FCC sells B-2 Stealth bomber radar frequency to foreign company
avna...@yahoo.com
Remember when President George W. Bush appointed Michael Powell, Colin
Powell's son, as Federal Communications Commission Chairman? Under Powell
the FCC began auctioning radio frequency bands to private owners and
corporations, eliciting a lot of criticism at the time because putting the
public airwaves in private hands limits competition. Once a private interest
owns a freqency band, no one else can use it unless that person or company
decides to sell or lease it for whatever price they want. Turns out that
wasn't the only bad consequence:
Spectrum Squeeze to K.O. B-2 Bomber's Radar?
Defense Industry Daily
24-Mar-2009 17:38 EDT
America's B-2A Spirit stealth bombers have been leaders in stealth
technology and weapon support arrangements. Now, they're a leader in a
less desirable category. DTI's Bill Sweetman reports that during a 2008
bandwidth auction, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
inadvertently sold the operating frequency band of the B-2 bomber's
Raytheon AN/APQ-181 radar to an obscure firm headed by a
Russian-educated citizen of Mali. Installing new radar arrays on the 20
surviving jets will reportedly cost "well over $1 billion."
Sweetman notes that this is just one side effect of spectrum allocation
problems and greater civilian appetites for its use. Patriot PAC-3
missiles that are critical to Japan's missile defense system have
problems there, because the radios used to link all the scattered firing
units use frequencies assigned to the Japanese cell phone industry. The
JTIDS predecessor to modern Link-16 MIDS-LVTs is currently the only way
to get AWACS targeting data to an F-22, but it has "limited
supportability outside the continental U.S." because it was developed in
an occupied band. Even flight testing and telemetry are beginning to have
these problems.
======================
Also see:
<http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,187202,00.html>
vaughn
<avna...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e2OHl.1222$cW....@newsreading01.news.tds.net...
>
> Remember when President George W. Bush appointed Michael Powell, Colin
> Powell's son, as Federal Communications Commission Chairman? Under Powell
> the FCC began auctioning radio frequency bands to private owners and
> corporations, eliciting a lot of criticism at the time because putting the
> public airwaves in private hands limits competition. Once a private
> interest
> owns a freqency band, no one else can use it unless that person or company
> decides to sell or lease it for whatever price they want.
The very idea of the government auctioning off something that it doesn't
even own curdles my blood. We trusted the government administer our radio
spectrum in the best interest of its citizens. Rather than do that, they
simply stole it and then had the audacity to fence the stolen goods in a
series of public auctions!
What will they steal and sell next? Yellowstone Park?
Vaughn
Eeyore
avna...@yahoo.com wrote:
> DTI's Bill Sweetman reports that during a 2008
> bandwidth auction, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
> inadvertently sold the operating frequency band of the B-2 bomber's
> Raytheon AN/APQ-181 radar to an obscure firm headed by a
> Russian-educated citizen of Mali. Installing new radar arrays on the 20
> surviving jets will reportedly cost "well over $1 billion."
Hilarious !
Graham
o...@uakron.edu
radar bands have been lost by the military.
Google Sprint and 2 gigahertz or TV white space or Sprint
Broadcast Engineering
All that old TV frequency space, well at least the desirable short and
medium range bands, went for auction for more cellular and poor
quality video to cell phones, and things like the ham radio
frequencies used for emergencies are now being looked at by a greedy
FCC. Copanies often petition to use bands assigned to land mobile
radio and ham radio and law enforcement, hoping the FCC and NTIA will
slip up just once.
One concept involved selling 700 Mhz TV spectrum to a private company
and then they would lease it for police and fire dispatch, at a
profit.
It gets worse, but those are a few examples off the top of my head.
Another goof is broadband over power line, transmitting HF over the
existing power network for internet and cable, without concern that
hundreds of miles of cable makes a world class HF antenna and will jam
existing users of HF spectrum including aircraft and marine and ham
and statewide emergency networks.
Dont forget about the FCC allowing religious groups to buy and install
hundreds of small FM repeater/translater stations under Bush II, using
guard channels inbetween the existing FM stations, thus degrading
existing service.
So much for the Communications Act of 32 and international treaty.
This started under Clinton, and Powell made it worse. They fired the
engineers and hired lawyers...
Steve
Eeyore
o...@uakron.edu wrote:
> Oh, you have not heard about the worst of it by far. Several other
> radar bands have been lost by the military.
Nothing would surprise me ( apologies for the snip ).
The FCC has just re-allocated the frequencies once used for radio mics. So
what's going to happen to those Broadway shows ?
Bunch of total morons.
Graham