COTS communications technologies for DoD applications: challenges and limitations

This paper addresses the issue of applying commercial communications technologies to military applications. The military community is moving toward 'network-centric operations', wherein the force fundamentally depends on the communications network. This transformation to a network-centric fighting force is predicated on the ability to achieve an Internet-like network capability in operational areas, referred hereafter as a tactical Internet. This paper first introduces the key underlying needs that commercial technologies and techniques are expected to meet, from a tactical Internet perspective. This paper then presents a series of technical issues that must be considered when integrating these technologies into a tactical Internet. Issues addressed in this paper include robustness to interference (both intentional and unintentional), covertness, security, scalability, and support for end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS). This paper then goes on to discuss the future role of commercial technologies in tomorrow's network centric paradigm.