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My understanding is that it is not difficult to intercept radio sources and then triangulate to determine their location. So were 1989 militaries, mapping a battlefield based strictly on radio interception/triangulation? Simply monitoring radio emissions from the other side and plotting them up to get a general sketch of enemy locations. Were they able to identify specific units and formations simply from radio emissions?

The game reflects the ability to locate HQs based on radio intercepts but in reality, would they have been able to form a reasonable picture of the enemy deployment?

I am just curious more than anything about how advanced were 1989 militaries on exploiting the potential of radio intercepts.

We are probably overly kind with the intercepts of both radar and radio. You can with the proper detection assets in an area work on finding fixed emitter sources. This is in the midst of a flood of jamming, spoofing, and dealing with friendly EW as well. None of that will really tell you where the tanks and troops are. It may be possible based on intel to know what unit is in the area, like 3rd Guard Tank Regiment, but even this can be spoofed by the enemy to keep the intel guys guessing. We will be adding additional fidelity to this area in Southern Storm and getting a "fix" won't be a pinpoint for direct strikes. Some time and effort will be needed to get a good fix. Units on the move will be extremely hard to locate. Much fun should be had. [:D]

I imagine it would be kind of a nightmare to try to implement into a game. And certainly not necessary but I read something about modern radio intercepts and locating units and was wondering just how advanced this process was back in the late 80s. Computers weren't nearly as powerful then as today and I imagine any attempt at the process would be far more difficult and slow than today. Although everyone used radios. In a static situation, I could see some potential. And maybe even in defense, assuming attackers were using radio, their positioning could potentially be plotted but maybe not in a timely manner. And with spoofing, who knows how to separate the real from the fake. Of course, I am no expert in that area and was just wondering.

I've got a friend who served over in Germany in the 80s doing the EW thing for a good part of his time. I need to chat with him and get some "first hand" feel of all the stuff so we can integrate what is reasonable into the game engine.

My understanding is the difficulty was not locating the transmitters, but classifying them.

Good day,

I spent a little time in the early 2000's working with Canadian locators - these are soldiers who work with Counter Battery Radars and with sound ranging. With either system, they were able to locate artillery batteries fairly well.

I have found a couple of web sites that talk more about this:

http://nigelef.tripod.com/tgtacqcb.htm#AFTER WORLD WAR 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-battery_radar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery ... resent-day


Signals Intelligence - is the art of intercepting enemy communications and here are some websites about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signals_intelligence
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Signals_ ... 80_to_1989

MikeJ19, thanks for the information. I will be checking those out. [&o]

And there, under Mike's link, is the one I was curious about-Electronic Order of Battle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signals_intelligence