RADIO ELECTRONIC COMBAT (REC).

Adrian:  

Alex, thanks for agreeing to this interview, to break the ice I was wondering if you could start by telling us a bit about yourself?  

Alex:  Thanks for inviting me along today Adrian.  My father was a diplomat with an interest in economics, energy markets and Critical Infrastructure.  My childhood was spent in St Petersburg with overseas tours with my parents in Ottawa, Cape Town and London.  At school in St Petersburg, I attended Young Pioneers and DOSSAF where I developed an interest in scuba diving.  Whilst my father was serving with the Russian Trade Delegation in London I attended St Aloysius College, the other side of Highgate Hill, taking my GCSEs.  I returned to Russia for a brief period of military service.

In 1998 I was fortunate to win a place to study PPE at SOAS in London, I graduated in 2001 and returned home to join the Russian Foreign Service in 2001 just before 9/11.  

Adrian:  That's helpful insight Alex.  My friend SO2 Optimism has an interest in the area you know as Radio Electronic Combat, I was wondering if you could tell us something about this?

Alex:  You should understand Adrian that this is not really my core business, my seniority is such that I have oversight of a small team here that looks at the tactical level. I’m sure you appreciate that I have to look at this in the round.  To meet the many requirements placed on us here in UK I have to help our head office set their priorities between strategic IMINT and SIGINT and at my seniority, oversight of some long term HUMINT cases here.  Much of this work, is before my time, from the Cold War, but I’m sure you understand the importance of continuity in Intelligence work? We do have some lengthy case files, some of our old friends here should have retired long ago.

Adrian:  That's fascinating, I was wondering if you could indulge me and let me know a bit about REC at the tactical level, as you see it from your position of seniority?

Alex:  My main interest Adrian is at the strategic level, the RECs team here in London work primarily against your tiny army and air force.  We call them the Tactical Team.  My interest lies in where they are able to talent-spot individuals and infrastructure with strategic potential.  We are conscious that the West sometimes talks about concepts of the Deep, Close and Rear battle, and early entry vs formal mobilisation, we have to be more fluid.  I’m conscious that we are supporting not only strategic assets planning to strike UK, to protect our motherland, but also collecting intelligence to support our forces who may be confronted by the British Military in the Baltic or Mediterranean littorals. 

The COVID lockdown has changed a lot for the Tactical Team.  About 10 years ago they picked up and old Hi-Lux pick up with an RF transparent canopy.  They keep this in a lock-up out towards Hungerford, that’s a hangover from when the Americans were at Greenham Common.  The Hi-Lux is typically fitted out with an Israeli IMSI Grabber, a Pineapple and laptop or two and a commercial spectrum analyser and some commercial software radios (SDRs).  The vehicle has a video camera front and rear running through Platesmart, its not 100% accurate, but they tell me its good enough  The equipment in the vehicle can be operated remotely over 4G if there is good connectivity or Wi-Fi where there is line of sight.  With the right antenna at the control end, we have controlled the Hi-Lux from  15km away.  

The SDRs are used to fingerprint military radios in aircraft and with land forces.  When working an airfield the Tactical Team will generally use Flight Radar to cross-refer with the fingerprints that the SDR picks up.  For aircrew and special forces, this is where the IMSI grabber comes in to play.  By correlating the phones that switch off, or move away, just before an aircraft starts to move and transmit we identify users of intelligence interest. Similarly, at general aviation terminals like Luton, Northolt, Farnborough and Battersea heliport we pick up individuals of military, political and economic interest.  When a submarine sails from the Clyde and a phone disappears from the network for a few months we similarly join the dots there.  

Our own military put a lot of pressure on our tactical team to look at British ISR and strike assets, from time to time they travel up to Waddington and Marham, where they used to be able to blend in as plane spotters.  Perhaps worth mentioning that they have some sort of radar warning receiver that they use close to airfields as well.  They recon they can not only fingerprint radars by type, but sometimes even the actual platform.  I understand they used to look for the Army’s counter-battery radar, but they don’t actually believe the British have a real capability here.  The ARRC at Innsworth is also of regular interest, the international mobile numbers often travel abroad with UK numbers giving us some interesting traffic analysis results.  

