Activities of the Joint Fiber Optic Working Group (JFOWG)

It is only in the last year that deployment to the US military has occurred of a large scale production, airborne platform extensively utilizing optical fiber for data networking. This will launch the military into still broader application of optical communications to meet its ever increasing bandwidth needs. For over twenty years, the copper wiring experts have been meeting as a Wiring Action Group to identify reliability, maintainability, and availability issues. For the last five years, a sister group, the Fiber Optics Working Group, has been meeting to address similar issues, but focused on optical communications. This paper provides background on the JFOWG and clarifies the benefits that it brings to the US Navy