DOD vs. 802.11b

goombah99 writes "The NY times (reg required) reports that "The Defense Department, arguing that an increasingly popular form of wireless Internet access could interfere with military radar, is seeking new limits on the technology". It would seem they have a good point; radar is an essential for both defense and civilian aviation as well as ship navigation in tight quarters. Critics of the restrictions contend technology can limit the interference, but what proof is there to these assertions? Sure we all want wireless internet but maybe there should be more careful review of its consequences."

Ok Ok - This is obvious ....

[bizitch]

This means WAR!! (driving)

Why not just use cell towers for radar?

[guacamolefoo]

Recently in the ex-Yugoslav mess, I believe that there were reports of the use of cell towers to track the "stealth" bomber, so who needs radar? Besides, is the DOD planning on bombing Starbucks? One can only hope!

GF

I can see the military's point

[MetricT]

802.11 is only used by terrorists and degrades our ability to conduct military strikes against Starbucks...

Interference?

[wiredog]

Don't wifi/802.whatever/etc have power outputs in the milliwatts? Military radars work with hundreds of watts.

And if these technologies do jam radars, is there an application in the field of speeding ticket avoidance?

Priorities

[Genuine669]

Maybe I'm wrong, but being an up and coming naval officer myself, I don't think there is much of an argument. Radar or wireless internet...radar or wireless internet... or maybe they could combine both..you know, ping someone, find their lag....and their distance =)

Suggestion for Saddam

[nomadicGeek]

Get on Amazon and order a whole mess of Linksys WAP 11's. Then get a hand on as many Pringles cans as possible (Pringle can antenna article) . This is the cheapest missile defense system you can build. [oreillynet.com]

I can hear it now...

[trix_e]

Mr. President, about, uh, 35 minutes ago, General Jack Ripper, the commanding general of, uh, Burpelson Air Force Base, issued an order to the 34 B-52's of his Wing, which were airborne at the time as part of a special exercise we were holding called Operation War Driver. Now, it appears that the order called for the planes to, uh, attack their targets inside Russia. The, uh, planes are fully armed with nuclear weapons with an average load of, um, 40 megatons each. Now, the central display of Russia will indicate the position of the planes. The triangles are their primary targets; the squares are their secondary targets. The aircraft will begin penetrating Russian radar cover within, uh, 25 minutes.

It, uh, appears that the whole misunderstanding was caused by a Wi-Fi access point in a Starbucks in Schenectady sir that confused General Ripper's signal corps.

In a war room near you...

[Kredal]

"Sir, there's a wireless access point at 30,000 feet, coming straight for us! The good news is, we can anonymously surf pr0n for the next 15 minutes... the bad news is that the access point is loaded with 50 megatons worth of bombs!"

Re:I can hear it now...

[yack0]

Mr McKittrick, after very careful consideration, Sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new Wifi network sucks.

Re:Other problems as well

[Anonymous Coward]

it's really becuase when you start using your cell phone it goes into transmitting mode, and boosts its power high enough to hit the tower, so you have a local energy source. Those towers are far away, so the time the signal gets to your phone its power has faded and now just harmless background noise. It's the same reason that having the phone up to your head could actually be harmful, but all that spectra of radio waves going through isn't, it's just background noise. kinda like this post, background noise.

Re:Interference?

[Dark Lord Seth]

A WIFI adapter will NOT jam a military radar but rather show up as an unknown emitter which in a time of war will generally cause the ship/plane/helicopter to go "defensive" and defend against the potential threat!

... meaning that you'd better have a fast vehicle if you go wardriving near any military installation because you might just end up with a HARM missile chasing your SUV down the interstate. Although if you're in a suicidal mood, you could ping something from your car and mock the HARM missile as it locks onto the emitter, which shut down after sending the echo-request packet, causing the missile to loose lock, after a bit your wifi card sends out another icmp-request packet, causing the HARM missile to momentarily re-aquire a lock onto you again, etcetera.

Can you imagine some poor pilot having to report to his CO why his HARM missile is continously losing lock in the middle of NYC?

Re:I can hear it now...

[volsung]

I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it would help me check my email!

make them stop!

[six11]

"Hello, is this the Bad Guys? This is Col. Sanders of the US Army. Listen, do you think you could tell your advancing armies to please stop jamming our systems with those pesky wireless networking signals? It's really making it difficult to prevent you from invading us. What's that you say? We should have thought of this? Well, yeah, we

did, but we dealt with it by telling our citizens to knock it off. Hey, it worked for them, why should it be any different with you?"

Re:FCC should take care of this

[Qzukk]

What is the military complaining about, doesn't their equipment have the FCC stamp on it?

The military version of the FCC stamp reads "This device must accept all interference, and is permitted to fire missiles back."

Oh, great...

[TheSHAD0W]

Sure, tell EVERYONE what radio frequencies they need to use to jam US military radar. Sheesh.

Re:Priorities

[m0rph3us0]

... because when our planes start bombing our cities in the hunt for the terrorists I'd really hate to interfere with their bombing abilities ny the use of my WLAN.

Just wait till the gov't finds out that the microwaves in our house transmit at similar frequencies to those that my WiFi card emits, except they do it at 700W.

Maybe we shouldn't build our radar systems in the public spectrum.

1. Buy microwave
2. Remove shielding
3. Sell "radar jammer"
4 ?? Proft.

One thing to keep in mind

[DonFinch]

A wifi emmitter operating in the 5ghz band could potentially draw attention from a HARM anti radiation missile...of course if it slams a laptop/cell phone/pda/SUV yuppie type, I wouldnt be sure if this would be a tragedy or a victory...