5G Could Mean Less Time To Flee a Deadly Hurricane, Heads of NASA and NOAA Warn (theverge.com) 153
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: As reported by The Washington Post and CNET, the heads of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warn [5G wireless networks] could set back the world's weather forecasting abilities by 40 years -- reducing our ability to predict the path of deadly hurricanes and the amount of time available to evacuate. It's because one of the key wireless frequencies earmarked for speedy 5G millimeter wave networks -- the 24 GHz band -- happens to be very close to the frequencies used by microwave satellites to observe water vapor and detect those changes in the weather. They have the potential to interfere. And according to NASA and NOAA testimony, they could interfere to the point that it delays preparation for extreme weather events. Last week, acting NOAA head Dr. Neil Jacobs told the House Subcommittee on the Environment that based on the current 5G rollout plan, our satellites would lose approximately 77 percent of the data they're currently collecting, reducing our forecast ability by as much as 30 percent.
"If you looked back in time to see when our forecast skill was 30 percent less than today, it's somewhere around 1980. This would result in the reduction of hurricane track forecast lead time by roughly 2 to 3 days," he said. If we hadn't had that data, Jacobs added, we wouldn't have been able to predict that the deadly Hurricane Sandy would hit. A European study showed that with 77 percent less data, the model would have predicted the storm staying out at sea instead of making landfall. Jacobs said later that we currently have no other technologies to passively observe water vapor and make these more accurate predictions. On April 19th, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine made similar comments to the House Science Committee. "That part of the electromagnetic spectrum is necessary to make predictions as to where a hurricane is going to make landfall," he told the committee. "If you can't make that prediction accurately, then you end up not evacuating the right people and/or you evacuate people that don't need to evacuate, which is a problem."
"If you looked back in time to see when our forecast skill was 30 percent less than today, it's somewhere around 1980. This would result in the reduction of hurricane track forecast lead time by roughly 2 to 3 days," he said. If we hadn't had that data, Jacobs added, we wouldn't have been able to predict that the deadly Hurricane Sandy would hit. A European study showed that with 77 percent less data, the model would have predicted the storm staying out at sea instead of making landfall. Jacobs said later that we currently have no other technologies to passively observe water vapor and make these more accurate predictions. On April 19th, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine made similar comments to the House Science Committee. "That part of the electromagnetic spectrum is necessary to make predictions as to where a hurricane is going to make landfall," he told the committee. "If you can't make that prediction accurately, then you end up not evacuating the right people and/or you evacuate people that don't need to evacuate, which is a problem."
But those poor teleco profits (Score:5, Funny)
Won't someone think of the Verizons of the world!! The AT&Ts and the Comcasts. All our favorite, friendly family loving companies that really want this 5G. Don't you know 5G is going to change EVERYTHING!!! If they don't roll out this MUST have technology surely they will go bankrupt!! Don't you care?!!
We don't need know weather accuracy and who listens to those silly reports anyway.
5G!!! 5G!!!
Re: Have you ever heard of satellites, GOP morons (Score:2)
Dodn't the US already skip 3G and barely implemented 4G?
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Re:But those poor teleco profits (Score:5, Insightful)
24GHz has been in deployment for years. AFAIK it's still mostly used by WISPs. With most systems having a max range of But, the point being, 24GHZ is all over the place out there.
The difference is a relatively small number of very high gain point to point links versus a huge number of broadcast antenna instead. I can see why the latter would be much more of a problem than the former.
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Won't someone think of the Verizons of the world!! The AT&Ts and the Comcasts.
I wonder if we can use the new signal to improve the weather forecasts. The model would be hellishly complicated, but you basically have countless new sources of energy in that band. That energy must pass through water particles before being detected by presumably multiple receivers.
Put another way, if you have 100 million houses with lights on, you can see some of that from space. Furthermore the cell towers themselves could report information that might be used to refine the signal. Its important to r
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We don't need know weather accuracy and who listens to those silly reports anyway.
Hurricanes don't really hurt people but if I can't get my hit of phone addiction spending my days hunched over a tiny screen in a posture that mimics a stress response, the world for me is over anyway.
Yes, I am being sarcastic ^_^
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Well they dont have to use the new frequency they can just use the old frequency and just increase speed a bit and sell it as 5G.. O wait!
Ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok (Score:5, Informative)
though if we really need that frequency for 5G, I agree that we need the monitoring equipment replaced/reconfigured beforehand. Flag as Inappropriate
The monitoring equipment needs that particular frequency due to the physics of r.f. absorption/reflection.
Move the fscking 5G frequencies.
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What about the lobbyist, will no one think of the poor lobbyists. Can NOAA pay them, can NASA pay them, NO, then they should STFU, only those who can pay for laws should have any right to them. This would be funnier if it were not true in the US.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Hurricanes are detected at sea.. Who the hell is using 24GHz in the middle of the ocean? :D
I was about to write the same
The hurricanes aren't broadcasting something
Actually they are, in a pretty broad spectrum and every lightning gives some extra signal.
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You need to sense the whole globe to accurately predict the weather - just getting good readings over the deep ocean isn't enough. If your measurements over land are degraded, you are not going to be able to predict as accurately how that hurricane is going to evolve and move.
There is a problem. The scale of the problem needs to be studied a bit more, but a decision does need to be made on whether the impact of the problem is significant.
A decision? (Score:1)
Yeah, kill 5G. Heck, kill all but the most basic 4G and kill everything LTE while you're at it.
Cell phones should do voice reliably with a minimum spectrum. If people want to watch TV on their phone they can either plug in a wire or use 802.11 wifi like every other device in the world. We really don't need high bandwidth connections monopolized by a couple three chosen carriers and then resold back to us for exorbitant fees with unreasonable contracts, pricing models, and oh yeah, criminalization of secu
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Hurricanes are detected at sea.. Who the hell is using 24GHz in the middle of the ocean?
Good point. Once they reach land no-one cares where they go, it's the oceans that need advance warning.
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Humans do not work like that. If someone expresses how they do not understand something, and you chime in with a "OMG I can't believe you don't understand!", that is only going to cause them to irrationally dig their heels into the opposite of whatever claim you are making.
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Here, let me help you be less ignorant:
You'll note that the summary specifically calls out hurricane track forecasting. That's different than hurricane intensity forecasting. Hurricanes intensify over the ocean, and as you so eloquently hinted at, not a lot of people are putting cell towers in the ocean. That's why they didn't talk about 5G impacting hurricane intensity forecasts.
Hurricane tracks are strongly impacted by high and low pressure systems. These tend to steer the storm, combined with upper level
Re: Ok (Score:1)
No, the critical frequency range is absorbed by water vapor- if you have unknown amounts of it being broadcast, how would you determine how much is being absorbed? If you don't know that, you can't figure out how much water there is.
It has nothing to do with satellite communications, but thanks for calling someone an idiot while showing you are one.
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I would say trumps a millennials need for faster facebook
There's a lot of ignorance in the comments, but this here deserves to be modded up so the world can see that ignorance of 5G extends beyond just how radiowaves work.
Lacking details - surely only where 5G signals are (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely the interference from 5G signals only occurs where 5G signals are actually present.
Which means hurricanes out in the ocean won't be getting interference from 5G transmission since there aren't any 5G cell towers out in the ocean.
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Good thing I said "lacking details", referring to the reporting of this, eh, and not "NASA and NOAA are idiots" like you apparently misread my comment to say.
Re:Lacking details - surely only where 5G signals (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely the interference from 5G signals only occurs where 5G signals are actually present.
Which means hurricanes out in the ocean won't be getting interference from 5G transmission since there aren't any 5G cell towers out in the ocean.
Do you think it has something to do with understanding where the high and low pressure systems are over a continental land mass? The place where the interference *will* be.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. has been said by many. These solutions are often modded up because it means cognitive effort can be avoided.
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I'd guess you don't need 24 GHz to see where the hurricane is right now; you can tell that by eye from a visible-light satellite image. But the weather forecast models need to predict cloud coverage and so on far away from the hurricane in order to forecast the hurricane's movement.
Sorta - storms don't have transmitters (Score:5, Informative)
One of the good things about these frequencies is it you don't interfere with your neighbors. At frequencies this high range is only around one kilometer. That is, unless your neighbor has a large parabolic antenna they won't pick up your signal very far away.
