Driver to drive?

[Jerry Avins]

casual observer wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:48:25 -0500, Jerry Avins <jya@ieee.org> wrote:

The need to guard against cyberattacks on power stations and military
installations is a clear indication of bad -- make that stupid --
design. Critical facilities shouldn't share wire networks with
internet-at-large, and there would ideally be no radio links. Those who
don't like other people reading over their shoulders shouldn't build
glass houses.

Agreed. Get rid of the wireless links on the Predator drones and use
wired connections. Wait....huh? ;-)

I didn't write about drones, but about power stations. As far as I know,
few distribute wireless power. Eat your heart out, Tesla! It should be
physically impossible to reach NORAD's computers from the web, let alone
hack into them.

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ

 

[Jerry Avins]

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:

Jerry Avins wrote:


The need to guard against cyberattacks on power stations and military
installations is a clear indication of bad -- make that stupid -- design.

Big design can't be without stupid flaws, especially if that design is
done by big company. This is just the law of big numbers. Only the
simple things that were in production in large quantities and for many
years, can be cleaned to perfection.

Critical facilities shouldn't share wire networks with
internet-at-large, and there would ideally be no radio links. Those
who don't like other people reading over their shoulders shouldn't
build glass houses.

Recently I read that "Boeing 787 Dreamliner is safe against intended or
unintended cyberatacks, as its entertainment network is software
firewalled from the flight controls". Isn't it wonderful?

Groovy!

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ

 

[Andrew Swallow]

krw wrote:
{snip}

OTOH, it's the US government. I'm backing the dumb-as-a-rock
explanation.

Front line tactical radio communication has traditionally been
unencrypted. This is just a continuation of that. However being
digital they are changing that. Also high speed off the shelf
portable encryption may not have been available.

Andrew Swallow

 

[Sylvia Else]

Eric Jacobsen wrote:

It's easy to be an armchair quarterback.

Perhaps, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was someone on the project
team saying that transmitting the video in the clear was just asking for
trouble. Such a person would likely have been seen as "negative" by the
project management, and the issue would never have been properly evaluated.

Sylvia.

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

On Dec 18, 3:36 pm, Eric Jacobsen <eric.jacob...@ieee.org> wrote:

Or, perhaps more likely, budget and schedule realities.  When you have
to meet a budget and a schedule, and the primary task (i.e., getting the
UAV flying properly) is consuming most of the resources (as it should)
then the links become a "get it working" task.   I doubt in the 90s any
manager would think it wise to use up a big fraction of a budget to make
a UAV work on getting the link more secure.

Been there many times, it's not unusual.  The fact that it's been that
way for so long is disturbing, but also not all that unusual in the
military/government management and procurement system.  It usually comes
down to budget and bureaucracy limitations and priority setting.  There
may have been other things in the program that were deemed (perhaps very
properly so) to have needed the attention more.

It's easy to be an armchair quarterback.

Hmm...under different circumnstances like launching a spacecraft to
Jupiter, this would be a reasonable argument. But I swim in this stuff
all day, and if you knew how ridiculously easy it is to add symmetric
encryption to a digitized link....[based on your comp.dsp posts I
would presume you do]

Let me put it another way. If anyone, anywhere, offers me and three
other people of my choosing, $100 million, or even $1 million, to "get
it right", there will be no excuses. Not one.

What they did was inexcusable.

Also, as I mentioned before, I spent about 18 months of my life going
back and forth with these people, and the problem is hardly money, as
they have plenty of that, and it is not time, as they themselves admit
that they are in no rush.

IMO, it all comes back to ego/greed/self-preservation/politics.

If any of you are engineers (most of you are) and think this is false,
I encourage you to spend 5 or 6 hours of your life trying to engage
DARPA and/or the US military in a meaninful way to see for yourself.
The environment is toxic to rationale thinking.

You might start with this $37 billion fiasco:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System
http://mobiledevdesign.com/hardware_news/program_costs_billions/
http://fcw.com/articles/2005/05/16/troubled-jtrs-hits-another-roadblock.aspx

In a nutshell, someone during the late 1990's tricked a senate
appropriations committee into funding software defined raidos (SDR's),
which you Eric, of all people, know something about.

