IRAQ WAR: Monitoring the opposition???

In the Iraq war, are all sides monitoring each other??

Or, are all military radios on both the USA and ISIS/ Al-Qaeda/Taliban opposition forces encrypted ???

During fatalities, can our lost military radios be remotely disabled as is the case with local USA law enforcement?? Does the military use radio codes similar to standard emergency repsonders??

Many Thanks

Rest assured, all tactical comms are encrypted.

I know around 2006 Iraqi police were using Transcrypt Intl 460 rolling code scrambling and the US Military placed a large order for ICOM IC-F43 UHF radios with Transcrypt Intl DES scramblers (ICOM Military bundle). These were not used for battlefield comms, but more for military base protection/operations.

Transcrypt is no more and I'm sure they're using digital encryption now coupled with FH for most comms.

Archie said:

During fatalities, can our lost military radios be remotely disabled as is the case with local USA law enforcement??
Many Thanks

Click to expand...

Simply put: Any compromised encryption is removed from use. Details vary, and should not be discussed much further.

Sent via Tapatalk

Everybody uses encryption.

Everyone uses some form of encryption if they are being smart. Some groups have used MotoTrbo and encryption. Others buying other model of Motorola gear. Look on auction sites, KVL3000's can be bought and you can make your own DES key.

Even terrorist groups can buy and operate scanners and computers, so monitoring takes place also.

My last trip the Icom F43GS radios had been replaced but were still stashed in boxes, Motorola XTS5000 handhelds were in use. AES-256 encryption. Then APX radios replaced those later on. So lost radios can be "stunned" and "killed".

For combat use, AN/PRC-148 Thales MBITR and JEM radios were used alongside Harris AN/PRC-117 and AN/PRC-152's.

There are ways to use "codes" for talking also, KAK and deKAK voice when on a radio to authenticate.

I even know of an air strike request once made over FRS/GMRS radio once (a Garmin Rino 120), and once the pilot could verify the source on the ground, the 9 line was approved. Obviously the situation was pretty bad to resort to FRS, but it did work.

thanks for bringing this up i had always wondered this also. what did the enemy use as far as comms?

Every type of cell phone was found and used. They had a long range, higher powered cordless phone, that reminded me of the 49 MHz models of the 1980's. But these seemed to work better, range was about 1.5-2 miles.
Lots of Motorola MotoTrbo XPR-6550 handhelds.
One group had an Icom repeater, but never did find the handhelds.
Some old, as in Vietnam era military radios.
FRS/GMRS like the blister pack pairs you can buy in the US.
All very common in Iraq.

Wonder why turbo unless it was encrypted

Enough said. Remember OPSEC. Please do not post any more info.

They are watching.

I did 3 SF tours in Iraq and retired from SOCOM in 2013.

reconrider8 said:

thanks for bringing this up i had always wondered this also. what did the enemy use as far as comms?

Click to expand...

I don't know what they are using now, but I do know a little about the first and second Iraq war.

Saddam Hussein was sold an Encrypted RACAL radio system (Jaguar) back in the late 80's early 90's.
It's been speculated the country that sold it to him (not us) already could break the encryption with some effort.

From the papers I read a few years ago, it used FH coupled with 56-bit DES (72 quadrillion possible keys).

During the first Gulf War, we were intercepting their secure comms , sending them for analysis, and they were being decrypted within 8 hours.

During the second Iraq war, we were breaking their comms in less than an hour.

I'd imagine now the enemy would stay the hell off the radio, less they catch a hellfire missile from a weaponized drone.

Also Google about how Hezbollah was breaking into Israeli comms during the Lebanon squabble.

They were apparently using high end surveillance receivers to intercept Israeli frequency hopping radios.
They also had equipment to listen to Israeli commanders cell phones.

Never underestimate your enemy. False security is the worst security.

I can remember the old time domain/ rolling code inversion tactical radios. The time domain function sampled a small segment of voice and rearranged it ever 30mS or so (dynamically). The rolling code inversion was used on top of the time domain rearranging and inverted the voice at different inversion frequencies (2600-4100Hz generally) many times a second.

They provided decent security against most adversaries, but they were being decrypted by putting the scrambled signal on a spectrograph and "cutting" the signal apart and re-piecing it to resemble the cadence and frequency of normal speech.

This took about 20 minutes of signal processing. This was over 20 years ago and could be done in the back of a truck.

Basically you undo the time domain rearranging first and then attack the rolling code inversion.


This is why modern VS systems use digital encryption (AES or higher for certain users).

thats awesome that they can do that. now if we can find a way to easily break ase 256 but from what ive heard its nearly impossible