Army VoIPing in the battlefield
Not long ago, if an Army infantry battalion commander wanted to communicate, he relied on radios that had limited range and often spotty coverage. But today, the army has harnessed he power of VoIP as a battlefield communications system by using a phone connected to a Joint Network Node terminal.
VOIP phones connected to Cisco Systems routers in the JNN equipment suite enable infantry commanders to make phone calls as comfortably as anywhere else in the world. The commercial routers connect to satellite circuits via a Datapath dish.
VOIP used in the battlefield is indeed a great achievement of technology but it has its own limitations. Phone calls made via JNN don’t sound as bad as communications on a tactical radio, but they also don’t sound as good as a circuit-switched or VOIP phone call made via a commercial, wired phone network.
Besides the Cisco routers, commercial equipment used in JNN includes Redcom PBX switches, Juniper Networks firewalls and Promina broadband network interfaces. After the Army selects that equipment, developers only needed to integrate the equipment into shelters or hardened transit cases.
In the JNN configuration that battalion commanders use, much of the commercial gear is on a trailer towed by a Humvee. The equipment can be set up quickly after the vehicle stops.
Jim Sintic, technical director of the Army’s Program Manager for Tactical Radio Communications, said the battalion JNN can be established in 30 minutes to support “a highly mobile and agile fighting force with broadband voice, video and data.” (source fcw)