MUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Rainforests and tactical radios don’t get on. Fortunately, help is at hand in ensuring armies can communicate more easily in thick vegetation.

- Thomas Withington

Jungle radio communication is severely handicapped by radio wave absorption, wherever radio waves must propagate for a considerable distance through the dense, moist jungle vegetation,” noted the United States Army’s Tactical Jungle Communications Study. This document was published in 1968, three years after the commencement of overt US involvement in the ongoing Vietnam War; a conflict occurring in a country where almost 48 percent of her terrain was covered by jungle.

Rainforests create nightmares for conventional Very/Ultra High Frequency (V/UHF: 30MHz to three gigahertz/ GHz) tactical communications. V/UHF communications have a Line-of-Sight (LOS) range. For example, a V/UHF antenna placed three metres (ten feet) above the ground will have a range of approximately seven kilometres (4.4 miles). Yet this line-of-sight range presumes nice, flat open space with no obstacles that could conceivably obstruct the journey of these communications. With its tree canopy and abundant flora such luxuries are not available in jungles. Another US Army document published while the Vietnam War was ongoing examining field artillery techniques stated that jungle vegetation can reduce V/UHF radio ranges between 10 percent and 60 percent. Such reductions cause problems not only for soldiers, squads and platoons to communicate with one another, but also for ground-to-air/air-to-ground communications.

Dean Booker, Codan’s business development director for tactical communications, served with the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals and is highly familiar with the challenges jungles cause for tactical communications: