5 ms·

What I don't understand here - if the US need their aircraft to work in combat operations spheres, surely it needs to be robust against this anyway? Nothing to

What I don't understand here - if the US need their aircraft to work in combat operations spheres, surely it needs to be robust against this anyway? Nothing to stop an enemy nation state using this to confuse

eternalban 6y ago
Effective signal range, maybe? If an operational base is large enough, 5G sources outside of this perimeter will not be effective. It also sounds like it is trivial to create artificial barriers to absorb the emitted energy. "5G wavelengths have a range of about 1,000 feet, not even 2% of 4G's range. So to ensure a reliable 5G signal, there needs to be a lot of 5G cell towers and antennas everywhere. We're talking on every lamppost, traffic light, etc. because even trees can block 5G signals." [p.s. hmm. Counter point: Disposable loitering EM-drone swarms. I guess this boils down to battery tech again.]
- nobleach 6y ago
  Which is why, when people tell me how "awesome" 5G will be, I have to remind them of the massive infrastructure cost. DC power in Europe also has a similar issue. It's a "short haul" technology. 5G repeaters may be possible, but I'd want to understand the roadmap for what comes next... could they be reusable for whatever "6G" might be? Otherwise we're going to spend a TON of money littering up the landscape for a short term gain.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    What are you referring to by 'DC power'?
    - xnyan 6y ago
      Differences between AC and DC power distribution and why you might chose one over the other. TLDR, AC is the most common choice for good reason, but there are also conditions where DC would be the better choice: You may have heard something like "AC is better for power distribution than DC." I would not go so far as to call this a lie, AC is in fact "better" than DC in lots of common cases, probably the big two being that at some (but not all) voltages, AC transmission is more efficient than DC and the second being that AC can be stepped up and down in voltage very efficiently without electronics or anything else more complicated than several loops of varnished copper wire. Of course this is not true in 100% of cases. For example, at very high voltages (think 100s of thousands of volts) something called the skin effect can become so pronounced that DC becomes more efficient than AC. There's a high voltage DC power transfer backbone in Europe for this very reason. When you're dealing with multiple countries and potentially different standards for AC power distribution, this has the nice side effect of eliminating the need convert between frequencies and phases of AC. The other, and probably the biggest reason you would choose a DC power distribution system is because your power source is DC. Pretty much all power is generated the same way, from fossil fuels to hydroelectric and even nuclear power - you use energy to spin a turbine, and that circular motion is used to induce an alternating current. There's really only one way to get efficient DC power and that's solar panels. Depending on the use case, the losses of converting DC to AC (and often, rectified back to DC again for the end-use application) may not be worth it.
      - cardiffspaceman 6y ago
        Pacific Intertie is borderline-famous application of DC in the US (with Swedish tech) and the Wikipedia article [1] looks like a good description. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
      - eternalban 6y ago
        Recommend the film “The Current War” for those interested in an entertaining look at the history of AC vs DC and the characters involved. I found it balanced, and not really picking sides between Edison and Tesla, in terms of hagiographic treatment. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
  - ksec 6y ago
    >massive infrastructure cost........It's a "short haul" technology. Again, only in US, and only mmWave. It seems US is the only part of the world where they use mmWave and 5G interchangeably. ( I guess I could blame the Media for it. ) Most part of the world aren't even thinking of implementing mmWave.
  - darksaints 6y ago
    5g already is awesome, and the vast majority of it uses the same exact spectrum bands as 4g. mmWave, which is a portion not shared with 4g which has high infrastructure costs, only tends to get deployed in super high density places that need the extra bandwidth. You can buy a 5g phone today and get the advantages of 5g without ever connecting to a cell site that your 4g phone couldn't connect to. Also, you aren't spending that money, some cartel telco is spending that money. You don't have any reason to be concerned about the amount of money they're spending. Those costs they're incurring has almost no relationship to the price you are paying...this is cartel economics 101.
    - themaninthedark 6y ago
      When you say cartel telco, are you talking about the telco's the cartels have set up? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-specialreport-idUSKCN24G1DN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-s... Or just AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile? Is there anything that shows they have been working to limit access to the market?
  - drewzero1 6y ago
    Are people trying to bring back DC for distribution? I love the idea but the short range and larger conductors seem to be barriers. I've been working on a 24VDC network for my workshop, but even across the room I'm accounting for voltage drop.
  - ummonk 6y ago
    The whole point of the high frequency portion of 5G is providing more bandwidth in dense urban areas with a lot of devices.
- Klinky 6y ago
