[Nowhere Man]

If you ask me, the parties who oppose this technology are a damned good reason to KEEP the technology in place! The so-called "peace activists" are nothing but communist sympathizers who seek to leave the free world weak and our enemies strong. And as for the envirowhackos, they're the reason why we're so dependent on Arab oil. If we were unencumbered by their neo-socialist lunacy, we'd be drilling offshore and in the ANWR without complication and would have enough oil to lay down the law on the Arab Street without fear of oil-based reprisals.

I'll drink to that. BTW, love your site and parodies, I love seeing the "fresh meat." Keep up the good work! I also will send prayers too.

We need to keep the longwave ELF/VLF transmitters in place, the whole idea behind them is that the low frequency radio signals can penitrate the earth and oceans very well at the depths the sub run at. Also, the lower in frequency, the better the radio signal can follow the curvature of the Earth way past the horizon. That's why lower frequency AM radio stations "travel more" than the ones at the upper end of the dial. I can pick up WJR in Detroit on 760 kc in the daytime here in Pittsburgh although the flatness of Lake Erie helps. Same thing with VHF-Lo signals (30-50 Mc), even though they don't travel nearly as far (except ionospheric skip), the signals travel far enough for police/fire etc. to use in rural areas. ELF/VLF is an extreme version of that, IIRC, they operate around 9 kc and although at those frequencies you have very little bandwidth to where you're limited to a few characters a minutes, all you need to communicate with the subs is a handful of codes.

I'm an amateur radio operator and general "radiohead" so this issue has peaked my interest. I remember in the 1980's, Governor Michael Dukakis didn't like the longwave GWEN (Ground Wave Emergency Network) antennas to be placed in Massachusetts. I believe GWEN is shut down now, I don't hear them on longwave anymore (around 171 kc, below the AM band) although I could tell what they are, they send short packets with the distinct sound that resembles opening the squelch (the hissing noise) on a VHF/UHF two-way radio or police scanner.

Let me add, Russ Feingold is an idiot although he did vote to impeach Beelzebubba so he isn't a total loss.

[Growler]

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.

[_Jim]

We need to keep the longwave ELF/VLF transmitters in place

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 ...

[_Jim]

Same thing with VHF-Lo signals (30-50 Mc),

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) ...

[_Jim]

I believe GWEN is shut down now, I don't hear them on longwave anymore (around 171 kc, below the AM band)

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 ...