The US Army’s costly quest for the perfect radio
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Can you imagine moving long distances or fighting for your life on uneven terrain with all of that stuff dangling off of you and weighing you down? Also notice that the soldiers behind him have full cargo pockets on their pants.
It's interesting to notice the interplay of how new technology enables the soldier to carry more gadgets and tools, but simultaneously makes the old gadgets lighter.
A typical soldier has more in his first aid pouch (one of those dangling tan things with a zipper) than the platoon medic did in WWII. His rifle is lighter, but it also has an advanced optic and a laser visible through his NVG's. He's carrying a vest with a "bullet proof" plate (very heavy) but under it is a shirt made of light durable technical fabric that wicks moisture away from his skin.
I'm convinced there will never be a day when the infantryman isn't carrying too much weight. There is a limit to how much weight a fit infantryman can carry and still be able to fight and they will always have us carrying stuff up to that limit.
Bonus points if other bits of hardware could be shared. Extra bonus points for software interoperability (long shot).
It's completely standardized for all modern military equipment.
The problem is that if you are going on a week long mission you need enough batteries to last a week plus extra in case something goes wrong.
Source: I'm a veteran.
This was for double digit (at least) hours long missions many times per week in mountains around +/-10K ft. Brutal.. lol
The accumulated weight of every little required item needed on missions.. a perpetual source of annoyance.
I had a woman just flat out turn on her heels and walk away from me upon mention of my service (I forget how it was related to the conversation). We were having a professional conversation at a conference. I've gotten looks of disgust from students (I teach various programming classes) when I tie something back to a lesson I learned in the military. Whatever.
That stuff doesn't affect me. It's more a reflection on them than it is me.
> one of them moved to Dallas from S.V. [emphasis added]
The Bay Area area is noted for anti-military sentiment, especially given the history of UC Berkeley during the time of the Vietnam War. Naturally, some of this spills over into anti-veteran bigotry.
Apparently few people remember back in the 80's when the biggest SV employer was Lockheed Missiles and Space who developed weapons for the DOD.
More recently you can point fingers at the complacency of Facebook, Google and Yahoo who were willing participants in the PRISM scandal.
US foreign policy since then has been... murkier. I don't think the Bay Area really has a position on soldiers, so much as it opposes the current and previous few wars.
It is crazy to me that people had negative reactions to your military experience. I think it points to a certain stratification of society that people would not have family members or friends in the military to help them empathize.
As the other person said, some people I've met at conferences have ended the conversation with me or told me they think it's immoral.
One person at a major Ruby conference casually literally asked me if I enjoyed killing babies.
Many people have the craziest ideas of what the military and war is like that have no connection whatsoever to reality. It's scary that civil society understands so little of the military now that it's so small and professional.
I'd say overall it's a good thing. It's a very good thing that 99% of people will never be able to remotely comprehend what we went through.
There were 15 US casualties in Afghanistan in 2017, and 14 in 2016.
That's not a war. That's a security operation.
There were 15 US fatalities, not casualties. I'm sure there were many more casualties - many of them life changing injuries.
That's horrible man, I'm sorry somebody was that callous.
I totally believe this, and it makes me very angry.
Volunteer for service, suspend your civil rights, vow to defend the Constitution, develop the technical skills, physical ability, and mental toughness to serve in combat, and lay it all on the line for fellow soldiers -- and return to a universe of people who cannot identify Khandahar on a map, and think they are morally superior... well, I would have issues.
(FWIW I have never served in the military, I don't like the chain of top-level decisions that led to a decade of active military deployment.)
I like to think that with decades of practice, I can anticipate this reaction, or at least catch myself quickly, or Plan C: apologize. Usually all of the above.
People are not mythological creatures. But getting civil society to stumble along, on a path together, has employed no small amount of storytelling and manipulation.
As American as apple pie, I suppose.
It is much better for all of us that the ones who we have kill be convinced they’re merely doing it to protect the rest of us. You can mend those hearts. You can’t mend the cold blooded contract killers.
Killing for money doesn't require you to be a psychopath, as is evidenced by the countless paid killers in the military and swat teams today.