  5G works on a variety of frequencies. The limits quoted are mmWave frequencies, which are very high 25 - 52GHz, and meant for short-range density. The frequencies in this article are in the 3GHz range.
- swiley 6y ago
  At that point why can't we just use WiFi? Or develop WiFi until it's as useful as 5G? Why all these special exemptions for large organizations building networks?
  - eternalban 6y ago
    IMO, 5G is about automation and command/control of roving robots, “Smart Cities”, and finally Augmented Reality (AR) in industrial and urban contexts. Applications range from benign factory automation to Boston Dynamics police dogs patrolling your neighborhood, to your walking in downtown Tokyo and being (virtually) greeted by AR entities. What is it that WiFi can not do but 5G can? 5G’s much lower latencies allow for R/T CnC (which enables all of the above). So, for example, your factory floor bot’s camera sees something that it’s local AI can’t categorize, so a central node with greater computational power and storage capacity can (in R/T) make decisions and send operative commands: Do the roundtrip latency calc for below for 4G and 5G: node -> base station -> fast network —> central control
    - swiley 6y ago
      Is WiFi really the slow part there? How does 5G improve on it? No retransmits?
      - eternalban 6y ago
        This what the search engine pulled up when asked about 5G latency: "5G technology offers an extremely low latency rate,the delay between the sending and receiving of information. From 200 milliseconds for 4G, we go down to 1 millisecond(1ms) with 5G. Just think about it. A millisecond is 1/1000 of a second." -- National Security Implications of Fifth Generation (5G) Mobile Technologies 5G technologies could have a number of potential military applications, particularly for autonomous vehicles, C2, logistics, maintenance, augmented and virtual reality, and ISR systems—all of which would benefit from improved data rates and lower latency (time delay). https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF11251.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF11251.pdf Interesting enough, a simple 'r/national security/civil liberty' and 'r/military/police' highlights a peculiarly undiscussed aspect of the enthusiasm of goverments worldwide to implement 5g, so that "gamers can have a better gaming experience!".
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
Without considering the merits of the issue, given the scarcity of spectrum: militaries accept that safety margins are much lower during combat operations; however that doesn't seem like a strong argument for reducing safety margins during peacetime operations.
wbl 6y ago
The military has its own effective means of silencing interfering sources permanently it can't use in peacetime. Also these altimetes are most useful when landing which is generally done on your side of the lines.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  Those interfering sources cost on the order of $10, the, uh, "mechanisms of silencing them" probably cost a couple orders of magnitude more, and the aircraft that could be brought down (such as the C130 in the article) cost on the order of $100M. It's a highly asymmetric problem. Also, bombing every cell phone within a few miles of your airport is likely to have some undesired side effects... Edit: A commenter further down mentioned the AGM-88 HARM, which is a $280k missile. That's significantly more expensive than my estimate of a couple orders of magnitude for a 'dumb' missile from a helicopter.
  - wbl 6y ago
    Tube artillery also works to silence sources. HARM is for things like air defense radars in enemy territory.
  - _jal 6y ago
    The combination of battery tech advances, cheap wireless comms and cheap processors has created a huge range of asymmetric risks like this. I suspect terrorists/freedom-fighters (depending on which side of which conflict you're on) will be exploring them for a long time to come - bomb-drones and remote IEDs are just the start of the development curve.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      Everyone keeps calling these risks asymmetric, but we haven't seen the price of a birdshot flak cannon because there hasn't been that much of a need yet.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
downrightmike 6y ago
A lot of the old justification for not having LEO satellite internet in the past, was that doing so would cross over marine GPS spectrum for older GPS devices. I'm surprised they okayed anything that interferes with their spectrum.
czep 6y ago
Radio altimeters are mainly used during landing. Presumably, you'd always be landing in friendly territory, so the threat of malicious interference would need to be very close to a base to be effective.
elil17 6y ago
For many types of flight, planes are robust against radio altimeter failure. The RA is really only used as a non-essential part of instrument approaches (e.g. landing in heavy fog, as opposed to a visual approach where a pilot can see the terrain) and as part of the ground proximity warning system (which should never be triggered if a pilot is flying correctly). For military applications, they reduce the risk to pilots and civilians from military aircraft which fly in ways civilian aircraft would never be allowed to. Military pilots are often ordered to hug the ground when deployed in order to avoid RADAR, but this raises the risk of controlled flight in to terrain. RAs are one tool which can help avoid CFIT when flying irresponsibly close to the ground. Military aircraft would still be able to fly at higher altitudes without RAs.
smarx007 6y ago
I think a better counterexample is to ask how those same planes with the same altimeters would fly (safely?) to Europe or Australia that are rolling out 5G in C-band. I seriously doubt EASA would authorise anything remotely unsafe.

