
Published in Military Embedded Systems
By Dominic Perez
The need to enable rapid deployment capabilities for the warfighter is driving increased demand for resilient and secure communication systems in dynamic environments. Recent conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere have reinforced what U.S. Department of Defense leaders have known for several years: that command posts have to be mobile to be survivable. They must be distributed over different areas and be able to set up rapidly for information-sharing and decision support without putting the post in jeopardy as an easily identifiable target on a map. The opportunity now: fielding turnkey, easy-to-use unified network operations that operate optimally on the move in the toughest deployment environments.
In the future, while there will certainly still be some larger fixed-infrastructure command posts, they won’t be located in close proximity to the tactical edge as they were in previous operations. The U.S. military needs to move beyond building and architecting a network that is fixed and must instead build mobile networks. The U.S. Army has been deploying mobile network systems, integrating them into vehicle platforms, and testing and validating their operation on the move, not just on legacy platforms, but on modern and planned platforms as well.
New mobile command posts at the tactical edge will deliver numerous benefits, such as eliminating the need to construct buildings, temporary structures, and tents. Beyond their use on ground-vehicle platforms, the mobile network will work on aviation, naval, and soldier-carried platforms to enable communication, networking, and data processing at the tactical edge while on the move. No longer will command posts need to remain static.
No matter how low the probability of intercept and detection (LPI/LPD), powering electronics up in a static location is like sending up a flare to sophisticated opponents. While adversaries may not be able to decrypt data traffic, they can zero in on the electronic signature from a static command post.