Marine General warns troops you could have cell phones killed: video

• The General Corps of the Top Marine Corps gave the troops a warning before using battlefield handy.
• Mobile phone data can show troop locations that make you vulnerable to enemy attacks.
• The war in Ukraine underlines the dangers of using mobile phones in a combat environment.

The Supreme General of the Marine Corps sent a video memory to the force this week, which warned the troops that the use of battlefield cell phone can have fatal consequences. It indicates Russian disasters in Ukraine.

The video shared on social media shows a navy that escaped the enemy fire to look for refuge in an abandoned building. Suppose it is safe, the navy pulls out his phone to send a text in which he asks for help and sends his location with it.

What nobody notices in this exchange is that the news has been intercepted. When his help with Marines, an enemy strike hits to death.

The video then transforms the discussion into the conflict in Ukraine and places the headlines of the war on the weapons of mobile phones and the use of the cell phone by Russian soldiers into a fatal Ukrainian strike.

The video refers to a devastating strike in which the number of Russian troops in Makiivka was killed at the end of 2022. Moscow blamed the use of mobile phones, but several factors seemed to be involved. It still serves as caution.

“If they can be felt, they can be targeted,” said Gen. Eric Smith, commander of the Marine Corps, in the video. “And if they can be targeted, they can be killed.”

While the navy shares its exact location in the video, card coordinates are not required so that troops can endanger themselves or their comrades. When Russia launched its complete invasion in Ukraine, Russian troops published videos on social media and gave the relatives at home, all data that Ukraine had previously struck.

Telephone calls, texts and photos that are shared with friends via unprotected lines can be intercepted and broken down for metadata to show where they were laid. Open source information that comes from the photos were fatal in Ukraine.

Russia has implemented several cell phone bans, and in 2024 Russia's lower house of the parliament proposed laws that would punish troops for the use of their personal phones in battle.

It is not just a telephone use that causes problems in combat. They are also unintentional signal emissions, such as the phones that undress from cell towers. “The character of the war continues to change,” said Smith. “The distribution of technology has made signature management essential on the battlefield.”

The Marine Corps published its latest official policy for cell phones in 2024, Capthanie Baer, ​​spokesman, told Business Insider.

She said, “The published video is a reinforcement and a continuous memory of the importance of the usage directive in all situations,” and added that the publication of the video was not linked to certain current events.

The idea of ​​”signature management” was a critical tenant of the discipline on the battlefield, but it is becoming increasingly important on modern battlefields where electronic emissions can reveal positions and movements.

The “signature” of a unit generally refers to its presence and how easily it can be recognized. Light, noise level and movement can be all elements of signature management. With the spread of mobile phones and social media, however, the idea of ​​the signature discipline turns into a more urgent problem.

Smith is not the first navy leader to warn of mobile phones. The former commander -General David Berger found such concerns about the weaknesses of cell phone to defense reporters in 2022.

“We have to be distributed. You have to have enough mobility so that you can shift your unit quite often,” he said of the efforts to prepare for expedition companies throughout the Pacific. “You have to do everything – as some of us learned 30 years ago – camouflage, bait, deception,” he said.

“What we don't worry about about 30 years ago is every time they express a button, they radiate,” he said.