New Applications Emerge Courtesy of Battlefield Users

Warfighters in the field are exploring new uses for commercial technologies and capabilities. Activities such as chat, web portal access and texting are driving development of new systems and improved capabilities. Jeffrey Kroon, director, network waveforms, Harris Corporation, told a MILCOM 2010 Tuesday afternoon panel that many more emergent applications are likely to appear in the near term. "Collaboration tools are being used on the SIPRNET [secret Internet protocol router network] that we haven't seen. People are getting pretty clever about them." As these warfighters expand the menu of communications applications, network designers have an obligation to not complicate their efforts. Kroon warned against adding complexity to fielding the network. "You have to do everything you can to make the network easier to deploy," he stated. "People trying to win the fight do not need a high level of complexity for setting up the network."