And then some people make some crazy assumptions when I tell them I was in the infantry for many years. I have interestingly been the target of a number of "jokes" about watching Fox News and supporting Trump, even though I'm actually strongly anti-authoritarian to a fault, and I want something like the Nordic model for the United States, and I supported Bernie Sanders in the last election. I just don't talk about politics at work, so people run wild with their assumptions. The hypocrisy runs deeeeep in the urban in-group left, man. I've honestly sometimes had an easier time talking about my time in service at Hippie Hill than I have in some tech companies. Of course this isn't information I'm eager to volunteer, obviously. But the conversation does come up sometimes, unfortunately.
And this doesn't even begin to touch on the totally disconnected delusions some people have about what the world is like in a lot of places on this Earth (and throughout history). We are so lucky to live in the time and place we're living in, the majority of people reading this.
I assume that's why you hear of so many veterans in their 20's and 30's with bad backs and trashed knees?
Even 50 lbs would be brutal.
According to that, in the 1920s the British Army "discovered that armies in the past had on the average issued the soldier between fifty-five and sixty pounds". Investigations by the British, Germans, Russians, and US into how much infantry should carry throughout the 1900s all end up around the same number of 30% of the soldier's body weight (48lbs) being the ideal load, and that the maximum load a soldier should carry shouldn't exceed 45% of their body weight (72lbs, and will degrade their combat effectiveness for the next few days no matter how physically conditioned the soldier is).
You could always limit yourself to the old ways, if weight/complexity were your only criterion, but the world moves on, and we're (apparently) not yet hitting the point where piling on more technology doesn't provide an overwhelming advantage.
That day will be when we have sustainable mechanized body armor. When the suit can carry more than the man wearing it, the man is no longer the bottleneck.
The question will be whether we just send drones at that point.
The army asked for a radio that could transmit a signal itself. This company offered to build a radio that sends the signal (using radio over ip) to a truck or other radio system that would then transmit the signal. Their radio would not work if there was not another radio locally available to tether it with.
That's not even the same product. Cheaper sure... more effective? I don't know where they got that from. With their system, if you're not in range of the truck, or terrain interferes with the signal to the truck, or the truck gets damaged, you lose all communication.
I'm not arguing with the rest of your post, I'm sure there is way more fraud, waste and abuse then we can imagine going on. But the laws of physics still apply and if you want transmit a signal far, you need a power source bigger than what people can carry. Even a vehicle mounted and powered radio wouldn't be able to transmit 10-20 miles unless you were sitting on top of a hill in otherwise perfect conditions.
More power just pushes you through small objects(trees, buildings, etc) depending on wavelength.
Firemen came to my house they had a portable digital EKG with 2G data line to push the graph to a doctor remotely. The thing couldn't get cell reception, probably a weak modem/antenna. One of the guy hinted at 5000$ unit cost. In terms of screen + processing + com electronics, it's about 50$. Some MD told me there needs to be some precise analog probes and ADC but I doubt it's in the 1000$ range.
Then there are standard validation costs, which are necessary.
The rest comes from premiums due to the medical market IMO. The companies know very well they can get away with such prices so they do, even though it could be pushed down without altering quality or even decent profit for them.
If only. As someone in Fire/EMS, a moderately equipped LifePak 12/15?
$14,000 to $40,000 depending on configuration - https://www.ogs.ny.gov/purchase/spg/pdfdocs/1260522835PL_Phy...
But to also be fair, there's a fair amount going on beyond all that. Defibrillator, including pacing, non invasive measurement of carbon monoxide, certain drugs and chemicals, integrated printer, weather sealed (gotta be able to operate outside in the rain), ruggedized for drops.
But still, $40K... oi.
The fact the mainstream market is able to sell 200€ smartphone with somehow advanced features is also ludicrous in that context. I guess it's just economy of scale power. But I'm convinced we could make the medical market a bit cheaper. It has serious implications on the whole structure. People will be treated differently based on cost. And in my case, that lack of 2G could have been lethal.
I went to a few fablab, these guys are replicating some mundane lab equipment for 1/100 or 1/1000 (can't recall) of the market price. I really liked that mindset.
I can guarantee that it did. It may even have been an AED. Earlier ones didn't actually display an EKG rhythm, but current models can, and run "reasonably" at about $1,000.
If they hooked up either 4 leads or 10 leads to you, then you were getting the full meal deal, so to speak.
And if Silicon Valley brogrammers built it, it would fail about 25% of the time, and catch fire the other 5%. But, hey, the fires would make for a great YouTube video--because the video uploader always works.
Medical has little to do with cost and lots to do with certification and indemnification.
Certification--that defibrillator WILL do what it is supposed to
... or ...
