[governance] FW: [IP] Inside the New Arms Race to Control Bandwidth on the Battlefield

[michael gurstein]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne at warpspeed.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Inside the New Arms Race to Control Bandwidth on the
Battlefield
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net at warpspeed.com>


Inside the New Arms Race to Control Bandwidth on the Battlefield
By BRENDAN I. KOERNER
Feb 18 2014
<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/spectrum-warfare/>

An electromagnetic mystery in northern Iraq changed the course of Jesse
Potter's life. A chemical-weapons specialist with the US Army's 10th
Mountain Division, Potter was deployed to Kirkuk in late 2007, right as the
oil-rich city was experiencing a grievous spike in violence. He was already
weary upon his arrival, having recently completed an arduous tour in
Afghanistan, which left him suffering from multiple injuries that would
eventually require surgery. In the rare moments of peace he could find in
Kirkuk, Potter began to contemplate whether it was time to trade in his
uniform for a more tranquil existence back home-perhaps as a schoolteacher.
Of more immediate concern, though, was a technical glitch that was
jeopardizing his platoon: The jammers on the unit's armored vehicles were on
the fritz. Jammers clog specific radio frequencies by flooding them with
signals, rendering cell phones, radios, and remote control devices useless.
They were now a crucial weapon in the American arsenal; in Kirkuk, as in the
rest of Iraq, insurgents frequently used cell phones and other wireless
devices to detonate IEDs. But Potter's jammers weren't working. "In the
marketplaces, when we would drive through, there'd still be people able to
talk on their cell phones," he says. "If the jamming systems had been
effective, they shouldn't have been able to do that."

A self-described tech guy at heart, Potter relished the chance to study the
jammers. It turned out that, among other problems, they weren't emitting
powerful enough radio waves along the threat frequencies-those that carried
much of the city's mobile traffic. Once the necessary tweaks were made,
Potter was elated to witness the immediate, lifesaving results on the
streets of Kirkuk, where several of his friends had been maimed or killed.
"To see an IED detonate safely behind our convoy-that was a win for me," he
says. It was so thrilling, in fact, that when Potter returned from Iraq in
2008, he dedicated himself to becoming one of the Army's first new
specialists in spectrum warfare-the means by which a military seizes and
controls the electromagnetic radiation that makes all wireless communication
possible.

It is well known that America's military dominates both the air and the sea.
What's less celebrated is that the US has also dominated the spectrum, a
feat that is just as critical to the success of operations. Communications,
navigation, battlefield logistics, precision munitions-all of these depend
on complete and unfettered access to the spectrum, territory that must be
vigilantly defended from enemy combatants. Having command of electromagnetic
waves allows US forces to operate drones from a hemisphere away, guide
cruise missiles inland from the sea, and alert patrols to danger on the road
ahead. Just as important, blocking enemies from using the spectrum is
critical to hindering their ability to cause mayhem, from detonating
roadside bombs to organizing ambushes. As tablet computers and
semiautonomous robots proliferate on battlefields in the years to come,
spectrum dominance will only become more critical. Without clear and
reliable access to the electromagnetic realm, many of America's most
effective weapons simply won't work.

The Pentagon failed to foresee how much the wireless revolution would alter
warfare.

Yet despite the importance of this crucial resource, America's grip on the
spectrum has never been more tenuous. Insurgencies and rogue nations cannot
hope to match our multibillion-dollar expenditures on aircraft carriers and
stealth bombers, but they are increasingly able to afford the devices
necessary to wage spectrum warfare, which are becoming cheaper and more
powerful at the same exponential pace as all electronics. "Now anybody can
go to a store and buy equipment for $10,000 that can mimic our capability,"
says Robert Elder, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who today is a
research professor at George Mason University. Communications jammers are
abundant on global markets or can be assembled from scratch using power
amplifiers and other off-the-shelf components. And GPS spoofers, with the
potential to disrupt everything from navigation to drones, are simple to
construct for anyone with a modicum of engineering expertise.

Stateless actors aren't the only-or even most troubling-challenge to
America's spectrum dominance. The greater an opponent's size and wealth, the
more electromagnetic trouble it can cause. A nation like China, for example,
has the capability to stage elaborate electronic assaults that could result
in nightmare scenarios on the battlefield: radios that abruptly fall silent
in the thick of combat, drones that plummet from the sky, smart bombs that
can't find their targets. The US may very well never engage in a
head-to-head shooting war in the Far East, but the ability to effectively
control the spectrum is already becoming a new type of arms race, one that
is just as volatile as the ICBM race during the Cold War-and one that can
have just as big an impact on global diplomacy.

The American military is scrambling to develop new tools and techniques that
will help it preserve its electromagnetic edge. But that edge continues to
shrink by the day, and very soon our inability to completely control the
spectrum might result in a different kind of war.

[snip]

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