The idea was that, if the radios were under software control, every
radio would be able to communicate with every other radio, as well as
any other software-enabled device on the Internet, which is pretty
much most of them. The senators who got behind this project where
duped into believing this nonsense, not understanding that, it is not
enough for the radios to simply be under software control. The radios
~need~ to form a network.

Imagine, one radio using QAM, other using OFDM, both under software
control. Now what? Nothing, that's what. What you would get is two
radios under software control, and not talking to each other, one
using QAM, the other using OFDM. Lovely. But the senators were duped
because they figured that, "Hey, if it is software, anything is
possible."

The people running JTRS took 6 years to realize that SDR does not
automatically translate into a packetized universal network. They
realized this *after* they had made grandiose promises of bit rate,
using relatively low frequency spectrum, almost all under 1GHz, with
performance on par with, or better than Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, companies
like Boeing, Honeywell, General Dyamics, etc...gouged huge chunks of
the overall $230 billion program, and as of 2009, it's still a mess:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040702604.html

Not surprisingly, when the U.S. senators asked why the original
program has balloned into costing 1/4th of $1US trillion dollars, look
what they write:

"The military and its contractors concede past problems but say they
have corrected each program so that they are on schedule, close to
budget and developing technologies as expected. Dennis A. Muilenburg,
until early February the program manager of Future Combat Systems at
Boeing, the lead contractor, said he expects the high-speed radios and
the wireless network to be finished on time and to "dovetail very
nicely with" Future Combat Systems."

This is comical. You go off and waste $11 billion, then gouge $3 more
billion, and you write something like this, and people are supposed to
believe you? ??????

Time? It took me all of 12 seconds to realize how stupid this SDR-but-
no-network was. When I began to hint to the top tech guy over the JTRS
program that they could have forseen that this notion from day one if
they actually had a real network engineer in the room, of course, he
defended himself and his team. When I implied that, because they
wasted time up until 2006, that they will basically have to rethink
the bandwidth, and do what IEEE 802.11 committee did, he tacitly
agreed, but again defended the extra two years wasted by saying "We
demonstrated a prototype recently."

Well, I got bits and pieces of their "prototype" through the
grapevine. The thing was some hack put together by a university not so
far away from the JTRS office.

Money? If you give me $5.8 billion, I will take $5.7 billion of it,
put it in my personal bank account, , and use the rest to hire a buddy
of mine who can do the rest for for $100 million. He'll likely keep
$90 million from himself, and hire 20 other people to with the
remaining $10 million, and get it right.

The only thing I can give credit for is that they now have a form on
their web site which essentially says, "Ok, we know we wasted $11
billion...We're sorry. Tell us how we screwed up, and how to make it
better."

Here's is the form:

http://jpeojtrs.mil/files/org_info/Lessons_Learned_Submittal_Form.doc

From this page:

http://jpeojtrs.mil/

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[Eric Jacobsen]

On 12/18/2009 4:32 PM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

In comp.dsp Eric Jacobsen<eric.jacobsen@ieee.org> wrote:
(snip)

Yet again, I'm not addressing the encryption, but the link (i.e., air
interface) protocol. Even in DVB-S and DVB-S2, the air interfaces are
completely independent from the transport layer and the encryption. If
you make the air interface just a bit pipe, it CAN'T expose the
encryption any more than any using a standardized air interface.

Making it difficult to even demodulate the signal, however, provides an
additional barrier to a would-be eavesdropper in that they must,
somehow, figure out how to demodulate the signal. This includes
figuring out the modulation type, the polynomial of the entropy
scrambler (NOT the same as encryption), the FEC, including any
polynomials, interleavers, or code matrices, any framing, etc., etc.,
etc. It's a monumental task if you don't also have a modulator with
which to perform detailed experiments, and even if you do the investment
and expertise required make it a pretty high hurdle.

How many have crashed or been shot down (but not completely destroyed)
and been recovered? That is, assume that they have the hardware and
algorithms.

