The future of the radio – No just satellites

Dear Sparks,

on an Italian newspaper has been published the following article written by the Team of one of the most famous Italian journalist Nicola PORRO.

The English translation thanks to Radio Officer David J. Ring – N1EA.

Not just satellites, on the battlefields in Ukraine the radio takes its revenge.

It was a mistake to set aside a lot of yesterday’s technology, which in any case proved to be very reliable, in favor of the excessive use of much more complex communication systems

Nicola Porro’s “Soup of the Day” Commentary.

by Roberto Ezio Pozzo 23 May 2022, 6:02

In 1901, immediately after having crossed the Atlantic with a radio signal, Guglielmo Marconi iconified radio communications as “the most powerful and universal means of rapid remote communication that the world has ever known”. He was certainly not wrong, even if he still could not estimate what military and strategic implications the invention of the radio would have. After more than a century, in the height of satellites and digital communications, radio still plays a fundamental role both in everyday life and in specialized military applications.

From the first days of the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, in February 2022, the strategic observers of armed conflicts were able to find an unexpected and massive return to the use of radio transmitters by both sides. in conflict, overturning the predictions of the most up-to-date telecommunications scholars upside down, as they would have sworn that this new conflict would be played out mainly in space and with the use of the most technologically advanced cyber communication technologies.

Speed, ease of use, reliability of the radio

In reality, things went very differently, due to a series of a few key concepts. First of all, the sudden development of the “real” war, that is extended to an entire nation (Ukraine is the largest nation in Europe) has made it necessary for the expected very rapid deployment of satellite based infrastructures to be reduced to a minimum but extremely efficient and functional means of communications, since there was no time to convey all the most important military communications in various satellite data streams that could have made them usable by all the units in the field and in the headquarters of the higher commands.

Above all there was a need for the extreme simplification of the radio procedures, required by a deployment of very fragmented forces scattered over an enormous battlefield. Contrary to what many believe, the management of satellite data traffic (capable of reaching any point on the Earth) is anything but simple and intuitive. In order for a satellite network to function properly, in addition to the many satellites in the sky, equally numerous ground communications structures are required, placed in strategic and unexpected locations and adequately protected from possible physical or virtual attacks.

In the sudden escalation of military operations in Ukraine, it was preferred to rely on the more traditional radio communications of the point-to-point type,, i.e., those directed in a circular way broadcast to a very large number of receiving stations, which, in turn, broadcast their communications directly, from antenna to antenna. After decades in which the metric frequencies between 1 MHz and 30 MHz (called HF) were increasingly placed in a secondary role, compared to the use of very high frequencies (VHF an UHF), the war in Ukraine has officially rediscovered the usability of High Frequency radio in the event of large-scale conflicts.

Voices from the battlefields

To the amazement of millions of radio amateurs in the world, as they are equipped with radio receivers and antennas suitable for receiving HF communications, the radio messages from individual military units engaged in the field have forcefully returned to the fore, as happened, for the last time in the recent times, during the First Gulf War in 1991. Excited voices of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers engaged in tank operations or those employed in those anti-tank and anti-missile systems that we have now come to know all, have literally filled the frequencies (more or less reserved for the military) throughout the first phase of the war and still in these present moments, albeit more rarely, still ringing on the speakers of shortwave radios throughout Europe.

It is not the first time that this has happened and this is probably due to a choice of greater simplicity and operational autonomy of the individual portable or mobile radio stations of the military in conflict, where in a very short time and with the use of decidedly limited means it is possible to install an efficient radio transceiver station with a range of many hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers.

The downside: jamming and wiretapping

There is, however, a downside, indeed, if it were possible, more than one downside: point-to-point transmissions can be easily “covered” by strong radio interference signals (the so-called jamming ) from enemies and quite easily intercepted if encryption systems are not used. Regarding encryption,, although many military-type radio communications are encrypted and made unintelligible to all not having the appropriate electronic key to decrypt them, not all those that have recently been heard made use of such security coding systems, mainly because, not having to deal with complex encryption systems, most of the two-way radios that can also be purchased on the web are perfectly capable of establishing a voice, telegraphy or data connection with other stations even thousands of kilometers away, in absolute operational simplicity, allowing its use even by personnel not adequately trained in telecommunications.

What I affirm is easily verifiable by examining the photographs abundantly present on the Internet, where among the soldiers one can see almost only commercial radio systems, rather than those of hardened and specialized military manufacture. It goes without saying that, evidently, it was considered that the game was worth the effort and being able to equip each operational unit in the field with an efficient radio station, even if technically unsafe, indeed, interceptable, is still better than not being able to install complex satellite stations due to lack of time, staff training and ease of use.

On the other hand, it must also be considered that the times of modern warfare have been incredibly short, so if information on the movements of troops during the Second World War could have a military interest for at least one day or so, today everything takes place at a highly accelerated speed with the result that news of of missiles and also a precious logistic information coming from the battlefield after a few minutes is old, obsolete and no longer usable because things move so quickly in today’s battlefield compared with the Second World War.

One step behind

Even in this specific tactical and strategic sector, the war in Ukraine – we can fortunately say still that it is fought with traditional techniques – has nevertheless shown a generalized lack of preparation of certain high commands to face those somewhat outdated asymmetric war scenarios, unreasonably considered unreasonable. more likely in the third millennium. I have repeatedly spoken of the probable need to take a step back, to be able then to do two steps forward, so as not to fall back into the error of putting aside so much technology of yesterday, which proved, however, very reliable, in favor of the excessive use of communication systems that are inherently much more complex and based on networks (which can be disabled by targeted hacking attacks). Unfortunately, the radio will still be used in other wars in the future. Better not to unlearn how to use it and teach its use also to young people.