I have to say that I am also under pressure from the Northern Fleet to increase our coverage of the UK and Norwegian P8 maritime surveillance capability.  The joint UK / Norwegian maintenance and repair organisation there is of growing interest to us.  Its what you call “bare-arsed” up there, but we are looking to see what we access we could gain under commercial cover from Aberdeen.  As you probably know we try to keep a trawler on station off the Clyde, off Dorset and Hampshire and a third in the North Sea.  I can't say too much but one or all of these can sometimes triangulate with fixed sites in London and Edinburgh.  

Adrian:   Well that’s fascinating Alex, but could you give us any examples of how this translates into tactical intelligence?

Alex:  Sure Adrian, I would hope that fingerprinting radios and radars on aircraft or with ground forces at their home base would create an association with a particular unit.  When one of these emitters turns up somewhere else in the world we can rapidly make an association.  

 

The presence of mobile phones is another layer on the sponge cake.  Sports Tracker and Strava provide us with a useful tool to track where service personnel typically exercise.  Imagine if you would a phone associated with Hereford or Poole, turning up as a group at Brize Norton, Heathrow or Gatwick, and all switching off or disappearing at the same time.  That's one indicator, when they all turn up together downrange we just join the dots with another one of our tactical teams.  

From a Wi-Fi perspective at places like Solstice Park on the A303 it's possible to hoover up the mac addresses of phones using the Wi Fi at Costa and McDonalds.  This can sometimes expose email addresses, even contacts sometimes passwords as well.  Running time-stamped content from the dash cams though Platesmart allows us to match people’s cars to their phones and their tablets. This can give us access to their online persona giving us the opportunity to further identify them for intelligence or other “business” purposes.  

If one of these units were to turn up in another part of the world, all this baseline data would provide Russian forces and our allies valuable indicators and warnings.

In 2016 you may recall Russia hacked a Ukraine artillery calculating app on Android?  This allowed the hackers to geo-locate the device on the Ukrainian gun-line and initiate counter-battery fire.  It's not my area of expertise but Im sure there would be other ways of phishing personal devices of the British Military during “peacetime” to get them to offer geo-location services.

That when they deploy, but don’t forget what they leave behind.  In some cases, we have collected names, phone numbers, emails and addresses of relatives and loved ones they have left behind.  We would use these to de-stabilise and intimidate families, inflicting pressure on those deployed from the home front.  This is, after all the age of hybrid war.

Adrian:  Alex, on behalf of your readers could I offer many thanks for your time today and for your valuable insights.  I realise you are a busy man and have other meetings to get to.  Adieu until next time!

Kings of War and Caddy Shack

BUT IS IT SPORT?

Many of my Twitter followers will know that this is a parody account, I presently sit on the outer edges of the Five Eyes Community where I still have to exercise some professional and personal caution.  These views are my exclusively own and in no way represent any part of the Crown.

I am not by any stretch an academic and my Twitter content is broadly mischievous or technical in nature.  Since the advent of twitter this blog has, until today lost its utility.  There may be a slight moral twang to my content, my father was a witness to Belsen, I to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, some of my peers have seen worse.  I have been plying the trade of an analyst for over 30 years now.  Target packs I have worked on have saved friendly lives, sent disaster relief to the right place and sent a few adversaries to court, or to meet their maker, I have supported Ministerial submissions.

@DavidMaxwell161 from Georgetown is someone I follow on Twitter and whose content I respect.  Over the weekend I was taken by a thread he picked up on from  KCL http://kingsofwar.org.uk/author/betz451/ which caught my attention about UK’s contribution in Syria.

The theme of this light-hearted, holiday season blog post was that UK’s involvement in Syria on the back of the recent vote by the House, is less than optimal.  I was surprised to see this tone from a faculty so close to the British defence community and several days later, still feel compelled to respond.  Extracts from the original  @KingsOfWar blog are in black italic below.

A month ago I remarked on the non-sensical decision by Britain’s parliament to authorise bombing by the RAF in Syria–see Britain’s Stupidest War. My point then, the clincher at any rate, was that I thought we would come to regret how as a society we’d allowed our wars to be so totally hijacked by domestic politics that they now served essentially little more than as props in political theatre. This piece then in today’s Telegraph caught my eye for the obvious reasons: RAF bomb raids in Syria dismissed as ‘non-event’. It turns out that not only are we not really doing much in the way of bombing (we may be doing a bit more on reconnaissance, but we were doing that before the momentous vote too), but actually the target that got all the attention was actually one that had been serviced by the USAF over a month before.