-- glen

A bunch, by my understanding, which may be how they figured out it was
DVB-S/S2. If, on the other hand, they find an FPGA (or some unknown
part) where the modulator goes, then they have to sort out what the heck
is going on.

Not trivial.
--
Eric Jacobsen
Minister of Algorithms
Abineau Communications
http://www.abineau.com

 

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

In comp.dsp Eric Jacobsen <eric.jacobsen@ieee.org> wrote:
(snip)

Yet again, I'm not addressing the encryption, but the link (i.e., air
interface) protocol. Even in DVB-S and DVB-S2, the air interfaces are
completely independent from the transport layer and the encryption. If
you make the air interface just a bit pipe, it CAN'T expose the
encryption any more than any using a standardized air interface.

Making it difficult to even demodulate the signal, however, provides an
additional barrier to a would-be eavesdropper in that they must,
somehow, figure out how to demodulate the signal. This includes
figuring out the modulation type, the polynomial of the entropy
scrambler (NOT the same as encryption), the FEC, including any
polynomials, interleavers, or code matrices, any framing, etc., etc.,
etc. It's a monumental task if you don't also have a modulator with
which to perform detailed experiments, and even if you do the investment
and expertise required make it a pretty high hurdle.

How many have crashed or been shot down (but not completely destroyed)
and been recovered? That is, assume that they have the hardware and
algorithms.

-- glen

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

On Dec 18, 5:25 pm, "Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgro...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Ah, sorry Eric, I was thinking you meant the packet transport protocol (what I
meant be tempted to call "link layer" but that's probably not correct) and not
the actual "physical" level link.  My apologies.

Which is easier for eavesdropping?

DVB-S, certainly, although if they had used AES (ok, probably not available
when it was designed -- maybe 3DES?), they still would probably have been OK.

Or RC6. I remember playing around with its predecessor, RC4, in the
early 90's. I have chunks of code still on my hard disk for RC6 that I
wrote a while ago (attached).

template <unsigned int w, unsigned int r, unsigned int b> bool
Cipher<w, r, b>::encipher (void *buffer, unsigned int length)
{
if (length % sizeof(Block))
return false;

unsigned int block_count = length / sizeof(Block);

for (unsigned int k = 0; k < block_count; ++k)
{
struct
{
unsigned long int A : w;
unsigned long int B : w;
unsigned long int C : w;
unsigned long int D : w;
} block = {0};

unsigned int m;

for (m = 0; m < (w / 8); ++m)
{
block.A |= unsigned long int (*((unsigned char *)
buffer + 0 * w / 8 + m)) << (m*8);
block.B |= unsigned long int (*((unsigned char *)
buffer + 1 * w / 8 + m)) << (m*8);
block.C |= unsigned long int (*((unsigned char *)
buffer + 2 * w / 8 + m)) << (m*8);
block.D |= unsigned long int (*((unsigned char *)
buffer + 3 * w / 8 + m)) << (m*8);
}

.....


It's 5:40 P.M. where I am. Using this code, and a spec of whatever
format exists for their data stream, assuming they will allow me up to
16 bytes per packet of padding, I could have a secure link done by
11:00 PM, while still not missing my favorite show on TV.

So the excuse that there was "not enough time" is not an an excuse,
IMO.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:34:06 -0800, Jon Kirwan
<jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:03:12 -0800, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:41:39 -0800, Jon Kirwan
jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:58:58 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Dec 18, 2:19 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

snip

Design any interesting circuits lately?

John's regular get out of jail free card, usually played after a long
post explaining why he is free to post denialist nonsense, while the
people who respond to point out that he doesn't know what he is
talking about should confine themselves to electronics.

I've been around the group long enough to have seen this card played
by John, time and time again. It's a highly predictable knee-jerk,
now. Rather than deal with his own overflowing ignorance.

Jon

Sloman is probably the single most-frequent poster to this group and
is literally 99% off-topic. And virtually every one of his posts
contains pompous insults. He is never helpful, never amusing, never
hopeful, never has ideas; he hasn't done interesting electronics in
decades and probably never will again.

