Twitter trackers jeopardize military aircraft?
usni.org
usni.org
If a military aircraft shows up on that, it's because they want to be seen, for example as a show of force. Once they don't want to be seen, they turn off their transponder, and disappear from those sites. Which is exactly what happened once SHTF in Ukraine.
I live near a number of RAF and US Air Force bases in the UK. As far as I can see all RAF flights are visible on ADSBExchange. However, we quite often have US F16s fly over and they quite often are not tracked. So either they have permission here in the UK to turn off their transmitters (not convinced), there is a signalling issue, or ADSBExchange are filtering some data. It does appear to only affect US Air Force flight here though…
They could also be switching the transponder to Mode 3 (equivalent to civilian Mode C) which is not ADS-B compatible but would still show up on normal normal civil radar scopes.
Or they can use some military only modes. Some of those could in theory be shown on civil scopes, but I'm not sure they actually are, while others like mode 4 or 5 cannot. But they could show up on the UK's military scopes, given nato intercompatibility.
Another theoretical option would be for the air force planes to be using mode-S, but having disabled mode-S extended squitter (which means the planes don't periodically broadcast their location, but simply only reply when interrogated by radar). I would expect ADS-B receiver to pick up on these periodic interrogations though. I'm not sure if interrogation responses are directional, but even if so, some receivers would probably be in the general direction of the radar site.
Its not really clear which. Outside of wartime, normal US Air Force policy is to fully integrate into the civil ATC system, except in special military use/training areas or certain special missions. This integration just makes things safer for everybody.
There were B-52s doing orbits over Kabul during the evacuation with their transponders turned on.
These transponders’ primary goal is preventing collisions. America never lost air superiority over Kabul. Keeping transponders on reduces the risk of collisions amid chaos at the cost of dialling up the non-existent risk of detection by Taliban SAMs.
Kabul’s airspace was a mess of civilian and military planes [1][2]. You want the Spanish A310 to know it’s barrelling towards a Superfortress.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Kabul_airlift
[2] https://twitter.com/defencegeek/status/1427012384502292480?s...
>Neither aircraft was equipped with TCAS collision avoidance systems, and although both crews had filed a flight plan, the German aircraft was not in contact with Namibian air traffic control and controllers were unaware of its presence in Namibian airspace. Furthermore, the Tupolev was flying at the wrong altitude, according to its flight plan and to the semicircular rule.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Namibia_mid-air_collision
If you're on a sensitive military operation and are broadcasting anything - not just ADS-B, but any sort of radio emissions - someone will notice you. Radio blackouts have been a part of secret operations for a long, long while.
Either you're broadcasting and therefore don't care who knows you're there, or you care to not be detected and don't broadcast anything. Those are the options.
Twitter has nothing to do with it.
Which is the exact message of the OP:
> Adversaries no longer need to rely on expensive radars to find U.S. military aircraft. The accessibility of this information demands a review of U.S. military operational security practices....
> Compromise Needed
> The information adversaries can derive from unsecured aviation data is far too revealing of mission-critical operations and movements. The Department of Defense (DoD), FAA, and other stakeholders need to reach a compromise that better balances aircraft safety and operational security. This agreement also should be coordinated with international air safety organizations such as the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and perhaps NATO as a standard operating procedure. A possible compromise could entail a peacetime mode in which ADS-B altitude and bearing data is transmitted but identifying information harmful to operational security is stripped out and a wartime mode in which DoD reserves the right to turn off ADS-B transponders in the vicinity of conflict zones.
There's tension between the needs of civilian air safety and military operational security. You don't want your military aircraft tracked, but you also don't want airliners colliding with them, either.
> Twitter has nothing to do with it.
Twitter demonstrates the problem in an eye-catching way.
Military aircraft have controls on their dashboards for turning individual systems off as required. Turning off ADS-B would be the first thing on the checklist for sensitive flights, and one of the things that are turned on purposefully when entering friendly airspace.
It would surprise me if military transponders do not have the ability to broadcast “I am a Cessna at 3000ft” regardless whether the actual aircraft is a F35 or a Galaxy.
cf the usual copypasta about the SR-71 crew asking ATC for an altitude and speed reading. They use the broadcast radio systems because they want you to know they’re there.
Yeah, of course, but that doesn't mean there still isn't an issue. If you read the article, you'd see that it was talking about stuff like military aircraft having their transponders on in friendly airspace over countries like Germany.
To the populace, sure it’s “visible” now. But adversaries are just doing what they’ve always done - why rely on Twitter, which could be censored by the USA.
