Military Message Systems: Current Status and Future Directions

The need for timely message delivery coupled with decreasing computer costs is causing message handling in the Department of Defense to be increasingly automated. This paper describes the functional, security, and performance requirements of automated military message systems. In light of these requirements, four operational message systems are compared and contrasted. A summary of results is presented for the Military Message Experiment, a study of the military utility of automated message systems. The usefulness of advanced software engineering technology, especially the family methodology, is explored for military message automation. Finally, several trends and research issues in military message handling are identified.