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Russian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a bad idea

• lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Came to post exactly this. It's like the Stavos (?) thing from few years back where everyone saw the secret running track on secret bases. Only this is not an amusing running track, but dying. It does emphasise something I have been saying for a while - privacy is the politeness of your neighbours, and secrecy is dead.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • nindalf 4y ago
    Strava. Fitness app Strava lights up staff at military bases - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42853072.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42853072.amp (Jan 2018).
  • kzrdude 4y ago
    "secret running track" feels like a joke, but the point it illustrates is clear - the massive uncontrolled dispersion of location data.
    • MikeDelta 4y ago
      There was also a case of soldiers using flash-card apps to learn about the nuclear bases they were stationed at, revealing various facts. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expose-nuclear-weapons-secrets-via-flashcard-apps/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
      • codedokode 4y ago
        This shows that people generally don't understand client-server architecture and think that the app stores data on their phone and not somewhere in cloud.
  • stavros 4y ago
    What did I do now?
  • codedokode 4y ago
    By the way, I remember a similar case in Russia. A telco company published a heat map created from GSM location data that reflected where in the city yound people spend their time. One of the "hot" spots on the map was in a remote forest area with nobody living around. Most probably it was a military object.
• cudgy 4y ago
  • lnsru 4y ago
  • rendall 4y ago
    But this was the public statement of Putin himself and captured Russian soldiers, so...
    • cudgy 4y ago
      They may have expected support from citizens in Eastern Ukraine where there has been a war going on for years, but I have yet to hear concrete evidence that this was expected throughout Ukraine. Also, captured soldiers will say anything under duress, and I have yet to see a verifiable survey of captured soldiers. Relying on The words of a few soldiers is nonsense.
      • scrollaway 4y ago
        It’s very much a fact, though. Before the war started, my girlfriend (Ukrainian) said she figured that if Russian soldiers came, Ukraine would just let them in in peace. She didn’t expect Russia to go ahead with an invasion in the first place, and didn’t realise war was what would be involved. Her attitude obviously very quickly changed when she saw her country was fighting back, morale is an important component of this. It was always delusional to think west Ukraine would welcome Russia, but east Ukraine had been consuming a LOT of Russian propaganda up to the war. And when we talk about eastern Ukraine we aren’t talking about the bordering cities currently suffering heavy occupation, we are talking about the entire eastern half. If Ukrainians themselves were thinking it, there is no question soldiers were as well. You may have seen comms of dead Russian soldiers in the early days of the war talking about this, including a sms conversation that got famous when being read out at the EU parliament.
        • 4y ago
• tester756 4y ago
  Aren't soliders across the world taught of this? like how does it even happen in current_year
  • Synaesthesia 4y ago
    This is why Russian troops are forbidden to have cellphones and to use social media.
    • simion314 4y ago
      Probably the superiors did not waste time explaining the reason and just demanded their phones, then the Russian soldier stole or robbed a phone and called home since he knows there is a big chance that he will be dead soon. So if you think that your soldiers have this need to talk home maybe an competent army should offer them some alternatives, like some satellite phone they can use once a day and call home, you can't expect 18 years old forced to go to war to be professionals.
    • praptak 4y ago
      Yeah I bet they are also forbidden from looting.
  • sofixa 4y ago
    The Russians don't have reliable communications, so it's not like there's that much choice. Furthermore, the level of training and education of the average Russian soldier is.. not great. Look at some of the things they did around Chernobyl for an example of their knowledge gaps. Same goes for their discipline ( low morale, poor training, corruption, encouragement of war crimes will do that).
    • octoberfranklin 4y ago
      > The Russians don't have reliable communications, so it's not like there's that much choice. Oh come on, VHF radio is stupid reliable. It's a war zone, so nobody's enforcing TX power limits. I don't buy this explanation. They aren't downloading multigigabyte 4k video, they're issuing combat orders. VHF has done a great job with that for decades.
• cm2187 4y ago
  On this topic, a french journalist also highlighted the use of small civilian plane navigation devices on Russian jet fighters, most likely because of the lack of access to components with the sanctions.
  • belter 4y ago
    "Moscow4" https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/04/19/navalny-moscow-4-origseriesfilms-3.cnn https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/04/19/navalny-mosc...