eternalban 6y ago

Effective signal range, maybe? If an operational base is large enough, 5G sources outside of this perimeter will not be effective. It also sounds like it is trivial to create artificial barriers to absorb the emitted energy. "5G wavelengths have a range of about 1,000 feet, not even 2% of 4G's range. So to ensure a reliable 5G signal, there needs to be a lot of 5G cell towers and antennas everywhere. We're talking on every lamppost, traffic light, etc. because even trees can block 5G signals." [p.s. hmm. Counter point: Disposable loitering EM-drone swarms. I guess this boils down to battery tech again.]

nobleach 6y ago
Which is why, when people tell me how "awesome" 5G will be, I have to remind them of the massive infrastructure cost. DC power in Europe also has a similar issue. It's a "short haul" technology. 5G repeaters may be possible, but I'd want to understand the roadmap for what comes next... could they be reusable for whatever "6G" might be? Otherwise we're going to spend a TON of money littering up the landscape for a short term gain.
- OJFord 6y ago
  What are you referring to by 'DC power'?
  - xnyan 6y ago
    Differences between AC and DC power distribution and why you might chose one over the other. TLDR, AC is the most common choice for good reason, but there are also conditions where DC would be the better choice: You may have heard something like "AC is better for power distribution than DC." I would not go so far as to call this a lie, AC is in fact "better" than DC in lots of common cases, probably the big two being that at some (but not all) voltages, AC transmission is more efficient than DC and the second being that AC can be stepped up and down in voltage very efficiently without electronics or anything else more complicated than several loops of varnished copper wire. Of course this is not true in 100% of cases. For example, at very high voltages (think 100s of thousands of volts) something called the skin effect can become so pronounced that DC becomes more efficient than AC. There's a high voltage DC power transfer backbone in Europe for this very reason. When you're dealing with multiple countries and potentially different standards for AC power distribution, this has the nice side effect of eliminating the need convert between frequencies and phases of AC. The other, and probably the biggest reason you would choose a DC power distribution system is because your power source is DC. Pretty much all power is generated the same way, from fossil fuels to hydroelectric and even nuclear power - you use energy to spin a turbine, and that circular motion is used to induce an alternating current. There's really only one way to get efficient DC power and that's solar panels. Depending on the use case, the losses of converting DC to AC (and often, rectified back to DC again for the end-use application) may not be worth it.
    - cardiffspaceman 6y ago
      Pacific Intertie is borderline-famous application of DC in the US (with Swedish tech) and the Wikipedia article [1] looks like a good description. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
    - eternalban 6y ago
      Recommend the film “The Current War” for those interested in an entertaining look at the history of AC vs DC and the characters involved. I found it balanced, and not really picking sides between Edison and Tesla, in terms of hagiographic treatment. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
- ksec 6y ago
  >massive infrastructure cost........It's a "short haul" technology. Again, only in US, and only mmWave. It seems US is the only part of the world where they use mmWave and 5G interchangeably. ( I guess I could blame the Media for it. ) Most part of the world aren't even thinking of implementing mmWave.
- darksaints 6y ago
  5g already is awesome, and the vast majority of it uses the same exact spectrum bands as 4g. mmWave, which is a portion not shared with 4g which has high infrastructure costs, only tends to get deployed in super high density places that need the extra bandwidth. You can buy a 5g phone today and get the advantages of 5g without ever connecting to a cell site that your 4g phone couldn't connect to. Also, you aren't spending that money, some cartel telco is spending that money. You don't have any reason to be concerned about the amount of money they're spending. Those costs they're incurring has almost no relationship to the price you are paying...this is cartel economics 101.
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    When you say cartel telco, are you talking about the telco's the cartels have set up? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-specialreport-idUSKCN24G1DN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-s... Or just AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile? Is there anything that shows they have been working to limit access to the market?
- drewzero1 6y ago
  Are people trying to bring back DC for distribution? I love the idea but the short range and larger conductors seem to be barriers. I've been working on a 24VDC network for my workshop, but even across the room I'm accounting for voltage drop.
- ummonk 6y ago
  The whole point of the high frequency portion of 5G is providing more bandwidth in dense urban areas with a lot of devices.
Klinky 6y ago
5G works on a variety of frequencies. The limits quoted are mmWave frequencies, which are very high 25 - 52GHz, and meant for short-range density. The frequencies in this article are in the 3GHz range.
swiley 6y ago
At that point why can't we just use WiFi? Or develop WiFi until it's as useful as 5G? Why all these special exemptions for large organizations building networks?
- eternalban 6y ago
  IMO, 5G is about automation and command/control of roving robots, “Smart Cities”, and finally Augmented Reality (AR) in industrial and urban contexts. Applications range from benign factory automation to Boston Dynamics police dogs patrolling your neighborhood, to your walking in downtown Tokyo and being (virtually) greeted by AR entities. What is it that WiFi can not do but 5G can? 5G’s much lower latencies allow for R/T CnC (which enables all of the above). So, for example, your factory floor bot’s camera sees something that it’s local AI can’t categorize, so a central node with greater computational power and storage capacity can (in R/T) make decisions and send operative commands: Do the roundtrip latency calc for below for 4G and 5G: node -> base station -> fast network —> central control
  - swiley 6y ago
    Is WiFi really the slow part there? How does 5G improve on it? No retransmits?
    - eternalban 6y ago
      This what the search engine pulled up when asked about 5G latency: "5G technology offers an extremely low latency rate,the delay between the sending and receiving of information. From 200 milliseconds for 4G, we go down to 1 millisecond(1ms) with 5G. Just think about it. A millisecond is 1/1000 of a second." -- National Security Implications of Fifth Generation (5G) Mobile Technologies 5G technologies could have a number of potential military applications, particularly for autonomous vehicles, C2, logistics, maintenance, augmented and virtual reality, and ISR systems—all of which would benefit from improved data rates and lower latency (time delay). https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF11251.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF11251.pdf Interesting enough, a simple 'r/national security/civil liberty' and 'r/military/police' highlights a peculiarly undiscussed aspect of the enthusiasm of goverments worldwide to implement 5g, so that "gamers can have a better gaming experience!".

