US Stealth Jet Has To Talk To Allied Planes Over Unsecured Radio

Lasrick writes "David Axe at Wired's Danger Room explains: 'For the first time, America's top-of-the-line F-22 fighters and Britain's own cutting-edge Typhoon jets have come together for intensive, long-term training in high-tech warfare. If only the planes could talk to each other on equal terms. The F-22 and the twin-engine, delta-wing Typhoon — Europe’s latest warplane — are stuck with partially incompatible secure communications systems. For all their sophisticated engines, radars and weapons, the American and British pilots are reduced to one-way communication, from the Brits to the Yanks. That is, unless they want to talk via old-fashioned radio, which can be intercepted and triangulated and could betray the planes’ locations. That would undermine the whole purpose of the F-22s radar-evading stealth design, and could pose a major problem if the Raptor and the Typhoon ever have to go to war together.'"

Comments

Link 16

[jacknifetoaswan]

As someone who once worked a project to implement Link 16 into a laptop on a HUMVEE, Link 16 is very easy to implement. If the Air Force wanted it, they'd have it. In all likelihood, the Air Force is unwilling to share the Raptor's targeting data, as they don't want the operational capabilities of the radar/IFF/command and decision systems to be revealed to anyone, including one of our closest allies. Such data can reveal the range of the radar, the resolution, and the characteristics of the radar when it comes to jamming and clutter. Obviously, all this data is classified as secret or above, and is almost certainly not for release to foreign individuals.

Remember, the F-22 is the only airborne weapons system that the US Government refuses to sell to other countries, because it's an apex predator. There's nothing out there that can rival it, and even the F-35, which is basically a follow-on of F-22 technology, is no match for it. Thus, we'll sell it to allied countries, but the F-22 stays US-only, in the case that if we're ever involved in an air war where we're back to old school air superiority, there are no air forces that can match ours.

That said, I remember reading an article a couple weeks ago, where a new pod is being installed in several US fighters that allow for interoperability with the F-22, over a form of encrypted radio. Basically, the pod allows the fighters to act as a sort of wireless access point, which interfaces with the F-22 and any other fighter with radios that don't talk the same language.

Re:Ironic

[dave420]

He was probably referring to public key cryptography, which was indeed invented in Britain first. Due to the official secrets act, it was not revealed until after some clever people in the US figured it out, too. Interesting anecdote: The Brit who came up with it figured out all the mathematics involved in his head without writing anything down, as he did it at home, where his job forbade him from writing anything work-related down.

Re:Nobody goes to war anymore.

[Luckyo]

Far more importantly, these are wars fought where people involved actually live. There is a massive disconnect in the Western countries about the entire concept of war, largely driven by mass media.

You see, even modern wars fought by West, like Iraq and Afghanistan are fought on the ground. The main difference is that one party only has army living out the realities of the war, while its civilian population is far away and doesn't have to experience any of the harsh reality of wars. Wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, only the enemy civilians are exposed to the war.

And yes, I know that official propaganda line is that they're not the enemy. It doesn't change the fact that they are treated like enemy civilians of occupied enemy nation, and the fact that they react like such civilians, by widely supporting local guerilla freedom fighters who are fighting asymmetric war against far more powerful invader that has no non-mercenary civilians of its own exposed to the war.

Personally I recommend BBC's Bomb Alley.

Re:I don't think the cypher is the problem.

[garyebickford]

I wonder if they are using some form of Ultra Wide Band. UWB is best for short distances in part because 'optical' effects become important, but if it works it is extremely difficult to discover - at every frequency the signal is below the noise floor. It's only detectable if one knows the digital pattern that is being used, and there are a zillion possible patterns. In the sky, away from reflective and refractive distorting obstacles, it is probably usable over longer distances. IANA EE, however.

And it does reveal the aircraft

[caveat]

The point of the whole secure-comms thing as I understand it is to have one 22 staying well out of range of the hostiles with its targeting radar active (which totally screams HI GUYS HERE I AM LOOK AT ME YAAAAAAAAAAH!), feeding the info unidirectionally to a few more Raptors that are much closer and have all their radio and radar emitters quiet; they receive the data, feed it to their tracking and targeting systems, and fire all without (theoretically) compromising their stealthiness - the bad guys see one fighter 150 miles away and think "ha ha dumbass is lighting us up from out there!" and next thing they know six AMRAAMS appear out of thin air 20 miles away.