Calling from the battlefield

[rfmcdpei]

A friend recently showed me a link to this CNN news item.

An Oregon couple checking their voice mail found a frightening three-minute recording of their son caught in a battle in Afghanistan.

Stephen Phillips, 22, and other soldiers in his Army MP company were battling insurgents when his phone was pressed against his Humvee. It redialed and called his parents in the small Oregon town of Otis.

Most of the sounds were gunfire, but shouts could be heard, including, "More ammo! More ammo!"

"At the end, you could hear a guy saying 'Incoming! RPG!' And then it cut off," John Petee, Phillips' brother, told KPTV-TV in Portland.

Phillips' mother, Sandie Petee, and her husband, Jeff Petee, were not at home at the time of the call. When they checked their voice mail, they heard the shooting.

"His friend died a year ago in Iraq and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, this may be the last time I hear my son's voice on the phone,"' Sandie Petee said.

Nobody was wounded or killed in his son's unit during the firefight, Jeff Petee said. He said, "It's something a parent really doesn't want to hear. It's a heck of a message to get from your son in Afghanistan."

I remember hearing similar stories coming from Israel during the Lebanon war two summers ago.

Modern militaries don't have any experience regulating civilization telecommunications devices because they didn't have any relevant experience with communications devices with such low thresholds for use: Cell phones are easy to transport and easy to use, and can transmit pretty easily as long as they have reception.

Most 23xx militaries would have had substantial experience with the use of civilian communications technologies on the battlefield by servicemen, and would regulate their use. Those regulations probably wouldn't be foolproof, especially if reserve units are mobilized. If the fighting is taking place in areas with relatively dense civilian populations, civilians themselves might be in regular and active communications with the wider world. (There might be some interesting news stories coming from the battlegrounds of Fourth Rio Plata War.)

Beyond the news value of these communications, they would also have considerable military and intelligence value. Imagine uploading a camera phone's JPEG of a battlefield to a command and control centre, say.

Thoughts?

 

[rfmcdpei]

This might already have had an effect on Nibelungen.

At the time of the Battle of Nibelungen, that world hosted a large population that enjoyed regular access to an approximately Core-like variety of advanced communications technologies, in turn serviced by competitive news media, the world as a whole having relatively close connections with a wider, industrialized planetary system.

Wartime censorship was undoubtedly imposed at the time fo the battle, and I think I'd be right to be surprised if civilian (or other unauthorized) communications signals made it across interplanetary distances. That wouldn't have stifled specualtions. More, there may have been episodes during the Battle of Nibelungen where elements of the opposing fleets may have come within range of the planet, or where the Kafers might have been engaged by Nibelungen's on-planet military forces (pop-up nuclear detonation lasers, say, even on-planet aerospace forces). Any of these events occurring within sight of population centres

Communications about these sorts of events--messages, forum posts, blog posts, peer-to-peer transfers of video files, et cetera--could have a disproportionate effect in post-Battle Nibelungen, maybe even comparable to battle damage in the rest of the Neubayern system. Do you want proof that the Core let a vicious alien enemy, already responsible for the deaths of not a few relatives and friends, into your home system? Look at the video that this geologist on the Cold Side took of such-and-such missile launch, or this chat forum transcript of people watching the aerospace base outside of town, or ... This kind of stuff could prove pretty radicalizing.

 

[Colin]

Despite the level of technology, Niebelungen is not a Core World culturally. In that, they are very much a Frontier planet. The tendency, therefore, would be to blame the core "Powers-That-Be"
Civilian communications technologies go a long way to bringing the war home. Linkphone and personal video of Kafer attacks, along with French attempts to control civilian populations, are widespread throughout the French Arm, and a good part of the reason for the widespread unrest there.

After all, home video of a bunch of DGSE commandos blowing an airlock, and seeing several unsuited bodies sucked out into space, does leave an impression. Especially when one poor sap's linkphone is recovered by miners, and shows the whole thing happening from his POV.

 

[Anders]

I'm just reading Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, and it shows a near future situation where civilian comms are dominant. So what do you do when you cannot prevent leaks? Add disinformation of course: massive amounts of disinformation, doctored footage, spin and fake blogging. Disinformation consultants produce cleverly constructed lies that drown out reality to the extent that absolutely nothing online can be trusted.

Stopping civilian coverage may actually be another unofficial reason to use EMP weapons.

