New high-tech US Army
The US Army is modernizing and building a high-tech army using completely new methods. Exercises on the new maneuvering scheme began on November 18, 2011, at the White Sands Missile Range training ground. The Pentagon plans to test the network integration of the units of a completely new concept - the NIE program - for three weeks.This program is a very bold innovative step that no army in the world has decided to take. NIE, introducing commercial network technologies of the combat command and control system, thereby expanding the capabilities of the troops. The constant introduction of scientific, advanced technology allows relatively cheap and fast to create military networks. These modern methods Pentagon plans to modernize the army. At the moment, the development of new types of weapons, construction, design and testing of new technologies takes a huge amount of time and requires substantial financial injections and human resources. Considering that in most cases, the troops receive reliable, expensive, but, unfortunately, already obsolete, useless, tens of thousands of combat units that do not meet the modern requirements of warfare. For example, consider the situation with Joint Tactical Radio (JTRS), a promising once radio system has been developed for more than fifteen years, constantly being adjusted to the current and future needs of the army, which will most likely leave JTRS at this level of development for many more of the year.
A fundamentally different method of development is laid down in the NIE program. The base architecture and platform upgrade kits, small “upgrades” will be built as quickly as possible. Thereby, the US Army avoids the incompatibility of new programs, network protocols, security systems, interfaces and terminals with the military equipment of the previous generation.
In the near future, the NIE program will be evaluated on the suitability of heterogeneous communication and network capabilities for working with them the military units of the US Army. The exercises, codenamed NIE 12.1, will test important features of the new concept: control of combat units during movement and network expansion up to one soldier. In addition, for the first time it is planned to test a phased increase in the capabilities of the combat network, connecting as many new elements and various equipment as necessary.
The second brigade of the armored division equipped with 50 types of various communication devices, information systems, computers, sensors, etc. will be involved in the tests. In addition, each platoon owns a different set of devices, combined tactical combat network WIN-T.
The United States Army is one of the first to verify the integration of various devices by combining them with a set of modern software that will assemble them into one functioning combat network. If successful, a new direction will emerge for the construction of a high-tech army, which will be much more convenient than the previous goal - building one device for all occasions, which is a much more difficult task than the one proposed. This will be a breakthrough, an example can be considered the emergence of GPS, when hundreds of fighters replaced a hundred bombers, without losing the effectiveness of performing combat missions.
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