In late June, the Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $280-million contract to install a range of electronic systems on three Bombardier business jets and two RQ-4 drones. Collectively, the installed systems are known as Battlefield Airborne Communications Node, or BACN. (Yes, that's pronounced "bacon.") It might look and sound hopelessly obscure, but BACN is a big, big deal: a sort of "universal translator" for the vast array of drones, jets and ground forces deployed by the U.S. and its allies.

The explosive growth in communication technology over the last several decades has resulted in military units that, as often as not, can't talk to each other. Add civilians, attached to the military, and you've got an even more confused comms situation. If you're a State Department reconstruction team carrying just cell phones and satellite phones, and you get ambushed in southern Afghanistan, you normally won't be able to talk to the Air Force A-10s flying overhead.

Enter BACN, which "extends communications ranges, bridges between radio frequencies and 'translates' among incompatible communications systems," using Internet Protocols, according to Defense Industry Daily. "That may sound trivial, but on a tactical level, it definitely isn’t," DID notes.

BACN is also a clue to possible, secret developments in air power. The prototype BACN Bombardier plane was spotted at Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, around the same time pictures surfaced, from the same base, of an apparent, top-secret, flying-wing drone that Bill Sweetman dubbed "The Beast of Kandahar." Could BACN be helping Beast spot Taliban fighters for NATO ground troops?

The translator plane might also be the key to turning the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter – usually a solitary hunter – into a true team player, and even a close-air-support bomber like the A-10. Most fighters and bombers use the Link-16 datalink to swap targeting data, but Lockheed left Link 16 out of the F-22, instead giving the Raptor a special "stealthy" datalink that only connects to other F-22s. But in a demonstration last year, the Air Force used BACN to plug an F-22 into a Link-16 network. "The question now is whether the F-22 bridging demonstration last year has become an operational capability," writes Steve Trimble.

[PHOTO: Flight]