From: Frank Gilliland on Dec 18, 6:54 pm

On 18 Dec 2005 14:04:25 -0800, wrote in

snip

In the Army the "front-line" (we called them just "line")
radio users were just ordinary infantry, artillery, or armor
troops who've had quickie courses in using their radios.

Those aren't Signal Corpsmen per se.

My bad. I thought they came from the same stock -- I guess that shows
how old I'm not :-0

No problem. "All parts are interchangeable" in the land forces,
something that's been mentioned for decades...before I was in
and will be long after today. Soldiers are soldiers first,
specialists second.

USUALLY, but not always, the infantry radio ops are infantrymen
with some short training in their manpack radios. Signalmen
are found from Battalion level and up to Brigades, and do the
mass-communication stuff for Brigade through Division command.

Field radio equipment has been designed for wired-remote
control (many hundreds of feet away, as needed) of transmitters
for over a half century. Major reason being RDF *might* be
able to pinpoint an emitter and drop some nasty stuff on it.
The personnel at the control point won't necessarily be hit
so those are still survivable. If the comms equipment is
destroyed and no replacements are available, the signalmen
revert to their basic duty: Soldiering the infantry way.


That used to be true but the paradigm has flipped over today.

Very true. Real sci-fi stuff they have these days. Won't be long and
every grunt will be equipped with a helmet-mounted sat-comm complete
with bio-telemetry and "black box" A/V recorders.

Not quite. That stuff is PR material that's been out for
years. The Army tried out the "squad radio" concept in
Vietnam during the early 1970s. Didn't work out well and
that was generally abandoned for wholesale use on the line.
I don't know WHY it didn't work out since I've never been
involved directly with it, just the manpack-to-high-power-
vehicular-amp families of "regular" (in ham ideas) radios
and some other interesting DoD stuff. :-)

Back in 1990 the land forces had the AN/PSC-3 radio with
voice and data capability on the military aviation band,
three different antennas from whip to wire mesh parabolic
reflector. The data part had a "chiclet" keyboard and a
small LCD-like screen and messages could be typed in,
stored, sent at 1200 BPS on UHF, either to an airborne
radio relay or through military comm sats. Can't verify
if the data part could be encrypted, but today's PSC-7
can do that. The PSC-3 was used in unfriendly territory
during Desert Shield and none were compromised. Some old-
timers in here thought the military was still using
something like WW2 OSS HF sets with morse code during the
first Gulf War! :-)

The present-day survival radios (HT size) can cooperate
with the DME of TACAN to yield distance information and
their voice is both digitized and encryptable. Same size
as 20-year-old survival radio-beacons but have more
electronic features and better battery packs.

The AN/PRC-104 HF manpack transceiver (operational 1986,
will be replaced soon by an updated unit) by Hughes Ground
Systems has an automatic antenna tuner integral to the
manpack R/T. One can physically shorten the whip by
removing sections to cut down visibility and the antenna
tuner will compensate for the shorter sections. Won't be
quite as efficient as the full whip but it is less visible
on the ground. The lil 20 W PEP transmitter will shove as
much RF into the whip as it can without damaging itself.

While I haven't been with the Army units testing anything
in the last half-dozen years, I can see that the "command
track" concept (actually a command vehicle, a Humvee now
more than a Bradley tracked vehicle) is still strong. That
lends itself to the "many antennas" visibility for un-
friendlies who have some smarts on sorting out targets.
With two NVIS whips (bent-over long ones) and a couple
VHF, UHF antennas on a Humvee, those stand out pretty well
from the ordinary gunner-style Humvee. There are "mini-
huts" for making up a Humvee into a radio command vehicle
holding lots of radios inside...similar to the full-size
hut on a deuce and a half flatbed.

Armor units have the flashy toys now with a couple dynamic
(on the move) automatic positioning location and reporting
systems still undergoing more field testing. [why, I don't
know, they were first out in the field a decade ago]
Artillery can confirm its position super-accurately with
military-mode GPS in the little HT-size "plugger" or
AN/PSN-11 receiver. The same plugger can connect to any
SINCGARS radio to update its calendar clock for good
networking in FHSS mode; GPS provides a super-accurate
time base. Plugger was in use during Desert Storm.

I haven't followed the progress of the SIDs (Seismic
Intrusion Device) that first saw service in later years
of the SE Asia Live-Fire exercise. My RCA division in
Van Nuys did the casing and geophone amplifier-filter-
processor, me doing the final whip design desired to be
a simple wire rather than the original OD tape style.
Buryable unit intended for Vietnam but that war ended
early without full deployment. It could distinguish
between two-footed and four-footed creatures and report
back (by coded radio signal) detection of the two-
footed variety. In the three decades since there must
have been improvement in that area. shrug

There's more stuff coming along with the first signs of
in SIGNAL magazine published by AFCEA along with Defense
Industry Newsletter.

The latest is an RF psycho weapon using ultra-wideband
microwave stuff to scare-shock-disturb unfriendlies at a
distance. First operational test contract was awarded
a couple months ago. While it uses radio, it might not
be handled by signalmen at all, probably not by artillery
types either. Psy-war units? :-)

The first NODs (Night Observation Devices) were
operational during the latter half of the 1960s and
used in Vietnam. Too many were stolen/captured with
the USSR making their own versions. Now those "Buck
Rogers" devices can be bought at sports stores as
a regular consumer electronics product. shrug