Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network

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The Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network (AUTOSEVOCOM) was a global switched secure telephone network operated by the United States Armed Forces and operated from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. It was very similar to the Automatic Voice Network ( AUTOVON ), which was the main military network for non-secure calls.

Phase I.

During the mid-1960s, the US government began building a worldwide secure telephone network. This was called the Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network or by its acronym AUTOSEVOCOM and was the first project of the National Security Agency to secure the telephone communications of the US Department of Defense. It was a cumbersome and expensive system that was only made available to very important users. Because of these inadequacies, the Ministry of Defense abandoned the project after 1850 terminals in the late 1960s to hope for a better system.

Phase I of the network was approved by the Deputy Secretary of Defense in July 1967, after which it took several years to implement AUTOSEVOCOM in the United States. AUTOSEVOCOM-I was a non-tactical network that allowed users to talk about classified or sensitive information on the phone. The network consisted of exchanges, transmission facilities and terminals at the end users. End users were either connected to an AUTOSEVOCOM exchange, an AUTOVON exchange or a Joint Overseas Switchboard (JOSS), which was operated and maintained, for example, by one of the many telecommunication units (Signal Battalions) in Vietnam.

The AUTOSEVOCOM switching equipment was designed for broadband calls between local users and allowed them to set up secure wide area connections. Most of the long-distance connections were routed via AUTOVON.

Phase II

Difficulties with speech intelligibility, requirements for speech recognition, the need for conference calls, faster service, and a simpler method of setting up calls resulted in the Department of Defense approving the development of a new, improved system called AUTOSEVOCOM II. The Army was the authority with the greatest demands on a new system. In May 1976, the Deputy Minister of Defense fully approved the AUTOSEVOCOM II project.

AUTOSEVOCOM II integrated technological advances and made it possible to offer several thousand users a higher quality of communication than when it went into operation between 1980 and 1985. The US Army Communications Command represented the program manager for the AUTOSEVOCOM II program.

The Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network has been replaced by the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN) and the tap-proof STU-III telephones . The last AUTOSEVOCOM switching unit in the world was shut down in the Pentagon in 1994.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas R. Johnson: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989 , 1998, Chapter 17, p. 142.
  2. ↑ How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop , by Dave Tompkins
  3. ↑ Christopher H. Sterling: Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century , 2008, pp. 48-49.