Industry Execs Cite Commercial Efforts to Help Address Army’s IT Network Challenges

Some industry executives discussed how to help the U.S. Army develop an information technology network designed to support warfighters in bandwidth- and power-constrained environments, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.

An executive talked about the potential role of commercial off-the-shelf technologies in addressing the requirements of deployed troops.

“COTS is how we solve problems,” Charlie Kawasaki, chief technical officer at PacStar, said Thursday at the C4ISRNET conference.

“Today our tech is used in IT networks, has a small form factor, rugged, network devices, can be backpacked or built up to command units, using less weight and less power,” he added.

Bill Patterson, vice president and general manager of the ground systems line of business at General Dynamics’ mission systems, cited truncation and the company’s efforts to help address gaps in the service branch’s capabilities.

“Some things the Army needs to truncate to make go away, don’t go into vision of 2028,” Patterson said. “That truncation is good for the Army, good for us, and will drive us to the far end of the spectrum. …  There are some gaps in capability, in innovation, and we are focusing our investment and innovation on how we help army with those gaps.”