A Virginia Class Attack Sub Concept Artist's rendering. U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Submarines are excellent at avoiding detection. When submerged they are so far off the grid, in fact, that it’s difficult for them to stay in contact with the naval bases that supply them with orders and information, or for them to beam information back to base. But a new quantum communications solution could change all this, allowing submerged submarines to communicate via laser pulses by exchanging encryption keys and messages over satellites.
Currently, submarines use randomized codes or “keys” to encrypt messages. These are established ahead of time between a sub and its communications base, and each code is only used one time so that an enemy cannot crack a code and use it to decipher future communications.
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Scientists Reproduce Quantum Entanglement, Einstein's “Spooky Action” TagsTechnology, Clay Dillow, military, quantum communication, quantum entanglement, quantum mechanics, spooky action, submarinesBut this is problematic. For one, it is logistically cumbersome. And a submarine that’s going on a long-duration mission has to pack lots and lots of keys, which could fall into enemy hands if the sub is overtaken. Moreover, even with plenty of secure keys, the communications between sub and base are extremely slow. In order to penetrate water, transmitters have to use very low frequency radio waves. These only allow for a few characters to be transmitted each second. While the rest of the world (and the battle space) communicates at high speed, subs are stuck with dial-up. In order to send or receive information in bulk or at speed subs have to surface, and that leaves them visible and vulnerable.
But researchers at defense firm ITT have an idea. Using quantum key distribution, subs could encode a key into photons (using the photons’ polarization to represent ones and zeros) making for a virtually un-hackable key--any attempt to intercept the photons would disturb the quantum system in a measurable way, alerting the sender and receiver that a third party is listening in (this is generally achieved via quantum entanglement).
With a secure key established, submarines could then--theoretically at least--stay a few hundred feet below the surface and transmit photons via lasers to satellites, where they could be bounced back to a base on the ground. The researchers’ simulations apparently demonstrate a system that could send and receive data at rates of 170 megabytes per second while a submarine is below the water line. That’s video-worthy data streaming.
Of course, first you would have to figure out just how well photons will hold their quantum states as they travel through water, as any deviation that disrupts the quantum system would render the system insecure (and pointless). And then you need a satellite that can receive and relay quantum-encrypted signaling--again, without disrupting the quantum states of the photons. In other words, this technology is far from battle-ready. But it could someday take high-speed, secure data transfer to depths where it currently doesn’t exist.
[New Scientist]
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Grunt 11/01/11 at 3:25 pm First, it is easily possible to float to the surface UHF or VHF antenna and communicate with a satellite, while the submarine is several hundred feet below water.
Now add to this line of underwater conduit a floating laser and the problem is solved. Radio waves to guide the laser towards the satellite and laser communication to make it harder to listen in too.
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scientific anomaly 11/01/11 at 3:39 pm i think they should make a drone that can be launched from the sub while it is still hundreds of feet underwater that goes to the surface, communicates whatever it is the people are trying to convey, then self destructs so the enemies cant get it and hack it or something.
-Knock knock
-Who's there?
-The Doctor.
-Doctor Who?
-Yes
Vector13 11/01/11 at 7:16 pm @scientific anomaly
Well, the problem is with someone intercepting the transmission itself, not necessarily at the transmission point. Just as well, there would need to be a drone for every time someone wanted to transmit or receive a message, and that would be pretty cumbersome :p
Link to this comment TheZomb 11/02/11 at 1:14 amThis article is incorrect in several points. First, the codes submarines use to communicate aka one time pad ciphers are impossible to "hack" or break individually, no matter of time or computing power will ever break one. The only way to break a one time pad cipher is to use two encrypted with the same key to break each other. This is the real reason the codes can be used once. The sentence "These are established ahead of time between a sub and its communications base, and each code is only used one time so that an enemy cannot crack a code and use it to decipher future communications." is incorrect in that respect.
Second, Quantum encryption has nothing to do with entanglement and bits are not encoded by polarity. Its called quantum encryption because it relies on a superposition of states in the light particles being sent (like schrodingers cat) and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Each particle has a polarity, determined by the sender and unknown by the receiver. The receiver has to guess what polarity to use to decode a particle. If you guess wrong the data may not be encoded to bits correctly. You only get on chance to read a particle since reading it permanently changes its polarity. The sender and receiver then pick some at random and send them unencrypted, if they are the wrong polarity someone has tried to eavesdrop. The receiver then tells the sender all of his polarity guesses and then they use the bits from the correctly guessed polarities to form a one time pad cipher just like before.
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gizmowiz 11/02/11 at 2:35 am Wouldn't that in theory allow for an enemy to use detection systems to identify Photon signals being sent to a submerged sub and thereby LOCATE the sub EXCACTLY and blast it out of the water?
It seems plausible this could nullify the subs ability to play hide and seek.
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