Pick your friends as you will.

Who's picking friends here? I still suspect you were giving me a
bunch of bull about the holier-than-thou high road you want to take
here when you, on the same very day, continue the very thing you were
saying you don't want to encourage.

Jon

WTF is wrong with you? Do you have insufficient drama in your life?
This is an electronics design discussion group, not some self-help
online neurosis therapy clinic.

John

 

[krw]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:20:47 -0800, Archimedes' Lever
<OneBigLever@InfiniteSeries.Org> wrote:

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:05:07 -0600, krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:44:12 -0800 (PST), Mark <makolber@yahoo.com
wrote:



Passing encrypted video over a satellite network built for unencrypted
analog video is not a trivial challenge. As far as I know, there
exists no scheme to do this that has not been broken already. The
problem is that encryption works partly by diffusing information so
that no part of the output looks like any part of the input. The
satellite link is filled with errors and distortion that have to be
contained to retain adequate video quality.

DS

um,, is that why General Instrument was able to do it did it 15 years
ago for HBO?

It can obviously be done. It just requires different, perhaps less
efficient, error correction algorithms which may mean lower S/N
required.

Wrong. It just requires MORE FEC.

AlswasWrong is once again wrong. Surprise everyone!

 

[krw]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:19:43 +0000, Andrew Swallow
<am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:

krw wrote:
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:08:44 +0000 (UTC), Rick Jones
rick.jones2@hp.com> wrote:

In comp.protocols.tcp-ip Mark <makolber@yahoo.com> wrote:
Passing encrypted video over a satellite network built for
unencrypted analog video is not a trivial challenge. As far as I
know, there exists no scheme to do this that has not been broken
already. The problem is that encryption works partly by diffusing
information so that no part of the output looks like any part of
the input. The satellite link is filled with errors and distortion
that have to be contained to retain adequate video quality.
um,, is that why General Instrument was able to do it did it 15 years
ago for HBO?
Is it "known" that the GI stuff (irony isn't cracked?

I don't believe anyone suggested using civilian encryption for
military applications, though it would have been better than nothing.

AES encryption would have probably beaten the Taliban and the Iranians.
Available in a single chip, or you can use software.

Real encryption is pretty cheap. The only complication anymore is key
management. No matter what you do that's a problem, so might just as
well make the encryption good. Rag heads aren't the only potential
enemy.

 

[krw]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:34:56 +0000, Andrew Swallow
<am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:

krw wrote:
{snip}


OTOH, it's the US government. I'm backing the dumb-as-a-rock
explanation.

Front line tactical radio communication has traditionally been
unencrypted. This is just a continuation of that. However being
digital they are changing that. Also high speed off the shelf
portable encryption may not have been available.

Nonsense. It's been available for decades.

 

[Andrew Swallow]

krw wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:34:56 +0000, Andrew Swallow
am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:

krw wrote:
{snip}

OTOH, it's the US government. I'm backing the dumb-as-a-rock
explanation.
Front line tactical radio communication has traditionally been
unencrypted. This is just a continuation of that. However being
digital they are changing that. Also high speed off the shelf
portable encryption may not have been available.

Nonsense. It's been available for decades.

True but tactical in the clear is still used.

Andrew Swallow

 

[Jim Yanik]

Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@My-Web-Site.com/Snicker> wrote
in news:l1fni5pg0rp6f64r3mbcb6apmg0to677ue@4ax.com:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:11:47 -0600, Jim Yanik <jyanik@abuse.gov
wrote:

Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@My-Web-Site.com/Snicker
wrote in news:ch7ni5ptab13kvhcr28uo31qb03l86685d@4ax.com:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:02:05 -0600, Jim Yanik <jyanik@abuse.gov
wrote:

krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzz> wrote in
news:t6pli5taujnq2pqp7rqh084udrbgfoomhs@4ax.com:

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:05:15 -0800 (PST), Le Chaud Lapin
jaibuduvin@gmail.com> wrote:

On Dec 17, 7:44 pm, Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> wrote:
What do you mean "get the encryption right"? I understood that
there was no encryption at all.

