October 3, 2009: The U.S. Department of Defense wants to provide the troops with a 3-D view of the battlefield. A decade ago, this seemed to be a science fiction fantasy. But since then, there are enough electronic eyes on the battlefield to make this happen. Developments in graphics software, and more powerful, and cheaper, computers has made 3-D representations of the real world easier to obtain. For the military, a 3-D view of the battlefield is a life saver, and a big combat advantage. Current software enables the user to quickly move around this 3-D view, checking for how things look from different vantage points (especially those of the enemy.)
There's one big drawback to all this. There isn't enough bandwidth (data transfer capability) available on the battlefield, to move around the data needed to keep the 3-D view updated.. Once this problem is resolved, the troops can get their real-time 3-D battlefield map. But the bandwidth problem has proved to be a real tough one. Mainly because high speed data transfer on the battlefield first became possible via satellite communications. And that soon ran into bandwidth shortages.
During the 1990s, the U.S. armed forces moved to satellite communications in a big way. This made sense, especially where troops often have to set up shop in out of the way places and need a reliable way to keep in touch with nearby forces on land and sea as well as bases and headquarters back in the United States. At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, there was enough satellite military communications capacity (commonly known as "bandwidth") in the Persian Gulf for about 1300 simultaneous phone calls. Or, as the geeks put it, 100 mega (million) bits per second. But while the military has a lot more satellite capacity now (the exact amount is a secret), demand has increased even faster. UAV reconnaissance aircraft use enormous amounts of satellite capacity. The Global Hawk needed 500 megabits, and Predators about half as much. The major consumer of bandwidth is the live video. UAVs have other sensors as well, as do aircraft. A voice radio connection only takes about 2,000 bits per second, and each of the multiple channels needed to control the UAVs use about the same. But it adds up, especially since the military wants high resolution video. At the moment, the U.S. has far more demand for satellite communications than it can support. As a result, many of the Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk UAVs in combat zones lack sufficient bandwidth to send all their video back to the United States. Data compression and using lower resolution is often necessary, or using satellite substitutes (aircraft carrying transponders) to send the video to local users. More data compression and satellite substitutes appears to be the likely solution to the problem.
