Comms espionage

[Jez_Armstrong]

Comms espionage

 

Where do you sit with this

Listening in to other teams comms

 good tactic that because you're using an open unencoded frequency that you expect to be listened to so you should use code words 

 

Or it's cheating and spoils the game for you

[LMKipper]

Perfectly legimate tactic.

[Wiggy]

Walk on play fine. I don’t think you would really learn anything apart from me calling my team mate a knob head. 
 

milsim depends on the rules. 

[Tackle]

20 minutes ago, Wiggy said:

Walk on play fine. I don’t think you would really learn anything apart from me calling my team mate a knob head. 
 

milsim depends on the rules. 

I look at it the other way, milsim is meant to be based on warfare irl, & breaking in to your enemies comms is a very real thing irl.

But, as you've said, most airsofters use comms for banter & piss taking, very little professional use, bit like knobs with taclights at night games, they usually do more harm than good to their own team🤣/🤬

[BigStew]

Cheating unless allowed by the rules, but even then a dick move. You are just going to have people spend all the game frequency hopping and you are going to piss away the game trying to listen rather than play.

[Impulse]

34 minutes ago, Wiggy said:

Walk on play fine. I don’t think you would really learn anything apart from me calling my team mate a knob head. 
 

milsim depends on the rules. 

 

I'm with @Tackle on this. I'd be more okay with it in milsim than walk on play. At milsim, it's supposed to be closer to real life (after all, it does stand for military simulation) and you already have people showing up with more expensive comms setups, NVGs and thermals, drones, sometimes even vehicles. If you bring someone on your team who can intercept the level of comms that most airsofters are using, then that's just part of the milsim, same as if you roll up on a squad at night who don't have any NVGs while your team is all decked out with fancy gen3 goggles and thermal imaging devices. Is it fair? No, but it's the way it is (and it's one of a number of reasons I avoid milsims)

 

Skirmish days you're going to get a whole lot of different people. You're going to get casual comms users, people who only use them to shit talk each other, people just starting out and testing out their brand new Baofengs with each other etc. Honestly, I'd be annoyed if someone was going to intercept and break into my comms at a skirmish day because I'm just there to vibe with my friends, maybe practice some scout sniper tactics and do some basic reconnaissance stuff. I'm not trying to be super serious, and I'm more focused on the other fieldcraft stuff than having ironclad secure comms and don't want to start having to teach the small handful of other people I'm on radio with a secret code language because some tryhard showed up to a skirmish day with the means to intercept comms. I'd view it in the same way as if someone brought a thermal scope to a skirmish day.

 

If someone just flat out gets hold of your frequency through loose lips, then you deserve it, though I still think it's a dick move at skirmish and I still think that flipping through frequencies to try and brute force guess someone else's frequency is also a dick move. My anecdote comes from a place of setting up a frequency with some of the basic security features on the Baofeng (CTCSS settings for example) and then keeping it to a tight knit group of, at best, around 6 people at max. Can it be intercepted? I'd be surprised if it couldn't be as I'm no cybersecurity specialist, but at the skirmish level it should be more than sufficient

[Jez_Armstrong]

CTCSS Just sets a squelch tone to send your transmission, it can still be listened to you just can't transmit unless you have the same tone, but even then some devices can show you the tone that transmission is set to 

[Adolf Hamster]

I'd be ok with it, for no reason other than as far as i've ever seen there are only 2 types of comms you'll get in a skirmish:

 

1. People who forget they have radios and hardly ever talk

2. People that announce every single little thing they're doing like they're narrating a minecraft lets play

 

And in both cases i suspect you wont get much information that can be used to your advantage.

 

As for milsims, unless part of the sim is specifically targeted as "we're pretending we have military grade encrypted comms" i'd also see it as fair game.

[Rogerborg]

Captain Walt, on his radio to his squadtoon: "Moving! Up! Staircase B! In! Significant! Force!"

 

Yeah, no, it's just me and you, mate, and I'm planning to use you as a meatshield.

 

Intercept away, see if it does you any good.

