, so our submariners can watch it" might indeed cause problems.

        I'll also concede: I mostly just want to see the NFL file a lawsui

        • businesses may not refer to the game unless they have rights to do so (so, for example, a bar cannot say "come watch the [big game] on our flatscreens!" even though doing so in no way implies endorsement.

          Can you provide a link to a single example of this actually happening?

  • Bogus title (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrJimbo ( 594231 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @02:58PM (#42779715)

    How the Super Bowl Will Reach US Submarines

    The actual answer is that the submarines have an antenna that reaches into the air. The title implies that the video signals are sent through sea water to submerged submarines. That is still impossible to do in real-time. The bandwidth (either acoustic or electro-magnetic) is just not available. The acoustic bandwidth is greater than the electro-magnetic but it is still many orders of magnitude lower than what is required for real-time video.

    • The title implies that the video signals are sent
      through sea water to submerged submarines. That is still impossible
      to do in real-time.

      Well, technically it is possible - but you don't get much of a video stream with only a handful of bits per second.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrJimbo ( 594231 )

        Well, technically it is possible - but you don't get much of a video stream with only a handful of bits per second.

        We can do much better than a handful of bits per second with acoustics (yes, IAaUAE) but it is still not enough to watch the Superbowl in real-time.

    • Re:Bogus title (Score:5, Informative)

      by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater.gmail@com> on Sunday February 03, 2013 @05:02PM (#42780463) Homepage

      Right. And on top of that, no submarine is going to hang about at periscope depth for the duration of the game. PD is a dangerous place as you have limited visibility and you're shallow enough for surface vessels to potentially get a piece of the 'scope or even the sail... Stealth also goes down when you have a 'scope and antennas making a wake on the surface. (On top of how exhausting it is for the control room party to maintain PD and a scope watch...)

      Unless they're in port or on surface transit, boats will probably get the game and the score the same way they have for decades... fasties and non-alert boomers will pick it up when they next grab a sked or a satellite pass, alert boomers will pick up whatever gets sent across the wire (VLF).

      Been there done that, got the t-shirt. Though back in the day it was something of a tradition to send the score of important games (especially the Army-Navy game) out as FLASH priority traffic. (I.E. went to the head of the queue and had transmission priority over pretty much everything but nuclear launch orders.)

  • Attack while they are all watching a football match

  • I sure hope they're doing something obvious like fuzzing the feed over those classified channels. I'd hate to see an opponent get an opportunity to attack the crypto when there's a 4 hour-long known plaintext transmission.

    • Wish I'd said that -- and been attacked for it.
    • Known plaintext is the weakest form of attack. Every cipher in modern cryptography is resistant to it. This would not be a big deal. Using AES in CBC mode is believed to be IND-CPA secure even, which means that it is secure against chosen plaintext attacks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      There should be no risk in sending something like this. First you don't have a known plain text because you don't know what the output of the video encoder for the stream is; though you might make some guess like; its probably mpegts and therefore there ought to be a certain magic number every 288 bytes etc. I am sure it helps the crypto analyst but probably not that much.

      Next while I don't know anything about military communications in particular; I am pretty confident they are not using unchanging per-s

      • OFB and CTR are weaker than CBC and similar modes in that you don't need to have correctly deciphered the previous block to decipher the next one, you only need to know the key, initialization vector and the position in the stream

        If you have the key then you can decrypt the first block and all the other blocks in a CBC encrypted stream so it doesn't really matter. If you have the key you win no matter what. With CBC, losing a packet of ciphertext would mess up only adjacent blocks, errors do not propagate. Also, CBC decryption requires only the previous ciphertext, not the plaintext. OFB and CTR are both proven to be IND-CPA (assuming a secure block cipher and your counter is not reused), so they are no weaker than any other mode

  • Gee, media, government, and technology partnership acts to provide commercial sporting event to soldiers despite the remoteness of their locations. How about not putting soldiers in remote locations to start with?

  • Hangers (Score:4, Informative)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @04:00PM (#42780095) Homepage Journal

    Do they dangle the aircraft from the roof? No. The word is "hangars".

    Hangers are what you put shirts and coats on, you wrist-tapping gibbons.

  • Wouldn't it seem risky to broadcast a data stream where the original state is known and the encrypted state can be intercepted?

  • Everywhere you go you must watch. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. We are the Borg.

  • Couldn't they just pre-record the game on a Hollywood back-lot and send the tapes to the subs before they go on patrol? It's just sports so it isn't like the outcome actually matters.

  • Isn't this a risk (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Since the information can be predicted and known by any would be interceptor, isn't it a fairly considerable risk that it gives that interceptor a great chance to break parts of how that information is transmitted and encoded?

  • Laughably wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

    by michael021689 ( 791941 ) on Sunday February 03, 2013 @05:38PM (#42780753)
    This is an impressively ill formed and ill researched article, even if you consider the reputation of the site that is distributing it.

    The misinformation spread about the Navy, and submarines specifically, is awe inspiring. Whereas most of the government spends its efforts to protect secrecy fruitlessly, the Navy seems to have grasped the idea of quantity. If you spew enough bullshit out, it doesn't matter if someone says the truth because it will be lost in a wave misinformation.

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