How they Find, Fix, and Finish You: The lack of understanding due to culture in radios, by GuerrillaLogistician

Reference –  3G

By GuerrillaLogistician

@glogistician on X.com

Imagine you are in the wide ocean, captain of a submarine, and you need to send vital information about the enemy to your fleet.  You know your encryption is unbreakable according to the command.  Yet every time you transmit, the enemy sends something to your area and hunts you.  Command knows they have High Frequency Direction finding called Huff Duff.  How do you plan to transmit?  Is the information worth risking your crew?  Can you risk it? Will the reaction force be accurate, or will they miss you as you slip deep and try to evade? This cat-and-mouse game has been a thing for as long as people figured out that signals could be measured in strength and directionally tracked.

Things like video games absolutely ignore this, and I think it is an absolutely god awful disservice to the complexity of warfare and understanding of what was going on because so much of our understanding about things comes from poorly spun media.  Just like how people think machine guns make a novice some mass killer in a second.  That said, games aren’t real life, and without experience in reality, you won’t understand how complex the topic is.  Why do I bring up games? Because so many people are playing Battlefield, and other such games, watching war movies, and believe they have a handle on the future from these “interactive stories”.  Why am I bringing up Direction, finding, and HF in submarines and games?  What does that have to do with the prepper?

0 days.

Congratulations, it lasted nearly 150 days and it only took the trailer of the next patch for someone to leak the EF-2000/EuroFighter documents.

You guys continue to amaze me

(Just woke up to this information) pic.twitter.com/b5I7fkT2gv

— Days without confidential leaks in war thunder (@NoLeaksPls) December 12, 2024

In the world of modern guerrilla warfare and the tactics that we are presented, many false ideas have played out in movies and video games. Sometimes the aspect of these gets very realistic, especially with submarine warfare. We have a good lens to look back into history and see how the technology and tactics evolved the battle space. So much so that today, in a Society of high technology and secrets, it is commonly known in the gaming industry that war games have some of the most insane leaks of critical and classified data about weapon systems.  Even though these leaks are a horrible thing and have spanned everything from the Chinese to the American military, the video game ignores all of the tactical communications and necessities of such technology.

Just like the submarine games are extremely accurate on how deep the submarine can go, how the torpedoes react, and even teach you how to operate many of the critical functions of that submarine, they don’t express other critical dangers.  It wasn’t the depth charges, the leaks, or the roving airplanes that would swoop down on an unsuspecting submarine that were the true danger.  Communications interception was one of the major breakthroughs in hunting down the U-boats during World War 2, regardless of the nation. Once these submarines were found because of their communications, threats like destroyers, aircraft, and the depth charges they presented were the real reasons these submarines were destroyed.  If a rifle has no sights, it can’t fire, and if there isn’t an eyeball to direct that weapon, it might as well be a paperweight. Just like ATAK and mesh networks, society has pushed so hard for constant and easy connectivity; they don’t think of the consequences. So what are these consequences, and who can address these in an efficient and smart manner?

Who else gives up poor information about radios besides the money-hungry sellers of gadgets that claim to do everything?  I was an old-school viewer of survivalistboards.com, etc, and while guns dominate all conversation, the three things that should be talked about and are ignored are Food/Water, Medical, and Comms.  Of these three, food and medical are the primary things you will have to deal with most often.  Yet little on these forums ever gets past the food and guns section on most days.  Most of these preppers tend to think they have it all under control, but don’t realize even in the world of massive preparation, a lack of training in, say, medical can lead to both wasting resources, and a need to communicate with others for those resources.

We see this all the time in disasters, not just Civil wars and the like.  That is why Mech Medic, and Doc Teddy are pushing knowledge, and people like Brushbeater do comms.  As you dig into these subjects, they become overwhelming, to be sure, which is why classes and training are so important.  Even if you are broke, training could be a book and practice.  Things become easier, like learning guns. At first, did you know how to take your gun apart and clean it?  Probably not, but I bet if you are on here, you probably do.  

HF is the same way, and HF is regional comms. Sure, people try to do other things, like build up networks of little meshtastic nodes that transmit all the time, and others stick up towers.  Each has limited but viable uses until people try to shoot you for simple things like Religious beliefs or opinions on how your taxes are spent.  The realistic way to keep in touch within 300(sometimes up to 600) miles comes down to HF radio if the backbone of society breaks.  When the networks go down, the mesh node you had packed away doesn’t work because you aren’t on the latest update. How will you listen, much less communicate?

Add to that it’s one of the few ways left that is still hard for even tech to Direction Find, IF you know what you are doing.  Lastly, many people rely on things like Discord, X.com, and other such sites to communicate and gather news.  As @brushbeater and @4ntipatern have said, if you don’t control it, then it probably isn’t really yours.  For instance, right now Ireland is having major protests as the Irish gov has suppressed information about an illegal immigrant rapeing a 10-year-old. The gov is suppressing all of this online, banning videos of citizens going after police, etc, as not appropriate.  So how do you get information?  How do you transmit information and stay safe?

Beyond Prep

https://commonofftheshelf.podbean.com/e/regional-comms-with-historian/

I think Historian did a great job in our previous podcast, where he made an argument for NVIS, focusing on its use with HF specifically in natural and regional disasters. As this is an article and people read less, I am going to discuss the boogyman of all topics.  Why is regional comms a partisan need, and who needs to know how to operate NVIS.  If you have a group of dispersed LGOP (short for little group of paratroops or partisans, as the case may be) in a region, this is a must.  From the command to the RTO of the groups this is something you NEED.

