U.S. Military To Create Its Own Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times today reports 'The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future. ... The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG. Conceived six years ago, its first connections were laid six weeks ago. It may take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build ...' Members of a consortium formed 9/28 include Boeing; Cisco Systems; Factiva (Dow Jones and Reuters); General Dynamics; Hewlett-Packard; Honeywell; I.B.M.; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Northrop Grumman; Oracle; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems."

Comments

So

[dmomo]

You just need one computer on there internet that's connected to one computer on "our" Internet, then it's one network; i.e. the Internet!

Will history repeat itself?

[toetagger1]

"Its Worldwide Military Command and Control System, built in the 1960's, often failed in crises. A $25 billion successor, Milstar, was completed in 2003 after two decades of work. Pentagon officials say it is already outdated: more switchboard than server, more dial-up than broadband, it cannot support 21st-century technology.

And they honestly don't think it will be the same storry again this time?

Long time...

[FiReaNGeL]

If it takes two decades to build, will it be relevant/secure/useful when completed? Where were we two decades ago? With the ever-evoluting nature of tech, I sure hope they planned ahead...

In anyway, it'll sure be costly. From the article :

"Providing the connections to run the war net will cost at least $24 billion over the next five years - more than the cost, in today's dollars, of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Beyond that, encrypting data will be a $5 billion project."

That's just the running cost, not the hardware/implementation cost (which may rise up to 200 billions). How many social problems could we cure/relief with that kind of money in the world? I know War = Power, but Kindness = Respect too. Yeah, I live in Canada.

Nothing new...Just repackaged!

[beaststwo]

DOD and some of the services already run their own "Internets" and have for many years. This is another round of building that great new network that will be the ultimate IT answer for the next few eternities (Note: in reality, 1 eternity unit is roughly about 6 months of human time).

What they haven't addressed is how this great network will be used to better defend the nation or reduce the cost of doing so.

Paul Strassman, a regular columnist for Computerworld, often presents studies of profitability of companies that heavily invest in IT versus those that don't. His studies tend to indicate that comapnies that invest larger percentages of sales tend to have lower profit margins, indicating that perhaps those companies are investing in technology in ways that aren't optimal.

Why should Government be any different? Didn't President Eisenhower warn about the "Defense-Industrial Complex" and the risk of Government buying non-optimal stuff to assist industry profit margins. So why should large-dollar Government-Industry partnerships be any more effiecient than what Paul Strassman sees in the private sector?

Re:Dupe!

[nicnak]

Although it's funny to say that this is just a rehashing of the creation of DARPA net again, it's going to be more than that.

The US military has seen what their creation has turned into with the internet and now they want to be able to leverage that for their own use. But at the same time they have seen how a robust system like the internet can still be overwhelmed by DOS attacks and worms/viri. In order to have a system that they can be sure will not be compromized when they need it most, they are forced to create a seperate system.

However even with trying to create a completely seperate network they will run into problems. Satallites could be shot down. Microwave links could be jammed. Encryption could be broken and misinformation could be injected to the network.

Given the current state of incompetence in the armed forces, I can assure you that this project will be late and over budget, and will not accomplish all the things they want it to.

Oh well, that seems to be the status quo in the US.

Re:Deja Vu

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Then they can safely shutdown "our" Internet. No more discovering stolen elections, or Fallujah casualties in the U.S.S.A.

A Small-Scale Version of this Already Exists

[Dak RIT]

The military already has its own, albeit extremely slow, internet it calls "SIPRNET" (it's basically a secure network that spans the entire globe where the US Military is, and only handles classified information). The US Military actually uses two networks on the battlefield at the same time, NIPRNET (connected to the Internet), and SIPRNET, which is only for classified information.

The NYT article talked about how soldiers of the future will have a "bird's eye view" of the battlefield in their own HMMWV, although something similar exists today as well. There are a few competing programs in the military right now, such as C2PC, which allow commanders and other soldiers to monitor in real time the location of friendly and enemy units, as well as sorties, terrain, etc. (although the location of enemy units of course isn't 100% accurate). Many many HMMWVs in Iraq right now (I drove a HMMWV in Iraq with this installed) have basic systems installed so that commanders and troops can monitor the same information on a battlefield in real time and coordinate with one another.

I'm sure this new system will be far more advanced and provide much more detailed information than the current one, but don't think that soldiers don't have some of this technology right now either.

Re:Dupe!

[Nutria]

Any military success we have is by brute force and a whole lot of money.

Pretty much all military success by brute force and a whole lot of money.

I can guarantee you, though, that if the 1944-era US military had to take Falluja, the city would be rubble, and all of the civillians would be dead or refugees.