Indemnification--if that defibrillator doesn't do what it is supposed to, somebody is out a lot of money.
I am deeply surprised that they would approve something that required a cellular connection to function. I have seen the FDA push back on wireless even when it was completely ancillary to the primary function or when the device had no ability to do anything to anybody.
I would be suspicious that a person did something--accidentally gave permission to the cell connection, for example. This is NOT an indictment of competence. LOTS of shit goes wrong when things are in crisis mode. Devices which are perfectly well designed for calm situations can be totally useless because the interface trips you up when amped on adrenaline.
Anyway, I wish I could discuss with people about the possibility of blending both models. I understand the economy of scales, but maybe some partnership between large mainstream electronics could give medical device suppliers special access to some standard, well rounded/tested at cheap prices even at low volume compared to say cellphones.
1. Make it do exactly the same thing that the previous version did, right down to replicating the bugs.
2. Then add a unicorn.
In government the first is not allowed - the contract is specified. However you can ask for more and if you have made progress they will sometimes grant you "that little bit more" - remember ultimately they want what you are under contract to make and if you fail they have to start over again with someone else.
The laws requiring publication of bidding documents and damning reports on cost overruns are also mostly specific to public projects. Who knows how much money Apple invested in self-driving technology? Try sending a Freedom of Information Act request to Uber inquiring on their self-driving car efforts.
Being over budget, late, and not meeting requirements seems to be an infectious quality. However, it's not like many companies are set up to deal with winning these contracts. Do you choose the company that's more likely to have a more complete product but possibly be unable to support it in a couple of years? Or the one that can do decades of support (including replacing obsoleted hardware) but has a reputation for being late, overbudget, and half done?
The established players also have a tendency to layoff or move the experienced engineers after a major update and leave only cheap, inexperienced engineers in their place. So the next big cycle will have mostly people who don't know what they're doing accepting changes that cannot actually be done (in time or budget, if at all) but they don't know better.
The resulting spec may or may not be possible to implement. It may have pairs of requirements which require great cost to implement both, where the sane thing to do would be to relax one slightly, but the spec is cast in stone and that will not happen. It may have specs which could be vastly improved at small cost, but that also will probably not happen.
In industry, ideally, there would be a series of give-and-take rounds between marketing, the product designers, the engineers, and manufacturing which will find the efficient solutions to the conflicts and identify cost effective enhancements. This can't happen in military procurement because to engage in a design process with a company or companies would be unfair to the other bidders. They might engage a company to help them write the requirements, but it would be one which does not bid on the final contract and does not enable the iterative design cycle.
As a procurement system, it can fail spectacularly and is almost guaranteed to preclude optimum solutions, but it also deters cronyism and snake oil peddlers. If it seems like it always fails, remember that you never hear of the contracts which come in on time, on budget, and deliver a usable product.
Imagine awarding a contract to build a self-driving car. Do you think that contract could be delivered on budget and on time? That’s like every military contract. They’re for bespoke stuff that doesn’t exist in the market. The military looks at what’s out there, adds a bunch of wishlist items, and then puts out a contract for that.
Think about how the private sector develops new products. They don’t award a fixed price contract. They throw a bunch of money at startups. Most of those efforts fail. What is the development cost of every successful product, accounting for those failures? In the military, all the hiccups and restarts and course corrections and dead ends that would kill a startup, and be written off by investors, instead get accounted for in the final cost of the contract.
Encryption is by no means the only additional feature, at least frequency hopping is crucial to avoiding jamming. I can imagine there are other requirements I can't immediately think of.
You will need to spend some effort on getting synchronization right, but it's a lot less complicated than, say, building a CRUD app.
If you want the radio to let you watch video feed from a drone above, show a map with locations of other soldiers, or update Facebook status via satellite link, that may be a bit more work.
Now make a radio that works in sub-zero and 100+ degree temperatures, survives water, dust, and firearm exposure, being dropped dozens of feet, is resistant to broad-spectrum jamming, can handle secure encrypted communications with a large set of ever-changing participants, has a range of dozens of miles and days of battery life, is of a size and weight portable enough to be carried by a soldier for hours or days alongside their normal gear, and which can be field-repaired by a soldier with a few days of training.
And those are just the high-level requirements. It's a lot more complicated than a CRUD app, which even a non-programmer can do in an hour.
Any cell phone seems to do the former just fine, and I don't know of any radio, military or not, that can do the latter.
