“Communications-Electronics Operation Instructions” It was a little “code book” with all the unit’s challenges and passwords and daily radio frequencies. It was to be signed in and out and was considered a “sensitive item”, right up there with a weapon, so don’t dare lose one! IIRC you had to have a “Secret” security clearance to sign one out (which back then meant E-5 and above).
Yeah, it was in ancient times (see sigline). Do they still have these? I kind of feel like if I asked some young PFC today about it he’d look at me like I had three eyes and a dick growing out of my forehead!
Hell, the most advanced commo I encountered as a grunt was the “Vincent”!
Yes I remember the CEOI.
Man, they HAVE to still have them on one level or another. Otherwise the young guys would never have the joy of spending 10 minutes decoding “Eat A D*CK” on New Years Eve an Staff Duty.
We were told that for actual combat use there were unissued, untouched, brand-new CEOI’s sitting in a safe at BN HQ, i.e. the old dog-eared ones we always took to the field were not the ones we’d use if the balloon went up.
Yes, but I’m not sure how far down the unit level it was different…was it each BN, BDE, DIV? I was in an Infantry BDE in Panama, and to my knowledge our BN had it’s own, but I could be wrong. I would think that you’d want some compatibility with sister units to prevent fratricide and to be able to hear calls for help or warnings of enemy activities (?).
To be clear, none of this is 2024 OPSEC as the period I’m referring to was approximately 40 years ago. We carried Springfield Trapdoor muskets for a time reference. :sarcastic:
Well, if I remember correctly it Starts at BDE and goes down to the Company Plt Sgt’s.
It Broke it down to Companies and then you got a two Letter designation and a two digit number from Co to Plt Sgts.
So the A Company CO might be AO12 and his 3rd Plt Sgt might be A340.
Yes, I remember them. Used them quite a bit. You meant Vinson equipment right? Secure FM comms that predated SINCGARS. When I went through AIT at Gordon they even trained us on the old Nestor equipment even though it was being phased out.
I hated it, it was a lot of extra work to do on the fly while Commanding a Tank.
Then I remind myself that my Dad did it, then transfered it to morse code everytime they needed to send a message.
Yeah but in Desert Storm weren’t almost 1 in 5 of our casualties from “friendly fire” (biggest yet worst joke in the military vocabulary)? I guess it was important to do it lest you be on the wrong end of a “misunderstanding”.
CEOIs were a common thing in Korea. I remember we were issued new ones on a regular basis (no old, dirty, dog-eared ones – but then Korea was on a pretty rigid go-to-war posture most times where we were at Camp Greaves north of the Imjin River). Not only did it have callsigns, suffixes, and prefixes, you could also encrypt, decrypt, and authenticate by voice.
Once I got to Special Forces we also had the SAVSERSUP (Special Audio-Visual Service Supplement).
Vinson KY-57 had to be keyed with a separate device (in the years before over-the-air re-key). If it ever got zeroed your encryption was basically erased (like formatting a disk).
I have to be honest with you, at some point in the advancement of commo, I went on recruiting duty and came back to a whole new world of commo. I learned the basics and kept a cheat sheet, but damn I could barely keep up with the changes.
By the time I had retired and was working for GD, a lot of data was being transfered via Force XXI communications. So I can call for fire, lase to the target and send all target data back to my Arty unit automatically.
Eventually someone will mount a laser up there for missles.
Yeah I knew it was more than challenges/passwords and frequencies, but couldn’t think of exactly what. Thanks. [to be fair I don’t recall the encryption thing, but ours were the old-ass “dirty and dog-eared” ones!]
Nope. These were booklets. It’s been a long time but IIRC correctly there were challenge and authentication codes and after all that was done you told the station you were sending to 'I set ‘Bravo Yankee’ and then sent the read the encrypted message to them.
There were training/practice CEOI’s which you could take to the field and I’m pretty sure back in the day something like ‘Use CEOI to send grid coordinates’ or something similar was part of the Skill Level 2 or 3 Common Tasks.
Just when I was feeling old you guys make me feel like a boot again. We used the CYZ-10(crazy-10) for SINCGARS exclusively when I was in. I never saw any booklet of the kind during my service time.