Unfortunately storms do not have transmitters. Therefore weather radar covering the ocean has to have a giant parabolic antenna. The radar has to go to pick up reflections off of raindrops a thousand miles away. That means it has to be extremely sensitive, sensitive enough to be able to pick up cell phone transmissions from several thousand miles away.
If you think about it the reflection off a raindrop is tiny, tiny, tiny compared to the power of the original signal. Therefore an antenna can pick up an original signal thousands of times further away than it can pick up a reflection from a raindrop.
Any cell phone tower within 2,000 miles of the radar installation is going to be stronger than the reflection off of rain hundreds of miles away.
Re:Sorta - storms don't have transmitters (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding of the problem is that it's the satellites which are detecting radar reflections off of raindrops at these bands. The problem is that since a satellite orbits hundreds of miles above the Earth, the distance between the satellite and the storm, is not very different from the distance between the satellite and 5G cell phone towers. So distance from the cell tower does not help attenuate the signal strength relative to the proximity to the storm. And because it's above the Earth, the angular separation between the storm and cell towers is not as great as for ground-based radar, meaning a directional antenna is less effective at filtering out the noise. So even though the 5G signal is attenuated more than the radar return, because it started off so powerful, it can still overwhelm the radar return off of raindrops.
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Over the horizon radars have existed for half a century.
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Over-the-horizon radars operate at frequencies down around 10 MHz, which can be reflected by the ionosphere, allowing you to bounce them to a target over the horizon. This article is about radars operating up at 24 GHz (not MHz), which can see rain droplets and developing hurricanes, but go straight through the ionosphere, so they can't be used over the horizon.
The GP is correct that this story is all about radars mounted on satellites, which can see a large chunk of the earth within their visible horizon.
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Ground-based radar cannot observe things a thousand miles away, because the Earth is round. If your radar sits 500 ft above sea level, and the "interesting" parts of the storm are 3 miles above sea level, the theoretical maximum range of the radar is 210 miles [calculatoredge.com].
Hurricanes are typically 8 to 10 miles high, some as much as 12 miles. [chicagotribune.com]
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Ever heard of rain scatter? Apparently not.
I'm a member of the local microwave contest group. We work amateur radio band frequencies ranging 1.2GHz (23cm) up to and including 24 GHz (1.5 cm).
A 'scattering' very strong signal 'twice over' the horizon can wreak havoc on delicate 24 GHz reception... or give you a very nice report (in distance, not in audibility... CW is often the only option unless you're native in parceltongue ;) ) during a contest.
If 5G on 24GHz really gets as 'massive' as on the current mob
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giant parabolic antennas are also very directional. they only pick up signals which are pretty much directly in their main lobe. The side/back lobes of a directional antenna are supposed to be very, very low compared to the main lobe.
That does not mean they can't pick up signals on a side-lobe, but they are going to be attenuated greatly.
However, the fact that the reflected signal is very weak is definitely a significant problem. A cell tower is a very strong, intentiol radiator, so it's quite possible t
Reflections to -28 (Score:3)
I bet that if you wanted to, you could do the math for reflections of phone signals off nearby objects and compare them to the -28 reflections off the rain for even short-range weather radar.
You might even be able to estimate the signal level the weather satellites end up with 36,000 kilometers away. Intuitively, I'd think that 36,000 kilometers of path loss each way, combined with the minimal reflective return, is going to give extremely low signal levels at the satellite.
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sensitive enough to be able to pick up cell phone transmissions from several thousand miles away.
Impossible.
Any cell phone tower within 2,000 miles of the radar installation is going to be stronger than the reflection off of rain hundreds of miles away.
Nope, that is behind the horizon: hint the earth is not flat.
To have a weather radar reaching 100miles far away you already need to be in an airplane quite high or need satellite based radar, no idea if that exists.
Oh, seems they are quite common: http://www. [buu.ac.th]
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They operate on totally different bands ... :P
Obviously, but the parent implied they would interfere with each other
Learn to click the right "reply to" button
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Because we all know that when you're modelling systems, there's no need to model the boundary conditions and environment surrounding the subject, you only need to model the principal subject itself.
Oh wait, that's not modeling, that's photography. Well, I'm sure you'll be happier with pictures of the actual hurricane instead of a storm track giving you 4 days of
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Yes. You DO lack details. (Score:4, Informative)
Which means hurricanes out in the ocean won't be getting interference from 5G transmission since there aren't any 5G cell towers out in the ocean.
