Bill Horne wrote on Sat 3 May 2008 under the thread 'Discussions' in
RRAM:

The Pave/Paws system that is pushing some repeaters off 70cm predates
the complaints by several decades, and I take the military's new
attitude to be another nail in the coffin of ham radio's former
"favorite son" status at the Pentagon.

As a veteran of the US Army Signal Corps 1952 to 1960 and as an
engineer who has been involved in DoD electronics during my
civilian career, I've seen NO evidence that US amateur radio
was ever in some "favorite son" status in the US military.

It used to be that we hams were a corps of operators who could be
pressed into service quickly during a war or other crisis.

Perhaps this was true in 1941. It was NOT true in 1952 when I
voluntarily entered US Army service (during the Korean War active
phase), trained at the Signal School at Fort Monmouth, NJ, and
subsequently assigned to long-distance, high-volume message
traffic handling on a 24/7 basis at a Far East Command Hq
station in Tokyo. I served in that assignment for three years,
had access to documents and reports on communications within
the military and queried many on the (then) modern methods of
communications by radio.

From the military point of view of 56 years ago, having an
interest in radio or the more general electronics field is only
important towards assignment in a particular military occupation
specialty (still familiarly called 'MOS'). Knowing on-off keying
CW skills via amateur radio MIGHT get one assigned to Field Radio
school (then the only Army MOS actually requiring OOK CW skill).
Field Radio MOS then involved using HF from a truck-transportable
station that was also equipped with teleprinters; teleprinted
messaging was the norm in the Korean War (active phase '50-'53).
The MAJORITY of 'radio' communications back then, a half century
ago, was by VOICE and that over line-of-sight ranges. Military
radio plans in the field were already organized into three
overlapping radio bands from high HF into low VHF, the bands
subdivided for infantry-artillery-armor unit use. No one needed
any morse code skills to operate those radios then. Indeed, it
was more akin to one-way talking on a telephone, something that
most civilians had already done in the 1950s.

Now, with
Morse as deeply buried as its creators and military electronics too
secret to be entrusted to soldiers and sailors who haven't been vetted
for security clearances, we're yesterday's news in the E ring.

I have NOT seen any of that "burial" nor of the "secrecy" alleged
to any Pentagon "ring" in my Army service nor in the many years
that followed as a civilian working on DoD contracts involving
communications. The "secrecy" is actually on a very low
Confidential level, the lowest of the three classifications. As
a matter of fact, most Army radios of a half century ago where
NOT used by signal personnel nor did they ever require any sort
of security classification; no more so than revealing ANY military
information to the enemy on anything.

I have no personal knowledge of what actually transpires in ANY
"ring" of the Pentagon. I must depend on periodicals and documents
published by defense electronics and electronics professional
associations to yield such information. In those, and in archived
copies of "Signal" (a quarterly of the Army Signal Corps, available
new to signal personnel) there has been NO such statements of any
"favoritism" expressed from a half century ago to today.

SECRECY in communications is regularly carried out today by UNvetted
"soldiers and sailors" using a variety of cryptologically embedded
(but selectable) means within radios. The standard small-unit
(battalion or below) field radio is the SINCGARS family operating
30 to 88 MHz. The first SINCGARS went operational in 1989, almost
two decades ago. Over 300,000 R/Ts basic to the AN/PRC-119 man-pack
transceiver have been built by ITT, Fort Wayne, IN. More are
available in HTs built by other firms plus the contracts awarded to
Harris Corporation for newer, smaller SINCGARS-compatible multi-
band radios. All of that family have their coding set by a "hopset"
entry (encryption key and frequency-hopping sequence settings) which
IS controlled by a "vetted" signal officer. The actual coding
method is digital, beginning with a pseudo-random sequence generator
involving digital feedback of a digital shift register could be
known by an unfriendly...but the permutations of possible keys is
so large that it is impractical for them to carry around super-
computers in the field to defeat the cryptology in time to be
effective. Note: The electronics technology to do all that has been
known (and most things published about it openly) for over three
decades, some of it public for four decades. In short, today's
US military CAN use very robust, secure codes to allow UNvetted
military personnel to communicate. They have had the capability
to do so for nearly two decades.

PAVE PAWS has been around for decades. It is in the technology
classification using multiple receivers to decrease the antenna
beam width with an ability to enhance phase shifting of the incoming
wavefront (allows other processing refinements of returns). Anyone
can gather information on its general technological structure.
Since it IS primary in its assigned operating frequency and IS part of
National Defense, that National Defense ought to be considered
primary by US citizens who wish to survive. Is a radio hobby
more important than national survival?

We'll have to find another reason to justify the allocations we enjoy.
It's going to be hard work, and not nearly as easy as learning Morse
(not that that would help now). We're going to have to get better - in
fact, much better - at public relations: the Red Cross and other
disaster relief agencies have known the importance of image all along,
but now hams have got to get in the game and advertise ourselves as an
anlternative to traditional communications during hurricanes, floods,
earthquakes, etc.

Please leave the morse code test issue OUT. That has been settled
for US amateur radio by the FCC after much, much debate for too long
a time.

IMAGE for the general public MUST be aimed OUTSIDE of amateur radio
publications. It cannot remain the insider topic WITHIN amateur
radio groups or publications. If it is REALLY there then it could
(and should) get out into the mainstream. Such emergency good works
news just haven't gotten out to the general public. The public sees
FCC issues as they affect broadcasting and cell phones in the national
news. maybe something about business radio of public safety radio.
Amateur radio news is not an important issue for such media.
The public has rarely seen amateur radio communications during
emergencies during national news...it HAS seen various National Guard
units and local government agencies doing communications on the news,
including FEMA equipment (going back to 1994 and the Northridge
Earthquake in January with quickly-transported video message displays
relayed by satellite for their own health-and-welfare messages seen
in handwriting of senders and shown on local TV).

I'm not going to comment on the Katrina hurricane situation. That
involves many more NON-amateur radio policies among local and state
agencies. The Katrina hurricane happened over two years ago and
the USA has had more emergencies since then. Rehashing the Katrina
situation does NO good in attempting to get the word out to the
general public about amateur radio. If ham radio is really as good
as some declare it, it should be worth national attention. It has
gotten very little on the national news in the last half century.
QED.

One thing that should NOT continue is to keep thinking in the
paradigms of pre-WWII 'radio' as is often presented in amateur
radio magazines. Technology has gone through several plateau jumps
of advancement since that long-ago time. Fantasies of some amateur
radio licensees are still rooted to back then. Those are lost in
the reality of today's radio capabilites and uses. The general
public has its own fantasies and it is foolish to attempt trying
to tell them other fantasies.

Amateur radio is a HOBBY. Let's try to focus on that.

Model vehicles are a hobby for others. The Academy of Model
Aeronautics doesn't pretend to advance the state of the art of
aviation but it was successful in lobbying for a hundred
frequency channels for radio-control two decades ago. Consider
that hobbyists are citizens and that the US government does
listen to its citizens. Work from that basis.

Leonard H. Anderson AF6AY

(Life Member)