NationStates

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:58 am**

New Chilokver wrote:so uh
what does this thread cover again

Politics, artillery, and greased up Navy bods.

Maybe tactics and large-unit strategy if you're boring.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 3:52 am**

Velkanika wrote:The Internet is extremely resistant to damage by design. The Internet started off as ARPANET, a secure US military data communications network using TCP/IP. As such, the system is designed to dynamically reroute traffic around holes and low bandwidth connections, so all you'd accomplish by cutting submarine cables is to lengthen the connection route between nodes in the countries the cables link. If there is a valid path between two nodes, they can talk. This means that any servers inside a completely isolated country will still be reachable from within it.

I have serious doubts about whether or not even a nuclear war could knock the Internet offline.

Minor construction accidents and farmers in their fields in rural, undeveloped countries have been able to knock out the internet to much if not most of entire countries with just a simple cable break. Ships dragging anchors plus just general wear and tear and degradation have caused major undersea cable breaks that have caused huge communications problems in rather large swathes of the globe.

It's not common to experience such disruptions in the developed world because there's a lot of network redundancy due to the sheer number of cables and routes, but in a wartime scenario with intentional targeting of communications nodes, there would definitely be huge network disruptions.

Even if some cables escaped being cut, they would be unable to handle the sheer bandwidth required to maintain the current volume of network traffic. Nevermind what may well be increased traffic in the event of a crisis with so many people eagerly searching for any news they can come across.

So no, it's honestly not hard to seriously degrade internet availability to the average consumer.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 4:18 am**

Define "knock the Internet offline."

If there was an emergency we could revert to using various improvised means for low-bandwith communications (like those Egyptians getting Tweets out after Mubarak cut the Internet off).

But you could quite easily stop the sort of high-bandwidth traffic that's needed for a modern post-industrial first-world economy to flourish.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 5:44 am**

I'm now imagining EMP being used to knock out Internet Online. Same goes for electronics definitely.

Oh, don't forget hacking. I've heard certain IRL countries have their own Cyber-hacking divisions.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:05 am**

Most countries with internet access probably do.

The only truly effective EMP attack to cripple "the internet" would be a nuclear attack.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:13 am**

MInroz wrote:I'm now imagining EMP being used to knock out Internet Online. Same goes for electronics definitely.

Oh, don't forget hacking. I've heard certain IRL countries have their own Cyber-hacking divisions.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:01 pm**

MInroz wrote:I'm now imagining EMP being used to knock out Internet Online. Same goes for electronics definitely.

Oh, don't forget hacking. I've heard certain IRL countries have their own Cyber-hacking divisions.

EMP does not work that way. Short of really powerful nuclear weapons, most electronics would at best blink off and on again.

Even nuclear EMP will not take out all electronics.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:09 pm**

Allanea wrote:
MInroz wrote:I'm now imagining EMP being used to knock out Internet Online. Same goes for electronics definitely.

Oh, don't forget hacking. I've heard certain IRL countries have their own Cyber-hacking divisions.

EMP does not work that way. Short of really powerful nuclear weapons, most electronics would at best blink off and on again.

Even nuclear EMP will not take out all electronics.

One of the big threats that seems to be circulated is very large transformers or electrical switch gear.
There are several thousand such devices in the US, and global production is something barely over 100.

Such devices may be crippled for "months" in the event of being subjected to nuclear EMP, some appraisals suggest.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:17 pm**

Thinking about EMPS:

How much damage could a Solar Storm similar that which occurred in 1859, which was so powerful that auroras could be seen as far south as the Caribbean, do to the internet?

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:30 pm**

Would it make sense to have a CERT/ELINT/EW unit (of about platoon size) at the battalion level? How much of an enemy network could be penetrated from the physical FLOT?

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:33 pm**

Imperializt Russia wrote:
Allanea wrote:
EMP does not work that way. Short of really powerful nuclear weapons, most electronics would at best blink off and on again.

Even nuclear EMP will not take out all electronics.

One of the big threats that seems to be circulated is very large transformers or electrical switch gear.
There are several thousand such devices in the US, and global production is something barely over 100.

Such devices may be crippled for "months" in the event of being subjected to nuclear EMP, some appraisals suggest.

What do they cost?

