The long-term solution may take "big, leap-ahead technology," said Maj. Gen. Pete Gallagher, head of the Cross Functional Team leading the network overhaul. But short-term solutions can be as simple as replacing bulky metal antennas with inflatable ones or loading new software on an off-the-shelf Android phone.
It was a Marine reservist, transport officer Maj. Chris Thobaben, who had the idea to repurpose the scout drones for logistics after seeing too many comrades killed or wounded on supply runs in Iraq.
As aircraft shrink, threats expand, and technology accelerates, aircraft engines must iterate along with the threats.
The Marine Corps and National Security Agency have joined forces to bring cellphones to the battlefield by 2019. Working with the NSA’s new Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program should let the Marines acquire cutting-edge civilian technology swiftly without sacrificing security, said Maj. Kevin Shepherd of Marine Corps Systems Command. The Marine Corps hasn’t chosen a […]
Classic science fiction imagined evil master computers remote-controlling their mindless robot minions. It imagined good-guy droids that were basically humans in tin suits. But as the actual science of autonomy evolves, reality is looking a lot weirder. The user interface may be in an ordinary Android tablet, but the artificial intelligence itself may reside in […]
WASHINGTON: With the Pentagon opening an outreach office in Silicon Valley, traditional defense firms may be feeling left behind. But the much-maligned prime contractors play a vital role in innovation, said Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush this morning. In fact, he argued, the Defense Department often needs the traditional firms to act as a “translator,” […]
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD: Amidst unabated budget gloom, Navy and Marine leaders aren’t looking for salvation in big new programs. They’re “repurposing and reusing existing capabilities” to get the maximum out of existing hardware for minimum cost. It’s a vision of the future in which a junior Marine Corps officer might call for fire support from a […]
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
RANGE 24, FORT DRUM, NEW YORK: “That’s awesome,” said Maj. Edward Sedlock, watching another soldier call up data on his militarized Android smartphone. It was such small, unguarded moments — neither officer had noticed a reporter standing nearby — which suggest that, after more than a decade in development, the Army’s struggle to bring wireless […]
The National Security Agency is launching a mobile device capability at the end of this year that will allow its personnel to securely access classified information with their smartphones and tablet computers. The program, which is a joint effort with the Defense Information Systems Agency, could potentially provide the military services with similar secure information […]
PENTAGON: The Army showed off an impressive array of battlefield wi-fi gadgetry today in the Pentagon courtyard, exhibiting new-found realism about what gadgets it might not need. Consider the hardware to connect the individual foot soldier to the brigade-wide command network, which has been stripped down from a 14-pound prototype to a militarized smartphone plugged […]
WHITE SANDS, NM: After weeks of testing at the Army’s vast facility here a private summed up the service’s newest iteration of the so-called Nett Warrior communication system in one phrase: “It ain’t ready.” Soldiers with the 2nd Heavy Combat Brigade, 1st Armored Division (2/1 Armored) spent several weeks at the Army’s latest network integration […]
The network transport architecture for NGC2 could be a hybrid approach that combines high assurance communications with 5G, WiFi, and multi-orbit satellites.
The Defense Information Systems Agency has certified the first secure mobile device running on the Android operating system. The Dell Streak 5 smart phone/small tablet computer is the first handheld device using the Android 2.2 operating system to be certified for use in the Defense Department’s secure but unclassified communications, said John Marinho, director of […]
Washington: Going to war? The Army may soon have an app for that. Today the Army rolled out the newest version of their NetWarrior program, a system designed to let individual soldiers tie into the massive command and control networks used by the Army to coordinate its operations. This version of the system is centered […]