Interesting to say the least;
Dr. Mordrid
Pentagon Plans God-like Internet
NewsMax Wire
Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004
Peter Teets, under secretary of the Air Force, has told Congress that a new military Internet being ramped up, 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,†according to a report in the NY Times.
Calling its secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG, the Pentagon concedes, however, that the project may consume two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build.
Providing the connections to run the war net, for instance, will cost at least $24 billion over the next five years -- more than the cost, in today’s dollars, of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Additionally, encrypting data will be a $5 billion project.
Hundreds of thousands of new radios are likely to cost $25 billion. Satellite systems for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications will add tens of billions.
All tallied, Pentagon documents suggest a bottom line of $200 billion -- to cover the war net’s hardware and software in the next decade or so.
Costs aside, there is plenty of enthusiasm for the project. "[It’s] possibly the single most transforming thing in our force," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said.
But as would be expected, there are detractors and skeptics as well.
Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a Pentagon consultant on the war net, said, “I want to make sure what we realize is vision and not hallucination. This is sort of like Star Wars, where the policy was, ‘Let’s go out and build this system,’ and technology lagged far behind. There’s nothing wrong with having ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with physics and reality.â€
Pentagon traditionalists point to the street fighting in Falluja and Baghdad -- saying firepower and armor still mean more than fiber optic cables and wireless connections.
Also in the mix: the potential for the super Net to cut through the bureaucracies of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines – proud branches that have traditionally built their own weapons and traditions. A network, advocates say, would cut through those old ways.
Advocates like Robert J. Stevens, chief executive of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s biggest military contractor, said he envisioned a “highly secure Internet in which military and intelligence activities are fused,†shaping 21st-century warfare in the way that nuclear weapons shaped the cold war.
Every member of the military would have “a picture of the battle space, a God’s-eye view,†he added. “And that’s real power.â€
Pro or con, the ideals of this new warfare are reportedly driving many of the Pentagon’s spending plans for the next 10 to 15 years. The grail: sending secret intelligence and stratagems instantly to soldiers in battle, making the military a faster, fiercer force against a faceless foe.
NewsMax Wire
Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004
Peter Teets, under secretary of the Air Force, has told Congress that a new military Internet being ramped up, 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,†according to a report in the NY Times.
Calling its secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG, the Pentagon concedes, however, that the project may consume two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build.
Providing the connections to run the war net, for instance, will cost at least $24 billion over the next five years -- more than the cost, in today’s dollars, of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Additionally, encrypting data will be a $5 billion project.
Hundreds of thousands of new radios are likely to cost $25 billion. Satellite systems for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications will add tens of billions.
All tallied, Pentagon documents suggest a bottom line of $200 billion -- to cover the war net’s hardware and software in the next decade or so.
Costs aside, there is plenty of enthusiasm for the project. "[It’s] possibly the single most transforming thing in our force," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said.
But as would be expected, there are detractors and skeptics as well.
Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a Pentagon consultant on the war net, said, “I want to make sure what we realize is vision and not hallucination. This is sort of like Star Wars, where the policy was, ‘Let’s go out and build this system,’ and technology lagged far behind. There’s nothing wrong with having ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with physics and reality.â€
Pentagon traditionalists point to the street fighting in Falluja and Baghdad -- saying firepower and armor still mean more than fiber optic cables and wireless connections.
Also in the mix: the potential for the super Net to cut through the bureaucracies of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines – proud branches that have traditionally built their own weapons and traditions. A network, advocates say, would cut through those old ways.
Advocates like Robert J. Stevens, chief executive of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s biggest military contractor, said he envisioned a “highly secure Internet in which military and intelligence activities are fused,†shaping 21st-century warfare in the way that nuclear weapons shaped the cold war.
Every member of the military would have “a picture of the battle space, a God’s-eye view,†he added. “And that’s real power.â€
Pro or con, the ideals of this new warfare are reportedly driving many of the Pentagon’s spending plans for the next 10 to 15 years. The grail: sending secret intelligence and stratagems instantly to soldiers in battle, making the military a faster, fiercer force against a faceless foe.
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