APPLICATION OF AIR POWER AND THE TARGETING PROCESS

That a target may get hit more than once might not be such a surprise to some of us.  Despite the application of overwhelming technology,the reality of warfare is that targets may not always fall when hit. The original targeting information may have been incomplete, BDA may have identified previous strikes had not been fully effective.  The target may have been reoccupied.  

Like the Ho Chi Mhin trail, London was bombed every night for over a year, so a repeat strike on the same target is not so far outside the expectation of some in London.  

One also needs to consider that contributors to an air campaign may in fact be working from an agreed coalition target list.  These days few G20 nations can afford the luxury of unnecessary duplication of effort, the RAF in particular is increasingly driven by cost.  Unity of purpose is after all one of the principles of war, can we so readily discount that there was no consensus for these targets to be re-visited? Personally I’m dubious.  

Whilst the USAF may be seen by some as the acme of air power, their contribution to fratricide is well known to the British infantry and hospitals in Kandahar.

So, what’s up KOW readers? What’s the point of it? Obviously, Shakespeare came to mind first–Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5:

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

But what does it mean? I hear you say. What’s the strategy? How does action X contribute to the realisation of policy Y? Wrong question, Grasshopper! What’s important is how it makes you feel. 

PHYSICAL ANC COGNITIVE EFFECTS

How do you feel?  Well at least we have some agreement that there is a relationship between physical and cognitive effect.  An oft quoted 18th century academic once wrote that: war is an extension of diplomacy by other means.  In hybrid warfare cognitive is at least as valuable as physical.

In UK the armed forces are under ever-increasing levels of legal scrutiny and oversight.  Levels of scrutiny far beyond those in many other armed forces and even some police forces in US.

Just a short walk from KCL to the Inns of Court, Ben Emmerson QC has already done some excellent work on the use of physical effect that touches on some of the differing national regulatory constructs that can exist within a military coalition.  https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2013EmmersonSpecialRapporteurReportDrones.pdf 

DEMOCRACY, OVERSIGHT AND THE WAR-FIGHTER

War-fighters also have a view on this, they are part of society, not apart from society.  In very recent history UK has entered in to conflicts without a clear mandate, over a decade on we still await the findings of the Chilcott enquiry.  Even this could become recent history when it finally gets published.  However, British voters should take some comfort that institutional lessons have already been learned and measures put in place within UK Defence.  In a democracy like UK, with defence totally reliant on  volunteers, the motivation of our sailors, soldiers and airmen should never be taken for granted.  Should it be a surprise that there may be some in the military who have even stopped to think about our freedom and our democracy, in those long periods of waiting before they have to fight, to put themselves in harms way?  

Im not just thinking about aircrew here, consider also the tanker and ISR crews, the CSAR  / MERT girls and boys who may have to step in to the void to pull them out.  Heaven forbid the British and allied “advisors and mentors” who may have inexplicably found themselves close to the proposed impact area. In harms way, to provide the most accurate targeting data we can find to satisfy the raft of regulation and oversight we in UK have to face prior to weapon release.  

Another point here is that in a coalition we don't do this on our own, any one of those interchangeable roles could be done by one “Tier one” ally supporting another.  This is not just a transaction between us and Daesh, it is a transaction between us and our allies.

Working under some of the regulatory constraints that Emmerson talks about, one might like to consider the assurance that some UK war-fighters now have, knowing, that they have Parliament guarding their back, instead of climbing on it.  

STRONG OR WEAK POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Venturing off piste slightly there is also some commentary about strong and weak government.  It might be suggested by some that asking Parliament to vote on committing Land forces to Syria and now offensive air, could be seen as irrelevant or a sign of leadership lacking confidence.  Personally I see a leadership in tune with the democratic process, with a moral strength that an autocratic leader could never have.

We might come back to the difference between physical and cognitive effect.  To suggest that UK’s involvement is to help increase the body-count is something of a fallacy.  We all know that even the scent of civilian casualties will drive us in to the hands of the internet jihadists.  The counter here is not more bombs, it is a stronger competing narrative, there is no doubt that we are still a long way off here . 

At which point the government can say ‘we’re doing our best!’ It’s down to you to forget that doing their best consisted of driving the occasional ball 10,000 feet down a crevasse.

