Batboard

Hey guys, I was checking out the thales25 radio, minus a few features that dont exist on the platform. One feature that really caught my eye was the fact that you can directly put in DES keys onto the radio without a keyloader! I think this is pretty darn sweet! Now my main question is there any portable radios out there that you can directly enter encryption keys??? I personally think radios should come with this feature. I dont really see it being too hard to accomplish, but Im relatively new to public safety radios, so I may be wrong about a few technical aspects of this, and maybe ethical issues if there are any. I dont see why not have this feature for any radios with UCMs. It certainly would come in handy if portables lose keys and OTAR is down. The only issue I can spot is the company loosing money from agencies not wanting to purchase a KVL to program the keys, KVLs do certainly help for fleet radios, instead of manually punching in the keys to every single radio. The only thing that comes remotely close is motorolas ADP where you can add keys through CPS.

How is key entry into the radio accomplished without a keyloader? What's your source?

The Thales software has a built in keyloader.

I highly doubt you will ever see radios that you can manually enter an encryption code through the keypad. Huge security issue. The reason for encryption is to keep things secure and out of people's hands who shouldn't have it. If keys start being handed out to anyone that "loses" the key this opens the door to loss of security for the key.

As DES was superseded by AES256 and its requirements in the P25 standard, Thales grew with it. The later model T25 radios require a KVL to load the AES keys, but still retained the ability to fill the DES key via PCP or a KVL if you so choose.