buglerbilly
14-07-10, 01:26 AM
By KATE BRANNEN
Published: 13 Jul 2010 16:30
The U.S. Army has nearly tripled its stock of radios in 10 years, its chief information officer said July 13.
In 2000, the Army had roughly 365,000 radios. Today, the service has 919,052, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said at a Army breakfast in Arlington, Va. That's almost a radio per soldier, he said. Thanks to an effort to get more communications technologies to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the service has nearly doubled the types of radios it owns, from 11 in 2000 to 20 today, he said.
The explosion of radios is just one example of how the Army has changed the way it communicates on the battlefield.
U.S. Central Command's (CENTCOM) network bandwidth has also expanded dramatically, according to Sorenson's briefing. On Sept. 12, 2001, CENTCOM could draw 46 megabytes of data per second through its networks. By 2003, throughput had grown 50-fold to 2.3 gigabytes per second. In April 2010, it is estimated that CENTCOM was transferring 9.6 gigabytes per second in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Sorenson's slides.
The Army is wrestling with this growth in communications as it tries to modernize its information technologies and build an affordable tactical network that can be deployed overseas. Many of its current network programs and plans were devised at the beginning of the decade, when there were fewer systems, meaning fewer eventually needing to be replaced. It has also taken years for some of the Army's network programs to go from plans on paper to usable hardware.
The Army needs to change the way it develops its communications technologies so that it can better keep up with the commercial world, Sorenson said.
The Army has been building "comms" the way it builds tanks, taking the Army over five years to develop IT systems, according to his slides. U.S. Special Operations Command is able to do it faster, taking roughly two years to develop and field its communications technologies. The Joint Communications Support Element (JCSE), headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., is able to do it even faster, according to Sorenson, who said the Army needs to speed up its processes to match what these other organizations are able to do.
Unlike the commercial world, the Army has been focused on building systems that can handle different tasks, rather than developing applications for a "common operating environment," Sorenson said. This has led to every system needing its own power cable and its own power amplifier, filling up valuable space inside Army vehicles, he added.
To move away from this mindset, the Army recently launched "Apps for the Army," which has led to a number of pilot programs, including training, fitness and intelligence applications for devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Android.
Sorenson said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the vice chief of the Army, left July 13 for Fort Bliss, Texas, where he will observe a large-scale network demonstration exercise that is intended to help the Army refine its network acquisition strategy. Chiarelli is leading a servicewide network review, as well as a capability portfolio review of Army radios. To accomplish both, the Army is rethinking its requirements, as well as taking a close look at what it can afford.
Published: 13 Jul 2010 16:30
The U.S. Army has nearly tripled its stock of radios in 10 years, its chief information officer said July 13.
In 2000, the Army had roughly 365,000 radios. Today, the service has 919,052, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said at a Army breakfast in Arlington, Va. That's almost a radio per soldier, he said. Thanks to an effort to get more communications technologies to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the service has nearly doubled the types of radios it owns, from 11 in 2000 to 20 today, he said.
The explosion of radios is just one example of how the Army has changed the way it communicates on the battlefield.
U.S. Central Command's (CENTCOM) network bandwidth has also expanded dramatically, according to Sorenson's briefing. On Sept. 12, 2001, CENTCOM could draw 46 megabytes of data per second through its networks. By 2003, throughput had grown 50-fold to 2.3 gigabytes per second. In April 2010, it is estimated that CENTCOM was transferring 9.6 gigabytes per second in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Sorenson's slides.
The Army is wrestling with this growth in communications as it tries to modernize its information technologies and build an affordable tactical network that can be deployed overseas. Many of its current network programs and plans were devised at the beginning of the decade, when there were fewer systems, meaning fewer eventually needing to be replaced. It has also taken years for some of the Army's network programs to go from plans on paper to usable hardware.
The Army needs to change the way it develops its communications technologies so that it can better keep up with the commercial world, Sorenson said.
The Army has been building "comms" the way it builds tanks, taking the Army over five years to develop IT systems, according to his slides. U.S. Special Operations Command is able to do it faster, taking roughly two years to develop and field its communications technologies. The Joint Communications Support Element (JCSE), headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., is able to do it even faster, according to Sorenson, who said the Army needs to speed up its processes to match what these other organizations are able to do.
Unlike the commercial world, the Army has been focused on building systems that can handle different tasks, rather than developing applications for a "common operating environment," Sorenson said. This has led to every system needing its own power cable and its own power amplifier, filling up valuable space inside Army vehicles, he added.
To move away from this mindset, the Army recently launched "Apps for the Army," which has led to a number of pilot programs, including training, fitness and intelligence applications for devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Android.
Sorenson said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the vice chief of the Army, left July 13 for Fort Bliss, Texas, where he will observe a large-scale network demonstration exercise that is intended to help the Army refine its network acquisition strategy. Chiarelli is leading a servicewide network review, as well as a capability portfolio review of Army radios. To accomplish both, the Army is rethinking its requirements, as well as taking a close look at what it can afford.