Lockheed's reasoning as to why they should set the parameters regarding what should be developed, when and in what order is simple; if today’s fourth generation jet fighter is the best there is, then surely a fifth generation jet fighter is bound to be better, right? And we should be building it, right? So let's get started now, before it's needed.

Why now? Because without developing something to replace what already exists, how are military aircraft manufacturers like Lockheed going to make money?

“The exact characteristics of fifth-generation jet fighters are controversial and vague, with Lockheed Martin defining them as having all-aspect stealth even when armed, low probability of intercept radar (LPIR), high-performance airframes, advanced avionics features, and highly integrated computer systems capable of networking with other elements within the battlespace for situation awareness.”^{Wikipedia Reference}

Why is Lockheed making this decision instead of the U.S. Air Force? Because if they, Lockheed, get to decide what to develop, then they get to focus on those things that are the most profitable for them.

The same is true when it comes to military communication systems. The collusion and corruption is palpable. Despite our government’s best efforts to specify those technology areas that it wants to see development take place in, technology companies and manufacturers are fighting the idea of letting the US military, or our government, make the strategic innovation leadership decisions that are needed in order to push the envelope in military technology and national security forward.

Does this trouble you? Then sit down while you read this, because reports are now beginning to circulate that say that the real reason corporate America isn't interested in, as an example, letting the DoD determine the prioritization of product and program development in advanced technology areas, is that by doing so they could find themselves precluded from using the data they develop on these projects later on, when they do business with China. More to the point, they might even find themselves barred from doing business with China at all, because of their knowledge of the results of the advanced research they did on behalf of the DoD. This kind of knowledge, plus knowledge of how the U.S. military might apply the technology being acquired, as well as its impact on U.S. military readiness, could easily cause a U.S. manufacturer or developer to be prohibited from selling its products to China. And since for companies like this profitability comes before national defense, it is better to simply avoid such entanglements than lose money because of them. Simply put, the profits to be made from working with China are much more important to American businesses than losing access to that market because of U.S. government regulations.

You already see this kind of thinking in the data and software application development arenas. Does it also exist in the military aircraft industry? How about military communication, of the kind that can be used both in the military and civilian world? Like quantum communication systems?

Search though you may, you will be hard pressed to find an American company saying things like this in public. Of course they wouldn't. In public they would simply explain away their desire not to do business with the U.S. government and DoD by saying that the Pentagon's procurement system is much too complicated.

So there you have it: those who need most to drive strategic decisions on national defense issues, like the U.S. Army Signal Corps when it comes to communication, have effectively been shut out of the system, and relegated to the past. The DoD and Washington itself can’t control these kinds of issues, so how is an American Army branch like the Signal Corps ever going to do it? The result is that for all practical purposes no one is driving the quest to build a better, more effective, more secure, more reliable form of cyber communication… military or otherwise.

But that’s not the case in China. In China’s case the military’s Quantum Space Satellite branch is driving the equation; and they intend to prove their case, to the world, that they have developed a new quantum level means to communicate, this July. At that time they will launch the satellite they have built and put it into orbit. Once operational it will complete China's growing quantum communications network, which includes a 2,000-kilometer-long quantum driven glass fiber optic network between Beijing and Shanghai.

Success for Chinese cyber-spies stealing secrets relating to the US military’s F-35 stealth jet, the building of a Chinese clone of this warplane, China’s hi-tech military advancements such as their development of the world’s fastest supercomputer based on stolen technology, a hypersonic weapons program, world leading armed ground robotics, and now this soon-to-launch unhackable quantum communications satellite… it all makes one wonder – where the hell are our leaders, and why the hell has the Signal Corps devolved from being strategic thinkers and leaders into an ineffective branch of tactical pawns doing the bidding of the civilian companies that train them?

Maybe it’s time for the U. S. Army Signal Corps to go back to its roots, and find people with scrambled eggs on their visors who understand that America needs communication leadership, and that they—the leaders of the U. S. Army Signal Corps—need to define the communication road that our military and country should be following, instead of just following the road laid out by those that determine their retirement benefits.

 

Editor's Note: Be sure to read the Update to this story at the bottom of this page.

Background Material

Most military cryptography is based on the use of an encryption key (such as a numbers pad), which, when applied to an encryption algorithm, can be used to decrypt or encrypt a message. Quantum cryptography draws its strength from its ability to create secure methods of encryption. It depends on the quantum level particles that make up our universe, objects which are inherently both unstable and uncertain things, which in turn seem able to simultaneously exist in more than one place, as well as more than one state of being.

