Abstract :
In striving to meet the increasing demands for timely delivery of multimedia information to the warfighter of the 21st Century, the US Army is undergoing a gradual evolution from its "legacy" communications networks to a flexible internetwork architecture based solidly on the underlying communications protocols and technology of the commercial Internet. The framework for this new digitized battlefield, as described in the DoDʹs Joint Technical Architecture (JTA), is taken from the civilian telecommunications infrastructure which, in many cases, differs appreciably from the rigors of the battlefield environment. The purpose of this paper is to survey the components and characteristics of the Armyʹs legacy communications networks, to illustrate the directions currently being taken for accomplishing this digitization, to describe the areas in which the civilian and military systems differ, and to define a glide path for convergence of the two technologies in support of the militaryʹs increasing appetite for information.
