Visiting Australian Navy ship causes 5GHz issues with Radar

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Visiting Australian Navy ship causes 5GHz issues with Radar

nedkelly

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#319826 6-Jun-2025 08:06

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360713622/visiting-australian-navy-ship-causes-internet-outages-radio-disruptions

Saw a post about this originally on LinkedIn yesterday, which then I lost as the app reloaded where techs were discussing this, and then today there is a Stuff article about it, quite a big whoops on their behalf.

Bung

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#3381035 6-Jun-2025 08:26

I remember a visiting navy ship at Wellington's Overseas Terminal in 1980s briefly turned on its main radar and that caused computer and phone system restarts throughout the city.

coffeebaron

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#3381241 6-Jun-2025 13:20

Send a RSM engineer in to shut them down and give them a big fine hehe 😀

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wellygary

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#3381256 6-Jun-2025 13:50

I don't think it was in the 5GHz band though...

Sounds like K band (20-40ghz), Wisps appears to have point to point links in here, its also where military radars operate...

lowigz

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#3381265 6-Jun-2025 14:16

I used to work for PwC, and when they opened a new office in Wellington with harbour views, our IT department warned them to install shielding on the windows due to the proximity to the water. Did they take our advice? Nope.. As a result, every time a ship docked, the office lost all WiFi as the ship radar interference wreaked havoc on connectivity.

They asked IT before making changes from then on..

coffeebaron

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#3381271 6-Jun-2025 14:33

Interesting comment from Mike Smith

Visiting Australian navy ship causes internet, radio outages | Mike Smith

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SATTV

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#3381302 6-Jun-2025 15:36

From one of my favorite radio stations.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DZUxMAfjj/

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TAKid

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#3381379 6-Jun-2025 17:20

Some years ago one of the giant US aircraft carriers was off Hobart in Tasmania and supposedly a number of garage doors kept opening and closing due to the communication equipment on the ship.

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Jase2985

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#3381644 7-Jun-2025 18:44

wellygary:

I don't think it was in the 5GHz band though...

Sounds like K band (20-40ghz), Wisps appears to have point to point links in here, its also where military radars operate...

while some do operate in that band most don't and it doesnt appear the ship has anything that would be in that band. Likely would be SATCOM at that frequency but then that would be pointed at the sky, and not conducive of creating a widespread outage like described.

Ship has a Sea Giraffe (AMB) Agile Multi Beam Radar. It provides multi-beam 3-Dimensional air coverage at 5.4 to 5.9 GHz. (G/H band IEEE or C band NATO)

Navigation or helicopter control radars, these bands are primarily 3 GHz (S-band), 5 GHz (S-band), and 9 GHz (X-band).

raytaylor

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#3381881 8-Jun-2025 23:49

It was in the 5.3-5.7ghz band.
Navigation and weather radars operate in those bands, and the radio equipment is designed to switch to another channel if it detects a radar user on the same frequency.
However having a bunch of radios randomly changing from their designated planned channels to a bunch of unplanned channels in turn causes more havoc and interference for other radio links so the problem compounds.

Radio users of the 5ghz band in NZ know that the metservice runs their weather radar on 5605mhz so will plan away from that channel and there isnt really anything else that uses the 5ghz radar band locally so its never been a problem before.

However this does highlight the need for our government to open up the 6ghz and the remaining 3ghz band for regional networks as is already done in other countries.
They cant really move the radar users because they require certain physics to operate.
Eg. The metservice cant move off 5605mhz because thats where water in the air can be best detected.

It seems that internet is now more important and should probably be the priority user going forward as there are alternatives for navigational radar now - GPS etc.

Ray Taylor

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