SO IS IT SPORT?

In concluding I might pick up that golfing theme: golf is generally seen as one player addressing a ball with a number of sticks.  The comparison does not translate well in to interdicting adversary infrastructure in some of the most congested airspace in the world, constrained by layers of legal oversight, whilst operating within a highly sophisticated and adversarial Russian air defence / air superiority envelope. 

Some dear colleagues in Andrews, Arlington, Norfolk and Quantico may see this as a game of golf, even in the Twittersphere I know many more who do not.   Irregular or hybrid warfare is arguably more about cognitive effect than it is about application of kinetic effect.  From a British perspective, it is about a stronger, more compelling competing narrative, it is about building a consensus in the community.

I might pause here to look at the “Muslim community”, I have served with Muslims and I socialise with them, their neighbours and families.  In UK defence I sense that we tend not to brand people according to their religion.  When you speak to these people they see themselves as an intrinsic part of British society.  My point here is that I believe that UK democracy is about creating a consensus in all of society, putting this to the vote in Parliament may be imperfect but its the best indicator we have at the moment.  maintaining social cohesion is something that many of us still have to master. ( #Ferguson #Mizzou)

But is it sport?  Whilst the Hoo Ya community may object, hybrid warfare today is arguably more about complex theatre, a multi-national promenade performance at that.  Except that for the analysts, the targeteer and shooter, the critic, the final arbiter, is not a contributor to the inside pages of the broadsheets.  For a Brit actor in this play, it is ultimately the highest court in the land, past Cafe Nero, just over the road from Kings College London  

… and the game of golf? it may one day be seen as an analogy used for last-generation warfare.

Security Must Make Sense

an interesting exchange over on Twitter tonight between some military security authorities and a plane spotter over at RAF Waddington.  The anonymous ( like me) military Tweeter took a member of the public to task over the operational content of some of his or her tweets.


One or two civilians were quick to point out that the information is already available at open source #OSINT.  so hardly fair, or polite IMHO to launch in to another unknown poster in open forum.

As a callow youth I was a conduct after capture instructor (CACI) on a flying squadron and had to brief the aircrew on the kind of security measures they would need to put in place, as individuals, as a team in an aircraft and within a squadron launching a number of aircraft on the same mission.

As individuals they were advised to take in to account the type of information that an adversary might have collected on them and their families.   Individuals and groups were briefed and advised on what threats they were likely to face if captured and they needed to do to help counter them.  

This is not new to the RAF we have had personnel attacked by the IRA in the past in England and in Germany, aircrew taken prisoner in Iraq, airmen and their families attacked by the Irgun and Lehi in Palestine.  We teach aircrew how to evade capture, how to interact with rescue forces such as our dear friends from the US CSAR community, flying their Pedro missions that  we have come know and to trust in Afghanistan. 

If that fails, finally we teach them how to behave if captured.  Most of that falls in to a discipline called Operational Security or OPSEC.

I would expect a responsible service such as the RAF to have OPSEC as its first line of defence, Force and Platform Protection would help to keep the platforms safe whilst in the air and Information Security  or INFOSEC to protect sensitive data before, during and after a mission.  In the RAF we call the use of multiple layers of security "defence in depth"


At RAF bases in the UK and other friendly countries security and counter intelligence personnel will know that they can often depend on the trust and support of the local community to act as their eyes and ears.  Plane spotters often have a key eye for the "absence of the normal and presence of the abnormal"  

Any base security officer and airman worth their salt will recognise that cordial relations with those with benign intent, every reason to be on the perimeter  and a sense of public responsibility will be the first to report anything to the base authorities.  The overwhelming support out friends and allies over at Lakenheath have had from the local community is more than enough testament to the goodwill towards both Air Forces.

Being a good neighbour is not just about community relations, it is also about good security. 

Unsung Heroes

These days everyone is a hero according to the media, many who are given the epithet will try as best they can try and sink in to the background.  Such is the modesty of these individuals, who when confronted, will frequently seek to pass the credit on to their comrades at the time. 

Some eschew the limelight altogether, on leaving the forces they make no reference to their previous military service.   Those from the most secret units are the most likely to avoid the topic altogether, making no reference to their military past, thereby modestly leaving their heroic past behind them for good.

