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- WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. military technology deployed overseas is disrupting
emergency telephone service in some countries and causing other telecommunications
glitches, annoying allies and incapacitating some weapons, a defense industry
publication reports.
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- Quoting an internal Defense Department
review, Defense Week said multibillion-dollar systems -- such as Patriot
missile defenses and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles -- won't work to
their full capabilities in some countries and, in others, can't be used
at all.
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- That's because their radio waves clash
with same-frequency users in host nations, the newsletter said in its edition
to be published Monday.
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- "At least 89 telecommunications
systems ... were deployed within the European, Pacific and Southwest Asian
theaters without the proper frequency certification and host-nation approval,"
it quoted the Defense Department's inspector general's report as saying.
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- This has caused telecommunications disruptions
in Germany, Japan, South Korea and Bahrain.
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- Billions of dollars worth of equipment
"cannot be utilized to its full capability ... In some cases, fully
functional equipment sits idle while its useful life expires," the
report said.
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- Pentagon addressing the problem
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- Pentagon officials said in written responses
to the audit that they generally agreed with the criticism. They added
that steps were being taken to deal with the problem, which they conceded
was serious.
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- The officials said a key problem was
that the United States has little control over which radio frequencies
host countries allocate to other purposes, and that often these change
after the systems are deployed.
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- The Patriot missile system's radios,
radars and data-link terminals have interfered with Korean cellular phones.
Pagers used by U.S. forces in Japan clash with Japanese aeronautical systems.
In Germany, infant crib monitors used on U.S. bases have clashed with German
telephone service, the report said.
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- In Bahrain, SPS-40 and SPS-49 radars
"are unusable because the equipment operates on a frequency that interferes
with the Bahrain telecommunications services," the report said.
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- Unless the conflicts are resolved, it
said, some U.S. air defense systems may be unable to do their jobs.
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- Host nations are angry about the disruptions,
the report said. Germany has passed a law allowing it to confiscate U.S.
equipment using frequencies not approved and to arrest the user.
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- And Saudi Arabia barred the United States
from using a $1.4 million satellite-communications device because it had
not gotten frequency rights.
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