Army signals security & "Clansmen" series radios

[Owen Lewis]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Gladman" <brg@gladman.plus.com>
To: <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Sent: 07 September 2000 10:32
Subject: Re: Army signals security & "Clansmen" series radios


> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "David Hansen" <davidh@spidacom.co.uk>
> > To: <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
> > Sent: 04 September 2000 17:20
> > Subject: Re: Army signals security & "Clansmen" series radios
> >
> > > On 4 Sep 00, at 14:41, Owen Lewis wrote:
> > >
> > > > Do you suppose that there might be separate 'codes' for national and
> > > > international use? If so, why should the French, as a member of
NATO,
> > > > be denied or otherwise not hold copies of the codes for
international
> > > > use?
> > >
> > > The French are usually semi-detached members of NATO, except when it
> > > suits them. ISTR they have never taken part in the integrated
> > > planning aspects of the organisation.
>
> As Owen has said, during this period France maintained a political
presence
> in NATO and was often seen by other NATO nations as trying to secure a
> strong influence in the planning and conduct of NATO activities to which
it
> was not contributing in financial terms.  Needless to say this was
> strenuously resisted by the other NATO nations and in the 1990s there was
a
> shift in French policy and a resulting willingness to participete and fund
> specific NATO efforts.  Again, however, there were serious objections to
> what some NATO nations saw as a French attempt to 'dine a la carte' at the
> NATO table.

My first hand observance of some aspects of French participation was through
much of the 80's . During that period, I don't think that the resistance to
French a la carte dining (which they certainly liked to do) had developed.

> In the mid 1990s French policy shifted further and this allowed France to
> fund and join a number of the NATO programmes.   For example, France
> rejoined the NATO R&D effort while I was Deputy Director at the NATO SHAPE
> Technical Centre in 1995/I996 and sent scientists to work there for the
> first time in decades.

And these days I have no personal observation point, though I do have a chum
in the IMS in Brussels suitably placed to have an overview of this. I will
ask him how it goes now.
>
> In my view it is fair to characterise the French position in NATO in the
> 1980s as 'semi-detached'.  However I doubt that this would be a sensible
> characterisation of the current position.

Agreed.
>
> But returning to crypto, there is very little integration of encrypted
> communications in NATO since each NATO nation takes a national approach to
> cryptographic information protection (guess why).

Well, working out from there, and on the basis that allies - most
particularly in operations - must sometimes communicate securely, one is
left to conclude that either national systems are used under some particular
form of arrangement to secure those systems or that must be at least one
allied system or there is some mixture of both approaches

> The sharing of sensitive
> information between NATO nations is fraught with many difficulties

True. But, surely, only in deciding what may be shared, with whom it may be
shared  and, possibly, when
it should be shared. The rest is largely mechanics that should follow on
from those decisions. As is common knowledge, in peactime (including
so-called police actions) the NATO national forces remain under several,
national command. In time of war, the national forces declared to NATO come
under the NATO command structure, which is almost the only part of the NATO
military structure to be maintained in time of peace. Now for that structure
to prepare adequately for war - and to safely control six figures of armed
men during several weeks of training manoevres, some secure inter-allied
secure communications would seem essential, nicht war?  Can you imagine the
potential for chaos, accidental loss of life and even political mistake if
close and secure liaison was impossible?

> and
> sensible technical solutions such as 'end to end' encryption are precluded
> because the nations will not agree common algorithms or the
> agreement/exchange of shared encryption keys.   In practical terms each
NATO
> nation runs its own national protected domain and gateways are needed to
> decrypt/reencrypt any secure information that needs to pass from one such
> domain to another. Such gateways are immensely difficult to build (I
believe
> this is impossible in practice) and the end result is that NATO has no
> modern, efficient secure messaging systems although it has been talking
> about this for many years.

That statement probably suffers from covering a very wide canvas in just a
few lines.As I'm sure you know, very simple and effective secure gateways
have existed on principles established  for inter-allied working during
WWII - if not as long ago as WWI. The technology has changed but the
principles have remained basically the same. At the other end of the scale,
I might agree  that NATO HQ's may not intercommunicate with the most
modern or efficient of secure communications but function, somehow, they
do.

Nevertheless, the thrust of your argument is correct in that reluctance to
share completely and also indecision over what and when to share must make
the design and management of secure communications between partners with
caveated trust between them quite a problem. However, without some such
capability, it would be quite impossible for NATO to function in battle - or
for the declared national forces to train for battle as an allied force.
Doesn't have to be perfect or even optimal. Does have to be sufficient
(just).

It would be nice to think that the design and equipping of a European
Defence Force (or whatever it ends up being called) with secure
communications will be an occasion for a fresh start. It could be, which is
by no means saying that it will.  If it is, would you say that PK systems
are likely to play a significant role?


Owen