[Impulse]

53 minutes ago, Adolf Hamster said:

1. People who forget they have radios and hardly ever talk

 

Every time I go to a larger event with a large group and nobody is using comms for the whole weekend apart from the people who have their PTT in a bad spot and are constantly hot mic-ing 🤣

[Cannonfodder]

For a regular sunday skirmish I can't see the point as even if you do pick up something useful about what one group are doing it won't tell you anything about the what the rest of the other side are doing. It also puts your side 1 gun down and as it would need to be done away from any firefights you won't have overall situational awareness making the player as useful and welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.

 

For milsim I can imagine it could be useful if done right, but as they're already pay to win this would only make me avoid them even more

Edited Friday at 15:07 by Cannonfodder

[hunter511]

You could tap me and my teams comms..... but you'd learn some interesting new words in several languages.... and realise that Jackspeak is a thing.

[Emergencychimps]

The issue is that genuine encrypted comms are so CM very expensive to get hold off and a real effort to set up and for airsoft, encrypted comms just isn't realistically  an option, so I'm against eavesdropping on comms....unless this is an element that is written into the rules of the game.

 

 

 

 

[GiantKiwi]

It's not the essence of the game, but at the same time, if they really want to do it, i'm not going to get in a tizz about it - if they really want to listen to the drivel we put out on comms, have at it.

[Tommikka]

5 hours ago, Jez_Armstrong said:

CTCSS Just sets a squelch tone to send your transmission, it can still be listened to you just can't transmit unless you have the same tone, but even then some devices can show you the tone that transmission is set to 

Back in the olden days, when PMR446 had 38 CTSS codes, before DCS was added making 121 codes, that people

thought were sub-frequencies …..

 

There were also toy & other cheap PMRs without the CTSS function.

 

I had a few Tesco stripey label PMRs which I would use to supplement our main PMRs.

The lack of CTSS did not mean that channel 1.01 to 1.38 were unavailable, but that the cheap PMR didn’t know that it should not pick them up on 1.0

 

I could then allocate CTSS numbers to people, such as compressed air station (who had a habit of going to Vox and blocking the airwaves when running the compressor), another CTSS to safety Marshalls, another to game control Marshalls, another to the safe zone and one each to faction leaders.

That way each CTSS group could have their own conversations whilst I could track them all or anyone could contact me.

Then I’ll pull out my proper PMR and switch to the appropriate CTSS 

 

 

(The cheap PMR would only transmit on .0 rather than to the CTSS codes, but could hear everything from .0 to .38 as long as you were on the right core channel

[heroshark]

Marshall channel is always a fun one to listen to 😄

[Tommikka]

1 hour ago, heroshark said:

Marshall channel is always a fun one to listen to 😄

Absolutely 

[Jaylordofwaargh]

At Red Mist in March, WARPAC did stumble on to the NATO channel (it's one radio network) told us. We gathered as a full rtb and changed the channel. 

So milsim, if it's in the rules, fine crack on, where it isn't, not so much, game of honesty and all that. 

 

For skirmish, yeah there is a chance you'll get meal team sixxl but why bother? 

[John F.]

If you have a decent phone reception, a secure alternative is to use bluetooth earpieces and go on a conference call with your buddies. 

[Rogerborg]

9 hours ago, John F. said:

If you have a decent phone reception, a secure alternative is to use bluetooth earpieces and go on a conference call with your buddies. 

 

Careful now: if you're on your phone all game, you might be mistaken for a marshal.

[Tommikka]

55 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

 

Careful now: if you're on your phone all game, you might be mistaken for a marshal.

Shhh

 

We have actually done that for events - particularly for hilly sites with no radio range unless you are all on hilltops

Edited Monday at 08:38 by Tommikka

[ruskitseller]

Interesting discussion for sure. We have done that in milsims and even utilised MILDEC nicely at times by sending out false sighting reports and patrol locations. All is fair in love and war...

Edited Monday at 19:58 by ruskitseller

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

Depends on the rules.  I have a habit of clarifying these at briefing.  'What's team A's channel, what's team B's, which is marshal channel in case of emergency.'  Listening in after being told the channel to avoid is a dick move.  Not knowing the marshal channel is daft in case someone breaks a leg or similar (again).

 

Picking up an unattended enemy radio and sending false info, listening in etc is 100% fine in my book.  It's also great fun to use a stupid callsign and then mention what you did around the campfire later that evening...

 

I only play filmsim though.