Non-Subscriber Extract
Broadening the horizon: battlefield broadband
By Adam Baddeley
28 April 2008
The performance of C4ISR systems is dependent on the dissemination of large volumes of time-critical information and data to and from mobile warfighters at every echelon of command - from the vehicle command post at the front line through to static headquarters.
Despite the splash that satellite communications have made in tactical networks - linking distributed and isolated users - their limited availability, throughput relative to ground-based high-capacity links and expense mean that terrestrial high-capacity line-of-sight (HCLOS) communications as wide-area systems (WAS) will remain the key bearer of the vast majority of network-centric operations.
Where the HCLOS trunk links end - typically at the brigade level - has traditionally been the cut-off where data throughput has dropped off, as the transport layer becomes dependent solely on combat net radios (CNR). Military requirements now call for low-latency C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnissance) information - including streaming video - down to the company and platoon level, something conventional WASs even in their more mobile form cannot provide.
Demand for capability has seen the growth of a new class of radio: the high-capacity wideband networking radio (WBNR), which is capable of supplying hundreds of kilobits of throughput indirectly between command centres via ad hoc networked links, hosted by other battlefield platforms.
Additionally, defence ministries and industry are evaluating the applicability of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies - beyond the ubiquitous Internet Protocol (IP) - to establish which standards and protocols can be used and adapted to ensure reliance and robustness.
In 2003 communications during the US Army's advance on Baghdad were strained and at times broke down because the Cold War-era mobile subscriber equipment (MSE), first fielded in 1988, could not keep pace with rapidly moving manoeuvre forces.
Its replacement, the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical (WIN-T), which predated Operation 'Iraqi Freedom', was conceived to provide high-capacity WAS services to and from mobile platforms while keeping pace with manoeuvre forces.
However, WIN-T was not then ready to meet demand for improved communications for ongoing operations in Iraq in 2003.
In response, the US deployed the Joint Network Node (JNN) from 2004, designed to provide a COTS-based stopgap solution for more mobile communications, offering broadband on the halt with considerable success. In 2007 a more incremental - pay as you go - approach was adopted for WIN-T, breaking it down into four increments and subsuming the capital investment in JNN, redesignating it WIN-T Increment 1.