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Navy ELF to Be Scrapped
engywook writes "National Public Radio and The Daily Press of Ashland, Wisconsin (among others, I'm sure) are reporting that the US Navy plans to scrap the Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) system for communication with its fleet of nuclear submarines, both in Wisconsin and Michigan. The report states that the Navy no longer feels that ELF is necessary, and that they will now rely on 12 VLF systems. The system has been in operation since October 1989. The system has been protested nearly the whole time, both as a part of a Weapon of Mass Destruction and as a potential health hazard."
Well, lets see: The VLF was designed to get around Soviet technology and communicate with our subs so the Soviets could not listen in on our coded transmissions. If VLF works (who else has an equivalent submarine fleet?) and ELF harms mammalian sea life, then scrap ELF. Besides, tuned wavelength lasers from space and aircraft can communicate (at least in shallower depths) with subs and not have to worry about spreading sound waves around the planet for all to hear and try to decode. Also, lasers can carry much more information than you can with ELF or VLF and you don't have to worry about carrier waves and such either.
Also, having been on an earlier Australian sub (Oberon class), late model Australian submarine (Colins class), British submarine and several US subs, I might be tempted to say no other nation in the world can compete with the technology in the US subs. Everything else just buzzes through the water for all to hear while the latest Seawolf class is truly stunning with amazing amounts of technology layered upon layer that slips through the water with uncanny silence. Which brings up another issue: Why does the US need such a large submarine fleet? Perhaps to counter a possible naval conflict with China over Taiwan? I believe N. Korea has a few (ancient) subs...... More tactical boats perhaps would be prudent, but....
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Yeah, finally time to throw away our tinfoil hats!
If radio antennas are considered weapons of mass destruction, I think we are all in trouble.
Well, it is known that Saddam did in fact, have radio antennas in Iraq, and I believe that there are still some there now.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
"Gaylord and I worked since 1972 together to try and end financing first for Project Sanguine and then ELF. The Navy would always whip us."
I see that nothing's changed in the Navy, then...
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The news article doesn't really have any technical information on ELF, so here's the obligatory Wikipedia article.
Of course, the first haphazard search I tried came up with this.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
...that Legolas was the first sign that ELFs were hazardous to our health. Anything that pale CAN'T be healthy.
A quick reality check here. In 2003, a "noisy" Australian deisel boat sunk two US nuclear attack subs and an aircraft carrier during joint war games. The Dutch have done the same sort of thing. On a previous occasion, an Australian sub sat underneath a US carrier, inside the CBG cordon, and followed it around for some days. At the end of the exercise it surfaced next to the carrier to the horror and amazement of all involved.
The biggest danger the US navy faces is hubris my boy. That's the real thing you have to watch out for.
I stand corrected and was unaware of these exercises. Mod parent up. :-)
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Does this mean that the Navy will go back to creating a.out binaries and libraries? I thought they only ran Window$ on their ships....
for communication with its fleet of nuclear submarines, both in Wisconsin and Michigan
Yet more evidence that we must vote Kerry - Bush has our nuclear subs stationed in the Midwest.
paintball
Don't confuse me with a conspiracy theorist when I say there's absolutely no reason to conclude the technology is being scraped.
Years ago the military was highly interested in non-lethal weapons that were based on a wide number of bizarre technologies including wretched smells, sonic weapons (that would make you crap your pants, or knock someone over like a 'rubber mattress hit them'), electomagnetic frequences (that cause nausea, sleepiness) and all kinds of other reality-weirder-then-fiction technologies.
Then one day seemingly in the midst of much progress they just dropped the whole thing--the budget went poof.
Since then many of the technologies have been witnessed and it's not really too hard to find info about it on the web.
I picked an example that was more over-the-top sounding then neccesary, however my point is the military's perogative is to keep their cards hidden and have the upper hand. I wish there was a way to say that more matter of factly and still drive in that point.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
The Navy is no longer interrested in nuking the whales, they feel that confusing the hell out of them provides for hours of humour. In canada we feel different. Our submarines let the water in so we can speak to them directly :D Much more natural don't you think?
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
A lot of classic conspiracy theories revolve around ELF and VLF.
The basic recurring premise ranges anywhere from a single person to an entire town (Eugene, OR) being bombarded with V/ELF and studying the effects. The results are hardly "mass-destructive", but rather annoying: nosebleeds, headaches, premature arthritis, sore throats, unexplainable bruised, etc. Supposedly, a US official working in the US Embassy in Moscow contracted a fatal rare blood disease, and hidden V/ELF transmitter was found hidden in the walls, aiming right for his desk.
The theories allege the military and intelligence agencies were interested to see if purposefully exposing subjects would be effective as a form on mind control. I don't mean mind control in the literal sense where someone says "Go kill your neighbor" and the subject says ok and snaps to it. More like putting someone's mental state into disarray, hoping in the confusion the person would be more susceptible to suggestions and persuasive tactics.
These "experiments" flat out don't work. There's no science to back it up. But the point is someone with authority believed they could work and spent a lot of taxpayer money trying. And that's the real shame.
