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Satellite Access in Time of War
miladus writes "Interesting report in the Washington
Post this morning about how the Pentagon is buying access to commercial satellites to meet its bandwidth needs. Most of the commercial access will be used for backup to the military satellites and for non-military tasks. And the Pentagon has to compete on the market with all the news organizations trying to cover the conflict in Iraq."
I know from working at different military installations that commercial services are used quite often for military purposes. All of the projects I've worked on utilizing satellite comms have always been over commercial satellites with Type-1 encryption.
I say let them have it. Better the Pentagon use it for something constructive than biased talking heads for their fluffed up stories.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
I've always wondered about the amount of actual bandwidth available to news organizations like CNN, the BBC and the rest. It's one of those things that came to mind whenever I'd see something like the grainy videophone footage we got used to in Gulf War 1.0, that looked like it was shot with a QuickCam using the Sony Pantycam(tm) image enhancement.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
So fast and easy to use, no wonder its number 1!!! Even make use of parental filters!
(ducks)
Someone tell these guys there's a War going on.
At a time like this, they shouldn't be downloading more pr0n!
--
GWB: "My troops went Iraq, and all they brought home for me was a lousy body bag"
It seems more likely to me that they'd be given carte blanche out of either patriotism, or the desire to capitalise on same ("Hey look, we gave more than anyone else to the War Effort").
Just how safe is this? Their data can be compromised and sold to other countries by greedy and unethical companies. Their protocols and encryption methods can be cracked and discovered. Think of the implications.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
While information to the citizens is important, the safety of the people that are doing the fighting comes first. They need data to do their job and come home in one piece. THAT is the first priority.
What screwy priorities, there should be *no* issue... ' we need the bandwidth, too bad' ' you |biased| news services can have what is left'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
With the budget that the Pentagon has, I'm sure that's no competition...
The Pentagon competing with the likes of CNN and the BBC over sattelite time?
:|
"We now cross live to our correspondant, Richard Jones, in the north of Iraq..."
"Affirmative.. unit 4, prepare to advance on the enemy position to your south."
"Ermmmm...."
I know it wouldn't happen, but hey.. at least try and have a little humour at such a bad time
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Anyone captured any cool pictures from satellites yet, perhaps using a setup like the one described here I'm considering going to Washington DC to photograph protests, etc. but I'm not sure how safe it would be, since Washington is probably the main target for retaliation.
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
I wouldn't think CNN's crappy videophone would take up much bandwidth. C'mon CNN, where's the technology?
Find public companies that own satellites inolved in this and invest heavily for one to three weeks.
Deep pockets are going to fight over limited resources - which means a lot of money is going to be exchanged in the short term.
Assuming that they satellite companies don't offer some sort of bargain deal or preference to the military/gov't, then they are looking to make a metric crapload on this.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
With the military using satelite bandwidth, will this have any effect on SPAM? It would be a shame if the whole SPAMMER infrastructure came to a halt during the war. Most likely I just miss out on re-runs of Gilligan's Island. And as far as politics are concerned, I stopped being ashamed to be an American the day Hill Billy Boy left office.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
the goddamn size 85 arial fonts should
help the bandwidth problem. Half the
page is only three words.
That's got to help.
Of course I almost had a
seizure when I first loaded it.
-J
My question is this: why are all the reporters who are reporting "via videophone" burdened with such bad reception? A decent ISDN connection should be able to have fairly smooth video and audio, yet the CNN reporter on the USS Lincoln and the CNN reporter in Northern Iraq both had super-grainy video and sketchy audio. Don't these reporters have access to a satellite uplink? And if not, why can't they get enough bandwidth over a decent ISDN connection?
Anyone knows about a working webcam in iraq?
Since when is democracy based on the amount of money you have/are able to gather from powerhungry corps?
That's what bothers me the most. Maybe after the fact that he was voted for by a minority of the electors. Something is realy wrong here.
I heard that civilian use of GPS may become less acurate, during war. This morning I fired mine up and it says: "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you're the biggest customer, you would have the added benefit of being able to task sats not only to cover what you want, but also to *not* cover areas you'd just as soon commercial services not have access to.
if countries like iraq or its allies had the capability to destroy or disrupt satellite com?
END OF LINE
Pentagon set Saddam up the bomb!
For great justice...
Seriously, after watching yet another Castro News Network reporter effectively asking a soldier in the field "Is there anything useful to the Iraqis that you could tell us?" last night, I'm not overly concerned about those jokers running a tad low on bandwidth. I'm sure they'll play the tapes of anything interesting when they get back home, after it loses its military importance.
