Broadband on the battlefield: military services follow dissimilar paths toward digital communications.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Battlefield Communications

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

SAN DIEGO -- The dream is to push streaming video and the Internet throughout the battlefield.

Air Force pilots want to see what's happening on the ground. Army commanders want to receive live images from unmanned aircraft above or from sensors around the next corner while in a moving armored vehicle. Navy captains want to see what's happening beyond the curvature of the Earth.

All three services have programs in different stages of development that are designed to bring digital communications to the battlefield.

The Army is in the second phase of testing its "war fighter information network-tactical," or WIN-T. The Air Force is funding the family of advanced beyond line-of-sight terminals (FAB-T) that may one day be installed in a wide range of aircraft. The Navy is working on a multi-band network radio--called SeaLancet by its manufacturer--that will move high bandwidth communications around in the maritime domain.

In the civilian world, commercial networks are already providing such services to customers who are "on-the-move." A businessman can connect his computer to the Internet in an airport in Dallas, get on an airplane and fly to New York, and have the same connectivity when he arrives.

The military wants the same. The difference is that commercial systems' infrastructures stay in one place. The armed services need systems where both the "customer" and the infrastructure providing the broadband links are on the move, explained Bill Weiss, vice president of tactical networks at General Dynamics.

"That mobile network introduces complexity that commercial industry doesn't need to worry about," he said.

But will these three systems one day be able to communicate with each other? And therefore, realize the dream of a "joint" world where an Army commander can send and receive what he sees to whomever he wants in the land, sea or air.

Maybe. Vendors at the Milcom conference here had only a passing familiarity with each other's programs--if any at all.

The military communications world has been notorious for creating "stovepipes"--more sarcastically known as "cylinders of excellence"--where systems cannot link to each other.

It's not impossible to make these systems talk to each other, it's just that no one is currently asking them to do it, said David White, FAB-T program manager at Boeing.

"You can imagine a mission in the future where you want to have an Air Force jet and a Navy platform communicate directly,"...