Walk into any modern signal corps training facility and you’ll find soldiers learning systems that didn’t exist a decade ago — encrypted mesh networks, software-defined radios, satellite uplinks that fit in a backpack. You’ll also find, often tucked into the same training cycle, instruction on a communication method that’s almost two centuries old: Morse code.
There’s a reason it’s still there. Several reasons, actually. And as electronic warfare gets more sophisticated and battlefield communications get more contested, the case for keeping Morse in the toolkit is getting stronger, not weaker.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s practical.
The Bandwidth Argument
Modern military communications consume enormous amounts of bandwidth. Voice over encrypted radio, real-time video from drones, GPS telemetry, battle management system updates — all of it is bandwidth-hungry and all of it is vulnerable when the spectrum gets crowded or jammed.
Morse code requires essentially none. A trained operator can send and receive intelligible messages using a signal so narrow that it punches through interference that would kill voice transmission entirely. Continuous wave (CW) signals, the technical name for Morse transmission, can be picked up at signal levels well below the noise floor of voice communication. That means a Morse signal can get through when nothing else can.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s a documented capability used by military and amateur radio operators for over a century. In environments with poor propagation, low power constraints, or active jamming, a 5-watt CW transmission can outperform a 100-watt voice transmission on the same frequency.
Why Special Operations Keep Training It
US Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and equivalent units in allied militaries still include Morse code in their communications training pipelines. The reason isn’t tradition. It’s redundancy.
A team operating in a denied environment — somewhere the local infrastructure is hostile, GPS is jammed, and conventional radio is monitored — needs communication methods that don’t depend on the systems an adversary controls. Morse code over a low-power HF transmitter, with the right antenna setup, can reach across continents. It can also be sent by other means when radio isn’t available:
- Light signals — a flashlight, lantern, or even a mirror reflecting sunlight
- Sound signals — tapping on pipes, hulls, or walls in captivity scenarios
- Vibration — through a hand on a surface, undetectable to nearby observers
- Written shorthand — preserved for later transmission
The famous example most people know is Admiral Jeremiah Denton, who blinked the word “TORTURE” in Morse code during a 1966 televised North Vietnamese propaganda interview, alerting US intelligence to the treatment of POWs. That capability existed because Morse training existed. It still exists today, and it still gets used.
The Skill Decay Problem
Here’s the honest part. Morse code is a perishable skill. Operators who don’t practice regularly lose proficiency fast — much faster than they lose, say, weapons handling or land navigation skills. A signal corps soldier who passes the basic Morse standard and then doesn’t touch it for a year will be slower and more error-prone when called on to use it.
The traditional fix was scheduled refresher training, which works but is expensive in instructor time and not always available, especially for personnel in non-signal MOSs who still want to maintain the skill for personal reasons or as part of an SF-track preparation.
The modern fix is self-directed practice using mobile tools. There are several free apps that handle the basics well. For soldiers wanting to build or maintain proficiency, the app at morsecodes.app is one of the cleaner options — it covers learning the code from scratch, real-time encoding and decoding, and audio output at adjustable speeds, which is the part that matters most for actual proficiency. The audio practice is important because Morse on the radio is heard, not seen, and reading dots and dashes off a page builds a different and less useful skill than copying audio at speed.
The same tool has support for Arabic Morse, which is a relevant detail for personnel deploying to or operating in CENTCOM AOR, where understanding adversary or partner-force communications protocols can matter. It’s a small feature, but it’s the kind of thing that’s hard to find elsewhere.
How Much Speed Do You Actually Need?
This is where realistic expectations matter. Military Morse standards historically required around 18-20 words per minute for full qualification, which takes months of consistent practice to reach. That standard exists because operational traffic moves fast and operators need to keep up.
For most personnel today, a more realistic target is:
- 5 wpm — enough to handle emergency traffic, basic signals, identification
- 10 wpm — enough to function as a backup operator in supported communications
- 15 wpm — solid working proficiency, useful in field conditions
- 20+ wpm — full qualification level, suitable for signal corps duty
Reaching 5 wpm takes most people two to four weeks of consistent daily practice — 15 minutes a day, broken into short sessions. Reaching 10 wpm takes another month or two. The progression follows a predictable curve as long as the practice is regular and the audio speed gradually increases.
Soldiers preparing for SF selection, Ranger School, or any communications-heavy specialty benefit from getting at least to the 10 wpm range before they show up, because it removes one item from the cognitive load during a high-stress training environment.
The Fitness Parallel
There’s an interesting overlap with how soldiers approach PT. Nobody trains for the ACFT once a week and expects results. The events get practiced in short, frequent sessions, with progressive load, and the gains come from consistency over months.
Morse code works exactly the same way. Daily 10-15 minute sessions outperform weekly hour-long sessions by a wide margin. The brain consolidates the patterns during the rest periods between sessions, not during the sessions themselves. A soldier who practices five days a week at 10 minutes per session will be measurably faster than one who practices once a week for 90 minutes, even though the total time is identical.
The mental discipline is also similar. Both require showing up when you don’t feel like it, accepting that progress is slow at the start, and trusting that the curve eventually bends upward.
A Realistic Practice Plan
For anyone — active duty, reservist, veteran, or military enthusiast — wanting to build Morse proficiency from zero:
- Week 1-2: Learn the letter set in groups of five, audio only, no visual reference after the first exposure
- Week 3-4: Add numbers and basic prosigns, practice copying short call signs
- Month 2: Work up to 5 wpm copying speed on simple plain-language messages
- Month 3-4: Build to 10 wpm, introduce sending practice with a key or paddle
- Beyond: Maintain through daily short sessions and occasional on-air practice with the amateur radio community, which is full of active CW operators happy to slow down for newer ops
The skill compounds. A soldier who builds Morse proficiency early in their career has a tool that stays with them through every deployment, every duty station, and every emergency where conventional communications fail. It costs nothing to maintain except a few minutes a day.
Bottom Line
Morse code is one of those skills that looks obsolete until the moment you need it, at which point it stops looking obsolete very quickly. It’s cheap to learn, cheap to practice, and disproportionately useful in exactly the environments where modern military operations are most likely to take place. The communications branch hasn’t forgotten that. Neither should the rest of the force.