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Feature Articles
Players Receive Lessons in Culture and Teamwork
The U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is playing games with the expansion of the military's "soft power" and decision making. Since September, the command has offered a complete training system that builds cultural awareness skills through game play and storytelling through its Joint Knowledge Online (JKO). [Read more...]
DHS Seeks Partnerships to Increase Information Sharing
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to help ethnic and faith-based communities handle terror threats by adopting procedures used by the Secure Community Network (SCN). The department's goal is to mimic the SCN platform for national security and preparedness and use it as a means to decrease the number of acts of terrorism by increasing both communications and information sharing. [Read more...]
News Briefs
World’s Fastest Supercomputer Goes Classified
Roadrunner, the world’s fastest supercomputer, is transitioning to classified projects to increase the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Roadrunner recently finished the shakedown phase of performing accelerated petascale computer modeling and simulations on 10 unclassified, fundamental science projects, including work on nonlinear physics of high-powered lasers and modeling nanowires at small time scales. The projects put a workload on the hybrid-architecture, 1.105 petaflop/s (one petaflop/s equals 1 million billion calculations per second) system that enabled scientists to optimize the way large codes run on the machine.
Multiband Radios Make Their Debut
Beginning this month, 14 government agencies across the U.S. are part of a pilot program testing a new multiband radio that enables first responders to talk to each other across frequency bands. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate developed the radio, which resembles current single-band emergency communications equipment but works on five frequency bands and can work on four additional bands used exclusively by the U.S. Defense Department, National Guard and Coast Guard. In addition, the radio, which weighs less than two pounds and has a battery life of more than 10 hours, receives weather reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and still functions even after being sprayed with a fire hose. The first version of the radios could be ready for the mass market by the middle of next year. France Tests Network-Centric Systems
The French army has successfully tested several advanced command, control and situational awareness technologies under operational conditions. Held in late September and early October, the Architecture Real Time Integration System Testbench (ARTIST) experiment validated several key systems being developed for France’s Bulle Operationnelle Aeroterrestre (BOA), or Air-Land Operational Digitization (SIGNAL Magazine, September 2004). Conducted as a joint exercise with the German army in Germany, ARTIST centered on a command center, four vehicles, three robots, one drone and two units of soldiers. The event featured three scenarios to demonstrate the effectiveness of battlefield digitization: the reconnaissance of a village, a coordinated response to an enemy counterattack, and overcoming enemy units then capturing a village. ARTIST is the first of three planned BOA demonstrations that will continue until 2012. The BOA communications systems were manufactured by Thales Group, robot scouts by Nexter Systems and the situational awareness systems by Sagem. Academia Studies Network Interaction
With approximately $35.5 million in funding over 10 years from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Penn State is launching an interdisciplinary center that researches network science. Collaborating with researchers at a number of other universities, scientists at Penn State’s Communication Networks Research Center will concentrate on the interplay among social/cognitive, information and communication networks. The Army is investing in the center in the hope that the research will help the service understand how warfighters, sensors and weapons communicate information through mobile, self-forming, rapidly changing networks. “Ultimately, we will be able to control the behavior of communication networks in a way that allows people to exchange the most important information,” Thomas La Porta, professor, Penn State, says.
SIGNAL Online Exclusive Articles
DARPA Takes On 99 Red Balloons
Actually, there are only 10. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is holding the DARPA Network Challenge on December 5 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet. Participants must locate the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of 10 red weather balloons that will be posted at undisclosed locations across the continental United States.
[Read more...]
Phenomenal Feat in Afghanistan
With the help of industry, the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) had communications in one of the two headquarters in the heart of Afghanistan up and running in three months. The project began by scooping out the insides of a gymnasium then filling it with the e-guts of a first-rate joint operating center.
[Read more...]
SIGNAL Magazine Current Issue
November 2009
Focus: Battlespace Information Systems
No longer do fighting forces establish communications networks across their own realm. The battlefield has become the battlespace as joint operations dominate amid networked forces. Establishing and maintaining this connectivity is key to successful combat operations.
Focus: Information Technology Acquisition
Procuring information technology systems and capabilities is vital for a network-centric force. However, traditional acquisition approaches--difficult enough for mundane procurements--cannot work in the dynamic world of high technology. A greater reliance on commercial off-the-shelf capabilities and systems complicates the task even further.
Read these stories and more in the current issue of SIGNAL Magazine.
Next Month in SIGNAL Magazine
Focus: U.S. Navy Technologies
No military service may be more empowered-and more limited-by information technology than the U.S. Navy. The sea service relies on long-range communications and information systems for command and control of its projected power around the world. Enhancing the warfighting capabilities of this network-centric force depends on advances in communications and electronics technologies, and the Navy is pushing to implement them concurrent with new missions. SIGNAL Magazine's December issue looks at how the Navy is solving many of its challenges today and where it may be headed in the future.
Focus: Surveillance and Reconnaissance
Virtually any national security operation, from warfighting to peacekeeping, depends on good intelligence. And, good intelligence starts on the technical side with surveillance and reconnaissance. SIGNAL's second December focus is on new surveillance and reconnaissance technologies that promise vastly improved support to the warfighter.
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