Fox News was kicked out of Iraq. Saddam knows who his friends are.
How much closer to the heart of terrorism could a president strike?
Terrorism? Iraq? A "president" could strike much closer, idiot. As far as Osama and chums are concerned, Saddam Hussian is just as much an infidel as you or I.
GWB just wants to make sure his access to nickjr.com remains unimpeded.
Best Windows Freeware
The Pentagon "is hoovering up all the available capacity," said Richard DalBello, president of the Satellite Industry Association, a trade group.
I can't tell if he's amazed or excited. Chances are DalBello is calculating his stock options as we speak. War will always make some people millionaires.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
...So, My hard earned money that gets sucked away to taxes is being spent on access to corporately owned satellites that are in a bidding war for either A) Keeping our troops safe or B) Letting Geraldo Rivera run around in the desert and state idiotic comments and a bunch of talking heads bouncing signals saying the same stupid things over and over.
Great.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
They already control the uplinks, why not take the logical next step and use the bandwidth when the journalists aren't?
It's not like the media is going to report anything negative about them... they want to keep their "approved" status.
Sukotto
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
Jesus Christ! well this is the first time I've learned something useful from /.
My question is: how safe is this for the companies? Civilian resources that are used during a time of war become targets. We hit a civilian bomb shelter during the last war that was being used a command and control center.
Of Course it could all jsut be a ploy to keep CNN's video phone coverage grainy ;)
--Im an oven mitt, not an engineer! (SLArbys Radio Commercial)
Because it is considered bad form to bash your leader when he needs the prayers and support of his people that he make the right decisions in a time of great trial. Whether we agree with him or not.
--Im an oven mitt, not an engineer! (SLArbys Radio Commercial)
It looks like the Govt. is not only buying up bandwidth, but also commercial satellite photography services.
I don't htink USA has any shortage of imaging tech., most probably trying to stop Saddam from buying the images
How are they going to stop bin Laden tho. , how long can they monopolize commercial satellites?
Scary.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
An Inmarsat spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the company puts all of its customers on equal footing.
Media companies such as Fox pay about $1.50 per minute for voice communication via satellite and about $6 per minute to transmit video.
I must admit I'm really surprised by these numbers. $1.50 for voice is not far from what we paid for ordinary cell phones 5 years ago. Will be interesting to see if these kind of services can be extended to the use of ordinary people one day.
It'll be cheaper than bidding against them for satellite time....
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
So, you basically keep funding Israel's occupation and then wonder why the Arabs have a problem with your role in the Middle-East?
The reason you see VideoPhone's in certain areas is becuase they are in hostile zones. In hostile zones, all press has been warned that planes scanning above for radar sites will see an upling as a ping on them the same as a radar site... That could cause many problems. As far as reporters onboard ships, the ships are not going to give them alot of bandwidth via their sat. hookups. So they have to use what they get. Hope that helps.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
Silly. The military has plenty of bandwidth, they buy up commercial bandwidth during conflicts to keep bad guys from using it. They probably buy up bandwidth and then sell it back to CNN and other friendly services, maybe at a loss, but it's just another mechanism for controlling information in the battlefield.
Two things,
1) I would guess (having not read the article) that any information that is encrypted tighter than a whale's bum under water, is either comms stuff, or information that is non-critical, things like before and after shots of Saddam's royal palaces, the before shot might be useful but the smoking crater that is the after shot will be very little use, and almost indistinguishable from all the other smoking holes in the ground
2) As to the civilian satellites being targets, despite what the spin doctoring and hawks would have you believe Saddam would have trouble getting ordinance to hit a barn door at 50 metres, never mind picking satellites off.
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
Our troops are in the Gulf because of US oil interests, Israel's security and because George the Second wants to outdo his father and also to avenge Saddam's plan to assassinate George I.
And the Pentagon has to compete on the market with all the news organizations trying to cover the conflict in Iraq
... We can? Well, thanks!"
"Hello, CBS? We'd like some of that bandwidth you've reserved. No? Well, OK. Say, out of pure curiosity, what are Dan Rather's coordinates?
Yeah, meeting the demand; just like Fox News.
[Maybe i'll burn some karma on this one, but after watching Fox News coverage off the Iraq-war for a couple of hours I just had too.]
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
I seem to remember them doing something very similar in Afghanistan (sorry, don't have time to dredge up a link). But in that case, they didn't need the capacity (not that I heard, anyway): they bought the pictures from the commercial imaging satellites to stop anyone else getting their hands on them. ISTR news agencies being less than happy with it at the time...
