Cuanto m\u00e1s se apoya el ej\u00e9rcito estadounidense en las redes inal\u00e1mbricas, m\u00e1s congestionadas se vuelven. Desafortunadamente, el campo de batalla moderno est\u00e1 experimentando interrupciones cr\u00edticas del sistema, con tropas cada vez m\u00e1s en riesgo, porque generan interferencias en las propias redes, debido a que las aplicaciones exceden la capacidad o ancho de banda de las redes. Este fratricidio digital no es un problema que pueda resolverse con disciplina radial o racionando el acceso de los comandantes.<\/p>\n
The more the U.S. military leans on wireless networks, the more congested they become. Unfortunately, the modern battlefield is experiencing critical system outages \u2013 with troops increasingly at risk \u2013 because we are unintentionally jamming our own networks.<\/p>\n
This digital fratricide is not a problem that can be solved by radio discipline or rationing commanders\u2019 access to live video feeds.<\/p>\n
Instead, the solutions need to be baked in from the start by Department of Defense acquisition staff that demand products be designed and built to intelligently sip, not guzzle, precious bandwidth.<\/p>\n
On America\u2019s frontlines, the internal\u00a0battle over bandwidth<\/a>\u00a0has reached a critical mass. In response to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, every military branch is pouring an immense amount of money into high-tech drones with high-definition cameras. Unfortunately, every time a General wants to see the enemy in 4K HD video, mesh networks become so congested that frontline warfighters cannot communicate with each other on conventional radios. Fortunately, American tech companies have already deployed commercial solutions to solve the problem.<\/p>\n Self-driving cars, for example, generate far more data than even the most reliable 5G network can handle. In the early days of autonomous vehicles, software engineers had to hand-carry large hard drives on and off the cars on a \u201csneakernet\u201d just to be able to analyze a day\u2019s route. In time, engineers advanced a concept known as \u201cdata decimation\u201d where only the relevant data segments and alerts would have to be extracted from a car, thus becoming more efficient with the network\u2019s scarce resources.<\/p>\n Beyond autonomous vehicles, the video game industry has already partnered with hardware manufacturers to bring the power of the Cloud into disconnected devices, which eliminates another tax on networks. Industry calls this method \u2018edge computing\u2019 and Pentagon leadership\u00a0frequently speak about<\/a>\u00a0the need for greater intelligence at the tactical edge. But both the defense and tech world are talking about the same solution: the objective is to avoid bandwidth overload by colocating artificial intelligence and machine learning software within handheld devices, robots, and sensors.<\/p>\n There are equally impactful operating system techniques, like \u201ccompute orchestration,\u201d that effectively turn a dozen cell phones into one single supercomputer when linked on a secure platform. These practices need to be enforced as a technological standard for the battlefield internet of things; however, such techniques are only now being considered in the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n There are three major obstacles preventing these solutions from being adopted in time to maintain America\u2019s competitive advantage in the AI arms race.<\/p>\n The first is the assumption that old techniques can solve new battlefield problems. Senior leaders and prime vendors\u00a0appear surprised<\/a>\u00a0that the network is suffering through major bandwidth constraints, and current mitigation measures are focused on the promise of\u00a05G<\/a>. Even so, it is prohibitively difficult and expensive to deploy new cell towers in austere environments. Furthermore, those towers won\u2019t help much when communications are actively contested by a highly effective, $100 radio jammer.<\/p>\n The second obstacle is awareness. The Pentagon must have an understanding of the problems already solved by America\u2019s innovative tech experts so the commonplace solutions can be fed into the Defense Department\u2019s requirements process. The National Security Commission on AI\u2019s\u00a0Final Report<\/a>\u00a0made it very clear that the Department is not moving fast enough, and the widening gap between what\u2019s revolutionary in U.S. Defense and what\u2019s common in the tech industry has reached a crisis point.<\/p>\n