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:38 pm**

Allanea wrote:
Imperializt Russia wrote:One of the big threats that seems to be circulated is very large transformers or electrical switch gear.
There are several thousand such devices in the US, and global production is something barely over 100.

Such devices may be crippled for "months" in the event of being subjected to nuclear EMP, some appraisals suggest.

What do they cost?

Cost isn't the direct problem here. The problem is that because these devices have a very limited demand and that thus the production capacities for them are limited as well. Large transformers, the kind installed on power plants and the like are just one of those items that you buy once and use forever (figuratively speaking). And the once is usually rare as well. So even if you had infinite money to throw at buying new ones the factories can only work as fast as they can. And it would take months to set up new factories to produce enough to replace what you lost.

The supply of large infrastructural items like that are simply not very good at coping with sudden changes in demand because not surprisingly these don't tend to happen short of something going really, really wrong.

Although this being NS everyone probably has a atom bomb proof underground facility in his corner of the Himalayan mountains that contains mothballed transformer plants. :lol:

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 12:42 pm**

Taihei Tengoku wrote:Would it make sense to have a CERT/ELINT/EW unit (of about platoon size) at the battalion level? How much of an enemy network could be penetrated from the physical FLOT?

I can't help but feel like that would be better suited for a more Homeguard/Territorial Army kind of role, at the Battalion level, while in a more conventionally organized military would simply have a larger unit at its regimental/Brigade level.

It probably makes sense for units who are particularly limited in size and/or scope, I.e, I could see such a thing being used by a Special Forces, Airborne or Naval Infantry battalions. But probably not in regular army units.

Allanea wrote:What do they cost?

A lot more when there's no or limited power systems available to produce them.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:04 pm**

Allanea wrote:
MInroz wrote:I'm now imagining EMP being used to knock out Internet Online. Same goes for electronics definitely.

Oh, don't forget hacking. I've heard certain IRL countries have their own Cyber-hacking divisions.

EMP does not work that way. Short of really powerful nuclear weapons, most electronics would at best blink off and on again.

Even nuclear EMP will not take out all electronics.

it will when the emp interacts with the high voltage power cables that criss cross your entire country

but the internet is the least of your worries

the entire system of international banking is immediately destroyed if it happens to be a major power like the USA, or severely disrupted if its even a small country

power plants will catch on fire and literally burn to the ground if unattended

communications will be almost impossible immediately afterwards, and electricity ceases to exist

for all intents and purposes it will destroy all electronics

because the only electronics not affected will be ones that dont matter or ones that are so remote that they might as well not be used

outside of the military, assuming the military is using electronics protected against high altitude EMP as this is questionable in the modern age given the threat of nuclear EMP has diminished in the past 30 years, you will lose all basically all forms of electronic communication for all intents and purposes it is literally the dark ages

tl;dr basically the end of civilization for whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught in such an event

or if the military can still talk to itself, then it's the end of civilization for people who arent the military, and the beginning of probably near permanent martial law, but the difference is slight

it's still the end of civilization if your 401k and stocks just got literally nuked regardless if the physical destruction is minimal, because the only thing that can keep anarchy from reigning is the m16 rifle

warday is quite well done in this regard also it might actually be understating a lot of things

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:15 pm**

Puzikas wrote:
Allanea wrote:What do they cost?

A lot more when there's no or limited power systems available to produce them.

Or if that factory was also bombed.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:37 pm**

Gallia- wrote:
Allanea wrote:
EMP does not work that way. Short of really powerful nuclear weapons, most electronics would at best blink off and on again.

Even nuclear EMP will not take out all electronics.

it will when the emp interacts with the high voltage power cables that criss cross your entire country

but the internet is the least of your worries

the entire system of international banking is immediately destroyed if it happens to be a major power like the USA, or severely disrupted if its even a small country

power plants will catch on fire and literally burn to the ground if unattended

communications will be almost impossible immediately afterwards, and electricity ceases to exist

for all intents and purposes it will destroy all electronics

because the only electronics not affected will be ones that dont matter or ones that are so remote that they might as well not be used

outside of the military, assuming the military is using electronics protected against high altitude EMP as this is questionable in the modern age given the threat of nuclear EMP has diminished in the past 30 years, you will lose all basically all forms of electronic communication for all intents and purposes it is literally the dark ages

tl;dr basically the end of civilization for whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught in such an event

or if the military can still talk to itself, then it's the end of civilization for people who arent the military, and the beginning of probably near permanent martial law, but the difference is slight

it's still the end of civilization if your 401k and stocks just got literally nuked regardless if the physical destruction is minimal, because the only thing that can keep anarchy from reigning is the m16 rifle

warday is quite well done in this regard also it might actually be understating a lot of things

