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U.S. Military To Create Its Own Internet

Posted by timothy on from the milnet-II-means-handouts-for-contractors dept.

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."

3 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Re:well, prepare for a robocracy by tukkayoot · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A computer network isn't an AI, so I'm not sure what the problem is. The Internet and other computers/machines/devices have already pervaded modern society to such an extent that a malicious, sufficiently advanced AI could cause serious problems for us no matter what. Things like missle launch controls ideally should not be connected directly to the outside world in any manner, and hopefully that's not what's happening with this military network (I haven't RTFA yet). But this idea is useful, the only question to me, is if it's not terribly wasteful and if it's really necessary. A more closed, security-conscious network for global communications for use by the military makes sense, whether you are trying to protect yourself from human hackers or AI hackers. Though I would assume that an AI hacker would probably be able to defeat just about any highly digital security system.

    At least that's how I see it.

  2. Will the military never learn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is the military equivalent of saying "Here's a $200 billion program to Make The World A Better Place". As with so many other military programs, it throws insane quantities of money at a real problem, with a timeline so long that the solutions will be obsolete before they hit the field, without paying attention to recent successes.

    The most successful information sources to the troops in the field in Operation Iraqi Freedom were from agencies who left the alphabet soup of military interoperability acronyms behind, and built effective web interfaces (almost on the fly) which were ideal for their customers on the ground in Iraq.

    Army logistics tracking system allowed troops to request and track their re-supply orders via satellite phone as if it was FedEx. The smarter intel systems are looking to amazon.com style customer relationship management systems as the appropriate model.

    This was all taking place in an environment where laptop computers in the field were still considered "unauthorized" by the military (fortunately, an edict ignored by commanders). Some of the best Command and Control information systems used were improvised in the months before the war by a few smart techies at the Corp level out of necessity using COTS equipment, since none of the divisions in the initial action had been upgraded to trailers-full of "ruggedized" computer systems of the last multi-multi-billion dollar information system program, Force XXI.

    The military has to learn to embrace technological FLEXIBLITY and allow a Bazaar-style of advancement among it's agencies. _READ_ some of this GIG proposal... http://ges.dod.mil/articles/netcentric.htm
    if you were constrained to those "Common Operating Environment" mandates, and what will be thousands of pages of specifications and acronyms, you'd never want to develop a line of code again. And noone will, except for the half dozen programmers at over-priced defense contractors who will be well paid to live and breath these standards for the next 20 years.

    -bcg

  3. How about no. by Charcharodon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Not only no but hell no. Not even in my wildest dreams would I ever think that. Actually it would be nice to simply have access to some of the nicer things such as IM and the extra bandwidth a system upgrade would bring without worring about the few 100,000 hack attempts the main firewall gets every day.

    Anyone who thinks the military is as cool and ultramodern as on tv and the movies is an idiot. Let me put it in a more proper persective for you.

    Palm/retnal scanners...nope...
    Ultra fast internet connections, nope.
    Top of the line computers...sure....from 1998. Fiber optic networks...nope...coax and 10bT baby!
    Instant file recovery and easy to use multi department integrated data basses...in your dreams buddy.
    Super geek wunderman IT guys that maintain and protect our networks....hahahahahahahahahahhahaha..tears..haha hahahahahahahahahaha...tears.... Let's put it this way I got an email the other day asking me whether or not I had submitted my paperwork to have the email account I've been using for the last 5 years.
    Neeto torpeedo technical orders with revolving 3D diagrams of equipment and buildings with intergrated sensors that can be controlled remotely on a really cool laptop/palmtop....err no. Bust out the TO books and get a wagon...yes I said a wagon we use them to carry tools and the 30lbs of books we need to do our work.
    Sealed room containing an alien body...that one is true...well ok to be honest it's made out of rubber but it is in a SAR access only area... is that good enough?

    An all powerfull multi-branch force combining sentient software/hardware matrix that will destroy the world by taking over all the weapons in the military. No but I do have to run Adaware everday to clean off all the crap from people surfing the net and playing flash games on government computers to keep it from crashing when I check my email. Not quite as scary as Skynet, but it does annoy the piss out of me.