It is time for our great country of America to end our dependence on publicly held bandwidth!
We will no longer allow our children to be held hostage by the threat of foriegn satellites. We will be resolute and just in our cause, as we cannot risk anymore lives.
Without going to war with any country that threatens to charge us for data access, we would allow the proliferation of ways to take our money and force us to act like a responsible part of the world. We will not allow this to happen.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
If we're jamming every radio communication in Iraq and taking out their telephones, how is it that CNN et al can have live broadcats out of Baghdad? I assume that we can selectively jam communications, or is it something else?
I merely said bias.. few, if any simply REPORT the news now, its all commentary based interpretation of the news.
Thus why I said biased. I'm not making judgments of which side is right or wrong.. Only that its no longer simple news reporting.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Dammit, the Pentagon slashdotted my CNN!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
A state of war exists when Congress passes a delaration of war.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
/. is international.
GWB is not my leader, and I wont "pray" for him or his people.
I will not protest him either, I may not agree with GWB's techniques and impatience, however I do not think anyone could prove that Saddam is not a murderer, plague and parasite to Iraq.
The people of Iraq will probably have a lot of stories to tell about him and his evilness once he is gone, and they dont risk their families being tortured by saying it.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Well here's a question: Do commercial sattelites have the same encryption capabilities as military sattelites? I mean... I know commercial signals are scrambled so I can't steal HBO but are we compromising military communications by using a less secure sattelite system?
Have a Happy.
Bandwidth shmandwidth. This is propaganda control!
...take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information."
...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Bhagdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists ..."
...those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves."
BBC correspondent Kate Adie who is now covering the US invasion reports in an interview on Irish radio about pentegon censorship:
"I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness. The Americans... and I've been talking to the Pentagon
"I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks--that is the television signals out of... Bhagdad, for example--were detected by any planes
Some will argue this is a necessary step in protecting the invaders, but this threat came well before the 'war' started. I for one doubt physical safety is anywhere close the true goal here. Political and public opinion safety is more like it.
And perhaps foreshadowing our buying up extra bandwidth for 'backup' Adie later in the interview says:
"...the Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them, whether they are... have feelings against the war. And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.
Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical equipment
Guess she had it right.
A description of the interview with links to audio and other sources can be found here
*cough*SteveForbesRossPerot*cough*
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
There is still some non-military data coming from the satellites: http://www.methaz.com/blogpics/iraq.html
Hey! Where's _All My Children_? There's some guy in a green outfit and hat, talking funny while eating dinner instead! Damn networks! You just *can't* get good TV anymore! :-)
Although you're correct in that the US has incredible satellite imagery capabilities, the problem is that the satellites are orbiting the earth, and thus they can't have a satellite everywhere they need it, at all the time. I would speculate that they're using the commercial imagery satellites to make up for gaps in their coverage.
My other sig is funny!
Just curious if anyone has picked up any good downlinks?? I can link em up if the info appears(Sat Xponder (Mpeg3 y/n)) Gotta love BigUglyDishes
My mother in law is worse than yours...and yes I will trade!
FYI...
Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe are selling high resolution *images* ( 1m/pixel), not communication bandwidth...
Actually the question of bandwidth comes up quite a bit in modern warfare. I've heard stories about how available bandwidth during the Afghanistan conflict limited the use of UAV's....they require a HUGE amount of bandwidth to do all the telepresence capabilities, and the networks are already stressed with existing communications as well as "civilian" applications on the network like P2P. They would have liked to flown a couple more, but they couldn't without a risk of bringing the entire network to a halt.
Requirements documents for combat systems carefully document acceptable network and CPU usage, specifying average throughput, peak usage, etc. in attempt to avoid just these problems, but newer combat systems by design are very network-centric, and run into some of the same problems we encounter on the commercial side.
I'm sure the US has some geostationary satellites up for key sections of the planet.
As someone else pointed out, there's enough bandwith for better pictures. Oh dear, that's an AC and might be a troll. Anyone who remembers "satilite broadcasts" on CNN from the last Gulf war might think pictures could be clear. Surely capacity has not decreased since?
Grainy pictures, however, are a nice Product Placement.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
They might also need shelter from the cold, but quartering in your house any old way is a violation of the third amendment to the Constitution:
"Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Your patriotism is admirable but it does not give you rights to other people's property.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
how safe is this for the companies?
