[Premium-Rx] Collins HF voice privacy unit VP-100

[Peter Ratuschni]

Hi,
a very interesting comment from Tim who is not a list member (so far?). He allowed me to put his answer here.

Best regards
Peter


Betreff: Re: [Premium-Rx] Collins HF voice privacy unit VP-100

Hi Peter,

  I can tell you that during much of the mid-1980s until
perhaps the early of mid-1990s, the US government used
some VP-100s for 'sensitive, but unclassified' communications
on HF & perhaps also VHF/UHF radio.

   The best & perhaps only example:   Some US military
units involved in counternarcotics 'detection & monitoring' as
well as US Coast Guard, US Customs Service & US Drug
Enforcement Administration units (aircraft, ships/boats
& land stations) had VP-100s so that they could communicate
relatively securely with counternarcotics units of Carribean nations
that the USA could not entrust with higher-quality transmission-security
devices fielded by US forces & major allies.

  So this means, for example, that during a counternarcotics operation,
US assets may have communicated amongst themselves using
NSA-endorsed TRANSEC gear in the PARKHILL or VINSON family,
but on joint nets with for example, Honduran counternarcotic
forces, they would have used the VP-100 family of TRANSEC
gear.


  The last time I saw VP-100 gear in a US gov't facility, it
was a US Coast Guard Transportable Communications Central
in the early 1990s, but the VP-116 successor is still in-use for
the purpose I described above today, on assets that utilize
the Advanced Narrowband Digital Voice Terminal family
for NSA-endorsed crypto.


Tim