old school communications 1 of 2 ( article 1 of 2 today )

OLD SCHOOL COMMUNICATIONS
( article 1 of 2 today )

When my son went into the Marines, they put him in communications.  From what I understood, you don’t get an option for MOS there, whereas in the Army they are a lot more accommodating.  I can see the cultural differences.  The Army is a huge vast bureaucracy with a LOT of jobs, and the Crotch is a sub branch of the Navy ( hence, the Squids take up a lot of mundane tasks the Jarheads need not bother with ) where, really, everyone is in combat fields.  For the most part.  All those Gung Ho throbbing peckers would pick the Cool Kid jobs and they couldn’t fill slots like communications.

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From the stories he told me about training, I don’t know if I would have been smart enough to actually learn that MOS.  There was a LOT of computer programming type of crap-it wasn’t just about digging trenches for field wires.  There was a lot of digital and computer areas in their field and you had to know it all.  Of course, my second response ( after my first, which was, damn, the kid is a lot smarter than me ) to all that was, that seems rather…vulnerable.  In day to day operations you had the normal failure.  Think, your Microsoft OS keeps humping with you for no apparent reason, and the Blue Screen Of Death is an ever present danger. 

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( I hate Microsoft.  They served a very good purpose twenty three years ago.  Apple-God bless them for the Mac, if not much else, my first real computer-was WAY too expensive to keep buying new machines when they upgraded everything.  And that was the age where computers and obsolescence meant hardware, not software like it does today.  Hell, today, the last time you really needed a new machine was then they went to USB ports.  What was that?  Ten years ago?  Two decades ago, two years was about as long as you could stretch out machine use.  The problem is they keep trying to rape you on upgrades like they used to, but with way more competition.  Now, you can hate Microsoft and actually do something about it.  Mostly, even if the options do suck )

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So, their field communications were vulnerable just from sitting there.  Then, they had their own Internet, or something similar ( we are talking about six years ago, so please forgive my lack of complete recall ), which had to have had some vulnerabilities.  Even just from their own stupid crap 18 year old kids always manage to pull.  I mean, this is the Marine Corps.  They have a LOT of issues as do all the services ( even the Coasties, being too close to the drug wars to escape institutional stupidity ), but they should, in theory, have LESS.  They were the ones who made the M-16 a lot less of a hunk of crap, and managed to get the other branches following along.  

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But the digital allure was far too strong even for them.  I’m fond in my own way of what digital can do, but I understand its severe limitations.  But the military just loves that crap.  Almost as if Political Correctness now includes robots on its diversity approved list.  So running field communications like it was a cell phone service was no longer enough for them.  My son went through one of the last of the schools for the communications specialist.  That MOS is/was almost retired.  It will soon be, or it already has transitioned, to total satellite communications ( there might still be short range-as in hundreds of feet-buried wire communication.  I have no idea.  It seems impractical to sat comm your artillery on the other side of a small base.  But what do I know?  Officers are a completely different species, and staff officers are a mutated form of that.  One never knows with them ).

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Can anyone else envision any problems with relying on satellites for your field communications?  Hostile nation hacking and satellite killers come to mind, neither untested issues.  Note that I make no claims as to the actual suitability of sat comms over other comms.  My only issue here really is the centralization and the upping the scale of complexity, two areas we are already dangerously vulnerable in.  For all I know, a sat comm radio is more reliable and hardier in the field than other alternatives.

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Military communications have always had severe limitations and a variety of unfavorable trade-offs ( and don’t forget that military communications also brought to us one of the worst movies ever, “Windtalkers” ).   It just might be that Sat Phones deliver a better level of reliability than ever before, at far less weight.  I concede the point, if true.  If every comm ever in the history of war had a price to pay for its benefits, and sats are no different, well, what are you going to do?  Myself, I’m of the mind that the US military is following the lead of its parent company the Federales and desperately grasping for further control as both institutions implode.  How better to micromanage every person ( or non-persons in the case of transgender and rabid Fem-First’ers ) in uniform than to centralize C&C?  Well, why not?  We learned nothing from the Soviets in Afghanistan.  Why start now with military structure?

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Why do I bring up communications?  I’m sure all of read Western Rifle Shooters ( wordpress.com ).  If not, you should.  A lot of it is worthless partisan posturing, but a lot is “we’ve already panicked about CW2, why haven’t you?” information.  You need to filter out the ‘love our troops and copy them” BS, because that is either ignorance or Quisling information.  You fight like your foe and you are fighting against your strength and towards his.  DingDingDing!  Wrong answer, dumb ass.  The first rule of guerrilla warfare is the exact opposite.  And if anyone tells you to fight conventionally he is your enemy. 

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But Rifle Shooters had a wonderful header that day, which was “Cutting enemy communications is always a early step in warfare”.  Obviously, they were referring to the antics of FaceBook and YouTube and such with their censorship against anybody not embracing political correctness with all their being, implying that the Left was at war with the Right and that the Right better believe we were on a war footing.  And as far as that goes, fine.  But of course it isn’t as simple as that, and I’ll cover that and the vulnerability of THEIR centralized institutions and power modules tomorrow.

( .Y. )

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