Warfighter Information Network -- Tactical: The Cost and the Commitment
Abstract
The U.S. Army currently projects voice and data files to satellites 23,900 miles above the earth's equator using super high frequency (SHF). In addition, fiber optic transmissions traveling at the speed of light send voice and data files around the earth more than seven times in less than a second. Today, the speed of military maneuver, the complexity of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the multiple and usually simultaneous missions that must be performed require greater communication coordination. The U.S. Army depends on reliable and prompt coordination between C2 nodes (information superiority) to provide commanders a competitive advantage on current and future battlefields. However, the current U.S. Army communications systems are limited between nodes and have not kept pace with the advances in C2 systems. The U.S. Army purchased the current communications systems -- Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) and Tritac/Digital Group Multiplexer (DGM) -- in the early 1980s, when systems were designed primarily for voice communications. Consequently, these two systems provide very little bandwidth for voice and data files and C2 systems connectivity. With the recent award of the U.S. Army's Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) contract to General Dynamics Corporation and Lockheed Martin, President Eisenhower's words seem ominous. While WIN-T will provide today's warfighter with information superiority and redundancy from the strategic to the tactical levels of operations, the current contract locks the U.S. Army into a proprietary system that may hamper the U.S. Army's ability to respond quickly to the changing battlefield. Instead, the U.S. Army Signal Corps should play a more active role in designing a battlefield communications architecture that would employ commercial-off-the-shelf technologies (COTS) with common user interfaces, because it is both time and cost effective and more responsive to the changing battlefield.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA506802
Entities
People
- James Howell
Organizations
- Marine Corps University