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Innovation brings technology to meet military's needs

Feb-21-2005 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By DOUG BEIZER

When U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, one of the command vehicles was outfitted with cyclone antennas to establish a link with orbiting satellites. The satellite connection gave life to an onboard collaboration system that let commanders in the tank share audio, video, data and applications with command centers just about anywhere.

"With that, they could share information back to Bahrain or all the way back to the Pentagon," said David Lind, defense sales manager for First Virtual Communications.

"Instead of having five telephone calls with five senior commanders, you can have a single call with all five of them together, sharing in real time video, voice and data information," said Lind, whose McLean, Va., company developed the Click to Meet collaboration product used by the military. "The five commanders can all look at a map, talk about it and then act instantly."

Although computer collaboration tools have been around for nearly a decade, only recently have they become sophisticated enough to be valuable for military purposes, said Marcus Fedeli, an analyst at IT research firm Input Inc. of Reston, Va.

"I think the ability for these systems to work together smoothly, quickly, efficiently and dependably and also have a level of security, hasn't been seen in the industry until recently," Fedeli said.

In many ways, collaboration technology is at the heart of the military's goal to modernize U.S. forces. The Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team is one example of the new units designed to be light, efficient and deployed quickly. The Stryker Brigade is using Macromedia Breeze Live for real-time battlefield collaboration among other uses, said Barry Leffew, Macromedia's vice president of government sales.

"One of the key focuses within DOD and the Army is to really permit collaboration and the concept of pushing information to the edge, out to the warfighters," Leffew said. "The Stryker Brigade has successfully used Breeze Live for a variety of things, including in warfighting exercises. They've done battle updates, intelligence briefings and war gaming rehearsals."


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