Arlington, VA (the USA), May 11, 2018, Text: Bm News Team, Picture: defensesystems.com

Future battlefield technologies have been discussed at the 17th Annual C4ISRNET Conference held on 10th May 2018 with focus on the new strategies and capabilities in mobility, command and control, communications, cyber, unmanned systems and sensors, networks and geospatial intelligence. U.S. military and government representatives debated on the issues and impediments related to the consolidation of data by the Department of Defence for providing single battlefield picture to troops and enabling them to make decisions on the fly, reported Defense News.

It has turned out that the challenges concerning data collection and security haven’t changed a lot during the years.

Capt. Clayton Michaels, the special assistant to the associate director for operations at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, stated, “We have to network our sensors better, our platforms better and, at this point, we are platform-centric, so I know in my own experience in the U.S. Navy we could probably do a better job of linking each platform together to the other ones in the battlespace and then getting that information out there.”

And the Viasat’s president of government systems, Ken Peterman, added, “There has to be a cultural change and recognition that we need to move more toward an adopt, apply, deploy, evolve kind of a thing and leverage the enormous investment and technology trajectory that the private sector is on.”

Unfortunately, due to private sector competitive sensitivities the Defence Department leadership doesn’t seem to be aware of the many existing useful and innovative technology solutions, according to Peterman, who also said, “There has to be a more candid, transparent dialogue so you can see the art of the possible and how affordable it is.”

In connection with the data security, Peterman commented that this is quite important for both the military and the commercial sector:

“I think we have enormous horsepower in this country that is yet untapped if we pull the public and private sectors together and recognize that we’re trying to solve problems that have a certain common thread,” he said.