I'll do you one better: THERE ARE NO HURRICANES OUT IN THE OCEAN EITHER.
No. Really. There aren't any. When the microwave satellites are looking there aren't any.
It's a hurricane PREDICTION system - not just monitoring.
It doesn't observe hurricanes in real time, then draw a straight line to the coast and say "It is here now, it will be there tomorrow."
It doesn't work like that. None of it. Details which lack are missing from your personal model of understanding how the system works.
They are bouncing radio waves off of atmosphere, which get absorbed not by hurricanes but by water vapor, making those fields of water vapor detectable.
Water vapor means hot and moist air, which is energy just sitting there, waiting to be picked up by an incoming storm and turn it into a hurricane or to be picked up by a hurricane and turn it into a bigger hurricane with greater range, capable of doing more damage.
Such huge energy boosts will also turn a hurricane one way or another.
It is a prediction system. Not just a monitoring system.
Also, covering the land with signal in that range, even should it magically stop right at the sea shore, creates a black hole across the entire land mass covered by the signal.
Congratulations. Now all weather prediction across the land is back to 1978. All the tech advancement in the meanwhile doesn't matter - data is back to 40 years ago.
Cause now you can't tell where the hot and moist air is nor can you predict how will it affect incoming weather patterns.
Is there hot and moist air coming from the land towards the incoming hurricane? Who knows.
It's all just a big black hole now.
But thanks to 5G you can post a live video in 4K of a rant about weather forecast not getting it right while you wait to be evacuated straight into the path of an incoming hurricane that no one yer sees coming.
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From House Science Committee Hearing on NASA Budget CSPAN April 19, 2019:
it comes to weather forecasting in general, again, you'd have to ask noaa, but my consultations with them, we're talking about going back to 1978 levels of data.
in other words, instead of a seven-day weather forecast, a two or three-day weather forecast.
again, i'm not saying that they sold our spectrum. that didn't happen.
but there's a risk that, depending on the power and the position of the cell towers in the 5g network, it could bleed over into our spectrum and that's the risk and the assessments that nasa has done in conjunction with noaa have determined that there is a very high probability that we're going to lose a lot of data.
Its a ploy to destroy the greatest nation on earth (Score:3)
Telco's are going to operate 5G over the ocean? (Score:2)
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Hardly any weather satellites are in geo orbit. Most are about 500 miles up doing about 10 orbits a day on polar orbits, geo would be stupid for many reasons. These instruments have 20+ bands ranging from 24-300GHz. There are 4 other bands that are used for the same purpose of producing water vapor data well out of the 5G range. And he is absolutely correct in saying a hurricane a week from shore is not going to have an issue. Now you can argue those storms that form in the mid west being a different story
Re: Telco's are going to operate 5G over the ocean (Score:2)
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I don't see the problem (Score:1)
Nobody cares about the weather when they're staring at their phone.
then we should stick with 4g (Score:1)
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and just work on improving 4g LTE performance, its good enough, maybe more antenna towers for better/more coverage
Good enough for your phone, but it's hardly good enough for me to drop my cable/sat home connection. With 5G, we might actually get some competition against COMCASST.
No need to worry maybe, (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
Why wasn't this frequency band reserved? (Score:2)
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Range? (Score:2)
The 5G minicells using the 23GHz band will have a maximum usable range of a few hundred yards - maybe a half of a mile, tops. Signal strength falls off exponentially, so you are looking at barely any signal at all after a couple of miles.They are also oriented so the vast majority of the energy is directed sideways (it's wasting RF power to direct them upwards) and anything more substantial than a leaf is going to cause signal fade.
So how is a weather satellite 23 miles up bouncing radar off the troposphere
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You're confusing "usable for digital networking" and "usable for measuring water in the air."
You actually think that NASA and NOAA don't understand math, and signals? Huh?
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You actually think that NASA and NOAA don't understand math, and signals? Huh?
Yeah they're a bunch of fuckwits. That's why I read slashdot to find out what a bunch of 10x progammers think of RF engineering.
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You're confusing "usable for digital networking" and "usable for measuring water in the air."
You actually think that NASA and NOAA don't understand math, and signals? Huh?