The application portion has a nice explanation on the effects of gun fire on systems. Keep in mind that "gunfire" covers everything from a 9mm handgun to a 30mm Gatling gun.
There is no encryption and no frequency hopping not because it's difficult to do, but because the goal is to be heard and understood by anyone who listens.
For example, we were working on radios that could self-organize into networks on frequencies they picked dynamically and keep on the same frequencies while facing a changing RF environment because they were in a convoy driving through the desert with a high powered jammer randomly stomping on everything.
And these aren't fanciful requirements. You're in a country whose government you just toppled--you can't count on the civilian frequency allocations. The military really doesn't want to keep track of every squad's frequency assignment manually. The radios are always on the move, in often challenging terrain (mountains, etc.). The enemy has jammers and countermeasures. Even if not every radio needs every one of these capabilities, the military needs an overall communications architecture that accommodates all of these functions.
It's a great example of how trying to design a product that works well for every stakeholder in every scenario leads to a Frankenstein of a product that doesn't work well for anybody. This happens all too often in government (typically military) contracts.
https://inah.pac.disa.mil/dtcs.shtml
While Iridium may have fallen out of favor in the commercial sector, it is an integral component within the US military.
https://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise...
[0] article: https://www.voanews.com/a/us-sanctions-eritrea-navy-over-nor... There is also an arms control wonk podcast that details it, but I can't remember which episode it is.
This is a very good book on the topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions,_Donkeys_and_Dinosaurs
A lot of the issue, especially with things like the Snatch, is that they were designed to get around quickly, hence minimal armour, but in modern theatre of war against insurgents planting IED's it breaks down totally.
Same issue with the Eurofighter Typhoon - great A2A, but awful for what's needed now, with is A2G.
Warning content contains squaddie humour potentially NSFW.
It does seem like a boondoggle, but hopefully it will actually work.
And without some hw/sw assisted crypto, communication becomes a lot slower. Or then you accept that the enemy can and will overhear what you say.
So for better or worse, complex radios based on digital technology is necessary for modern military use.
Enter the Code Talkers.
Though I wonder whether it would be that useful today, with the state of voice recognition and machine translation technology? Just because you throw away those fancy digital radios doesn't mean that your enemy will forgo modern tech. ;)
Today $130 gets you 30MHz full duplex radio, $300 60MHz one.
Back in the mid-late 90's I had to travel down to Fort Gordon (? I think?) which was home of the Army Signal Corps to give a training class on using our Single Board Computers to the group that built the man-portable radio simulators.
The old guys there (and they were almost all in their 60's+) built simulators that had to weigh and behave exactly like the actual radios for effective training (except that they didn't actually transmit any signals). The radios were huge. I simply could not imagine having to lug that thing around in the field all day.
The simulators were all "programmed" using relay logic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay_logic), so at least the size made that easier :-)
What communication equipment they did train us on was basically obsolete. "We have to train you on the old stuff because the new training hasn't been approved yet. You probably won't see any of this in the field."
http://www.public.navy.mil/jtnc/Pages/resources.aspx?filter=...
The AN/PRC-117G is an example manpack radio used by the Marine Corps today. We use it for voice and data.
https://www.harris.com/solution/harris-falcon-iii-anprc-117g...
If you're not familiar with radio wave propagation, don't get suckered into thinking hand-held radios can always replace manpack radios or that manpack radios can always replace vehicle radios. The art of radio involves a balance between power, proper antenna use, and terrain. Small, hand-held radios often don't have enough power to transmit a signal the distance you may need it to go in whatever terrain the person is in.
As for hardware cryptography modules - again - you can buy an ARM chip that's the size of your thumbnail that's basically a full blown computer.
I'd be interested to look at the insides of one. I wouldn't be surprised if making them EMP hardened would be a big component of where the bulk comes from.
examples:
http://www.c-comsat.com/antenna/flyaway-antenna-mp-100-ku-ba...
https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/default/files/asset/docume...
http://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/
one of the uses for such is to give a high-resolution video feed to a platoon (or several platoon sized) group, from a drone such as the reaper, for use in their TOC (tactical operations center) of the COP/FOB. And fairly high resolution data uplink from the COP/FOB for things like hilltop mounted infrared cameras feeding data back to a larger base somewhere in the region.
Doesnt mean milspec cant be light when requirements arent ridiculous, http://www.milspec.ca/radspec/prc-343.html is build like something off the shelf.