A network out of bandwidth

Border security should be relatively easy with a small fleet of Predators droning over the Iraqi deserts, but infiltration of the borders is constant. The encirclement of cities and the restricting of people fleeing those places should be relatively easy given round the clock surveillance by Predators and Global Hawks, but one of our top wanted terrorists managed to leave Falluja in the midst of a total encirclement of the city.

The military needs more bandwidth, but as every computer geek knows, adding more pipe width just leads to more junk flowing through it to fill it. The military is trying to create its own internet network, one with very high data rates. The problem seems to be that they have to use existing technologies to do this or they risk not being able to support their own invention.

Satellite technology is at this point incapable of coping with the torrent of raw data that a big deployment generates. Yet how do they manage to put a large army in the field and support them if not by satellite feeds? And Lord forbid that we have three large active deployments at the same time.

Hierarchical network processing

The military seems to be proud of the fact that controllers in Virginia can tell the grunts that the thing in front of them is good, bad or indifferent. This capability is due to the raw feeds going through the entire network, off to Washington where people in suits, live behind desks looking at the stuff in real-time. The intelligence community made great breakthroughs in the last decade being able to analyse the imagery and turning round the detail to the fighting units in double quick time, but it has eaten up bandwidth. That bandwidth is critical to all aspects of the modern military and suddenly it's not free or available.

I think it is about time a new concept evolves, one that leads to less heavy long distance network use, we need to deploy the intelligence analysts to theater, and given them the processing capability in the field. This way, mechanisms other than purely satellite feeds can be employed for the gathering portion of the effort. This would take a great deal of load off the network. The teams in theater would then pass back to Washington only processed data, as and how the network allows.

Obviously these intelligence assets would probably have to work at Corps level, putting them at divisional or brigade level might be a bit too risky, but other intelligence and operational activities should or could be moved down the chain of command, with only the processed data then being passed up. This may lead to the corps not knowing exactly where PFC Smith is walking at this moment, but that is probably the cause of much of the network malaise the military is facing. Why not a database query down to brigade to find out the check-in points that the PFC made over the last hour, and any discrepancy reports...

The Network is flexible, not infinite

Flexibility has been a military by-word for centuries, but while tremendous efforts have been made to make modern technology fit with the paradigm, there are limits to what can be done. Even spending billions creating a new network will only lead to another full pipe if efforts are not expended on how to filter data at lower levels and 'report' intelligently upward.

We need the facilities that 24/7 surveillance can provide, therefore we need to work within the framework of technology that exists (or can be envisaged being present in the near future) and make changes to the processing structure to allow for the best use of the facilities.