ET, Phone Home
20th October 2024
One of the foundational beliefs among US military planners is that our communications will be secure … despite no evidence supporting that belief and a fair amount of evidence to the contrary (see, “Communications Vulnerability”).
So many of our weapon systems depend on guidance signals, telemetry, data flow, and so forth and the security of those communications has been taken as an article of faith despite evidence to the contrary. For example, Iran has had success disrupting and/or capturing our UAV control signals resulting in loss or capture of UAVs.
The US military consistently refuses to test communications under realistic conditions during field exercises and, in a display of unbelievable illogic, has publicly stated that using our full capabilities would be too disruptive during an exercise. Do we not believe that China will have capabilities at least equal to our own? Should we not, then, subject our communications to the maximum disruption possible in exercises to see what works and what doesn’t and to learn how to work in the face of disruptions?