I just assumed that, since it is the US military, employing a drone
to do semi-stealth reconnaisance, that a basic requirement would be
that young kids who probably earn < $100/month should not be able to
intercept the stealth video. My bad.

Maybe they should leave it as it is. That way, the terrorists could
put it up on YouTube. Maybe there is a Hollywood show in it...

Perhaps it was intentional. They can sell electronics to the
terrorists. Who knows what backdoors lurk...

"So You Think You Can Out-Run A Hell-Fire Missile."

"Smile! You're on Candid Camera!"


the US now has a very small Air-Ground Missile in development;it's
called Spike(not the Israeli Spike ATGM),and is 2 ft long,5.3 lb total
and has a 1 lb warhead,electro-optical guidance.It's intended to take
out unarmored/lightly armored vehicles or single rooms in buildings
and not cause a lot of collateral damage.
A soldier can carry three missiles and launcher,and it can also be
carried on the drones.

it's like a small model rocket.

http://defense-update.com/products/s/spike_laser.htm

That's the sort of thing I recommend to stop "hot pursuit"
situations...

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/321871

Stop on an officer's order or we make you stop ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Heck,-I- want a launch rail on MY car.

Anybody have plans for a rail gun ?

...Jim Thompson

Spike is "fire and forget",so it locks on the target's image.
Easier to aim.
but 5 grand a shot,though....
unless you can engineer a really low cost seeker.


I may build a model rocket copy of Spike,I've got an unfinished airframe of
the right size.

Heh,cops would FREAK if they saw a missile on a launch rail on top of a
car! Maybe put a red LED in the nose,people would think it's a seeker...

<GRIN>


--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

 

[Jim Yanik]

"Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgroups@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:jbUWm.160145$Td3.153560@en-nntp-01.dc1.easynews.com:

Ah, sorry Eric, I was thinking you meant the packet transport protocol
(what I meant be tempted to call "link layer" but that's probably not
correct) and not the actual "physical" level link. My apologies.

Which is easier for eavesdropping?

DVB-S, certainly, although if they had used AES (ok, probably not
available when it was designed -- maybe 3DES?), they still would
probably have been OK.

---Joel

It's called COTS;
Commercial Off The Shelf.

keeps costs down,cuts development time.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

 

[Jerry Avins]

Steve Pope wrote:

Le Chaud Lapin <jaibuduvin@gmail.com> wrote:

So the excuse that there was "not enough time" is not an an excuse,
IMO.

Probably encryption was not in the requirements. It would of
course be illegal for a defense contractor to add features
just because they thought those features were important...
they must trace back to a contractual requirement.

I uncovered a serious specification omission when, as a technician for a
subcontractor, I built hardware for the Mercury space capsule. The
contractor (Collins Radio) agreed that the omission could lead to
catastrophic failure, but determined that the amount of paperwork to
effect a change was prohibitive. (Just as I kicked it up to Collins,
they would have had to continue up the chain through McDonnell Douglas
to NASA.) The project manager at Collins agreed to push the matter after
I said that I would ask the astronauts what to do.

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ

 

[Steve Pope]

Le Chaud Lapin <jaibuduvin@gmail.com> wrote:

So the excuse that there was "not enough time" is not an an excuse,
IMO.

Probably encryption was not in the requirements. It would of
course be illegal for a defense contractor to add features
just because they thought those features were important...
they must trace back to a contractual requirement.

Steve

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:52:39 -0800, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:34:06 -0800, Jon Kirwan
jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:03:12 -0800, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:41:39 -0800, Jon Kirwan
jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:58:58 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Dec 18, 2:19 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

snip

Design any interesting circuits lately?

John's regular get out of jail free card, usually played after a long
post explaining why he is free to post denialist nonsense, while the
people who respond to point out that he doesn't know what he is
talking about should confine themselves to electronics.

I've been around the group long enough to have seen this card played
by John, time and time again. It's a highly predictable knee-jerk,
now. Rather than deal with his own overflowing ignorance.

