Prime Base

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Remember that every link is another chance for something to go wrong. Indeed, the more links you have, the easier it is for someone to deliberately render you blind.

True, failure is in the system but, you would have an army of technicians available.

As for deliberate intent. No system is fool proof or survives first contact with a hostile force. Redundancy and simultaneous transmission. Sure, they go a signal; one, five, twenty, and echoes. Then they have to pin it down form all the camouflage and ground clutter. I would rather herd cats.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Yes and no. We have a tendency to assume a certain superiority in our technology that is not always 100% true. SINCGARS is extremely difficult to detect... if you only have a limited time and instruments to catch it. If I have the right tools and the ability to park near a stationary transmitter, I can find it after a relative handful of transmissions. Remember that you are talking about a set of stationary transmitters - concealing the message is pretty easy, concealing their location is not.

You would have to have a system that could scan the entirety of the radio spectrum; then discern nanoseconds of deliberate transmission from radioactivity or solar activity, even stellar activity. The time spacing between the deliberately chopped up radio is also deliberately at different intervals. Far too fast for a human, it takes a computer processor to gather it all, and render it back into a coherent, properly ordered transmission. Note, it is also encrypted too. This way private snuffy can't eavesdrop on the Corps commanders push to Divisions, separate Brigades, and task forces. If you don't have the encryption; you don't have the time (satellite cesium clock regulated), the frequency hop, or the message unlocked to determine if you heard the noise from a star that died a billion years ago or .000000001 of second transmission for "Radio check, over".


This makes radio intercept unlikely in the extreme.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

True, failure is in the system but, you would have an army of technicians available.

And the point is not to risk them. If your concern is being located, sending a guy out a door is the last thing you want to do!

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

As for deliberate intent. No system is fool proof or survives first contact with a hostile force. Redundancy and simultaneous transmission.

But it still isn't better than just running a wire. I can't believe how often I have to tell this to junior engineers, most of the time getting fancy causes you more problems than it solves. If your current widget solves the current problem, don't go looking to defeat molemen capable of following a cable through rock down to the horizontal pipe it then follows to the base. As you mentioned, you have experienced staff, why burden them with an overly-complex system when a simple one will do just as well and still leave them free to respond to that hostile force?

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Sure, they go a signal; one, five, twenty, and echoes. Then they have to pin it down form all the camouflage and ground clutter. I would rather herd cats.

You would have to have a system that could scan the entirety of the radio spectrum; then discern nanoseconds of deliberate transmission from radioactivity or solar activity, even stellar activity. The time spacing between the deliberately chopped up radio is also deliberately at different intervals. Far too fast for a human, it takes a computer processor to gather it all, and render it back into a coherent, properly ordered transmission. Note, it is also encrypted too. This way private snuffy can't eavesdrop on the Corps commanders push to Divisions, separate Brigades, and task forces. If you don't have the encryption; you don't have the time (satellite cesium clock regulated), the frequency hop, or the message unlocked to determine if you heard the noise from a star that died a billion years ago or .000000001 of second transmission for "Radio check, over".


This makes radio intercept unlikely in the extreme.

We're not talking about radio intercept, we're talking about radio location. We're also talking about relatively simple blocking just by raising the noise level. RF was my bread and butter for years, first as a technician and then as an engineer. If PB is hull down and acting like a rock, I can sit there all day and listen to those sensors chatter back and forth at each other. And if I have the resources to endanger PB then odds are pretty good that I have the resources to do this - it takes less than you might think if you have someone reasonably knowledgeable. And the fancier your system gets, the more power it needs and the easier it is to find.

So again... why not just run wires through the rock? If they can tunnel after them, won't you already know it and take action against them?

[tsofian]

Someone brought up the possibility that the base is in the fallout pattern from a known nuclear target. In a way I think this is actually a very good thing. If the base gets a dusting of fallout it is even less likely to have visitors. The base itself is totally protected from the threat this would pose.

By the end of the five year fallow period a lot of the fallout will have decayed (basically everything with a half life of 6 months or less will have undergone its ten half life cycles and be gone). Weathering will also help, at least to a certain extent.

However I propose that the fallout pattern was not as predicted and the base wasn't hit by any fallout. At first this was viewed as a blessing-Then the refugees started showing up