• lordnacho 4y ago
  The stories of Russian military incompetence are so widespread, I'm starting to have a hard time believing it. They can't drive a convoy a few hundred miles, they don't seem to know that tanks need protection from anti-tank missiles, they're scared to fly their plans, they use ordinary mobile phones to talk to each other, their generals are way out on the front line, their flagship got sunk, soldiers are quitting their jobs due to this not being an official war. Wouldn't you stop after I don't know, a week of this? It just seems so overwhelmingly bad, you have to wonder if actually the war is going ok for them despite all these things and the Western media is simply keen to point out their shortcomings. It just makes less and less sense with each story.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    Probably most of these stories are part of the pro-Ukrainian propaganda - in every war the side people are on makes fun of the adversary.
    • foldr 4y ago
      What would that even mean, concretely? It’s not Ukrainian propaganda that the Moskva sunk. Russia admits it. (And if it wasn’t sunk by a Ukrainian missile, extreme Russian incompetence is the other explanation on the table.)
      • eps 4y ago
        But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine. Propaganda works by selecting some facts and amplifying them, all the while hiding others. Note how Ukrainian military losses are never reported, for example. Photos of destroyed Russian tanks are all over the place, but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. The coverage is very selective to paint a specific picture.
        • foldr 4y ago
          I’m not denying that Ukrainian propaganda exists. My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence. Oddly, lordnacho seems to suggest that they are less inclined to believe this the more evidence for it that they see. The mere fact that Ukraine still is not occupied by Russia tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
• shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  *troops, fix the heading please
  • Stratoscope 4y ago
    Yes, I noticed the typo after the two-hour edit window. Hopefully dang will fix it. There is a mildly amusing story behind this. Or perhaps I am easily amused! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31376306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31376306
    • Thorrez 4y ago
      If you want dang to fix it, click the contact button on the bottom. I always get a response, and usually it's extremely quickly.
    • shreyshnaccount 4y ago
      It is amusing xD
• willnonya 4y ago
  "To some, this type of scenario may seem...hyperbolic" Or just wildly inaccurate given the lack of cell phone networks at sea... Once they are on land
• octoberfranklin 4y ago
  I am very surprised that the Russian military hasn't simply cut all the fiber optics running into and out of the areas where they're operating. Does anybody have insight on this? Fiber isn't hard to find. The aerial stuff is unmistakable (snowshoes or other slack-loop storage). The buried stuff has conductive marker tape, like the stuff used for locating buried power lines but with a different resonant frequency. It can't be that hard to find the few fiber optic arteries into/outof the next city they want to crap all over and cut each trunk once. Would love to know why this hasn't been done. Obviously I would not make a good general. Edit: okay, the article mentions this, claiming that the Russians don't have VHF radios, which I find to be an utterly ridiculous claim. This is 1960's (or earlier!) technology folks. Does not pass the smell test. Even if they've resorted to "civilian handheld radios", those don't need cell towers or fiber optics.
  • randomsearch 4y ago
    Usually the military doesn't target infrastructure they'll need themselves. I've seen various Ukranian sources mention Starlink as a useful comms tool.
    • octoberfranklin 4y ago
      Sure, but I don't see how the Russians need the Ukranian fiber optic network or cell network. By all reports it's being used against them quite effectively. Military orders go over VHF radio, not cell networks. I have a hard time believing that Russia is incapable of invading countries without cell towers (although it would be cool if that were true!) > I've seen various Ukranian sources mention Starlink as a useful comms tool. That's actually yet another reason for them to take out the fiber optics. Starlink only reaches a hundred miles or so; beyond that it needs fiber.
      • randomsearch 4y ago
        Bit of a late reply but fyi - the Russians have been using cell networks to communicate military orders, which is perhaps the piece of the puzzle you were missing.
• nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > troops cross into Ukraine, their cell phones emit a roaming signal that connects to Ukraine’s cellular network... naive and ignorant about using mobile devices, they often call home This is not unique to the Russo-Ukraine situation. I've been with British personnel who carry their own laptops with them while on active duty and move across borders with them. We have an unbelievable naivety about technology in all societies - basically an inability to control it, because people see carrying an all-in-one personal tracker as their god-given inalienable right. CO: Put this uniform on! PVT: Yes sir! CO: March 500 miles in the rain and snow! PVT: Yes sir! CO: Eat this disgusting MRE. PVT: Yes sir! CO: Fire on these enemies! PVT: Yes sir! CO: Please surrender your cellphones for the safety of your entire company. PVT: FK OFF! I need* to post on Facebook. While running an exam I asked students to switch off their phones and put them in a box at the front of the hall. Half were resistant. I had to expel two for refusing and another who sneaked-in a second phone that rang during the examination. Many of the remaining students were distracted, looking nervously at the box every minute. These are good, honest, hard working and normally attentive young people, not delinquents, but those things have a hold over them that is worrying. These things are drugs and the sooner we start saying so and treating them as such the sooner we can find the appropriate psychological stance and interventions.
