[HN Gopher] What Defcon Sounds Like: Skyking Emergency Action Me...
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What Defcon Sounds Like: Skyking Emergency Action Messages (2016)
Author : riffic
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-01-11 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (specialcollections.radio)
(TXT) w3m dump (specialcollections.radio)
| lxe wrote:
| I randomly ran into an EAM in progress when scanning the
| frequencies with an RTL-SDR. Felt like Fox Mulder.
| fizwhiz wrote:
| Fond memories of watching that show.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Not gunna lie, defcon sounds pretty awesome and the callsign of
| SKYKING is pretty freaking amazing and dystopian sounding.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I think the writers of the film WarGames liked it too. They
| seemed to imitate the call with the phrase "Skybird calling
| Dropkick" in an impressive radio DJ voice.
|
| I noticed that GMRS radio IDs also have these effects on people
| sometimes. When I call with my ID in a place like Yosemite I'll
| hear other people on their FRS radios ask if they have a cool
| ID too. (Not that I think it is cool, but it's certainly
| different...and I think most prefer it to calling family and
| friends by name on a public radio band)
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| The _Wargames_ RED DASH ALPHA MESSAGE bit has some relation
| to real life. There were RED DOT and BLUE DOT messages back
| in the old days (though that was in the encrypted payload,
| not the preamble) [0].
|
| [0] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-
| vault/2019-0...
| [deleted]
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > PLZT (Polarized Lead Zirconium Titanate) flash blindness
| goggles
|
| Wow, I've never seen those before. The appearance instantly
| brought to mind the Bith cantina band from Star Wars. :)
| bendbro wrote:
| Why don't they use encryption? Wouldn't it be preferable for your
| messages to be completely inscrutable?
|
| [Edit] To clarify my question, I'm specifically talking about
| these unencrypted parts:
|
| 1. The number of "Skyking do not answer"s indicates the severity
| of the message.
|
| 2. The fact that it is known that messages to Skyking are for a
| nuclear force.
|
| I wouldn't want an adversary to know when or with what severity I
| am commanding my nuclear force. It leaks significant information
| that an adversary can use, for instance, to judge your response
| to some action the adversary took.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| For a good explanation on why you don't want these things to be
| too high-tech and too encrypted, see "Doctor Strangelove", and
| take particular notice about the roles played by CRM-114.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Just like TLS, the payload is encrypted. The skyking stuff is
| just header. It has the advantage that there's less to go wrong
| and doesn't take sophisticated equipment to receive.
| Harvesterify wrote:
| But they do:
|
| "Salutation, trigraph, timestamp, authentication, and then a
| series of letters comprising the coded message."
| acapybara wrote:
| "The messages are simply a series of letters, relayed in NATO
| phonetics, and encrypted with a one-time cypher. The receiver
| would need a code book (by varying reports refreshed daily,
| weekly, or monthly and inches thick) to identify the key and
| decrypt the message."
| joezydeco wrote:
| The article implies that the nuclear forces have already been
| deployed and targets set - this would be the final instruction
| to launch (the "go/no go" on that USAF cheat sheet).
|
| At that point there's not much to hide or encrypt.
| ericcumbee wrote:
| From my understanding each bomber has a playbook so to speak
| along with the code book. each Play is a different target
| package. Just like in US football the message from Command to
| the bombers isn't the verbatim target package but just a code
| telling them which target package to select from their
| playbook.
| eob wrote:
| Well, the payload is encrypted using OTPs. But if the gist of
| the question was really "why use such old tech when newer tech
| is available?":
|
| I suspect these methods of communication remain because of
| their robustness against attack and simplicity to implement.
| It's a guarantee that even if all the modern networks go down,
| commands can still be issued from anyone, to anyone using off-
| the-shelf hardware.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| >all the modern networks go down, commands can still be
| issued from anyone, to anyone using off-the-shelf hardware.
|
| Yep, and if there's any single salient characteristic about
| Nuclear C3, it's redundancy. Normally the launch crews, subs,
| command posts, bombers, tankers, and strategic reconnaissance
| aircraft would get their message over secure terminals, but
| there are many other ways to get a valid EAM (to include via
| voice transmission).
|
| There's a famous (and perhaps apocryphal) story about Jimmy
| Carter touring the SAC underground. He supposedly told the
| senior controller he wanted to talk to the boys in the launch
| control centers, so they set up the circuits and told the
| crews to STAND BY FOR A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE
| UNITED STATES.
|
| This caused quite understandable consternation, as the crews
| were certain most of the comms networks had been taken out
| and the nation was somehow in the midst of a general nuclear
| exchange (though their detonation detection systems were not
| sounding). A voice message from the President never occurred
| again.
| bendbro wrote:
| That was not what I was suggesting. Copying my edit from
| above:
|
| I'm specifically talking about these unencrypted parts:
|
| 1. The number of "Skyking do not answer"s indicates the
| severity of the message.
|
| 2. The fact that it is known that messages to Skyking are for
| a nuclear force.
|
| I wouldn't want an adversary to know when or with what
| severity I am commanding my nuclear force. It leaks
| significant information that an adversary can use, for
| instance, to judge your response to some action the adversary
| took.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I wouldn't want an adversary to know when or with what
| severity I am commanding my nuclear force.
|
| Usually (when the primary potential enemy is an opposing
| superpower held in check via MAD), you either want exactly
| that (as a palpable thread signal to get the other side to
| back down in an escalating crisis, or as the palpable
| absence of such a signal when you _are_ just doing routine
| exercises) or MAD has completely failed and we're all going
| to die.
