global secure communications : challenges and opportunities Bharat

xperiences from recent wars against nations and global terrorism have identified a need for a much higher degree of information sharing and joint decision making among various intelligence agencies, different armed forces, and the central command and control structure. meeting this need calls for an orders-of-magnitude increase in computing and communications capacities and replacement of current stove-piped information systems and networks by an integrated infrastructure and service creation environment for the DoD, intelligence, and homeland security communities. based on the tremendous success of the internet and web in providing an integrated environment and productivity gain in the commercial arena, the u.s. government has embarked on an ambitious journey toward creating the global information grid (gig) to enable net-centric operations and warfare. indeed, internet, web, and several related technologies, having provided major drivers for recent commercial successes, are ideally suited to move toward the realization of the gig vision. however, a number of technical challenges need to be addressed. ApL is contributing to this effort and should continue to play a major role in helping the government and industry create technical solutions to these challenges. This article highlights some of these challenges and discusses advanced work to which ApL can contribute.