Trends in military communications

It is noted that the major trend in military command and control systems is toward distributed systems to provide greater survivability against physical and electronic attacks. This also makes possible the sharing of computer resources and data. Distributed architectures involve physical dispersion and functional distribution; that is multiple command and control nodes are dispersed to complicate enemy detection and targeting, are interconnected to allow sharing of command and control responsibilities, and are reconfigurable in the event of losses. One approach to promoting network survivability using existing resources is to exploit multimedia links to provide redundancy, both in available channels and in types of media, over the entire electromagnetic spectrum to ensure connectivity and avoid or overcome both natural and man-made interference. Also considered is the use of artificial intelligence/expert systems. An expert system built into the radio would monitor the various radio subsystems; using appropriate rules and a suitable database, it would control the selection of the adaptive techniques available