Recently, I learned a bit of the stuff that the western militaries plan for their field networking requirements, or to be more precise, into what the usual vendors offer for that purpose. Effectively, everything will go wireless. Instead of re-inventing the wheel again, the overall strategy is to use commercial networking base technology, but on different frequency bands and with military crypto add-ons.

For example, Nortel builds a solution that is based on mesh networking with an OSPF-capable router in every mesh node.

Of course the mesh stuff is still a huge research field, performance degradation by number of hops towards the uplink is still a hot topic. So far no-one seems to have found the holy grail, although some of the test data available from university projects looks better then what I have seen from OLSR so far. The secret is of course multiple radios per node on different frequencies (or even software defined radio…), control over hopping / spreading patterns on the radio layer to minimize interference, and phased array antennas to create directional beams on demand in order to optimize for obstacles in the radio link path based on various metrics. The Nortel system mentioned above is rather simple compared to the stuff that is about to come.

In military systems of various vendors, the standard 802.11 MAC chips are used, just the radio frontend is replaced by one that works on certain military frequency bands, like in the 30-38 GHz area. Also custom hopping / spreading codes can be used, which provides an obstacle to interception. So you won’t see their networks with your standard WLAN equipment, but it uses the same base networking technology so it will just work on the computer side like your ordinary WLAN card.

Not only 802.11, but nearly all other commercial wireless technologies are also available or planed as a military version. WiMax, UMTS, Tetra and even GSM is or will be available in different-from-normal frequency versions. Small, field deployable wireless networks are all the rage with military planers. The dream is a helicopter deployable, solar or otherwise self-powered set of small wireless nodes, that can be dropped into a certain area and will provide instant, secure, high-bandwith wireless networking to the soldiers. Some companies sell solutions to set up a small GSM network covering a certain area within hours or days. They will offer UMTS solutions very soon. Connectivity back home is IP-based with nearly all solutions, satellite backhaul is the usual method used. Most network solutions just deploy the cells into the desert and do everything else at home to minimize the complexity on site. They probably correctly assume that the GI will be able to plug in power and correctly aim a satellite dish, but not much more…

On the security side, the MAC chips used have serious vulnerabilities. It is known that with very low bandwith you can disable 802.11 cards, provided you know which handcrafted frames make them throw up. So while everybody is currently struggling to get stuff up and running at all, it is absolutely clear that the possibilities for “information warfare” will raise substantially. If I were to make a stock tip, investing into makers of ruggedized IT equipment seems to be a wise choice…