Buoys for Tactical Aircraft

[Jonfliesgoats]

TUNA is a project announced by DARPA.  Essentially, buoys connected by fiber optic cables would be used for tactical communications in an environment with significant rf jamming.  Methods of communication in hostile environments are pretty sensitive, so I would take this poster with a grain of salt.  That said, the ability to drop buoys all over the place and develop a communications network does have some pretty interesting applications.  What are your thoughts?

http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017-01-05

Edited January 7, 2017 by Jonfliesgoats

[DDE]

Somehow I doubt someone that can force the USN into a situation where it has to TUNA will also allow them to fish-spread unmolested.

[Tex_NL]

Theoretically it could work. Practically it is way too hard to deploy and way too easy to sabotage.

You will need to deploy those buoys as a string, not a web. A web will be nearly impossible from a ship unless you connect buoys to each other afterwards. From a plane a web is out of the question.
Buoys are relatively easy to spot with radar. Since the buoys need to be physically be connected to each other you would only need to take out a single buoy or wire to cut large sections off the network.

To maintain such a network you would need absolute dominance in that area otherwise it will eat up too much manpower. When you already have complete dominance you can use whatever method of communication you want.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Good points!  The fact that it is publicly announced for such a specific application reminds me of the A-7 revitalization program.