Um, no. That's not how an EMP works

An EMP caused by a nuke blast is only a few miles wide and loses energy the farther it is. The higher it is, the less effective it is. Look up operation starfish, I think it was. That did knock out electronics in Hawaii, but since it was practically directly overhead it's impossible to tell really how far the EMP can go, but judging on how they work, not far.
But your iPad would be safe, if it has a steel case. As would your phone. If you have a steel car, your spark plugs would still work. Industrial computers would still work becuase they often have metal casings. Airplanes would still work becuase their all metal, and so would tanks and military bunkers.

All of these examples are examples of faraday cages.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:49 pm**

New Axiom wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
it will when the emp interacts with the high voltage power cables that criss cross your entire country

but the internet is the least of your worries

the entire system of international banking is immediately destroyed if it happens to be a major power like the USA, or severely disrupted if its even a small country

power plants will catch on fire and literally burn to the ground if unattended

communications will be almost impossible immediately afterwards, and electricity ceases to exist

for all intents and purposes it will destroy all electronics

because the only electronics not affected will be ones that dont matter or ones that are so remote that they might as well not be used

outside of the military, assuming the military is using electronics protected against high altitude EMP as this is questionable in the modern age given the threat of nuclear EMP has diminished in the past 30 years, you will lose all basically all forms of electronic communication for all intents and purposes it is literally the dark ages

tl;dr basically the end of civilization for whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught in such an event

or if the military can still talk to itself, then it's the end of civilization for people who arent the military, and the beginning of probably near permanent martial law, but the difference is slight

it's still the end of civilization if your 401k and stocks just got literally nuked regardless if the physical destruction is minimal, because the only thing that can keep anarchy from reigning is the m16 rifle

warday is quite well done in this regard also it might actually be understating a lot of things

Um, no. That's not how an EMP works

An EMP caused by a nuke blast is only a few miles wide and loses energy the farther it is. The higher it is, the less effective it is. Look up operation starfish, I think it was. That did knock out electronics in Hawaii, but since it was practically directly overhead it's impossible to tell really how far the EMP can go, but judging on how they work, not far.
But your iPad would be safe, if it has a steel case. As would your phone. If you have a steel car, your spark plugs would still work. Industrial computers would still work becuase they often have metal casings. Airplanes would still work becuase their all metal, and so would tanks and military bunkers.

All of these examples are examples of faraday cages.

He knows this.

The problem is that no infrastructure would survive to continue the existence of these devices. No commercial power to charge mobile devices, except rationed or generated. No internet or cellular network to make mobile devices useful or worthwhile.
No electricity to serve things like air to bunkers, otherwise concrete coffins of heat and nothing else.

They'll have their own generators, but still.

An "industrial computer" would probably be killed by power surge through its electrical cables, which connect to the pylon grid, which is the bit that is vulnerable to HEMP.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:57 pm**

New Axiom wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
it will when the emp interacts with the high voltage power cables that criss cross your entire country

but the internet is the least of your worries

the entire system of international banking is immediately destroyed if it happens to be a major power like the USA, or severely disrupted if its even a small country

power plants will catch on fire and literally burn to the ground if unattended

communications will be almost impossible immediately afterwards, and electricity ceases to exist

for all intents and purposes it will destroy all electronics

because the only electronics not affected will be ones that dont matter or ones that are so remote that they might as well not be used

outside of the military, assuming the military is using electronics protected against high altitude EMP as this is questionable in the modern age given the threat of nuclear EMP has diminished in the past 30 years, you will lose all basically all forms of electronic communication for all intents and purposes it is literally the dark ages

tl;dr basically the end of civilization for whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught in such an event

or if the military can still talk to itself, then it's the end of civilization for people who arent the military, and the beginning of probably near permanent martial law, but the difference is slight

it's still the end of civilization if your 401k and stocks just got literally nuked regardless if the physical destruction is minimal, because the only thing that can keep anarchy from reigning is the m16 rifle

warday is quite well done in this regard also it might actually be understating a lot of things