  • totetsu 4y ago
    It's like you need some phone isolation practice time before the exam also. One class a month with phones in the box.
  • PebblesHD 4y ago
    The students you mentioned are probably more nervous about the $1000+ device now not in their control than they are as a ‘withdrawal’ symptom. I’m happy to show the device being turned off and out in a backpack in those situations, but I’m not letting it out of my possession. I’d sooner just not take it with me in the first place. Taking my own phone into a hostile situation on the other hand, why would you? I don’t even take my own phone when travelling for business.
    • klysm 4y ago
• de6u99er 4y ago
  Military needs to bring it's own crll towers, so troops don't need to use local phone operator.
  • TomK32 4y ago
    The best targets are those emitting strong signals.
• Stratoscope 4y ago
  For anyone wondering, yes I do know how to spell "troops". I submitted the story with its original title: > Russian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a very bad idea The HN code auto-corrected this in a most amazing way: > Roops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a very bad idea I was on mobile and tried to make the obvious correction to that, but missed a letter! And now the edit deadline has expired. Ah well. This proves that with a combination of human and machine intelligence, anything can go wrong! @dang If you see this, I wonder if you could fix my typo, and also in your copious free time figure out how the original title got corrected to "Roops"? :-)
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    Email the moderators directly at hn@ycombinator.com (I've done so in this case.)
• kkfx 4y ago
  I strongly suggest a different point of view: having always smart devices nearby is a bad idea. For us, civil in peace. Why? Because letting very few to know very much about us while most of us know next to nothing about them is VERY VERY VERY bad for Democracy. A small example: let's say you are named Alphabet or Microsoft, does not matter, and you have started to harvest data, no one can know if, how and when you do, from "remote schooling", let's say you have an in-house well developed behavioral model and you are very skilled in ads and propaganda campaigns... What stop you from identifying most skilled students for aspects of your interest and drive, an ad at a time, their interest toward you, so depriving you potential new competitors of talents, perhaps directing bad students to them? When you have essentially the complete control of all human communications because they simply happen on your platform you are not a company anymore, you are a de-facto corporate-state and your customers are your slaves. Remember a thing: if there is no privacy for all it's ok, if there is complete privacy for all is equally ok. If we are almost all in balance it's ok, if very few hold too much all others will suffer. War is the extreme example, but it's a VERY good one, because as Carl von Clausewitz have written years ago war is just politics by other means and modern management/corporatocracy is just kind-of mock war by few against many others, against customers included, since lock-in, coercion etc pay back well.
• slim 4y ago
  Most of you correctly identified this as propaganda even though it's not lies. But you don't seem realize that this propaganda is targeting you and it's purpose is to paint Russia as weak to enroll you in the war effort
• yosito 4y ago
  No cell phones on the battlefield seems like operational security 101. Deployed soldiers should not get cell phones, ever. I wonder if this happens more because of bad military policy about cell phones, bad enforcement of said policy, or because even for deployed soldiers it's next to impossible to survive in the modern world without a cell phone. I suspect it has a lot to do with the latter. Cell phones are completely inescapable.
• hackernewds 4y ago
  case in point: https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-13-after-exposing-secret-military-bases-strava-restricts-data-visi.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-13-after-exposing-secret-mi... Strava exposed unmarked US bases since soldiers were using the app for fitness tracking, and suddenly unexpected parts of the globe had activity in their heat map that Strava chose to publish.
• fulafel 4y ago
  There is lots reporting about video/photo and geolocation uses of mobile phones in the war zone that seem to pay off, the reality seems to be a bit more nuanced. See eg https://time.com/6166781/ukraine-crowdsourcing-war-crimes/ https://time.com/6166781/ukraine-crowdsourcing-war-crimes/
• sunstone 4y ago
  Pretty sure it has nothing to do with Starlink.