Military Communicators

In this essay in SIGNAL Magazine, I present an overview of Named Data Networks (NDN) and some of their advantages. The military’s vision for the 21st-century battlefield calls for the use of manned and unmanned systems, sensing and sharing information across a joint multidomain collection of weapon systems, to outpace near-peer adversary’s targeting cycle. These systems presumably will have unique communication interfaces, come into and out of range of other systems. They may also be degraded or destroyed over time. Traditional TCP/IP network architectures will struggle with these challenges. Therefore, as the Defense Department develops a vision for connecting these platforms, it should consider adopting NDN solutions.