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The Internet and The War
John Jorsett writes "Wired Magazine has an interesting article on the realities of the use of communication and navigation technology in the Iraq war. Particularly intriguing is the use of chat rooms to engage experts thousands of miles away in helping to solve problems at the troop level in the field. And if you think your admin job is tough, try running your servers in 125 degree heat in a sandstorm."
I'm sure that there is encryption at the network layer (ala IPSEC or VPN), so using an unencrypted application layer program (like MS Chat) isn't a problem.
If you actually *read* the article, you will see that the reporter talks about (sigh) a "secret Internet" and a "Tactical Internet". What they really mean is a "WAN" (the reporter refers to it as a "far-flung LAN"). It even says that the WAN is NOT connected to the Internet.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"If We Run Out of Batteries, This War is Screwed."
By Joshua Davis
It's early April, days before the fall of Baghdad, and a convoy of trucks from the 11th Signal Brigade is rolling through southern Iraq. The mission: establish a digital beachhead in central Iraq. Without this advance node and a handful like it, the Army's Third Infantry Division cannot receive the precise targeting information it needs to fight its way into the capital.
About 9 am, soldiers in the convoy see something that fills them with dread: four dead sheep by the side of the dusty road. Within a mile, they spot two more and quickly pull the convoy to a halt. What many had feared since arriving in the Middle East now looks to be a reality: chemical attack. The convoy leader does two things, one in keeping with well-established military protocol and one entirely new. First, he makes a lot of noise. He lets out three long blasts on the horn - the low tech signal for a chemical attack. Then, after donning his own protective gear, he turns to a computer terminal bolted to the dash of his vehicle.
Suspect chemical attack, he types into a Microsoft Chat session running on the tactical Internet, the military's battlefield communications system.
Multiple dead sheep by side of road. Pls advise.
Two hundred miles away - in a warehouse at Forward Command - Lieutenant Colonel Norman Mims, the intelligence officer for the 11th, sees this curious message appear in the chat room and replies, How many sheep over how much distance?
6 sheep. Approx. 1 mile.
A veteran of Desert Storm, Mims has learned that sheep in the region regularly die and are simply dragged to the side of the road. The number and distance are typical.
Unless air quality is degraded, chemical attack unlikely.
If this had been Gulf War I, the convoy would have lost a full day - calling in the incident by radio, describing it to three or four rungs up the command ladder, and waiting for a crew of specialists to arrive, test the air, and give the all-clear. But this war is different. An email gives the sheep's coordinates to a chemical investigation team, and the convoy just keeps moving.
The history of warfare is marked by periodic leaps in technology - the triumph of the longbow at Crécy, in 1346; the first decisive use of air power, in World War I; the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, in 1945. And now this: a dazzling array of technology that signals the arrival of digital warfare. What we saw in Gulf War II was a new age of fighting that combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and - above all - a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected minute by minute.
Welcome to the so-called revolution in military affairs, the new theory of war that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been promoting since he arrived at the Pentagon in 2001. Generals at Central Command, in Qatar, put the concept into practice as they sent troops racing toward Baghdad, hopscotching across Iraq, and sidestepping enemy assaults. If rear units were attacked, if supply lines were threatened - so the theory went - the technology would allow soldiers to spot the problem quickly enough to dispatch defenders, who would swarm to the rescue. Information would take the place of a massive troop presence on the ground. Dead sheep could be safely ignored. In short, the war was a grand test of the netcentric strategy in development since the first Gulf War.
At least, that's the triumphal view from the Pentagon briefing room. But what was it like on the ground? As Wired's war correspondent, I tracked the network from the generals' plasma screens at Central Command to the forward nodes on the battlefields in Iraq. What I discovered was something entirely different from the shiny picture of techno-supremacy touted by the proponents of the Rumsfeld doctrine. I found an unsung corps of geeks improvising as they went, cobbling
There has been alot of press made about the US military's changes in the way it communicates and it's desire to "swarm" on an enemy instead of the old way it and every other army has moved and communicated.
Basicly since the Romans every conventional army moved like a great set of parallel lines with interconnecting lines between them for communication and supply.
There has been a layer of abstraction between what the Generals tell the Colonels, what the Colonels tell the Captains, what the Captains tell the Lieutenants and what the Lieutenants tell thier soldiers.
