No such danger today. Palmer, a 29-year-old New Yorker with the Army’s First Cavalry Division, is training on the latest in battlefield communications equipment. In an actual combat situation–an invasion of Iraq, say–his commander could forward Palmer’s e-mail from the front straight to Gen. Tommy Franks’s in box. “It’s automatic,” says Palmer. “I don’t need all kinds of books to find who to send information to. It just makes my job easier.”
Dubbed Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Below–FBCB2 in Army-speak–the Internet-based communications system was beta-tested in Bosnia during the 1990s with promising results. Now it’s being rolled out to Army divisions and select Marine units. It’s standard equipment in thousands of Humvees, tanks and helicopters camped on Iraq’s southern and northern doorsteps. The generals hope that giving soldiers on the ground a near-omniscient view of the battlefield will help lift the chaotic “fog of war” that can lead to mistakes, and “friendly fire” casualties. The –Tactical Internet, as FBCB2 is called, takes data collected from thousands of Global Positioning Satellite sensors aboard vehicles and aircraft and integrates them with battlefield intelligence from a wide range of sources–aerial spycraft, roving Green Berets and CIA agents. The data are continuously updated on the fortified FBCB2 Web site and beamed to mobile units in the field. E-mail and voice transmissions provide additional information. In combat, e-mail is said to be more reliable than voice transmission, which is prone to cross talk and crashes more often than the Tactical Internet.
The system’s backers say it is far more efficient than conventional battlefield communication. Navigating through a hostile zone, for instance, can consume 80 percent of a soldier’s time. “Now, I’ve got 80 percent of my time to talk about how I’m going to kill him instead of figuring out where he is,” says Brig. Gen. Robert Durbin, the First Cavalry’s assistant division commander. He can instantly pinpoint to within a few feet a vehicle traveling 65 miles per hour anywhere on the battlefield. Where a request for firepower took 10 minutes to process, it now takes five. In theory, the system may even reduce friendly-fire deaths, which accounted for a quarter of American fatalities in the first gulf war, by automatically rejecting calls for fire into known “friendly” zones. “It’s as significant as the evolution we went through when radios were propagated in the 1930s,” says General Durbin.
Even so, some in the military are wary about the prospect of war by Xbox. Traditionalists fear that computers are no substitute for time-honored “fieldcraft,” and warn that putting too much information before soldiers’ eyes could cause paralysis: would a tank driver go into shock if his screen indicated he was surrounded? There are also worries about the potential vulnerability of the software itself. Early versions were hacked by testers, and the system’s GPS backbone is vulnerable to jamming by small Russian-made devices, available for about $35,000, which have ranges of more than 150 miles. “The rest of the world knows that the best way to fend us off is to blow our GPS because we’re so dependent upon it,” says Elizabeth Stanley-Mitchell, a security-studies professor at Georgetown University and a former Army intel officer. Overloading is another problem. The sheer volume of messages pouring into the system at once could overwhelm it, slowing the ability to provide real-time updates. While it’s built to withstand the elements–including heat up to 140 degrees–an errant shard of shrapnel, or even an accidental elbow blow, would crumple the screen. And entire portions of the system could be wiped out if the enemy attacked the program’s brains–operations centers, established about 12 miles behind the front lines. “Technology has limitations and can be defeated very easily,” says Army Col. John Rosenberger, an in-house skeptic who fears the day when GPS devices replace the compass. “But there is a very large group of influential decision makers within [the Defense Department] who believe that technology will provide us dominance in the future.”
The Tactical Internet’s champions say that while it’s not perfect, it’s an overdue step into the digital age. And analog navigation had its problems, after all. One general recalls that during the 1991 gulf war, planners used double-sided tape to stick “friendly” icons on acetate maps. Occasionally, one of the bits fell to the ground–and resulted in friendly-fire casualties. The project’s deputy manager, Thomas Plavcan, acknowledges that “given enough energy or deception,” the Web page could be hacked. But, he insists, “we’ve done a lot of testing on this, and we met the marks.” The system is protected by the strongest encryption available, and each onboard computer is equipped with an instant “self kill” mode, which will destroy the unit if it falls into enemy hands. In two years, Pentagon planners say, the devices will be compact enough to carry. Their sensors will monitor the vital statistics of troops and their vehicles (much like the digital dog tags some troops already wear).
So far, the Army has spent $800 million in development and training to get the program up and running. The Pentagon will spend an additional $82 million over the next four years. But the future of battlefield computers may depend on how well, or not, they perform in a war against Iraq. “I know the system works,” says Sergeant Palmer, fiddling with the computer in his Humvee. “But I don’t know if everyone is fully trained to work it.” He may soon find out.
