Fundamental Research Policy for the Digital Battlefield

The Department of Defense is looking to commercial information technologies to meet its needs for digitization equipment. The commercial marketplace has shown responsiveness and agility in meeting the growing civilian demands for robust, reliable, and ubiquitous communications. Many of these technologies are of direct use or can be leveraged to develop systems for the military. But although commercial systems are advancing rapidly, it is not clear that they will meet all military needs, especially those of the Army. Evolving Army warfighting concepts for Force XXI and Army After Next rely heavily on dispersed and mobile forces, connected by reliable, secure, high-speed, and high-capacity communications networks. Operational success of these concepts will depend on the pace of technology. This study examines the ability of the commercial marketplace to meet the future needs of the Army on the tactical battlefield. A framework is developed linking the Army's future operational capabilities to system design tradeoffs. This framework is then used to examine how well commercial systems can meet Army needs. We find, using this methodology, that commercial wireless systems will not meet the Army's future needs, and the Army needs to trade off requirements with future investments in research and Army-unique systems.