You don't want to just jump straight to "ADS-B transmitters" right off the bat when speaking to a non-technical audience, because they have no idea what that means or what the implication is. Leading with "your info could end up on Twitter" provides the foundation for why a non-technical reader should care about the rest of the article.
There’s a reason the DOD aren’t in objection to ADS-B transponders but it’s above the civilian author’s security clearance level to know the reason.
Hmm... the author is listed as: "Gunnery Sergeant Andrew Guthart, U.S. Marine Corps", which does not sound civilian to me. Civilians usually don't have military titles.
If you have a problem with this data being public, that's not a Twitter issue, that's a policy issue which will affect several companies (and if that's what you think, that's fine). If you think this data should be public, just not on Twitter, what sense does that make?
There aren't many analogies that have any use beyond sounding pithy. They fall over at the slightest bit of scrutiny. I don't think this LAN one is much of an exception. Data that is public by default shares little relation to traffic on my LAN. Just say what you mean. Don't want the data to be public? Sure, I think that'd be interesting to talk about. Just don't like Twitter? Also cool, though not as interesting.
Hiding this is only hiding the problem, not improving actual security.
If your military aircraft isn't in war zone, then how much do you really care about other people in the world picking up your ADS-B transmissions? After all, they can just turn the transponder off, and take on all the responsibility of dodging other aircraft.
They already have some resolution for this https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy
ADSBExchange.com does not, I always use that as it's completely free and fully powered by volunteers. They don't do any filtering or add artificial delays. Recently they've even added MLAT reception of pre-ADSB flights (needs quite a bit of coverage in the area though!)
Asked directly they try to refuse as long as they can. However, they seem to use the block list maintained by the FFA. Sign ip now through a new convenient online form [0]. The seem to accept non-N registered, too.
ADSBexchange continues to refuse, but there's still some hope. FAA adding convenience to their process shows the pressure is rising.
Why?
And military would have encrypted insider communication between eachother
It may be naive question cuz I never operated such a thing
And yes, there are people who have cameras pointed at the sky all over the country, and with software that says "I see a plane, and I don't see no ADS-B".
Combine https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/raspberry-pi-airplane-tr... with https://medium.com/swlh/automated-meteor-aircraft-satellite-... and you're golden.
Then you have to rely on a human element, which is a horrible idea in a rapidly changing environment.
Imagine someone hits the base and takes out its comms. You no longer have any idea where anyone is.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Shutting down the twitter bots will help absolutely nothing, just hide the problem.
Nobody suggested that.
I agree stripping some info from ADS-B might help and I saw that suggestion in the article, but also that is IMO just a piece of security theater. Serious adversaries will know what it is.
Now, I guess the USAF isn't flying fuel stations around just for the heck of it - there will be fighter jets or surveillance drones alongside the tankers feeding from them, but with their ADSB transponders switched off.
Same with FORTE10/11 - they just appear on ADSB trackers somewhere over Greece, fly out over the Black Sea and then vanish. Transponders switched off.
Have you ever listened to congressional hearings related to tech? Folks from congress have no idea what's going on. They're focused on the wrong issues, ask insane questions, and at the end of the day are responsible for regulating the industry. If things don't change, we're going to end up in an even worse spot when it comes to online privacy, security, etc etc etc.
That being said, it was pretty interesting to track military aircraft flying around during the opening weeks of the war
With the high visibility of ADS-B you’d have thought that someone in US DOD would have thought about this newfangled radio stuff and perhaps put some controls in front of one of the people operating the aircraft to allow turning off radios or spoofing the ID on transponders.
“Hello fellow civilian aircraft I am a Cessna flying at 3000ft ground speed 75knots 45 magnetic” says the C5 in an attempt to camouflage the sensitive operational flight through civilian airspace before entering the war zone.
What would be missing with encryption is identification. However, knowing where something took off from and how it behaves in the air provides enough information.
The solution is much easier. My flight track is my intellectual property. DMCA take-down.
Might even outsource this job. Fly the shape of Mickey Mouse and let Disney work on the take-downs.
Not sustainable. Mickey Mouse enters public domain on January 1, 2024.
> Adversaries no longer need to rely on expensive radars to find U.S. military aircraft.
Wait… so which one is it? Can you get this information from public websites, or only with expensive radar equipment? Clearly, it’s the former and even if it were the latter, it’ll only stop the poorest adversaries. Twitter is just the bull horn.
Why it's unencrypted?
How does radar see those aircrafts?
For coordination with civilian aircraft.
> Why it's unencrypted?
See above.
Otherwise, to tell everyone, including the enemy, that they're there, as a show of force.