Jon

Sloman is probably the single most-frequent poster to this group and
is literally 99% off-topic. And virtually every one of his posts
contains pompous insults. He is never helpful, never amusing, never
hopeful, never has ideas; he hasn't done interesting electronics in
decades and probably never will again.

Pick your friends as you will.

Who's picking friends here? I still suspect you were giving me a
bunch of bull about the holier-than-thou high road you want to take
here when you, on the same very day, continue the very thing you were
saying you don't want to encourage.

Jon

WTF is wrong with you? Do you have insufficient drama in your life?
This is an electronics design discussion group, not some self-help
online neurosis therapy clinic.

Actually, I'd really like to know WTF is your problem, following me
around like a puppy. Why are you even here? To discuss climate, for
gosh sake? Or politics?

I know why I'm here. I'm a hobbyist and sometimes something very nice
happens -- like the post Jim placed in today which gives me an
enjoyable moment. I've enjoyed discussions on a reverse biased diode
noise, low overhead constant current sources, and you name it. I like
to learn and sometimes I get to observe and learn from the interacting
discussions here. Not so much, lately. But even today!! yes!

So what's your excuse?

Jon

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

On Dec 18, 5:55 pm, Sylvia Else <syl...@not.at.this.address> wrote:

Eric Jacobsen wrote:
It's easy to be an armchair quarterback.

Perhaps, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was someone on the project
team saying that transmitting the video in the clear was just asking for
trouble. Such a person would likely have been seen as "negative" by the
project management, and the issue would never have been properly evaluated.

Sylvia.

Amen sista.

As I mentioned before, after speaking to various prime contractors and
DARPA, I was depressed for 4 days straight. I got the same feeling you
get when a long-lived pet suddenly dies - lump in throat, can barely
talk, in mild shock, you didn't think it would affect you that much.
People try to ask you what's wrong, and you cannot tell them, because
nothing you can say can convey what you feeling to them. They'd have
to experience it for themselves. Disillusionment is an understatement.
Shame, disgust, anger, discontent, surprise, guilt, alarm, rage...all
of it simultaneously, is speaking in codes to you, telling you he
understands that you might have some "misgivings" about the way they
do thing, but if you want to get paid, you have to play by their
rules, and I don't mean filling out forms.

Contrary to what DoD/DARPA claims, I have found the general culture of
these places, both DARPA and the prime contractors, to be toxic to
true innovation.

One might ask, if this is true, then why do we see stuff from them,
some of it good stuff? After all, we have patriot interceptors, the
F22, Hell-Fire missiles, Stealth bombers, etc.

I offer a simple answer:

$100 billion

You give anyone $100 billion, and they are likely to produce
~something~, whether it crashes or not. Those ~somethings~ are what
we see on the Military Channel, and because it is the first time we
see them, they look cool, but make no mistake:

1. They cost 20x, 30x, 100x, ....1000x? what they should cost.
2. If they happen to explode randomly, the director on the set of a
Military Channel episode will not say, "Call us back when you get
something that is technically sound." Instead, he will say, "Hmm...I
see, ok, well, we can work around that...just bring enough so that we
get sufficient footage to clip out the scenes where it doesn't work."
3. There are usually real scientists and engineers lurking who
actually know how to keep them from crashing, but as Sylvia pointed
out, these people are likely ostracized in favor of those who "play by
the rules".

Truth or fiction.

DARPA and prime contractors reveal whichever is more appropriate at a
particular instant on a case-by-case basis to portray themselves in
the most favorable light.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[krw]

On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:10:31 +0000, Andrew Swallow
<am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:

krw wrote:
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:34:56 +0000, Andrew Swallow
am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:

krw wrote:
{snip}

OTOH, it's the US government. I'm backing the dumb-as-a-rock
explanation.
Front line tactical radio communication has traditionally been
unencrypted. This is just a continuation of that. However being
digital they are changing that. Also high speed off the shelf
portable encryption may not have been available.

Nonsense. It's been available for decades.

True but tactical in the clear is still used.

For radio that's expected. For a Predator link it's stupid. It gives
up the Predator's main advantage; stealth.