Posted on 11/13/2004 8:50:11 AM PST by 4kevin
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at us.rd.yahoo.com ...
Such as preventing SPAM from infiltrating... :)
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 Laws of Physics are always enforced, unfortunately. The GIG will not be an easy nut to crack.
BTW, I once heard that the term "Surfing the Net" was really "Cerfing the Net" as in Vint Cerf. Was I dreaming?
5.56mm
And how would this prevent a nut with a car bomb from killing our troops? Don't forget the basics and get caught up in all the toys.
This is based on a 1970 Multihop Packet Radio Network idea called ALOHA, developed at the University of Hawai by Norman Abramson. http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/a/al/alohanet.html
Cool -- I'm ready to open my account!
-eventually cable companies go away...
air cooled, gas operated, magazine fed...
I thought Algore invented the Internet?
Not to wee-wee on anybody's parade but wasn't this thing sorta, kinda what the Terminator or Matrix flix were about???
Don't let the UN get this system after we've developed it.
We should also have the key to destruct in place if need be.
Willie Green is deeply saddened for all the copper industry workers.
better hurry and let them know.
book mark
had a pretty haunting "vision" of this sort of thing myself about ten years ago.
lesseee... if it takes 2 decades to build, and another decade for business to push it into the nooks and crannies of everyday life -- for our own good and convenience, of course -- I guess I might be about dead by the time my every breath is recorded and Orwell starts spinning in his grave [whew]. My poor kids, though....
Can we believe anything from these guys??
they gave us GPS and that works real good...
I wouldnt hold my breath for this. OSD bureaucrats hired an army of dot-bomb refugees to develop the architecture and implementation plans. People who are clueless about the type of warfare and conditions that our troops are experiencing in Iraq right now.
One of their chief architects 'retired' from MCI/Worldcom (afte they went bankrupt)
Marine and Army combat units are NOT clueless ISP customers. Unfortunately, I think that, like most monlithic OSD-bureaucracy directed "joint" programs, it will be 300% over budget while delivering 30% of it's desired capability.
-R
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