Compare and contrast these self-assured men and women with many of those so-called "heroes" propping up the bars of numerous British Legions and RAFA branches around the world.  More frequently these days found walting around certain parts of the internet.

It seems not a day goes by without another case of stolen valour coming to notice.

Thankfully there are still those to hold their own counsel, avoiding the limelight, as ever keeping a low profile:   Unsung Hero #49

Walt of the Walts

Flitting between OWOB and the Yard yesterday I could not help but notice that Broadway was brought to a standstill by a rare piece of theatre.  Inclusive as ever, I felt it was only right and propper to bring some of these stalwart chaps and chapesses to your attention.  The carefully chorographed posture of the front row had more than a hint of the "gang show" about it. Although amongst the captivated onlookers, I for one was expecting a Busby Berkley number at any moment. 

So have you spotted the Walt yet?  Well I had to wonder about the Snowdrop on the front row.  I rather think he he has dressed to impress, hoping for a cameo role?  For me the star of the show was the rather trim young lady in blue in the back row, a touch of the principal boy about her, but  a star with a leading role none the less. (  I must try and catch her in the club sometime)

How touching that this crew elected to have their house photograph taken in front of Scotland Yard, is it supposed to indicate some kind of affininy, or is it an attempt at irony?  I'm sure if they really wanted to be like the Met they would have a betting syndicate, perhaps they all went on for Lunch at the Cinnamon Club on the company amex?

Perhaps there is some reciprocity here and the staff from the Yard or Belgravia nick all line up to have their group photo outside 76 Rochester Row ?

So where do the Int Corps have their photo:  outside Group 4, Aegis or perhaps south of the river at the Cotton Centre?  I hope you are all ready for 26th July?  Its going to be quite a day.

Chin chin.

PS:  Not long before the nearest Int Corps Unit has a pretty WRAF OC  ;-)

An interesting single-service take on Information Superiority

The ISops mega vent!!!

I don't want to be a whistleblower so I can't give too much detail as I can be easily identified and there would no doubt be reprisals from the COC. More than anything else I just need vent and air this dirty laundry.There have been lots of instances of where I have been forced to do unauthorised changes to the DII infrastructure, moving terminals re-patching. Each time I say “it needs to go through Atlas change management” but get told just to do it by the FofS due to the cost ATLAS charges. Other things that have rub me up the wrong way - Restricted "standalone" laptops being used to process work information being connected directly to the internet. Not having any form of AV or firewall (new in post, would never dream of having unprotected / patched laptops leave my IS store), coming back in riddled with viruses and trojans and illegal downloaded movies! But with no formal SYSOPS signed or carriage certifications issued. Those responsible can’t be traced, if I wasn’t told to ignore these violations by the COC. I don't even have the tools (no software, licences etc) to rectify these issues.Other things that are really frustrating me, on more than once on my dig outs of the stores, I have found secret hard drives laying about unaccounted for in unsecured locations and had to hand them in to the 102 owner. The COC don't seem concerned at all, which in itself is a big concern. Unapproved use of cordless phones and other obvious security violations. All mentioned but ignored by the COC. The use of illegal unlicensed software on standalone machines... I can go on... I could technically lose my Microsoft Certifications for not reporting and being complicit with these software violations.I just feel like there is no where to turn to address my concerns, but from talking to my peers, this is common through out the MOD and other signal units and its getting worse! after 14 years, I need to vent!Do I have the moral courage to speak up risking isolation and reprisal and a shit CR or do I tow the party line and smile my way to a good CR and let the unprofessional cycle continue? Either way - the Signals is in a very bad place right now and its getting worse! SignedSgt XXXXXX

They often say that you get the Politicians and the Journalists you deserve. The past few days have brought the opposing poles of the world of British journalism in to sharp focus.

The Leveson enquiry continues, but Charlotte Church's settlement at the High Court today continues to highlight the gross corruption of individuals inside both the media and parts of Government. This is indeed a cancer in our society.

Contrast these tawdry hacks then with another employee of the News International group, Marie Colvin

(C) Daily Telegraph

How could one ever start to imagine that someone capable of enduring such hardship and making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of truth, could have the same profession, even the same union as those scum from Wapping?

We are all far richer because of the contribution that Marie Colvin has made, we need more of her kind and a bit more of the editorial courage and governance that once used to be a hallmark of the Press of a true democratic society.