Well considering that their equipment is 22,400 miles a way, and it's all uphill to it; I'd say it's pretty safe. It's not like Iraq could do anything to a satalite, and the bandwidth is pretty much a commodity, so Knocking out the other guys bandwidth is the same as knocking out your own. As long as the providers are playing fair their satelites would be off limits. Now Military satelites a lot of the time are place in polar orbits usualy circular about 600 mi up, still hard to hit.
If you mean how safe is it for ground stations, I'd guess that it's pretty perilous for them. We've warned journalists not to go roaming arround Iraq and try to connect to a satalite.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That could lead to a serious shortage who knows what they'll do next like buy up all of the Britteny Spears MP3 off gnutella!
Sorry if you wasn't joking, just in case you wasn't they're digital first one costest plenty, the next just a blank cd or bandwidth.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The problem is that journalists reporting live on events as they occur is that it's a great way to tell the enemy exactly where we are and what we are planning. This really does pose a safety risk to the guys on the ground. If the reporting isn't controlled to some extent, this is essentially giving the enemy free information that they would otherwise use spies to collect.
I'm perfectly happy with having reporters present, but restricting them from reporting operational details until after the operations are complete. The last thing I want to see on the news is some guy reporting live with a detailed map of Baghdad pinpointing his location, and the location of troops, which I've already seen a couple of times today.
--there's two completely different ways to price oil, one is the common "by the barrel" using terms of "money". This is just as important as estimates of volume. You need not only the volume, it needs to be recoverable, and not recoverable in terms of just "money". The other way to measure recoverability is to use a more scientific approach than "money", and that is to refer to oil out of the ground as "the amount of BTUs of energy used to get back x-amount of BTUs of energy in the form of crude oil that is usefull and useable". With the latter method, the bulk of the world's reserves are simply not available for much longer, this is called loosely "peaking" as it refers to various fields, and barring some amazingly efficient energy source that would negate it's use on extracting oil because it would be redundant then, the mideast fields, roughly speaking, are the vast bulk of recoverable oil that will remain so beyond a few more years.
Here and there around the planet there remain some good fields, but for the long haul, it's the mideast, in particular iraq, saudi arabia and iran. Just recently in historical terms, north sea and mexican oil are peaked and in decline. There remains recoverable oil but it will be gone soon. These mideast fields are so far ahead in terms of being the big kahunas nothing else comes close. They will remain economically and physically "recoverable" long past any other fields, roughly speaking. A lot of those wells there are still self pumping, under pressure from underground, their recovery costs are very marginal, that's why their oil is cheap still. On the contrary, and for another example, the US still has lakes of oil underground, huge amounts, but the point is moot, most of them are capped off now, the energy in terms of required BTU's for extraction needed, usually by injecting water underground to force the oil up, is about at a net break even BTU to BTU level now, so that oil will stay down there, even if you have "money" to throw at the project. It's a waste of time almost completely, and beyond a waste of time if you value the water. They would be marginally useful should foreign oil not only crack 80$ a barrel, but if the cheaper oil was even available at all to extract the more expensive, and if the water was there to use, which in the US west, ain't available. Arctic oil is somewhat more valuable, eventually it will get used, societal demands will rise so high that any environmental concerns will be ignored. those concerns are rather over exaggerrated, and once the price at the pump hits double what it is now, opposition will evaporate to a fringe level beyond now, but even then, there just isn't that much there. A study I looked at is, it is enough to run the government itself at it's current size, so I can guess who's going to get it once it opens up.
This century is the century of the resource wars, particularly oil, water, and arable farm land that doesn't require artificial irrigation. We are in the peak and now starting to decline "good old days" when it comes to energy, and with that, industrial civilization. I doubt even 1% of the g;lobal population is even concerned at this point, feeling that oil is an infinte resource and all you need to have it is to throw money at the problem.
Early predictions of resource limits, in particular the 70's, were based on junk and inadequate science, well before the planet was mapped and explored better with radar, etc. It is almost 30 years later since those mid 70's predictions, we have advanced significantly in our ability to measure. Now that we can do it much more accurately, we have a much better handle on oil supplies. It really ain't pretty. It comes down to the mid east fields got the lion's share, by a huge margin. We still have tarsands, oilsands and oilshale, but the recovery costs are astronomical, and not hardly any better than a few per cent useful in terms of energy needed, and a net loss in terms of wasted and polluted water. It's somewhat useful in canada where they have water
(Three Kings reference)
George bush needs you! Needs your help! Free Iraq! Get Saddam Hussein out! George Bush, the president, wants you!
