Over the years, the military and the electronics industry have often drawn on the ingenuity of radio amateurs to improve designs or solve problems. Hams provided the keystone for the development of modern military communication equipment, for example. In the 1950s, the Air Force needed to convert its long-range communication from Morse code to voice, and jet bombers had no room for skilled radio operators. At the time, hams already were experimenting with and discovering the advantages of single sideband (SSB) voice equipment. With SSB, hams were greatly extending the distances they could transmit. Air Force Generals Curtis LeMay and Francis “Butch” Griswold, both radio amateurs, hatched an experiment that used ham radio equipment at the Strategic Air Command headquarters. Using an SSB station in an aircraft flying around the world, LeMay and Griswold were able to stay in touch with Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska from around the globe. The easy modification of this ham radio equipment to meet military requirements saved the government millions of dollars in research costs.
More recent technological experimentation has focused on such techniques as software defined radio (SDR). This amazing approach enables electronic circuit designers to employ software to replace more costly — and bulkier — hardware components. It’s no coincidence or surprise that radio amateurs have been among those investigators doing the ground-level research and experimentation to bring this technology from the laboratory to the marketplace. Transceivers built on the SDR model now are making inroads within the Amateur Radio community and represent the likely wave of the future in equipment design. Affirming the relationship between Amateur Radio and cutting-edge technology, in 2009, Howard Schmidt, W7HAS, was appointed White House Cybersecurity Coordinator.
ARRL member Schmidt is one of the world’s leading authorities on computer security, with some 40 years of experience in government, business and law enforcement. Schmidt credits ham radio with helping him launch his career. “Building … computers to support my ham radio hobby gave me the technical skills that I need to … start doing computer crime investigations and work on the early stages of computer forensics, in turn enabling me to start working on cybersecurity issues.” Hams are often found in industry and the military as technology presses ahead.