In my Kimanjano campaign the French government is doing what it can to make sure that it is very hard to get subversive stuff out-system or even to the Azanian colony: no encrypted messages allowed without authorization, automated censorship software, broken Link transmissions etc. This stems some of the information, but skilled people can of course get around it. But if you can make the normal people think twice about uploading the pictures of the burning police headquarters or the firefights in the street to the Link, you have already reduced the info you need to handle by 90%. Then you can concentrate on the last 10%.

Unfortunately for France the governor-general is not that good at spin, and he sacked the think-tank that could have helped him. They are now working for the "exile government" of Nous Voila, preparing an exquisite policy-wonk revenge against him. Never anger the people who tell the talking heads in the media what to talk about.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Despite the level of technology, Niebelungen is not a Core World culturally. In that, they are very much a Frontier planet.

Point.

After all, home video of a bunch of DGSE commandos blowing an airlock, and seeing several unsuited bodies sucked out into space, does leave an impression. Especially when one poor sap's linkphone is recovered by miners, and shows the whole thing happening from his POV.

! 23xx portable communications devices sound like they're pretty durable.

 

[Colin]

! 23xx portable communications devices sound like they're pretty durable.

They can be. Again, it depends on the market. Stuff sold on the Frontier tends to be more durable, especially if it is built there. Core World consumer electronics tend to be more fragile, and more subject to the whims of fashion.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Beyond the news value of these communications, they would also have considerable military and intelligence value. Imagine uploading a camera phone's JPEG of a battlefield to a command and control centre, say.

>Thoughts?

Its called infromation warfare / networked warfare etc depending on the country and quite widespread within first tier militaries to the point that mobile phone towers are standard military equipment now.

in 2300 the militaries will still be dealing the now growing problem of getting data to the right people at the right time from the torrent flooding the network

 

[Anders]

One interesting angle of 2300/2320AD is that the internet revolution is fairly recent in the setting. It was just about to take off when the Twilight war occured: no global internet, no WWW, no dotcoms and so on. The foundations of the Link were more along the lines of the French minitel and Japanese appliance-computers.

Although the Link may technically be more distributed, I would think the information and applications on it have been fairly centralized. It is probably relatively recently the Link has become more open, making it more Internet-like. But there doesn't seem to be a strong "internet culture" (beyond some hackers and nerds), the Link seems to be fairly national and it has not transformed society in the same way the Internet is doing to ours.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Although the Link may technically be more distributed, I would think the information and applications on it have been fairly centralized. It is probably relatively recently the Link has become more open, making it more Internet-like. But there doesn't seem to be a strong "internet culture" (beyond some hackers and nerds), the Link seems to be fairly national and it has not transformed society in the same way the Internet is doing to ours.

Minitel users seem to use their network mostly for online shopping, bill payment and phone directory information requests, in ways that were fairly direct translations of things that they had to do in their pre-Minitel day-to-day routines. The chat forums were an unexpected side effect.

 

[oletheros]

Although the Link may technically be more distributed, I would think the information and applications on it have been fairly centralized. It is probably relatively recently the Link has become more open, making it more Internet-like. But there doesn't seem to be a strong "internet culture" (beyond some hackers and nerds), the Link seems to be fairly national and it has not transformed society in the same way the Internet is doing to ours.

Part of that may be due to the fact that human culture is spread so wide. Imagine clicking a link on a French webpage from Mars. The query time is forty minutes in each direction, which really makes the user think heavily about whether the download is worth it.

I imagine that email is pretty widespread, though. Especially among the people living on the frontier and people living on ships.

Blogging might not be as widespread, but where it does show up, it has an impact. Especially if the author is talking about something significant. (Blogging the long winter on Nous Voila, for example.)

 

[Anders]

I run my campaign partially over the net since I live in the UK but my players are (mostly) in Sweden. We use a web forum where the characters and NPCs are sending each other email, as well as blogging. It is a pretty good way of bluebooking, with everything from flamewars (never, ever, suggest to French rebels that they should drop the tricolor) to news clippings. To some extent the discussion has to be non-canon for the game since real rebels would definitely not be discussing their next strike online, but it is good for game cohesion. In-game it also gives a nice flavor of the email conversations, be they police requests to investigate suspected Provolution activity to corporate intrigue.