Um, no. That's not how an EMP works

An EMP caused by a nuke blast is only a few miles wide and loses energy the farther it is. The higher it is, the less effective it is. Look up operation starfish, I think it was. That did knock out electronics in Hawaii, but since it was practically directly overhead it's impossible to tell really how far the EMP can go, but judging on how they work, not far.
But your iPad would be safe, if it has a steel case. As would your phone. If you have a steel car, your spark plugs would still work. Industrial computers would still work becuase they often have metal casings. Airplanes would still work becuase their all metal, and so would tanks and military bunkers.

All of these examples are examples of faraday cages.

the only person who doesnt know what emps are is you

hemp interacts with long power lines which are obviously not shielded nor can they reasonably be

but in truth it actually interacts with long antennas so anything from a power line to a radio is affected

airplanes faraday cages, but incomplete, and mostly for protection against lightning strikes im not sure how it would react to hemp but a military aircraft woudl probably not really care, and a boeing can probably be put down safely if you can ditch it or something and the manual gear jettison works, otherwise youre probably going to die when you run out of glide time

tanks are not faraday cages idk why you think that unless you think steel rectangles = faraday cage which is wrong

neither are iphones

or really much of anything

you probably dont know what antennas are though so its ok

so your examples are really dumb also shot starfish was done over an uninhabited portion of the pacific ocean literally a thousand miles away from hawaii so good job for proving my point i guess

project k is a much better example than starfish because it was done over a populated area and they burned down a couple power plants lol

in practice this means a deliberate HEMP attack results in destruction of surge protectors, fires in transformers and powerplants, and loss of the civil power grid

military electronics escape HEMP damage by being designed around computers which can survive the voltage changes, and they might blinker or something momentarily but they (probably) wouldnt stop working

civilian electronics are not, because this is extremely expensive, and most of the reason why military electronics are roughly a decade behind the civilian counterpart

and military electronics today may not be made to be HEMP hardened to begin with (though they were 30 years ago) since the threat of hemp has mostly disappeared after the cold war

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:06 pm**

Holy fuck Project K.

Those poor Kazakhs can't catch a break.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:08 pm**

Project K is just one reason why the Soviet Union was one of the most beautiful and Pure Societies to exist in the universe.

On par with 1950s-'60s Sweden.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:12 pm**

The Akasha Colony wrote:
Velkanika wrote:The Internet is extremely resistant to damage by design. The Internet started off as ARPANET, a secure US military data communications network using TCP/IP. As such, the system is designed to dynamically reroute traffic around holes and low bandwidth connections, so all you'd accomplish by cutting submarine cables is to lengthen the connection route between nodes in the countries the cables link. If there is a valid path between two nodes, they can talk. This means that any servers inside a completely isolated country will still be reachable from within it.

I have serious doubts about whether or not even a nuclear war could knock the Internet offline.

Minor construction accidents and farmers in their fields in rural, undeveloped countries have been able to knock out the internet to much if not most of entire countries with just a simple cable break. Ships dragging anchors plus just general wear and tear and degradation have caused major undersea cable breaks that have caused huge communications problems in rather large swathes of the globe.

It's not common to experience such disruptions in the developed world because there's a lot of network redundancy due to the sheer number of cables and routes, but in a wartime scenario with intentional targeting of communications nodes, there would definitely be huge network disruptions.

Even if some cables escaped being cut, they would be unable to handle the sheer bandwidth required to maintain the current volume of network traffic. Nevermind what may well be increased traffic in the event of a crisis with so many people eagerly searching for any news they can come across.

So no, it's honestly not hard to seriously degrade internet availability to the average consumer.

You know what, I'm just going to write a paper on this. I'll be back with conclusions in a few months.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:26 pm**

Perhaps you should focus on the actual DoD Internet instead of trying to invent a fan fiction that makes an ignorant myth into something it isn't.

