The Armys Bandwidth Bottleneck

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study, which was prepared for the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the House Committee on Armed Services, examines the issue of how much bandwidth will be required to achieve the goal of digitization (the bandwidth demand) versus how much bandwidth will be provided by the Armys planned communications programs (the bandwidth supply). CBO finds that significant shortfalls currently exist for the Army in the supply of bandwidth. Moreover, under the services current plans, demand will continue to exceed supply beyond 2010after the Army begins fielding its next generation of advanced radios and other communications equipment. The study examines several options that would improve the future match between bandwidth supply and demand. However, in keeping with CBOs mandate to provide impartial analysis, this report makes no recommendations.