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The digital technology on display at last week's SGI Defense Summit in Arlington, Va., would give soldiers perhaps their most important weapon: information.
The digital technology on display at last week's SGI Defense Summit in Arlington, Va., would give soldiers perhaps their most important weapon: information.
Defense Department officials at the event wanted to know how the technology can be used in the war in Afghanistan and how soon it could get into the hands of warfighters.
'As I watched the wonderful display of technology, I wondered, how do I get that to my warriors?' said Dave Borland, deputy CIO of the Army. 'How do we get the right amount of bandwidth when we need it?'
The summit, 'From Sensor to Shooter: Providing the Warfighter with Mission-Critical Information in Real Time,' sponsored by SGI Federal of Silver Spring, Md., brought out hundreds of industry executives and Defense officials. On display was technology to link command and control operations with sensor, communications and weapons systems into a single architecture.
Borland said the Army is working on how to fit so much information into a finite system. One way to get more bandwidth, he said, is the Joint Tactical Radio System, for which the Army recently issued a request for proposals. JTRS uses high-capacity, programmable, multiband and multimode tactical radios for flexibility, upgradeability and interoperability among the services.
Another area in which the Army will see some technological advances, Borland said, is the Warfighter Information Network'Tactical, the Army's tactical telecommunications infrastructure.
The RFP for WIN-T is scheduled to go out in March.
WIN-T is intended to provide command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that are mobile, secure, rugged, seamless and capable of supporting multimedia tactical systems.
The Navy preserves its bandwidth through the Teleport program, which links the service to the Defense Information System Network, said Rear Adm. Nancy Brown, director of the space, information warfare, command and control division.
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