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

Without considering the merits of the issue, given the scarcity of spectrum: militaries accept that safety margins are much lower during combat operations; however that doesn't seem like a strong argument for reducing safety margins during peacetime operations.

wbl 6y ago

The military has its own effective means of silencing interfering sources permanently it can't use in peacetime. Also these altimetes are most useful when landing which is generally done on your side of the lines.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Those interfering sources cost on the order of $10, the, uh, "mechanisms of silencing them" probably cost a couple orders of magnitude more, and the aircraft that could be brought down (such as the C130 in the article) cost on the order of $100M. It's a highly asymmetric problem. Also, bombing every cell phone within a few miles of your airport is likely to have some undesired side effects... Edit: A commenter further down mentioned the AGM-88 HARM, which is a $280k missile. That's significantly more expensive than my estimate of a couple orders of magnitude for a 'dumb' missile from a helicopter.
- wbl 6y ago
  Tube artillery also works to silence sources. HARM is for things like air defense radars in enemy territory.
- _jal 6y ago
  The combination of battery tech advances, cheap wireless comms and cheap processors has created a huge range of asymmetric risks like this. I suspect terrorists/freedom-fighters (depending on which side of which conflict you're on) will be exploring them for a long time to come - bomb-drones and remote IEDs are just the start of the development curve.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    Everyone keeps calling these risks asymmetric, but we haven't seen the price of a birdshot flak cannon because there hasn't been that much of a need yet.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago

downrightmike 6y ago

A lot of the old justification for not having LEO satellite internet in the past, was that doing so would cross over marine GPS spectrum for older GPS devices. I'm surprised they okayed anything that interferes with their spectrum.

czep 6y ago

Radio altimeters are mainly used during landing. Presumably, you'd always be landing in friendly territory, so the threat of malicious interference would need to be very close to a base to be effective.

elil17 6y ago

For many types of flight, planes are robust against radio altimeter failure. The RA is really only used as a non-essential part of instrument approaches (e.g. landing in heavy fog, as opposed to a visual approach where a pilot can see the terrain) and as part of the ground proximity warning system (which should never be triggered if a pilot is flying correctly). For military applications, they reduce the risk to pilots and civilians from military aircraft which fly in ways civilian aircraft would never be allowed to. Military pilots are often ordered to hug the ground when deployed in order to avoid RADAR, but this raises the risk of controlled flight in to terrain. RAs are one tool which can help avoid CFIT when flying irresponsibly close to the ground. Military aircraft would still be able to fly at higher altitudes without RAs.

smarx007 6y ago

I think a better counterexample is to ask how those same planes with the same altimeters would fly (safely?) to Europe or Australia that are rolling out 5G in C-band. I seriously doubt EASA would authorise anything remotely unsafe.