| lsaferite wrote:
| > I wouldn't want an adversary to know when or with what
| severity I am commanding my nuclear force.
|
| If you make the communications mostly continuous, then real
| messages are lost in the noise.
| batman-farts wrote:
| > I wouldn't want an adversary to know when or with what
| severity I am commanding my nuclear force. It leaks
| significant information that an adversary can use, for
| instance, to judge your response to some action the
| adversary took.
|
| I seriously doubt that the people directly wielding these
| weapons actually want to use them. A small information leak
| indicating potential escalation like this, while still
| hiding exact deployment orders, may actually be desirable.
| bendbro wrote:
| > I seriously doubt that the people directly wielding
| these weapons actually want to use them. A small
| information leak indicating potential escalation like
| this, while still hiding exact deployment orders, may
| actually be desirable.
|
| I agree, but I would argue you could decouple notifying
| the world and notifying your force, but perhaps that
| would remove the teeth behind the message. And further,
| it could be entirely possible they've already decoupled
| and Skyking is just theatrics
| 015a wrote:
| Plus, you know, oftentimes the people commenting for the US
| nuclear defense systems to modernize are the same people who
| put Log4J everywhere they could (meaning: Silicon Valley
| engineers).
|
| Its funny how hypnotic the word "modernize" is; totally
| divorced from any measurable success outcomes. More
| efficient? Possibly. But as we learned with COVID; when you
| stress an Efficient system, it breaks. Militaries tend to be
| pretty highly stressed; and it would be best if they don't
| break.
|
| One thing is for certain: There is much the maintainers of
| these antiquated systems could learn from more recent
| engineering practices; but there is just as much we could
| learn from them.
| fatbird wrote:
| The content is encrypted with one-time pads that are constantly
| refreshed, which is entirely undecipherable through
| cryptanalysis. Encrypting the radio signal itself would require
| a much more extensive infrastructure than binders and radio
| receivers: specialized hardware that might be compromised or
| flawed, or simply break down, rendering you unable to listen to
| the channel over which your critical orders might come; harder
| to audit as well with more moving parts and components that
| aren't easily inspected or tested.
|
| This seems like a case of a very simple and robust system being
| more than sufficient for the task, and anything more complex is
| a waste of time and money.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| That cheatsheet is not accurate. The number of "skyking"s do
| not have anything to do with priority/severity. Further, SIOP
| was not strictly speaking retired -- it was renamed, most
| recently to OPLAN 8010-12. I would take the linked page with a
| very large grain of salt.
| woah wrote:
| Presumably the adversary has already launched an easily
| detectable nuclear attack themselves so they know something is
| up
| chiph wrote:
| The salutation is not encrypted because it's designed to
| attract the attention of the radio operators on the plane. They
| need a few moments to grab their pens to write down the message
| that follows so they aren't going to miss any characters.
|
| So far as leaking information - by the time these are sent as
| real-world communications (i.e. not as a test or during
| training), the planes are nearing their target. So it won't
| matter for much longer if the enemy knows, since the positions
| of the planes are (hopefully) unknown.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Sometimes you want a communication to be public, loud, and
| undeniable, even if you don't want it to be understood by all.
|
| It makes it difficult to later deny that the order was given,
| it'll be recorded many times over by friend and foe alike.
| Recipients can possibly confirm that their counterparts are
| also receiving consistent orders.
| bendbro wrote:
| You were the sole person who understood my poorly worded
| question. How did you come to the correct interpretation of
| my question, given information was missing from my question?
|
| Did you assume that I realized the content of Skyking
| messages is encrypted, and then deduce that my question must
| relate to the other unencrypted parts?
| nightpool wrote:
| It could also be that goodluckchuck didn't know that the
| content of the Skyking message was encrypted :P
| bendbro wrote:
| True :)
|
| Though I think he did understand that, given "even if you
| don't want it to be understood by all"
| encoderer wrote:
| Those flash blindness goggles are a terrifying reminder of how
| much effort we have put into delivering weapons of mass
| destruction.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I think the real lesson is how much effort we put into making
| bomber crews believe they would return from their bombing runs
| alive, to functioning airfields, to be used again if necessary.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Many aircraft were well aware that they were headed to
| recovery bases in countries like Turkey, and that their home
| air base was almost certainly a radiating ruin. SAC
| reconstitution teams would meet them to refuel & rearm -- in
| theory.
|
| A friend's dad was an F-4 pilot and sat on nuclear alert on a
| carrier in the Med. If the alert a/c (armed with nuclear
| weapons) were sortied, they were instructed to find a NATO
| airfield to land at because their carrier was almost
| certainly at the bottom of the ocean by the time they hit
| their targets and started their return journey.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Victor Alert: 15 Minutes to Armageddon: The Memoir of a
| Nuke Wild Weasel Pilot
|
| Major General Lee Downer, United States Air Force Academy,
| 1964, served 33 years active duty in the Air Force-14 years
| in Europe, 2 in the Pacific. Commander, at Squadron and
| Wing level, he flew almost 4000 hours in F-4, F-111 and
| F-16 fighters, including over 150 combat missions with the
| 366th Tactical Fighter Wing based at Danang, South Viet
| Nam. In 1991 he Commanded Air Forces (AFFOR) and the 7440th
| Combat Wing based at Incirlik Air Base during Operation
| Desert Storm. A fully qualified "Gypsy" member of the 81st
| Tactical Fighter Squadron 1969-1973-Hahn, Zweibrucken and
| Spangdahlem Air Bases
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Being able to see the instruments, target, etc. during a
| nuclear war has value even if you're not coming back.
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(page generated 2022-01-11 23:00 UTC)