Projecting military needs into commercial standards

The author uses universal personal telecommunications (UPT) as an example of how the Department of Defense (DoD) is communicating its needs to commercial standard bodies. The traditional approach to buying commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products is to wait for industry to develop commercial standards for UPT and then for industry to offer UPT products. Rather than wait and buy only a limited number of suitable COTS UPT products that result from the tail-end of the traditional approach, DoD recognized that it would be more logical to influence the front-end of the process, that is, the development of commercial standards from which industry builds its UPT products. The Joint Telecommunications Standards Steering Group, which consists of representatives from the Joint Staff, the military services, and the defense agencies, is the DoD focal point for telecommunications