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A Cautionary Tale on Testing and Evaluating Tactical Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
January 2008
Dr. John A. Stine, The MITRE Corporation
ABSTRACT
Transformation dictates that the nature of future warfare will be network-centric where netcentricity
is contingent on a ubiquitous network. At issue are the capabilities that this network
must have to make network-centric operations (NCO) possible. Wireline and commercial
wireless technologies have colored the expectations of what is possible and, in many cases, the
requirements for the network and the applications as well. This article argues that these technologies
are fundamentally different than what is required on the battlefield and, if caution is
not exercised, these technologies could easily misdirect requirements and subsequent testing and
evaluation strategies toward performance measures that are orthogonal to those required to
enable NCO. The article reviews several contemporary discussions of NCO and networks to
arrive at the thesis that the critical networking technology for the tactical edge is one that
allows users to communicate with each other locally regardless of their organization and without
dependence on connectivity to a network infrastructure. This article suggests test and evaluation
approaches to validate this capability and to measure its effectiveness.
Publication
Copyright © 2007. "A Cautionary Tale on Testing and Evaluating Tactical Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks" was published in the March/April 2007 issue of The ITEA Journal for Test and Evaluation.
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