Like Danton said, Paul Baran is the origin of the RAND study discussing use of a packet switching network to provide redundancy and robustness in wartime for military communications purposes. This doesn't involve the Internet, as the Internet was invented at CERN in the 1990s for the express purpose of consumer availability to information in an instant, by Tim Berners-Lee (well, WWW isn't the Internet, but it might as well be since all other competitors are a bit too obscure for the average person). Nor does it involve ARPAnet, which was just the first packet switching network designed for communication of information between universities and US government agencies to collaborate on research projects.

Regardless any sort of "nuclear war Internet" wouldn't be used by universities of all people. Defense Switched Network is that, which didn't appear until the 1980s (almost 15 years after ARPAnet lol) and is the backbone that SIPRnet, DSRN, and all the other parts of the DoD Internet ride on. Its main use is secure voice lines for teleconferences I think, though.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:31 pm**

Gallia- wrote:
and military electronics today may not be made to be HEMP hardened to begin with (though they were 30 years ago) since the threat of hemp has mostly disappeared after the cold war

Ah, good, then most of the US Military is perfectly safe since it still uses largely Cold War tech.
Totally for EMP protection, not at all for focusing on novelty programs that politicians can use to line pocketbooks and abandon all else.

As far as DoD Internet or software-anything, not something to be emulated unless your goal is inefficiency at ten times what it should cost for an efficient product.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:39 pm**

Pharthan wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
and military electronics today may not be made to be HEMP hardened to begin with (though they were 30 years ago) since the threat of hemp has mostly disappeared after the cold war

Ah, good, then most of the US Military is perfectly safe since it still uses largely Cold War tech.

You might think that, but it doesn't.

DDG-1000 uses COTS electronics, as does LCS. The US Army relies on a massive backbone of civilian electronics, commonly called "Android phones", to communicate and control its troops in battle.

The tech itself is also largely irrelevant. There is soon to be no experience in living memory without these systems remaining in the Army, and the US military has probably stopped training under the assumption that it will be attacked with nuclear weapons, by battlefield jamming, and other common experiences. The US Army no longer has an offensive jamming or counter-jamming capability anymore, for example. The USN is safe mostly because its warships are old as shit as you said, but the organizations preclude old tactics. Carrier strike groups are not the invincible floating fortresses they were since they lack a sufficiently capable interceptor that can loiter at distance from the HVU, and the escorts are too few in number. Not to mention the lack of fixed-wing ASW with the loss of S-3 (rip in pineapples SV-22) which somewhat ruins the whole standoff ASW provided by the Victorious.

Virginia is a pretty piddly lightweight compared to the monster hunter/killer that is Seawolf, but it's unfortunately one of the few successful acquisitions since important systems like ATA, AFX, and NATF all went kaput, and the future USN has to rely on Super Hornet for air defense.

The US Army still doesn't have BLOS shells for the M1, which is a dumb decision that will bite it in the ass in a war when it has to fight tanks, because it was too busy preparing for Mega!Iran's eventual invasion of the Saudi oil fields and capture of Riyadh to actually bother modernizing its equipment, until that went kaput after $25 billion dollars and 12 years of bullshit, only to receive more expensive and worse forms of what it was originally going to buy. It also doesn't have a hypervelocity missile to replace TOW, which is so obsolete it might as well be equivalent to spitting at a tank like T-14 and maybe 50/50 against even ancient T-90.

The future is only going to get worse.

A military that relies on cell phones and portable cell towers for battlefield communication is a military that loses wars. Not like, Iraq or Korea, but wars that matter: like Estonia and Poland.

The only branch that is probably reasonably immune to HEMP for all its equipment, and still practices under what can be essentially considered modern war conditions, is the USAF. The Army is essentially lost to the wiles of the cell phone network and Android OS, and the Navy is slipping with its newest surface combatants using commercial computers, while its most advanced warships remain vaporware and will probably never materialize.

The US military has been free from the threat of HEMP for longer than almost all posters in this thread have been alive, and probably longer than all of them (except Crookfur and Puzikas, maybe a couple others?) have been reasonably cognizant. There's no reason to invest in hardened electronics anymore and there hasn't been for close to 25 years.

It is a grim time for the USA, and it's unlikely to get better.

Posted: **Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:48 pm**

Under what reasonable (or otherwise) assumption would the US Army not prepare for a scenario of battlefield signals jamming?

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