Military operations are becoming increasingly reliant on a communications and information infrastructure that provides seamless, interoperable connectivity between all forces, anytime and everywhere. This operational emphasis is changing the manner in which command and control (C2) systems are defined, developed and fielded. Communication systems can no longer be ‘application-centric’. Instead, we must define a communications infrastructure to support a variety of applications and missions. In particular, communications systems must be interconnected to create a network accessible by all applications and users. This ‘network-centric’ communications infrastructure has been coined the ‘Global Grid’. In many ways, the tremendous technology advances over the past ten years in the commercial world are making the Global Grid realizable.
This work was sponsored by the Electronic Systems Center under contract F19628-94-C-0001. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the author and not necessarily endorsed by the United States Air Force.
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