So, can we get the satellites?
No.
Ahh, the patriotism of capitalism. Democracy my ass.
All they have to do is follow through on this. That should increase available bandwidth.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The occupation is a justified reaction to aggression and attacks from this territory into Israel. The more we fund Israel, the sooner they can defeat the Palestinian army, and the the occupation CAN end.
Do they really need all the bandwidth? You'd think they've got enough satellites, enough networks so they would never have to rely on 3rd party commercial systems.
Perhaps they're trying to limit the free flow of information. The pentagon has never seemed particularly enthused by war journalists. They know information is dangerous. They want to be the one point of information. Less pictures of babies crushed in rubble, more pictures of Americans slaughtering night-gear-less Iraqi soldiers in the middle of the night. Oh wait, I guess thats out too now.
How else are they supposed to make this war look how they want it to? The war machine has its own interest at heart.
I remember several months ago there was an mention here on /. about a special small satellite dish transceiver unit (about the size of most carry-on luggage) that could transmit data at well over one megabits per second. With that type of bandwidth near-broadcast quality video is possible; how come nobody is using it right now in the Middle East?
Saddam is a Muslim, actually and while he's been a lowlife, I don't think that makes him as much of an "infidel" as it makes us for not being Muslim.
:/
...)
Under Sharia (Islamic law) non-Muslims DO NOT HAVE the same civil rights Muslims do. It's just not the same sort of crime to kill a Muslim vs. a non-Muslim, which is part of the problem
For all the talk about US imperialism, Islam has its own sort of "manifest destiny" encoded in it (e.g. they intend to subjugate the world under Sharia, eventually, and NOT to give up any land they subjugate... they believe that this will bring 'peace' via some contorted 'logic'
The government doesn't have any money of their own, its YOURS. And if they run low in the budget, they raise taxes. Now reconsider this bidding game you speak of. Beyond that, this transcends petty commercial issues. we are talking the lives of our fellow Americans, trying to defend our freedom. Regardless of how you feel about the war, ( which I'm NOT debating either direction here ) that is the reality of the situation now, their ass is on the line.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was a satellite communications tech in the military, then I got out and I now work for one of the satellite companies mentioned in this story.
Now that my industry is making headlines, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say, "HI MOM!"
They certainly have geosync satellites, but they aren't useful for visual surveillance: too far out. For video, you need to be quite close; the best results come from airborne drones. LEO (Low Earth Orbit) is OK: 100-odd miles up, where the Space Shuttle, International Space Station etc live. Out in GEO, you're moving at 2 miles per second, more than 20 000 miles up. Photographing the ground from 100+ miles up is difficult enough, but at 20 000?
--Offtopic but interesting: The above post is #5555555, is by an AC, and has been MODDED DOWN.
--Just a thought on life's little ironies.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
It's better than your tax dollars paying the millitary to put up their own sattelites to handle usually unneeded bandwidth. Do you have any idea how efficient these private companies are compared to Uncle Sam? Even in a bidding war I'll bet we're paying under 10% what a home-grown green-painted sattelite would cost.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I agree. CNN should use smaller fonts that use less bandwidth.
It places a burden on Congress to detail exaclty how and under what circumstances soldiers should be quartered. "Do it now, and as you like" would violate that and would require an amendment, not just an ordinary law.
You have to understand the respect for private property and law this underscores. Abitrary searches, confiscation and encumberance, even in time of war, are UnAmerican.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
terraserver still works...
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Those statements are obviously total bunk considering we currently can see Peter Arnette, feeds from MSNBC cams, and other such things on TV right now.
This space for rent.
I wasn't thinking about the actual satellites, so much as the offices, personnel, relay stations, etc. It weakens the presumption that civilians are off limits.
I don't htink USA has any shortage of imaging tech., most probably trying to stop Saddam from buying the images
How are they going to stop bin Laden tho. , how long can they monopolize commercial satellites?
At least for satellite imaging companies in the United States, one of the conditions in order to get a imaging satellite license is to abide by US government regulations that include a list of 'denied parties' that cannot be sold to, and the ability to issue 'shutter control' directives for sensitive parts of the world.
Of course, these limitations can't be applied to foreign satellites (eg Russian, French or Indian), however, those satellites also do not have the same resolution capabilities as the US satellites.
I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the
right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document
library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I
should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it
was by the time I find it.
I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe
"The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except
that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder
pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left
blank."
-- Alex Crain
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