If the U.S. Military Is In The Middle Of A Battle And There Communications Are Jammed, What Do They Do?

Question

When I say "Battle", I mean like an assault on a city.

Answer 1

If you are the the troop involved on the ground, you can resort to time hacks, hand and arm signals, smoke grenades, at night use flashes from your night visions set on IR, control rates of supressive fire, whitsles, and of course your loud voice. The higher ups will un-*** themselves in the meanwhile with additional protocol procedures which we can't really talk about here.

Nothing will stop the attack if you already engaged and if your in the middle of completing the mission without masking friendly fire, the enemy is destroyed or flees, causing uneccessary collateral damage, or causing units to your left and right to fail their missions.

Remember we have been doing this for decades and even with satellites, GPS, Blueforce trackers, UAVs and HF encrypted digtal SATCOM techno garble whoppie do wizz bang junk: a simple tap on the shoulder to let the next man know he's up for assault through the door will never go out of style....

Answer 2

There is usually a plan that is given to the various level commanders.  If the communications go out,  they each are to carry out their part of the plan to the best of their abilities.   The real problem is without communications you can not call in artillery strikes or air support.  Also you need to stick to the plan so the higher level commanders will have some idea of where you are in order to prevent friendly fire problems.  

If all else fails and the plan goes completely to pot...each commander is suppose to make decisions on his own.  If he finds he is unable to accomplish his mission,  he usually falls back to a secondary objective,  which is usually to do as much damage to the enemy as possible with what he has while trying to rejoin his higher level unit.  

(Citing OPSEC is a good way to say "I don't know."  Notice everything I have stated is general information which can be found at any decent library in the reference section)

Answer 3

Each unit has drills in which they use as back-up in case communications between vehicles is lost due to jamming.  I'm Signal...even WE have a back-up plan that we rehearse prior to rolling out on convoys.  However, with the type of equipment that we have, it's nearly (not totally) impossible to jam our radios.

Each unit should have a SOI that explains what to do.  Thorough information is classified and cannot be said in detail over the internet for OPSEC reasons.

Answer 4

they keep fighting. Semper fi do or die!

Answer 5

Most of the fail safe plans that the military has for unreliable communications is classified information. And the majority of us in here who have served (or is serving) no better than to "kiss and tell". So in the Navy we have other circuits that we communicate on within our battle group while engaging the enemy. As well as personnel that are trained in S.O.S flag, hand and light signaling, and a number of hand held communications methods. So Soldiers, Sailors, Air Men and Marines have a wide array of means to carry out orders, and issue/receive commands.  

Answer 6

They call the AWOL 1st Lt. from the TANG for advice.

Answer 7

Nothing stops or slows down an assault.

The US Military has been doing this for a couple of hundred years and while lack of commo is a hindrance, it will not stop an action.

In fact, we train to loose one form or another of commo and what we will do to correct the failure and what we will do in the meantime during the failure.

Nothing stops or slows down an assault.

Answer 8

That was always dealt with before the operation started.  There were secondary missions, abort missions and several options for loosing communication.  Our troops were taught this.  Many other countries soldiers would be lost, or just "stop" and dig in.

Answer 9

Word of mouth, cell phones, satellite phones, signal flags, signal lights, pidgeon carriers... whatever it takes man.

Answer 10

Shoot friendlies.

Answer 11

I can not tell you what procedures we use for that situation do to OPSEC..

All I will say is that there are plans in effect for that specific situation and all radio operators must know this prior to heading into a battle.

Answer 12

switch to a different freq