more on Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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,
=== message truncated ===



                
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