Posted on 09/20/2007 4:05:14 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Australia 'cracked US codes'
By Don Woolford September 20, 2007 04:23pm
KIM Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes while he was defence minister in the 1980s.
"We spied on them and we extracted the codes," Mr Beazley told Parliament during his valedictory speech today.
Mr Beazley, who was defence minister from 1984 to 1990, said that when he took over the job he soon learned that the radar on Australia's Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region.
In other words, Australia's frontline fighter could not shoot down enemies in the region.
Mr Beazley said he was greatly tempted to "belt" the Liberals with this and lay to rest their claim to be best at managing defence.
"I shut up, I said nothing," Mr Beazley said.
"I went to the US and for five years, up hill and down dale, with one knock-down, drag-out after another, with Cap Weinberger, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, I tried to get the codes of that blasted radar out of them.
"In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves and we got another radar that could identify (enemy planes).
Mr Beazley said the Americans were Australia's most important ally.
"But they are a bunch of people you have to have a fight with every now and then to get what you actually need out of them," he said.
Mr Beazley said that the story of getting the Hornet codes was well known within Defence, but not beyond it.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Wonder if Beazley knows what the acronym IFF means.
Beazley belongs to the Labour party.Things like IFF are trivial when you are only trying to take potshots at the Government in power.
Not being able to use the radar to ID an aircraft doesn't mean you can't shoot it down. Pilots have managed to shoot down their own wingman.
Also, the codes could have been updated if Australia had been willing to pay McDonnell Douglas to update the software.
Depite his labor background, I don’t doubt him for a minute. America is playing the same game again with the JSF. Apparently the word ‘Ally’ is a one way street in Washington.
Sure you can shoot down someone without a radar or AWACS.Only problem is that your chances of getting shot down first go up by a factor of 10.
& How exactly do you know that Mcdonnel Douglas would have performed an update if the Aussies had paid more-the US did the same thing when it sold F-15 Strike jets to the Saudis.
I worked for McDonnell Douglas after I retired from the AF. I'm more familiar with the F-15s than I am with the F-18, but I do know some of the differences in the software between the US version and Saudi version. I know that the company was ready and willing to do the upgrades if the customer produced the money - as long as the requested upgrades were legal under the Foreign Military Sales requirements.
The Americans kept saying they’d provide the codes, but never did.
“So we tried to crack the codes so we could enhance them,” Mr Beazley said.
“And we made a lot of progress.”
Mr Beazley said the Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22451478-2,00.html
Obviously, the Pentagon doesn't.
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