Please take this with a grain of salt. There's no need to go into a huge exposition trying to debunk these stories. You save it. I'm just repeating these unsubstantiated tidbits. Reports like these fueled many an X-Files episode. The producers/writers didn't come up with these things out of thin air. They're interesting to read. Not to "find out what happened", but to get an insight into the background stories X-Files sometimes use.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I don't know much about the particulars of what happened in those war games, but diesel and nuclear subs are very different. When operating, diesel subs are much more noisy than nuclear subs. However, diesel subs can turn off their engine and run completely silent. On the other hand, a nuclear reactor is always on. If you're trying to avoid detection, it's much better to be in a diesel sub.
It is still impressive that two US attack subs were sunk, but this isn't because US technology is behind. It's because an older technology has a single advantage (the ability to run noiseless for short periods of time) that can be exploited in close quarters to great advantage.
A quick reality check here. In 2003, a "noisy" Australian deisel boat sunk two US nuclear attack subs and an aircraft carrier during joint war games. The Dutch have done the same sort of thing.
That doesn't say much all by itself.
What were the rules?
What was the mission of each side?
Were there any handicaps?
Did the US sink any ships? etc etc etc
For all that story tells us, the US might have sunk 30 ships. I'm not trying to insult Australians here, I'm just saying that article is REALLY vague.
Life is too short to proofread.
ELF, 30-3000 Hz VLF, 3-30 kHz Oh I'm sorry did all of you overlook the fact that the /entire/ country of USA, and most of the rest of the world is /dependant/ upon 50, 60 and *enter your countries standard here* hertz frequencies?
They are emitted daily from antennas in your street or above your street, in and around your house completely covering your family like a big fudging faraday cage!!
The earth terminals which save your life /and/ rid the household of static electricity sure as hell look like a mighty fine dipole to me!
Especially when you multiply it by, oh, every house in the world with electricity.
Lets take a look at a rather interesting report:
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw104732_20040 926.htm/
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CONTROVERSY: A federal judge in Wisconsin halted construction of the system in 1984, saying more environmental and health studies were needed. A federal appeals court in Chicago overturned that decision. The Navy said it spent more than $25 million to study the impact of ELF's electromagnetic fields, which were described as similar in nature and strength to those produced by power distribution lines.
POLITICS: Within years after ELF was built, Wisconsin politicians, including U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold and the congressman who represented the Clam Lake area, Rep. Dave Obey, called for its closure."
After attending militar excersises with US personell, I can confrim this. In one excercise, our home guard kicked the ass of the USMC. I find that incredible, but not if you analyse the mentality of the USMC. They fly in on choppers, equipped with the baddest and coolest in military technology. They are big fellas with kick-ass war faces. Then their chopper lands and they jump out. And fall into 2 meters of fine grained snow. The the Norway Home Guard (Maybe even that cute girl on the picture) come loafing around on their cheap-ass skis (The skis are called "NATOboards", guess why. See them here: picture). The USMCs are thouroghly stuck in the snow, not able to reach their equipment, and all of the team are killed by headshots, according to MILES.
Also, the american forces are a bit naïve. On another excercise, navy SEALs were to rescue 2 prisoners from a building on the top of a hill. They left a bunch of equipment behind, as the excercise did not allow for CS gas to be used. The Norwegians responded by having only a couple of gunmen in the building, while digging the others into the ground at the foot of the hill. As the SEALs passed the soldiers by 50 meters, the ones in the building pounded the SEALs with CS, and the dig-in soldiers ran up and shot the confused SEALs in the back. The SEALs complained that they iddin't excpect CS to be use and had no ABC equipment with them. Their colonel apparently gave them a chewing out, becaus they were so incredibly naïve to think that every force in the world would obey the rules...
Nonsense. The us navy is painfully aware of the dangers posed by quiet -- be they ultra quieted SEAWOLF class nukes, DE's (diesel electrics) or the new generation of european AIP (Air Independant Propulsion) boats.
Oh, and there were 3 DE's, not one. Oh, and your "noisy" comment: a DE is only noisy while it's snorkeling. When she's on battery propulsion, she's as quieter than a nuke, generally speaking. Trust me, nobody in the US Navy thinks DEs are rattle buckets.
And the Navy knows, having been taught this lesson by its own submarine fleet, that a quiet boat is a fearsome, almost invincible enemy. The purpose of the excercise was to help the Navy figure out how to take out a DE operating in the littorals. It ain't easy.
The one and only reason the Collins's survived is because the engagement orders required the CVBG to enter into her backyard, where the DE's advantages were best put to use.
No one was surprised, only highly irritated.
The biggest danger to the navy is littoral DE and AIP submarine proliferation, mines, and high speed small boats packed with explosives, manned by the willing-to-die. The biggest danger to the navy isn't hubris, and frankly, i find the implication offensive.
from a former seawolf (SSN-575) sailor.
