Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!cbnews!military
From: budden@manta.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Signals
Message-ID: <10224@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 89 01:56:07 GMT
References: <9869@cbnews.ATT.COM> <10104@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 19
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: budden@manta.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
The main reason signal lights (flag hoist and semaphore too) are
poor choices is the extremely limited bandwidth.  Typical FL data
rates are in the 5 W/M neighborhood.  (The only times we'd man the
signal team on CG cutters was when we worked with the Navy.  Since
Coast Guard has no signalmen, the team was taken from the Quartermaster
locker -- and usually salted with a Radioman or two who was good to
a couple dozen W/M CW.)   The bit error rate is usually 
pretty high too.  And the labor cost is excessive (include critical
skill level training in that equation).

The other reason is that that is not the way we operate any more.
Battle groups are spread out well beyond the horizon and the
premium is currently on extended line of sight comms, not
line of sight.  

Rex Buddenberg