Military communications [Guest Editorial]

Modern military communications systems continue to face a number of unique challenges not present in commercial enterprises. These challenges include among other things, operating in contested environments, low bandwidth communications links, unpredictable topological changes, and the need for special priority and security level considerations. In the face of these challenges, there is a need to leverage and build upon the explosive information technology advances being made in the commercial markets. This Feature Topic explores an interesting and important crosssection of topics along these lines, spanning communications layers from physical, through networking and higher layer IT services.