Stay Safe !.......
Posted on 09/26/2004 4:05:33 PM PDT by 68skylark
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) -- With terrorism the new global threat, a network of radio antennas that let the Navy maintain secure communications with submarines at sea has become yet another Cold War relic.
On Thursday, the Navy will shut off its extremely low frequency (ELF) radio transmitters in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, saying the 15-year-old system, first proposed in the 1960s, is outdated and no longer needed. The Navy now will use 12 ``very low frequency'' transmitters located worldwide.
For years, peace activists and environmentalists targeted the two huge transmitters in the Chequamegon National Forest near Clam Lake and in Upper Michigan's Escanaba State Forest. Each transmitter consists of an antenna strung on 600 40-foot poles across dozens of miles of forest.
Critics contended that the system was for use during a first-strike nuclear attack, and that the radio waves could cause health and environmental problems. Demonstrations led to hundreds of arrests, some for trespassing onto the site and sawing down poles.
Steven Davis, spokesman for the Navy's Space and Navy Warfare Systems Command in San Diego, said the Navy spent about $25 million on research and studies into public and environmental safety and found no problems.
But Sen. Russ Feingold, who has wanted to shut down ELF since 1993, said the Navy had a ``bunker mentality'' in trying to pretend the facility had a purpose.
``I do think the war on terror had something to do with this,'' Feingold said. ``I think people are finally realizing we need to equip our military and everything we do toward the real threats.''
Davis said closing ELF comes after a ``re-evaluation'' of the Navy's priorities.
``Even as recently as three years ago, the world has changed considerably,'' he said.
The Navy spent $13 million a year to run both ELF transmitters, Davis said. He said the government has not yet determined the cost of dismantling the sites, which could take up to three years.
Some residents said they were concerned about the loss of jobs. Each site has one Navy worker and 27 civilian contractors, according to Davis.
``It is definitely going to hurt the economy,'' said Roger Anderson, co-owner of Deb's Y-Go-By, a bar, grill and bait shop in Clam Lake, a quiet tourist wayside about 40 miles from Lake Superior.
``Eventually, we knew this was going to be obsolete. It is just coming a little sooner than we thought,'' Anderson said. ``Maybe they need the money for the Iraq war or the war on terrorism.''
The Navy began using the $400 million system in 1989. The project was nearly killed in the late 1970s but was revived by President Reagan in his plan to modernize strategic defenses.
The project was scaled down considerably from the original 1960s plan, which included a grid of 6,200 miles of buried cable and 100 transmitters that would withstand a nuclear war.
Jerry Holter, 74, who lives about a mile from the Wisconsin transmitter, said he believes Project ELF served its purpose.
``It was a great deterrent to nuclear war against the United States. When we were in the Cold War, the Russians knew that if they hit us we could hit back twice as bad,'' he said. ``So it kept them in tow. Without the system, we were left out in the cold. We needed ELF.''
Stay Safe !.......
In was an open secret that ELF was designed to send nuclear launch orders to Ballistic Missile submarines. As you note, it penetrates the ocean whereas other radio waves don't. It wasn't the only method that the Tridents had of getting "the word." But I agree that we should keep ELF, for the redundency.
Were they asking for the formula for transparent aluminum?
You've got a technical 'salad' of terms there that isn't very clear; a) they are phasing out the ELF system in favor of b) a VLF system with 12 different transmitting sites.
I've got to believe that the information 'data rate' will go up with the new system compared to the old system at ELF ...
A VLF system with 12 different globally-located system may well outdo the olf VLF system; penetration of seawater is a matter of how much attenuation you're willing to accept, it's not a show stopper as far as propagation below the surface is concerned. We've got a lot of techniques we can use today to, using DSP technology and various 'synchronous' demodulation techniques that allow a raw noise to signal ratio to exist *prior* to signal processing ...
IIRC, the predecessor to this system was called Big Jim, which was a transmitter with its antenna stretched between two mountain tops. The data rate was woefully slow, but that was how we talked to submerged subs.
The main advantage to Low band VHF is - lessened attenuation due to intervening terrain (knife edge diffraction isn't as lossy) and lessened attenuation due to forestation (foliage, trees, etc.).
Other than that, VHF Low band is noisy (power line noise, urban noise like switching power supplies et al), inefficient for portable (hand-held) equipment and prone to 'skip' (ionospheric propagation that can 'cover' weaker, local traffic).
Low band VHF, BTW, is a line-of-sight propagation band (well, line of sight plus 10% or so) - ZERO ground wave propagation as on AM broadcast (I know, I know MANY people 'claim' GW prop, but it ain't so) ...
Yup, GWEN's gone - no more modem-sounding data bursts to compete with the hobby beacons within the 'license free' band of 160 - 190 KHz band ...
I can't get much into the specifics of how the system worked, but it was one of those "gee-whiz" systems that was ultimately very limited in its usefulness.
That's an interesting 'band' to work with, antenna efficiencies are low (unless you can stretch something huge between mountain tops!), something even a few thousand feet long is only a fraction of percent efficient ...
I notice you have links to some stuff on your profile page from Brad Dye. It wouldn't surprise me to find out he was a Navy radioman in the early sixties, stationed for a time at Northwest Receiver site in North Carolina. I was there at the same time and had a run-in with him. LOL
Its going to suck if we ever have to fight more than terrorists. The "lighter, faster, cheaper" Rumsfeld mentality is going to come back and bite us big time.
Its going to suck if we ever have to fight more than terrorists. The "lighter, faster, cheaper" Rumsfeld mentality is going to come back and bite us big time.
It never occurred to me that we were now immune from nuclear war. Quite the oppisite, I thought that it would be inevitable given all the different countries that have the bomb.
Thanks for the ping!
Never thought much of the sub radio. For that matter, I didn't think the burger radio was all that hot either.
You have freepmail.
I know that data rate is inversely proportional to frequency. So ELF yields Extremely Low Data Rate. But the number of bits needed to order a nuclear weapons launch is fairly small, and the number of bits needed to tell a sub to come shallow to get a vital message is even smaller.
I just don't like giving up technology to the Greens if we might want it someday.
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