Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DARPA Looks To Adaptive Battlefield Wireless Nets

Posted by Zonk on from the was-a-boring-conversation-anyway dept.

An anonymous reader passed us a NetworkWorld link about an effort at DARPA to succeed in combat through networking. The idea is to keep soldiers in a position of informational superiority through a tactical radio network that would 'link' everyone together on the battlefield. "Project WAND, for Wireless Adaptive Network Development, will exploit commercial radio components, rather than custom ones, and use a variety of software techniques and algorithms, many of them only just now emerging in mature form. These $500 walkie-talkie-size radios will form large-scale, peer-to-peer ad hoc nets, which can shift frequencies, sidestep interference, and handle a range of events that today completely disrupt wireless communications ... [right now] 'The average soldier on the ground doesn't have a radio,' says Jason Redi, principle scientist for BBN's network technologies group, and the man overseeing the software work. Radios are reserved for platoon and company commanders, in part because of their cost: typically $15,000 to $20,000 each, with vehicle-mounted radios reaching $80,000."

5 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Re:not here yet by crowbarsarefornerdyg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And public safety. It'll make communications a lot easier if we can use our handhelds, and have it eventually retransmitted to our dispatch center rather than having to run back to the truck to ask for an air ambulance or whatever. There are times that you just can't leave a patient.

    --
    "Slapping lipstick on a pig does NOT make it Natalie Portman. Paris Hilton, maybe, but not Portman." - UncleTogie
  2. Re:Is This Like The $5,000 Hammer? by timmarhy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    you must suck at maths - unlike the army, Abdul doesn't need a mobile phone base station for each bomb.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  3. Re:This will teach them not to enlist by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Salary of a geek browsing slashdot most of the time - $100K
    Cost of a radio - $15K
    Saving an american life on a battlefield - priceless. Isn't it??? Saving any life on a battlefield - priceless. Isn't it???

    FTFY
    --
    Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
  4. More gear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Sounds like even more gear for the poor infantryman to carry around in the 130F heat.

    Hooah

  5. Re:Electronic Warfare by HateBreeder · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That is just silly.

    The point of encryption is not to make the signal seem like background noise - if that were the case, it would most certainly be impossible to decrypt it without losing data (since some background noise would have to sneak in).

    An Encrypted link, means that the data payload is encrypted. But the encapsulating packet is still very much ordinary.

    --
    Sigs are for the weak.