I don't know why NASA and NOAA are objecting, which is why I'm asking the question. It doesn't make sense. Modeling is nearly worthless for terrestrial stuff, there are variables you don't know until you deploy, which is why cell phone companies have crews testing and tweaking their networks constantly. So what model are they using that shows signal above noise floor at a frequency/power level that shows significant fade after only a mile or two?
Re: Range? (Score:2)
Frankly, I'm shocked that a telco would even SPEND money on 24GHz equipment & spectrum licenses... that particular band is SO affected by water vapor, even Florida-level HUMIDITY is enough to render it almost unusable.
As others have noted, though, 5G@24GHz might mess up the current generation of satellites, but could actually be a net BENEFIT to the NEXT generation by providing them with the equivalent of ground-based metaphorical spotlights of known strength & propagation to light up storms from be
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The idea is baked into the very concept of 'cellular' networks. You sprinkle them around liberally. You want lots and lots of tiny cells.
It's the same way your wi-fi router works right now; if you're close enough, and have good enough SNR, you ride the 5 ghz radio, and you have higher speeds. If you're further out, you drop down to the 2.4 ghz radio, and have slower speeds, but better range and penetration.
Well, if you have a 24 ghz cell close enough, you attach to that radio. As you move further way, y
Oh sure (Score:2)
And every single one of them will be first in line to get their new government provided 5g phone.
Why was all this (Score:5, Insightful)
A new standard, some testing, get approval as it all worked.
Problems found? More testing? Problems. Not approved.
The math around using and getting approval for "electromagnetic spectrum" use should not be new to any advanced nation.
Wouldn't Data Sharing With Telcos Improve Things? (Score:2)
I don't understand why letting the telcos use these frequencies necessarily impairs the government's ability to infer the air moisture amounts.
Can't we just require that the telcos report (in some near realtime fashion) both the locations and the signal strengths at which they are broadcasting on these frequencies. Then the government could use BOTH what the telcos report as the absorption rate between cellphones and base stations as well as the absorption as measured by the satellites after compensating
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The satellite doesn't broadcast. This is passive microwave sensing where we look for changes in the black body radiation of the sun reflected from the surface of the earth due to absorption of a specific frequency by water vapour in the atmosphere.
So if there are changes in the level of radiation at that frequency, its a problem. Creating a real-time database of the location and signal strength of every single transmitter, globally, at that frequency is a major undertaking which would require international
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Thanks. That answers my question.
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Though if you did do it perfectly I wouldn't be surprised if you got an improvement but, yes, I see the practical impossibility.
I am doubtful of the story (Score:2)
excellent submission (Score:2)
This is stuff that matters.
Fuck 5G (Score:2)
Prediction? (Score:2)
"If we hadn't had that data, Jacobs added, we wouldn't have been able to predict that the deadly Hurricane Sandy would hit."
I'd be curious to know how much damage, and how many souls were saved by that prediction.
Hey Trump...Fire this Mother Fucker Pai (Score:2)
From the article:
"Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to discuss protections on February 28th — a couple weeks before the FCC started auctioning off 24GHz spectrum on March 14th — but that Pai rejected the invitation, claiming there was no “technical basis for an objection."
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He's just doing the same thing any fossil fuel lobbyist on the government side of the revolving door would do, throwing the planet under the bus for the profit of one industry.
Color me suspicious ... (Score:2)
... that this is just now being discovered to be a problem.
Something (I'm not sure what) must not be what it seems.
Credit FCC for selling that slice of freq. (Score:1)
Spectrum is allocated by the FCC. Apparently due diligence wasn't done, and engineers weren't involved in the decision.
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You mean due diligence wasn't done by the ones whining. This is not a sudden new thing, was planned and known and publicly designed and discused and developed for more than a decade. What kind of idiots living in a vacuum are staffing these weather and satellite agencies?
Since the JPSS satellilte operates on 22 bands... (Score:1)
What happens when it rains? (Score:2)
Apparently this 24GHtz signal is being used for weather prediction because it bounces nicely off of water vapor. What happens to this super-fast signal when it rains? or gets foggy?
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Not bounce, emit. Water vapor actually emits this frequency. It absorbs energy (warmth) and will emit naturally on this frequency extremely weakly. Even works at night, so it's not bouncing sunlight either.
The Lighthouse Joke (Score:2)
US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your cou
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