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| Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War |
| 2004-11-14 |
| The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future. The goal is to give all American commanders and troops a moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats - "a God's-eye view" of battle. This "Internet in the sky," Peter Teets, under secretary of the Air Force, told Congress, would allow "marines in a Humvee, in a faraway land, in the middle of a rainstorm, to open up their laptops, request imagery" from a spy satellite, and "get it downloaded within seconds." The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG. Conceived six years ago, its first connections were laid six weeks ago. It may take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build the new war net and its components. Skeptics say the costs are staggering and the technological hurdles huge. Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a Pentagon consultant on the war net, said he wondered if the military's dream was realistic. "I want to make sure what we realize is vision and not hallucination," Mr. Cerf said. "This is sort of like Star Wars, where the policy was, 'Let's go out and build this system,' and technology lagged far behind,'' he said. "There's nothing wrong with having ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with physics and reality." Advocates say networked computers will be the most powerful weapon in the American arsenal. Fusing weapons, secret intelligence and soldiers in a globe-girdling network - what they call net-centric warfare - will, they say, change the military in the way the Internet has changed business and culture. "Possibly the single most transforming thing in our force,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, "will not be a weapons system, but a set of interconnections." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #11 Call it STAR WARS, SPAWAR, SATWAR, or GLOBAL MISSLE DEFENSE, etc. the bottom line is IT WORKS, AND DUBYA IS PROCEEDING FULL STEAM AHEAD. International [now Global] Leftism-Socialism-Communism-Progressives dev their anti-USA 2020 max timeline and are running scared because Dubya, America, and GMD is about to their only and greatest ace, the NUCLEAR BULLY STICK, as OBSOLETE, IRRELEVANT, AND DEAD AS THE DODO, ALL BUT OFFICIALLY GUARANTEEING THE EARTH/TERRA FIRMA BELONGS TO AMERICA AND WESTERN DEMOCRACY-CAPITALISM! This is why the Left are tripping all over themselves, inverting and perverting and converting and subverting anyone and everyone, anything and everything, mis-informing and disinforming, to FORCE AMERICA UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM, i.e. COMMUNISM, and "SOCIALIST" OWG BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, AND BY 2020 BEFORE AMERICAN GMD AND AMERICAN BATTLESPACE DOMINANCE AND STILL EXPANDING AMERICAN HYPERPOWER-PLUS AND AMERICAN/US-STYLE GLOBAL CONSUMERISM GETS TOO STRONG FOR ANYONE ANDOR EVERYONE TO RESIST! Communism = Islam/Rad Islam > BETTER FOR EVERYONE TO FAIL, OR BE DESTROYED, THAN FOR SOCIALISM, includ FAITH/GOD-BASED SOCIALISM, TO LOSE FACE OR POWER! Gorbachevism > iff the East can not be brought up to the standards of the West, the West will be brought down to the standards of the East - IOW, COMMUNISM/LEFTSOCIALISM WILL WIN BY LOSING AGS AMERICA, NOT WIN BY WINNING! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2004-11-14 9:38:07 PM |
| #10 If you're designing for a limited user base, you can get really fascist about things - hard encryption end-to-end, for example, and a specialized TCP/IP protocol that drops unauthorized (unticketed) packets at the first switch they hit while setting alarm flags fingering the transmitting IP. Might even be able to get physical coordinates of peepers... |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-11-14 8:19:20 PM |
| #9 Build the onion, peel the onion, build the onion, peel the onion... TCP/IP, to the great surprise of its Parc Place inventor, just flat works. Amazing fact, that. Stephen - mebbe they just didn't want to take a meeting... and another... and another... etc. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-11-14 8:13:55 PM |
| #8 There are some interesting implications to this. Will this system talk to a differ system-ie,the similar system the EU wants to build. Will the US export military equipment that has the system? It looks like military planners believe US in future will fight alone,and bring in allies to handle rebuilding/reconstruction/peace-keeping. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2004-11-14 8:05:00 PM |
| #7 I hope none of it runs under Windows ... it would be *very bad* if it got hacked. |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2004-11-14 7:12:13 PM |
| #6 I'm sure to NYT reporter the internet is like magic, but to anyone who understands it, its remarkably simple. Its power is its simplicity. I think the clever and high risk things are what they intend to do with it, not the network itself. BTW, I believe the "Any sufficiently advanced technology .." predates ACC. I think it used to be called the Harvard Law. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-11-14 6:59:00 PM |
| #5 Someone needs to take Vint Cerf aside and 'splain to him that the first set of intercepter missiles for "Star Wars" are on line. Not that he'd listen. It's more important to have the important position, politically, than have the least bit grasp on the facts. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-11-14 4:23:28 PM |
| #4 "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke |
| Posted by: Darth VAda 2004-11-14 3:02:18 PM |
| #3 Is there a Rantburg portal for this beast? |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2004-11-14 2:41:13 PM |
| #2 "Internet in the sky," Uh, you mean SkyNet? I'm headed to the Mexican desert. |
| Posted by: beer_me 2004-11-14 2:37:46 PM |
| #1 Who said that at some point technology is indistinguishable from magic? ... I read it and cannot but notice parallels with Mahabharata and some parts of Vedic Shastras. |
| Posted by: Cornīliës 2004-11-14 2:37:41 PM |