Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 91

FIXING NETWORKS

Army communications architecture
slides often show the UAS with lightning
bolts linking a platoon to a company to a
battalion to a brigade, and some even to
a division. Normally, these slides show
one representative platoon, although
actually there are many, and it would be
some kind of extraordinary platoon that
would operate on the division’s network.
Such connectivity would need preplanning in order to program all the radios
required to relay the signal (without
exceeding the capacity of the network).
Recall that with the short range of the
networking radios, there is no single
unifying network, only local networks
operating on their own frequencies. In
a three-brigade division, there could
be twenty-one battalions, eighty-four
companies, and two hundred fifty-two
platoons. This would require a substantial allocation of the available UASs to
be dedicated to relay company, battalion,
and division networks.
This presents a large problem set.
However, the scale and scope of the
problem may often be glossed over in
the reputed solution because even if a
super-communication UAS is developed that relays multiple frequencies at
once, it will still be subject to the same
duration and weather constraints and
would be vulnerable to counter-UAS. In
addition, there is still the limitation of
carrying the network’s capacity, which
would be challenged to support the
number of radios required by a company’s network, let alone a division’s.
A soldier uses a digital Rifleman radio, part
of the Joint Tactical Radio System Handheld,
Manpack, and Small-form Fit (HMS) program,
during a network integration evaluation 8 April
2014. The HMS program provides a radio
waveform-enabled “gateway” between the Rifleman radio and the Army’s satellite communications backbone, known as the Warfighter
Information Network-Tactical.
(Photo by Claire Schwerin, PEO C3T, U.S. Army)

MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

89