The military renaissance in high frequency communications

[VA3KOT John]

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tec...nications/

Military use of HF has been superceded by satellite comms which is less vulnerable to solar activity. Unfortunately, satellites are highly vulnerable to anti-satellite warfare as this article explains. So now the European military - and presumably others too - are getting back into HF. Good article, very interesting especially in how the military is using weak signal technology, high data rates and Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) to get the most out of HF despite possibly adverse propagation conditions.

[VE3WI Dave]

And inevitably, our little scraps of spectrum allocation will come under threat.  This is already happening, as New Zealand hams just lost their allocation of 2 channels at 5 MHz to the military.

http://www.arrl.org/news/new-zealand-rad...-60-meters

We would be wise to work on learning how to make ourselves useful to local emergency organizations.

73
Dave, VE3WI

[VE3WI Dave]

And it's not just the military who are craving HF bandwidth.  There's an article in Dec QST about HF data links for stock market transactions.  Apparently a millisecond or so faster transmission means millions of $$$.  The fastest method is atmospheric HF, faster than satellites (due shorter path length) and faster than fiber (due to velocity factor).  There's a picture of a tower with several log-periodic antennas in Chicago, owned by a stock trading firm from the Netherlands.
73
Dave, VE3WI