That's the only reason the Navy will give up on a technology. After six years in boats, two years in training prior to, I came away very impressed with the ongoing developments of tech as an instrument of war. The Soviets could not beat us in that arena, even with Walker trying to make money off what he knew... The only other venue for tech development (outside that for warfighting capability) that has shown in recent history such rapid progress has been the race for the moon in the sixties.. Remember, the US interstate highway system was modelled after Hitler's auotobahn system - designed for high speed transport of war materiel and troops...
A quick Google search revealed the following: ZEVS, THE RUSSIAN 82 Hz ELF TRANSMITTER. Located near Murmansk. The article has some nice maps, screenshot of the spectrum, etc.
As for the story with the CS - I guess I don't see the point of that. If the purpose of the training is to operate without CS, then why blame the soldiers for doing the exercise as they were asked to? Ok, in real-life you don't know whether the other side would use CS, but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
Looking at the performance of the US military you can't really claim that they don't know how to fight. Quite apparently they are up to the job when it comes to real life. Their main deficits (as I see it) is in policing - they perform well in conquering a place, but poorly in holding it. That's sufficient if the main purpose of your military is defence, but it's a disadvantage if you want to conquer/bring peace/build an empire (pick according to political view).
As a last resort, we could look at the science behind ELF before we worry too much about the "damage": (1) ELF transmitters are only a megawatt or so. The ELF waves are sooo long (many thousands of miles), that a little 50 mile antenna only radiates oh, maybe 5 watts of effective radiated power. (the rest just heats up the wires). Those 5 watts get spread more-or-less evenly all around the earth. (2) Your tpical large marine creature is maybe one billionth the size of the earth, so we're down to maybe 5-billionths of a watt hitting the beast. (3) Your typical animal is an even smaller fraction of the thousand-mile ELF wavelength. So about 99.99999% of the energy incident on say a giant squid goes right through it. We're now down to 5 quadrillionths of a watt. (4) A typical nerve discharge is around a THOUSAND to a MILLION times that amount of energy, so the ELF signal is that much weaker than the thousands of nerve impluses going off right inside the squid's body every second. (5) So I would not worry too much about ELF harming anything. (6) And, oh, as other have mentioned, the energy from power lines is many orders of magnitude stronger than ELF (and even that is hard to pick up any distance from power lines).
I've got a good story 'bout this.
There's used to be an annual NATO tank competition called the "Canadian Army Trophy".
When the M1 first came out, it caused quite a stir, as it was far faster and quieter than had been expected. But the thermal sights also gave the Yanks a huge advantage on the pop-up target range.
It seems that the motors used to raise/lower the popups were hot enough to show up on the thermal sights, and the thermal load from raising a target made the motor glow hotter before the target was fully raised and visible. Accordingly, the M1 kicked ass on the popup range, and overall swept the competition.
The following year, the Canadians (who hosted the competition) placed a large number of thermal dummy motors out on the popup range - and the M1 placed miserably. They also adjusted their own tactics to deal with the M1's strengths, and soundly defeated the Yanks.
The lesson here is that while a technological advantage can indeed give you the upper hand, such an advantage is fleeting. Properly motivated and creative soldiers can devise ways to defeat your tech anvantage and can and will hand you your ass.
DG
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I'm not an American either, but I worked alongside (and "fought" against them) many times - and there is unquestionably a "national character" to the US (and other nations') Army.
Keep in mind that I'm generalizing here.
The American Army is huge, has a lot of really good and impressive kit (not necessarily the best stuff, but the average iquality level is pretty good and they have a LOT of it) and undertrained.
By "undertrained" I mean that the average American soldier is very heavily specialized and is often explicitly forbidden to branch out. Each soldier has a specific job and a specific purpose.
Whereas in smaller armies like the Canadian or the Isreali, soldiers are expected to do much more and are encouraged (within certain limits) to improvise.
A quick example: let's say you are a commander, on top of a ridgeline, advancing with an armoured brigade towards an objective a few km away. On the next ridge up is a wooded area you think might be harbouring an enemy infantry position.
If you are Canadian, you will send forward your very highly trained and impressively skilled brigade recce troop. They will sneak forward, scout out the woods, and report back on what they found without the enemy (if he is there or not) ever noticing that they were there. If the enemy is in the woods, you will then quickly plan out a brilliant and innovative quick attack that takes the enemy completely by suprise (and in the flank too) eliminating the enemy with the minimum amount of own losses and ammo expenditure.
If you are American, you call up two more brigades out of your division, and the three of you pound the wooded area flat with direct fire, while divisional artillery fires in indirect support, and the Air Force adds a squadron of B52s. Once the fire mission stops, you will send a patrol of junior privates up to the matchstick pile to see if they can find any fragments of the enemy. If they don't, there was a company in there; if they do, it was at least a division.
Which technique is more effective? *shrug*
What does wind up happening though is that any time you fight the Yanks size-on-size, they Yanks typically get the short end of the stick. The counter-argument is that the Yanks NEVER fight size-on-size, so it doesn't matter.
I will say this though - any time we schooled some Yanks, they were typically VERY enthusiastic about how we did it, and wanted to learn. They weren't stupid or unprofessional, just undertrained and overmanaged.
DG
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