To share large amounts of data more easily and quickly, US Joint Forces Command is partnering with five local government and education entities on a network geared for scientific and military research. The partners are: NASA Langley, College of William & Mary, Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center, and Jefferson Labs. The network—Eastern Virginia LightWave Internetworking Technology Enterprise—will be hooked up with the high speed, high bandwidth National LambdaRail (NLR) network, described by one Joint Forces Command official, Mark Williams, as an R&D national super highway linking to research universities and high tech firms. The connection of the regional network to the national network will help establish southeastern Virginia as a “hub” for modeling and simulation, Williams said. He noted that JFCOM sees the NLR as a way in which to work with academia on “system design and engineering to develop new simulation tools and products that would essentially push new capabilities to the joint warfighter faster, cheaper and better.”
The U.S. military needs to wake up to the fact that global dominance is no longer a viable strategy for national defense, because pursuing that unrealizable goal is making the country less safe, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said April 22. Emerging defense technologies like swarms of…