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more on Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 20:34:21 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Tom Gray <tom_gray_grc () yahoo com> Date: November 15, 2004 3:17:48 PM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War I attended conferecnes in the late 80s and early 90s where systems wiuth these capabilities were discussed. I specfically remember attending a IEEE Local Computer Networkks conference in which a panelist described how ATM could be used to bring battlefield images back to the Pentagon for the selection of a weapon. I was so non-military that I had to wait for the panelists explanation that weapon could mean an airplane etc. Thsi was in the era when people were predicting that IP would be replaced by ATM. In 1998 I saw a video from Dartmouth at an Autonomous Agents conference about the use of ad hoc networks and mobile agents to enable data communication between individual soldiers and headquarters for the purpose of commmand and control. Projects such as this have been going on for a long time. Obviously under different administrations from both parties and before the Project for a New American Century was written Tom Gray --- David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
Begin forwarded message: From: Andy Duff <andy.duff () edengene com> Date: November 15, 2004 5:50:06 AM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: RE: [IP] NYTimes.com Article: Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War Dave, Linkage? I recently re-read the "Project for a New American Century" document published in 2000. [The full document is at
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf]
In the light of Tim Weiner's article and Vint Cerf's comments, it's interesting to remember the original text in this document (which was the output of a team including Paul Wolfowitz in 2000): <<Over the next several decades, the United States must field a global system of missile defenses, divine ways to control the new "international commons" of space and cyberspace, and build new kinds of conventional forces for different strategic challenges and a new technological environment.>> From my own attendance at earlier days at ICANN conferences in 2001-2, the phrase <<the US must [...] divine ways to control the new "international commons" of [...] cyberspace>> rings particularly true. Tread softly... -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: 13 November 2004 05:02 To: Ip Subject: [IP] NYTimes.com Article: Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War November 13, 2004 By TIM WEINER 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." The American military, built to fight nations and armies, now faces stateless enemies without jets, tanks, ships or central headquarters. Sending secret intelligence and stratagems instantly to soldiers in battle would, in theory, make the military a faster, fiercer force against a faceless foe. 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 said. "And that's real power." Pentagon traditionalists, however, ask if net-centric warfare is nothing more than an expensive fad. They point to the street fighting in Falluja and Baghdad, saying firepower and armor still mean more than fiber optic cables and wireless connections. But the biggest challenge in building a war net may be the military bureaucracy. For decades, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have built their own weapons and traditions. A network, advocates say, would cut through those old ways. The ideals of this new warfare are driving many of the Pentagon's spending plans for the next 10 to 15 years. Some costs are secret, but billions have already been spent. Providing the connections to run the war net 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. Beyond that, 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,
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