Free Republic

According to a Telegram channel (@serhii_flash), the Russian military has begun deploying FPV (First Person View) drones equipped with coils of fiber optic cables, marking a significant advancement in drone communication technologies. The Ukrainian military has encountered one of these unusual drones, which had a 10-kilometer length of fiber optic cable unspooled during flight. This cable control method offers a crucial advantage on the battlefield as these drones exhibit a unique resistance to electronic interference, making their neutralization extremely difficult, if not impossible, with current methods. The constant and uninterrupted video signal provided by the fiber optic cable allows for...

“When I said that electronic warfare will soon not be able to prevent FPV drones from flying over the battlefield, I was not joking. Several extraordinary solutions have already been invented that reduce the efforts of radio electronics engineers to zero. Ukrainian channels publish photographs of a drone(presumably Russian drone) that was controlled via a fiber optic cable. Such a guidance system is not afraid of any interference, and the camera produces the most beautiful image without the slightest delay. So it’s time to equip armored vehicles with means of physically destroying drones. Whether it will be a small-caliber air...

Although high-speed wireless technologies like Wifi 6E and 5G dominate news headlines, analog, and optical cables are still the backbone of the internet, and for good reason. Researchers in Japan just set a new fiber optic data transmission record with a technique that’s compatible with existing cable infrastructure, meaning a real-world implementation is entirely possible, and not just limited to a laboratory setting. Researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) successfully sent data down a custom multi-core fiber optic cable at a speed of 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 51.7 km. That’s the...

A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon (R) looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed...

Elbit Systems of America has successfully integrated acoustic, vibration, and visual sensors with artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms into its TORCH® command & control/common operating picture software. This solution is now being deployed as part of CBP’s Border Wall System to provide an autonomous capability for U.S. Border Patrol to know when items of interest are trying to unlawfully cross into the United States. Elbit Systems of America has also integrated TORCH® with Sintela’s ONYX™ Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) system that senses acoustic and vibration activities, along with wide angle commercial cameras and machine learning algorithms... TORCH® and ONYX are part...

Someone hacked through yet another fiber optic cable in the San Francisco Bay area early Tuesday morning, continuing a rash of incidents that have disrupted Internet traffic and vexed law enforcement officials. The latest attack occurred at around 4.30 am Pacific Time near the town of Livermore, about 50 miles east of San Francisco. Someone climbed down a manhole cover there and cut through several fiber optic cables, according to several reports. The FBI is investigating. The cables are operated by backbone providers such as Level 3 Communications, which sell capacity to other cable and Internet providers. The cables carry...

Cellphone, Internet, and telephone services across half of Arizona went dark on Wednesday after vandals sliced a sensitive fiber optic cable, according to those familiar with the situation. The incident is raising concerns about the safety of U.S. infrastructure.

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there. This part doesn't: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, "You just hit our line." Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center on Spring Hill Road. But Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government...

WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Fiber optic cables -- an amazing invention showing how clever people can be, right? Maybe so, but nature got there first, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday. A deep-sea sponge with a "skeleton" made out of silica did it first and did it better, the researchers said. It has spicules -- skeletal structures -- that look very much like modern fiber optic cables, except they don't crack, the team at Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU - News) in Murray Hill, New Jersey, reported. Fiber optic cables are long strands of pure glass about the diameter of a...

<p>PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- More than 140,000 miles of fiber-optic cable lie buried along Oregon's Interstate 5 corridor, the remains of a latter-day gold rush to capitalize on a 1990's telecommunications boom.</p> <p>Now, after $1 billion of investment, about 95 percent of the fiber goes unused and nearly half the companies that laid the line are bankrupt.</p>

Along-known selling point of fiber optics is that it either inhibits or prevents surveillance of communications. This particular aspect of fiber optics is now a line of political separation between the political aims of the European Union and those of the United States and potentially a line of conflict between the United States and China. The EU takes comfort that fiber optics shields communications from surveillance. European Commission member Erkki Liikanen said in speech of Sept. 5, 2001: "The development in technologies can bring protection against surveillance. It is a comforting finding that...fibre-optic cables instead of satellites for transcontinental communications...