How come Federal does not use FH/SS gear?

[prc117f]

Even with encryption the Simplex narrowband transmits would pretty much show up as a spike on any spectrum monitor equipment and with DF gear they can point out the location of transmits. I would figure that high end criminal enterprise would probably have a dedicated Countermeasures team with high end equipment to detect and triangulate transmits or determine if there is some kind of surveillance operation near by and if so they could probably then send someone with passive audio surveillance equipment to listen in.

[colby4601]

Originally Posted by prc117f

Even with encryption the Simplex narrowband transmits would pretty much show up as a spike on any spectrum monitor equipment and with DF gear they can point out the location of transmits. I would figure that high end criminal enterprise would probably have a dedicated Countermeasures team with high end equipment to detect and triangulate transmits or determine if there is some kind of surveillance operation near by and if so they could probably then send someone with passive audio surveillance equipment to listen in.

I so highly doubt it.

[SOFA_KING]

Maybe some do...like the intelligence community. I have seen spikes that looked like it on a good sensitive, and fast sweeping spectrum analyzer. They would come up and go down like two-way traffic would. Military? Maybe. But the usual federal equipment is not capable. Someone would know if it were.

There is also a drawback to it as it raises the noise floor. I wonder how well they track too. I think it was Transcript International that actually made under-dash VHF models. That would be fun to play with!

Phil

[prc117f]

Originally Posted by SOFA_KING

Maybe some do...like the intelligence community. I have seen spikes that looked like it on a good sensitive, and fast sweeping spectrum analyzer. They would come up and go down like two-way traffic would. Military? Maybe. But the usual federal equipment is not capable. Someone would know if it were.

There is also a drawback to it as it raises the noise floor. I wonder how well they track too. I think it was Transcript International that actually made under-dash VHF models. That would be fun to play with!

Phil

I would venture the CIA etc.. probably use frequency agile equipment but the regular folks FBI etc.. use bog standard radios with encryption that would show up like mount everest on a spectrum analyzer.

Nextel would actually be more effective since it is so widespread that they could technically hide in the commercial nextel radioclutter

Motorola has some pretty neat radios that use FH on the 900mhz range, pretty decent hop rate. (DTR series)

[SOFA_KING]

Originally Posted by prc117f

I would venture the CIA etc.. probably use frequency agile equipment but the regular folks FBI etc.. use bog standard radios with encryption that would show up like mount everest on a spectrum analyzer.

Nextel would actually be more effective since it is so widespread that they could technically hide in the commercial nextel radioclutter

Motorola has some pretty neat radios that use FH on the 900mhz range, pretty decent hop rate. (DTR series)

Direct Talk also does that in the 900 band. I took spectrum shots of it and counted 30 hops per channel with 30 KHz spacing (if I remember right). Almost encrypted with a programed phone number!

Phil

[milf]

US military uses SS equiped gear on a regular basis. CIA and NSA use more satellite comms than basic radio. FBI, and DEA both were shown SS/FH gear, but deided that Nextel, SatComms, and digital capable encrypted gear was far more cost effective. Imagine that, federal agencies worrying about cost.

[mancow]

What is it with this site and disappearing posts? I just posted a full page reply, got the successful post, message and poof...it never showed up. This has happened several times in the for sale forum too.


Basically what I was going to say is that they did use the Transcrypt stuff but I think the syncronization was an issue back before imbedded micro gps was commonplace. Also, repeaters are a difficult issue when using wide band SS.

I have several of the hand helds that were supposedly used by the Feds at one time or another and they still work fairly well. I also have a Uniden AMX mobile modded by transcrypt that came from the US Marshals Service.

I would assume that the MBITR and similar small military type units with FHSS are often used by DEA in Central and South America while battling cartels but as for the regular agents it's normal equipment that is used.

[milf]

Mancow, correct on the foriegn ops usage by DEA...

[ecps92]

Yes, but the DTR is very very Short Range

Originally Posted by prc117f

I would venture the CIA etc.. probably use frequency agile equipment but the regular folks FBI etc.. use bog standard radios with encryption that would show up like mount everest on a spectrum analyzer.

Nextel would actually be more effective since it is so widespread that they could technically hide in the commercial nextel radioclutter

Motorola has some pretty neat radios that use FH on the 900mhz range, pretty decent hop rate. (DTR series)

[WA4MJF]

Probably a complication thing, too. Remember the complaints that the Army could not talk to the LAArNG during the aftermath of Katrina. The Army guys had never been trained on how to use their FH gear in single channel mode. Can you imangine a typical Fed that had FH gear trying to talk to a single channel user? If the Army RTOs, that use their radios every day, don't know how to switch to single channel, New Squelch On to talk to the "New" Family of FM radios, think how much of a problem it would be for civilians to do it.

[Ray_Air]

Frequency hopping is not secure, UNLESS it is coupled with strong crypto.

This (DRS Technologies, Inc. - WJ-8654 MINIATURE VHF/UHF MICROCEPTOR™ RECEIVER) will make butter of FHSS and for HF their is a surveillance receiver called the FH-1 that was made solely to track FH radios. Depending on the speed of the FH some higher end consumer grade near field receivers could possibly track them to. FYI, the Opto Xplorer and the older Opto R-10, R-11 will track the new FHSS radio made by Trisquare , TriSquare - 2-way Radio - Beyond FRS Beyond GMRS eXRS (TM) eXtreme Radio Service.
Granted those radios hop every 400mS, which isn't blazingly fast, but that hop rate can be easily tracked by consumer gear costing only a few hundred to several hundred dollars. Does anyone know the hop rate of a military HF freq. hopper? Or the hop rate of the older Transcrypt VHF radios?

[milf]

Well the specail I saw on the Military CHan on an "Mail Call" thing with R. Lee Irmy showed one that they said was spread spectrum and changed freqs every 100 ms, fully encrypted, and was only produced for the military special ops units.

[signal500]

Some of the Federal agencies are using Nextel and there Blackberry for most of there communications. If and when they use VHF/UHF communications, some use simplex low power portables and mobiles. Most all of the agents I have worked with over the years just want to know how to turn the radio on and what channel they need to communicate with each other. I was involved in a large operation with many Federal agencies years ago and we all were using low power portables on the MURS frequencies. Any Federal agency can use any frequency in any band including the Ham radio bands. They really don't need overpriced FH/SS radios to achieve covert communications.

[signal500]

Double Post by mistake

[Ray_Air]

I just bought a used Optoelectronics R-10 Interceptor and it will track the FH used by the Motorola DTR's. That hop rate is 90mS. You can clearly hear the digital noise at the beginning of the transmission which verifies that another radio is in range , if not the TX will be cut off and the radio will display a message something like "user not available". However, the R-10 won't demodulate the DTR audio because it uses VSELP.

The R-10 easily tracks the Trisquare eXRS radios which hop at 400mS intervals and it will demodulate the voice because the Trisquares are not digital. They use analog FM. I think it may be NFM because the voice is a little off, but clearly intelligible.