From: John from Detroit
Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 09:07:17 EDT

K6LHA wrote:
There have been a great number of civilian fixed station equipments that
have been designated as "military" (by the addition of a sticker/label)
as far back as 1953 without any special tests, physical or
electronic, without any changes or additions in appearance. None of
these were intended for field use up to about 1980 or so, therefore they
would not have undergone full environmental testing. Consider them
"COTS" (Commercial Off-The- Shelf) equipments as described by Hans.

Let me put it this way.

If you are going to design a product for the military, (And you must
admit military contracts are the "800 pound gorillas" in the business).

Since I've actually designed military equipment, last one being the
AN/ASM-416, a test set, I just don't see that "gorilla" label.
Specifications are sometimes tough to meet and nobody can talk their
way out of it (as salesmen or executives do) to project overseers.
You either meet specifications or you get fired. I always met spec.

I don't think I could define military contract work because so many
hams just haven't done it and they are all full of misconceptions.
It is just WORK. If you like it you get paid for the fun. If you
don't like it then you probably wouldn't have gotten high enough
on the totem to be in a design position.

And by simply tweaking a tuning slug it will work as well on the ham
bands.. and the device is not "Classified" in and of itself.

The MAJORITY of military contract work is NOT classified. Hasn't
been for decades. The major 'classified' category is "company
private" which is common, very common to all corporations, amounting
to not jabbering company stuff to workers in other companies. Yes,
I've been vetted by the FBI and a bunch of other alphabet soup
agencies up to Secret with a background check (actual interviews
in-person) for Top Secret. Missed a "Q" clearance completion
because my work assignment change to another group. ['Q' was a
classification involving nuclear things]

Forget the Hollywood BS about security clearances, drama, and
that phony baloney. I live near "Hollywood" and very, very few
of those were actually involved in such national secrets. The
only ACTUAL encounter close to me was the Lockheed "Skunk Works"
at Burbank airport (now renamed "Bob Hope"), at Building 82 just
off the Hollywood Way and Winona intersection in Burbank, CA.
Drove past it for years and years without knowing it was THERE
all the time since WWII days. A mile and a half from my
house of 37 years, I had to find out its location from a book,
a biography of Ben Rich, successor to legendary Kelly Johnson,
read several years after Lockheed pulled out of Burbank.

Why not market to hams as well?

Ahem...Collins Radio tried that but it wasn't profitable.
Hallicrafters went bust long ago. National Radio quit the
ham market long ago. SGC in Washington state markets HF
SSB transceivers mainly to private boat owners but isn't
pushing for the ham market. Face it, HF radios are NOT in the
market spotlight anywhere except to hams and the Big 3 in
Japan have that tied up nice and tight. The market for NEW
radios is at VHF - UHF - Microwave, strong emphasis being at
1 GHz for cellular telephony...both cell sites and mobliles.
Its been that way for over two decades.

Now, I do admit that the military has some classified stuff that I'll
likely never set eyes on..

Not that much. When I was stationed in Japan my battalion had
full run of everything but the Crypto room in the sub-basement
of the Far East Command Hq building...and guys who manned that
were battalion personnel. The reason so few see things is
because it isn't publicized and it has no "action" by itself.

To see a 1962 booklet produced by the Army on one big station:
http://sujan.hallikainen.org/Broadca...phabetSoup.pdf
http://sujan.hallikainen.org/Broadca...s/My3Years.pdf
Both are about 6 MB file size and the second one is my photo essay
of a 3-year assignment at the same station 1953-1956. Good contrast
between essentially WWII gear and better stuff working 15 years
after WWII was over.

[on KWM-2s] Perfectly
good ham radios were being totaly reduced to their atoms because they
were part,, Mind you just part, of a classified communications system.

No, no, no...MARS wasn't used for "classified" comms in Vietnam. I
can
assemble a list of what was used - there's plenty of sources of
history
on that other than ARRL publications. BTW, the KWM-2 came in two
flavors: Full-frequency range for maritime market, limited range for
the ham market. AN/FRC-93 designation was for the maritime market
KWM-2.

Never mind that they were a part you could buy over the counter at Ham
Radio Outlet.. they were still part of a classified system so they were
blown up, drilled, shot, flamed, run over with tanks and otherwise
redced to powder.

Then visit Davis-Monthan AFB (?) to see square miles of "perfectly
good
aircraft" that haven't been recycled for their aluminum, outdated
engines or outdated internal mechanical, hydraulic, electrical
systems.

A total waste of thousands of dollars worth of hardware that could have
been sold, without danger of compromising the classified system at all
since this was just a part.

WAR by itself is a TOTAL waste of lives and property. What else is
new?

Regardless of the tales from over 35 years ago, MARS was NOT handling
"classified" material into/out-of Vietnam. The classified material
was encrypted by a small group of personnel and could be sent over
very ordinary radio circuits using very ordinary radios.

First operational in 1989, the AN/PRC-119 (manpack version SINCGARS)
can be captured and reverse-engineered to try to find its built-in
encryption system for decoding intercepts. Won't help anyone. The
digital voice and data modulation uses a long long key and the carrier
hops at a 10 frequencies per second rate over a 30 to 88 MHz span.
"Hopsets" (colloquial) are generated at battalion Hq level for all
that encryption-hopping key information. It is difficult as heck to
INTERCEPT enough message data to attempt a decrypt attack on it.
ITT Fort Wayne, IN, has manufactured over 300,000 SINCGARS radios
since 1989 (ITT press release some years ago). What are you going to
do with a VHF radio that doesn't even have a tuning knob on it?

73, Len K6LHA