Future Directions for the Connected Battlefield
Already registered? Click here to login now!
On the modern connected battlefield, dispersed forces, sensors, weapons, and command systems become a highly coordinated network. Wireless connectivity confers the advantage of compressing the time between sensing targets and acting on them.
Connectivity in warfare means:
- Faster decision making
- Greater situational awareness
- Distributed operations
- Faster sensor-to-shooter loops
In this Future Directions webinar, we’ll examine some of the technology trends that are driving the overall shift from the dated paradigm of “tactical radios” to a resilient and heterogeneous wireless fabric that links personnel, vehicles, drones, sensors, weapons, and command systems, even when an enemy is actively trying to disrupt the network.
Rather than following a hub-and-spoke networking model, battlefield networks are moving to a self-forming, self-healing mesh architecture with nodes that double as users and relays and routes that dynamically change as platforms move, change, or vanish.
Ultimately, military communications systems are moving toward a battlefield RF system that simultaneously communicates, senses the spectrum, detects adversary emitters and adapts its own waveform/antenna in real time. Communications, electronic warfare (EW), and sensing are converging into a single network architecture.
In addition to topics related to network fabrics, discussion topics might include:
- How 5G cellular technology might fit into the mix
- The role of cognitive and/or AI-driven spectrum management
- How networks will cope with jamming and provide low-intercept-probability communications
- The role of phased arrays and other electronically steered antennas in more spatially distributed and RF-congested environments
- The transformation of drones into flying network infrastructure vs. simple endpoints
- Terrestrial and satellite networks melding into a single architecture
- The growing role of distributed edge AI for denied, disconnected, intermittent and limited (D-DIL) environments
- The exploding proliferation of sensors and the resulting flood of RF traffic
- Commercial RF technology making its way into military systems