History has shown that the ability to communicate dynamically changes the way wars are fought.  Having the ability to call for help, relay 60 miles, or connect two towns with reliable communications over a mountain is a must.  It could dynamically change the way you see your regional relationship.  Scout in his Guerrilla’s Guide specifically has an example transmission where they spot armed people, and instead of them being an enemy, they recommend contact.  When all hell breaks loose, and your small team has gone to observe an area, how fast should you a leader get that information?  Well it should come back as safely and quickly as possible, but how do you do that?  Especially in agricultural areas where you can’t throw a defensive force at every farm, but every farmer is vital to community survival.

Having a radio doesn’t help when your Line Of Sight cant quite reach that 30-40 miles, yet the farmer could hold out the time it takes to get forces to them.  Maybe it is simpler, you want a buffer and send a scout team out dozens of miles to watch a major road near your town for possible issues.  Maybe you need to transmit in Utah, and you have a community nestled in the Rockies, and the other community is right over the ridge.  Maybe it’s a winding road that is 5-10 miles, but the line of sight is not possible, and you can’t man a repeater tower 24/7.

Likewise, keeping a small scout team out there would be nice, but having them come back and forth on the limited fuel might not be a smart or quiet way to pass a message.  NVIS skips that ridge, keeps that checkpoint in contact, and helps prevent you from being direction found like all those poor submarines trying to use skip communication 1000s of miles.  While long distance is great, and we think of things like HAM radio as the long distance grid down go-to, many forget how versatile it is regionally.  This is where the Historians class and the 50-60 mile communications demonstration really hit home for many.

Where standard comms jumps long range, and that is definitely useful at times, an NVIS antenna localizes your comms, you can still receive that long DX from others (listen to places far away). So while your operator is waiting for that ANGUS report he can also listen to all the other comms bouncing all over. Also, the logistical ability of reliable comms is absolutely a must. Right now we can call for help at any time. What happens when you’re in an area with brownouts, and now that no one has landlines, what do you do?  Add to that, landlines are going away, and those can be cut as well.  What are you going to do?  In the age of internet comms, when everything crashes out and you can’t even talk to your buddies in the local area you live in?  How did you react when the internet/cell service went down?  Confusion, did you have a plan?  What were you going to do if things didn’t turn back on?

Now, let’s make it a lot more disturbing by putting a hostile force in play with all the issues that you already face. Something most people don’t understand is that every transmission is a chance for you to be F3EAD by this hostile force. Do you know how to reduce this issue? Historian goes over multiple ways on how to cover things like ground wave mitigation. If you look at the image above that shows the ground wave, you can see how it moves across the Earth’s surface, but things like train changes will stop the ground wave in its tracks. Knowing what kind of environment you will be operating in is key to the success of not only hiding properly, but getting that transmission out and not having a group of hunters find you.

During World War 2 alone, many of these direction-finding systems were set up, and then people were sent out in specialized trench coats to hunt down would-be transmitters. Something little known in the modern era is the fact that amateur radio was shut off during the war because of the threat of spying. All nations during the war would set up direction-finding systems and would have a fast reaction force to go hunt down these people transmitting. Historian discusses many of the failures in communication that led to the capture and death of many of the operators, and the sad part is that most of this knowledge is lost on modern radio operators today.

WWII DFing equipment, German DFing field equipment for regonal operations (left), I believe a British worn receiver to find transmission down to the home (right)

https://brushbeater.store/products/tinysa-ultra-spectrum-analyzer

TinySA capable of being carried in the field and concealed, merging both of the WWII devices into one.

The absurdly interesting part about all of this technology is how advanced it has become and how easy it is for people to have that technology in their own homes. So much so that the tinySA ultra and the Kraken are routinely in the possession of people who may not even understand how massive an advantage they have at their fingertips.  Historian goes through the steps of safely deploying a specific antenna after you have built that antenna which you will then take home with you.  When I say this, I mean this from the deepest recesses of my brain, but this man has probably forgotten more about radio technology and the intricacies of such technology that the lost knowledge probably could fill more books than the knowledge I have on the subject.

If you’ve been thinking about going to any classes after taking the Scouts RTO course, this is a class for you. Suppose you want to be a leader or be involved in leadership. In that case, this is a class that you should understand because the threats that are not capable of being seen by our senses could get your community or group killed faster than orange vests on Taliban fighters.  RTO and advanced RTO are definitely classes designed with tactical applications in mind. While he touches on several of the aspects that Historian will go into, Historian will take you on that necessary deep dive.  It will be far more clandestine and strategic in nature, and something so many people miss out on. It is fun and entertaining to have crystal clear calms and play GI Joe in the woods, but it is a whole other aspect to worry about people hunting you day after day, week after week.

While even Scout sets you up to prevent a lot of these problems, his focus is that of action, unlike the framework that makes Historian’s class so pivotal in our understanding of defeating SIGINT and its role, we see guerrilla warfare.  If Scout is the morphine and tourniquet to the comms world, Historian is the long-term care and surgeon. I highly recommend his classes, both his current NVIS class and his future ones he has planned.