Since the Revolution the layers of abstraction grew wider and wider.
By the Second World War, the United States Army had the widest gulf between the commanders and the men at the front of any Army in the European Theatre of Operation.
By Vietnam it was worse and the Gulf War it came to a head when Schwarzkopf canned a General who refused to advance due to a lack of fuel for his M-1s.
Now what is happening is remarkably fast adaptation of technology and communications systems for an Army.
In Afghanistan it was possible for A-Teams on the ground to contact the Pentagon directly and request supplies for themselves or thier allies on the ground and to have those things loaded within hours on C-17s.
Beyond the chat-rooms and GPS are the data-links between aircraft like the newer F-15s, F-22s, Grippens, Comanche, or data-links between ships, helicopters and patrol aircraft.
An example of this can be seen in the F-22. The radar of the F-22 has many modes, but one of them is to sit there dark and listen for radar signals, then it sends out pencil thin beams to detect the engines of an aircraft and it compiles a list of possible types from that signature. Using a data-link the detecting F-22 can send back detailed target information and aircraft behind the lead aircraft can launch AIM-120 missiles on a profile to light thier radars only when they get close to the target.
People have been pooh-pooing this revolution in communication and sensors in the press, but I think there is an assumption of rapid technology adpotion in the private sector that just doesn't happen in the military, but as militaries go the United States is adopting at a revolutionary rate.
They also need an MP3 player to torture those poor captured representatives of the former Iraqi regime with heavy metal and children's songs.
You mean like this?
GMD
watch this
Interesting article from WSJ that talks about these new Warriors.
"GCCS runs over Siprnet - the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network"
Just how damned difficult is it to get acronyms right?
The correct definition is "Secure Internet Protocol Network," although I have also heard it as "Secure Internet Protocol Router Network"
Apparently, very difficult.
Exactly. A large percentage of the traffic on the tactical internet takes place via tcp/ip on encrypted, frequency hopping fm packet radios. And commo is always ready to push out new comsec in case of any compromise. This keeps them pretty secure. Trying to use any of it outside line-of-sight is a bitch, though.
Most of the important stuff in the theater of operations runs on Solaris, usually.
Now I'm sure someone will complain about my talking up the F-22 and claim I'm over Tom Clancy'ing it's capabilities or something.
My info came from International Air Power Review Volume 5 pages 60-62 and covers the ALR-94 passive receiver, Intra-Flight Datalink and APG-77 radar in non-cooperative target recognition and jet engine modulation modes.
There are more pressing military waste issues than M$ licensing to worry about, like the one trillion missing USD that they simply can't explain. ("Sorry, Senator, I must have left it in my other pants.")
SIPRNet is one of several DoD operated internets that are physically separate from The Internet(tm), but use the same technology (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP web servers, etc.) Interconnections between physically secure LANs are over dedicated point-to-point facilities that are bulk encrypted with hardware. It is used for very low-level classified information ("SECRET"). (This level of classification is used for information like today's weather forecast, as opposed to, say, the launch codes for nuclear missiles.) There's also a "sensitive" but unclassified version called NIPRNet, again physically separate. The military likes air gaps.
Owning the crypto box does you no good without the key sets. In fact, I think the SIPR crypto is compatible with the old KG-84s which John Walker gave away so long ago. As with software, it doesn't matter if the algorithm is known.
I expect the keys are routinely changed daily for this application based on similar levels of security for other purposes, but I don't really know.
Nothing about the network architecture prohibits using other levels of encryption at other layers in the protocol stack. You can still use IPSec, SSL, SSH, web site passwords, ROT13, and all that to your hearts' content. SIPRNet just provides data link encryption.
The bit about Rumsfeld and Franks teleconferencing is probably fluff. If true, they may well have had additional crypto on either end. Or not; it might've been along the lines of "How's it going, Tommy? Fine, sir, fine."
Actually, they DID have contingencies. If the sub was ever boarded, abandoned, or could possibly change hands in any way, the comm oficers were ordered to throw the books describing the Enigma into the water on the floor. These books were printed with a special red ink on pink paper. The ink would disolve as soon as it hit the water.
Without those books, the Enigma would be completely useless. They contained the schedule describing the first few letters the operators had to type to use the machine for any given day. It was a great system, really. The Enigma was eventually captured, but it took quite some doing.