[Milsurplus] Global Information Grid

[Brian McQueen]

Oh my gosh!!!  Will Al Gore help invent this as well???

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Nickels" <w9ran at oneradio.net>
To: <milpack at yahoogroups.com>; "Mil Surplus List"
<milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2004 11:48 AM
Subject: [Milsurplus] Global Information Grid


> I thought this would be of interest to some here.   And when it doesn't
> work, there will always be HF radio!
>
> 73, Bob W9RAN
>
>
> NEW YORK (AFP) - The Pentagon which invented the precursor to the Internet
> 40 years ago, has laid the first connections for a secure, wireless
> information network that proponents say will fundamentally transform
> warfare, a US newspaper reported.
>
> Estimates are that the Global Information Grid will cost 200 billion
dollars
> in the next decade alone, but take two decades to complete, the New York
> Times said.   The new network would fuse US military and intelligence
> services into a unified system and make volumes of information instantly
> available to soldiers on the battlefield, the Times said.   Every member
of
> the military would have "a God's-eye view" of the battlefield, said Robert
> Stevens, chief executive of top US military contractor Lockheed Martin
> Corporation.   Proponents say it will become the most lethal weapon in the
> US arsenal and change the military and warfare the way the Internet
changed
> business and culture.
>
> The system would allow "marines in a Humvee, in a faraway land, in the
> middle of a rainstorm, to open up their laptops, request imagery" from a
spy
> satellite, and "get it downloaded within seconds," Peter Teets, under
> secretary of the Air Force, told Congress, according to the Times.  The
> effort faces staggering technological hurdles.  Vint Cerf, one of the
> inventors of the Internet, is now a consultant to the Pentagon on the
> project. "I want to make sure what we realize is vision and not
> hallucination," he told the Times.   "This is sort of like Star Wars,
where
> the policy was, 'Let's go out and build this system,' and technology
lagged
> far behind," he said. "There's nothing wrong with having ambitious goals.
> You just need to temper them with physics and reality."
> The military has twice before tried to build information networks for the
> military.
>
> The 1960s-era Worldwide Military Command and Control System often failed
in
> crises. A 25-billion-dollar successor completed in 2003 is already
outdated.
> Pentagon scientists invented the systems that became the Internet starting
> four decades ago but the Internet leapt forward once it emerged in the
world
> of commerce a decade ago. The war net is "an attempt to catch up," Cerf
> said.  Military contractors and information-technology innovators formed a
> consortium to develop the war net on September 28, the Times said.
> The group includes Boeing, Cisco Systems, General Dynamics,
Hewlett-Packard,
> Honeywell, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Oracle,
> Raytheon, and Sun Microsystems.
>
>
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