Unique to quantum particles, they hold a property that allows them to choose what state they are in and how they will behave, based on who, how and what bumps into them. This trait also exists whenever something tries to measure a quantum particle’s properties. Quantum cryptography draws its strength from this weirdness, especially as it applies to something called Quantum Entanglement.

Quantum Entanglement is the act of fusing two or more particles into complementary “quantum states,” which in effect allow the state of a set of quantum particles to form an encryption key that can be used to encrypt a message. Quantum Entanglement thus forms the basis of a “quantum key.” What makes quantum keys unbreakable is the fact that attempts to read them, as alluded to earlier, will cause the quantum state they exist in to collapse, thus making the message unreadable as well as revealing to the originating party the attempt to break the code.

Quantum encryption takes advantage of this feature, using it to detect would-be eavesdroppers, as well as protecting the message itself from being decrypted. Further to this, the complexity of quantum mechanics itself makes it virtually impossible to reverse engineer a quantum key generated through Quantum Entanglement.

Quantum keys are thus theoretically impossible to crack by even quantum computing. Notwithstanding all of this, it is important to note that even quantum secured communication is not perfectly secure. Quantum secured communication, like other forms of encryption, is vulnerable to denial of service attacks, physically tampering with the quantum communications device, as well as the most basic of all security failures: human failures in operational security and/or the impersonation of the sender. For a more scientific view of this topic, please download the PDF document on quantum communications via satellite. Click this icon to do so:

More Background Material

Quantum information technology has become a reality: quantum cryptography. This ultra-secure way of sending messages is based on the fundamental postulate that measuring a quantum state will alter it. Thus, if we encode messages in individual quantum states, such as the phase of photons whizzing down an optical fiber, an eavesdropper who tries to intercept the message cannot avoid changing it. We can therefore test if the message has been read before it reaches the intended recipient—something that is impossible using classical signals.

In quantum communications, the objective is to send information using single photons or pairs of photons, which are encoded in specific quantum states along the classical optical fiber network. A given quantum state, called a qubit (quantum bit of information corresponding to the classical 0 and 1), can be encoded on a single photon, for example by using the polarization of the photon, or by using a pair of entangled photons, or by still more complex schemes allowing to teleport a quantum state from one location to the other.

The emerging field of quantum communication will rely on the same fibres and thus wavelengths used in "Classical Telecom". However the classical laser pulses will be replaced by single photons. Therefore, the future of Quantum Communication will strongly depend on the availability of efficient, low-noise single photon detectors at telecom wavelengths.

      Above text and photo courtesy Quantum Photonics

While you are boning up on this topic, enjoy this video too...

 

 

Update – 1 September 2016

Well, the Chinese are certainly not sitting on their laurels. As we predicted, this month (August 2016) China launched a Quantum Satellite in a bid to create a platform able to provide truly secure military communications. This is a major step in China's effort to not only be at the forefront of quantum research, but also create a completely new, secure method of transmitting information.

Using this satellite platform, Chinese researchers hope to be able to  beam communications from space to earth via the use of quantum entanglement. As we said in our article above, quantum entanglement employs photons, or particles of light, where the actions of one photon are reflected in the other, regardless of the distance between them. If a workable system can be developed to control this process, this method of communication could prove to be the most secure in the world, completely invulnerable to hacking.

Scientists and security experts in many countries are studying the technology, but not here in the U.S. Worse, our military doesn't seem to be even aware of this new form of communication. With all of the hacks that are going on, including hacks of both data and software applications from the NSA, one would think this would be a high priority.

The Chinese satellite is expected to circle the earth every 90 minutes after entering orbit at an altitude of about 310 miles. With most of China's efforts being run by the equivalent of the Chinese military Signal Corps, China’s many high-tech scientific endeavors, including its ambitious space program, have enormous backing from the central government. As an example, the country’s 13th five-year economic plan, just announced in March, listed quantum technology as a focal point for research and development. Yet again, America doesn't even seem to know this form of communication exists, let alone our military (groups from Canada, Japan, Italy and Singapore are also conducting quantum space experiments).

For novice readers of our website, traditional communications satellites send signals using radio waves. A quantum communication satellite however uses a crystal that produces a pair of entangled photons whose properties remain entwined even as one is transmitted over a large distance. Messages can be sent by manipulating these properties. As important, when it comes to trying to hack into a quantum communication link any tinkering with the corresponding quantum state of the communications would be detectable, which is why the method is secure. At its most basic form then, two parties can communicate secretly, safe in the knowledge that any eavesdropping attempt would be immediately known and could be prevented.

For a good yet very simple explanation of how all of the science behind quantum entanglement works, read this article by the online website Quartz.

Watch the video below from the New York Times for a 30 second summary of the Chinese satellite's mission: