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Suppose you are supporting an early entry Global Response Force (GRF) mission; which network equipment would you rather fly in with: two large sheltered vehicles that take up critical cargo space in your C-17 aircraft, or a few carry-on transit cases that provide 12 times the bandwidth?
Continuing to inform requirements and seek solutions for light-weight, expeditionary networking gear for the GRF, the Army recently demonstrated a new modular suite of expeditionary communication equipment that provides increased bandwidth with significant size, weight and power (SWaP) reductions.
"As a GRF unit, what we take with us is critically analyzed because whatever we take, we have to leave something else behind," said Cpt. Alan Adame, C Company commander, 127th Engineering Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, a GRF unit . "If you take a vehicle with a shelter and it tows a mounted generator trailer, then that is potentially cutting off an artillery piece, a military intelligence piece, a radar piece; something else is being excluded from the fight [to make room on the plane for that equipment]."
The Army conducted the operational proof-of-concept expeditionary Signal Modernization (SigMod) capability demonstration at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in mid-March, in support of the current 82nd Airborne Division operational needs statement requirements. Soldiers from the 127th Engineering Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division, executed the demonstration at three geographically separated locations to see how these new scalable SigMod capabilities could be utilized during various stages of operations to provide voice, video and data communications, mission command and situational awareness over the Army's tactical communications network backbone, Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T).
"It's a complex world that we fight in, but the solution to mission success for rapidly deployable units like the GRF is simple: the more situational awareness we can provide, with equipment that is smaller, stronger and faster, the greater the chance for mission success," said Lt. Col....