The big problem for planetary nets in the colonies is going to be lags; large wildernesses require satellite communications, and they have long lags. Hence no first person shooter games outside the land network. It also makes communications more vulnerable and centralized: on Adlerhorst there are only a few satellites linking the French and German sides.

 

[Colin]

And of course, one of the first things to go in the invasion was sat-com networks. The French, in an attempt to regain control, restricted access to the new networks to military only, effectively breaking the planetary link networks on Kimanjano, Beta Canum, Beowulf (partial), and Nous Voila. In fact, on Nous Voila, the only functional non-military communications systems is off of a mostly-wrecked Kafer battlecruiser in high orbit, along with a small constellation of Kafer comsats. Access was originally via recovered Kafer gear, but someone eventually figured out the frequencies and access codes. Zapamoga makes use of this network in their rescue efforts.

 

[G. Fieendish]

And of course, one of the first things to go in the invasion was sat-com networks. The French, in an attempt to regain control, restricted access to the new networks to military only, effectively breaking the planetary link networks on Kimanjano, Beta Canum, Beowulf (partial), and Nous Voila. In fact, on Nous Voila, the only functional non-military communications systems is off of a mostly-wrecked Kafer battlecruiser in high orbit, along with a small constellation of Kafer comsats. Access was originally via recovered Kafer gear, but someone eventually figured out the frequencies and access codes. Zapamoga makes use of this network in their rescue efforts.

Out of curiosity, how big is a 2300/2320AD communications satellite...?
(Are they like today's communications satellites, i.e have lots of transponders (i.e several thousand), but weigh several tonnes, or would they go down the route being proposed by DARPA, i.e clusters of 10kg satellites, with 50 transponders on each "nanosatellite"...?).

 

[Colin]

Military systems tend to go for many small satellites, while civvie systems tend to be larger and capable of handling far greater bandwidth.

 

[BMonnery]

Out of curiosity, how big is a 2300/2320AD communications satellite...?
(Are they like today's communications satellites, i.e have lots of transponders (i.e several thousand), but weigh several tonnes, or would they go down the route being proposed by DARPA, i.e clusters of 10kg satellites, with 50 transponders on each "nanosatellite"...?).

50kg ISTR, they're in the AG....

 

[Anders]

Compared to today 2300 satellites are very cheap (mainly because spaceflight is cheap). Rebuilding sat networks should be easy... but politics messes things up.

On Kimanjano the Azanians have set up sat comms for their sea operations. The French authorities want to keep control over information flows so they have expressly forbidden uncontrolled coverage over Fromme (using parts of the ESA treaty dealing with not helping terrorist activities in other member countries). Then again, Azanian engineers regularly "forget" that they leave open links when doing maintenance or updates.

 

[Waldemar]

One interesting angle of 2300/2320AD is that the internet revolution is fairly recent in the setting. It was just about to take off when the Twilight war occured: no global internet, no WWW, no dotcoms and so on. The foundations of the Link were more along the lines of the French minitel and Japanese appliance-computers.

Although the Link may technically be more distributed, I would think the information and applications on it have been fairly centralized. It is probably relatively recently the Link has become more open, making it more Internet-like. But there doesn't seem to be a strong "internet culture" (beyond some hackers and nerds), the Link seems to be fairly national and it has not transformed society in the same way the Internet is doing to ours.

I think this is actually a quite unique element of 2320 AD, namely that its computer architecture is different from ours. I remember recently reading the Free city of Krakow for Twilight: 2000 that described a very important operation recovering a lost computer device. The description of why it was important really read as the "computing machines" of the 1980's, the idea of an interconnected net was quite far away from the public's mind. It shows in how Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook took the, for its time, standard cyberpunk/Atari video game approach to the internet.

We in the real world early 21st century have grown accustomed to relatively free information, and that many of our devices are rather general in their outlook. The world of 2320 AD took a different path, where a simple use of Google could perhaps not be available.

 

[rfmcdpei]

We in the real world early 21st century have grown accustomed to relatively free information, and that many of our devices are rather general in their outlook. The world of 2320 AD took a different path, where a simple use of Google could perhaps not be available.

Another possibility might be that it's only now that bandwidth and computer complexity has grown to the point that the computer networks of 23xx can emulate the World Wide Web, at least in the Core. The major difference, at least insofar as workability is concerned, might be a need to keep buying new peripherals ("Here's your video enabler, over there is your sound system ...").