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U.S. Military To Create Its Own Internet 364

Posted by timothy from the milnet-II-means-handouts-for-contractors dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times today reports 'The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future. ... The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG. Conceived six years ago, its first connections were laid six weeks ago. It may take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build ...' Members of a consortium formed 9/28 include Boeing; Cisco Systems; Factiva (Dow Jones and Reuters); General Dynamics; Hewlett-Packard; Honeywell; I.B.M.; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Northrop Grumman; Oracle; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems."
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U.S. Military To Create Its Own Internet

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  • Skynet anyone (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ultra Magnus ( 312814 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:36PM (#10807643)
    Who here did not immediately think of skynet when they read this.......
    • Actually, the thing that I first thought was ... Microsoft is not on that list! Is military intelligence getting better?
      • Oh, crap, Microsoft is on the list ... hiding after Lockheed. I guess that our previous assumption about military intelligence was right after all.

        • Re:Skynet anyone (Score:5, Funny)

          by spektr ( 466069 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @03:35PM (#10808372)
          Microsoft is on the list ... hiding after Lockheed.

          Including Microsoft is a straightforward decision. I guess they figured that at some point they'll need a supplier of mine sweeping software, so they picked the leading one.
    • There is a system called Skynet already, now in its 5th incarnation, its a satellite comms system for the military.

    • Re:Skynet anyone (Score:4, Funny)

      by EtherAlchemist ( 789180 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @02:07PM (#10807886)

      Our government couldn't build Skynet if they tried. My first thought when I read this, having worked for the DLA/DoD and Army, was "It will cost three times what they say it will, be done 10 years late (which won't matter because it will have become obsolete 2 years from now) and run Windows XP."

    • Re:Skynet anyone (Score:5, Funny)

      by crashfrog ( 126007 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @03:13PM (#10808243) Homepage
      I figured they were doing it so that the President's mention of the "Internets" looked prescient instead of stupid.

      Lookin' out for the Commander in Chief, I guess.
    • actually i thought arpanet.

      • Re:Skynet anyone (Score:3, Interesting)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
        You mean DARPA-net?

        That was one good design, but I think the original design team has left. I don't know where they went, though. Certainly not to the internet. They wouldn't have approved of anything with the current number of centralized vulnerabilities.

    • How about no. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @04:53PM (#10808800)
      Not only no but hell no. Not even in my wildest dreams would I ever think that. Actually it would be nice to simply have access to some of the nicer things such as IM and the extra bandwidth a system upgrade would bring without worring about the few 100,000 hack attempts the main firewall gets every day.

      Anyone who thinks the military is as cool and ultramodern as on tv and the movies is an idiot. Let me put it in a more proper persective for you.

      Palm/retnal scanners...nope...
      Ultra fast internet connections, nope.
      Top of the line computers...sure....from 1998. Fiber optic networks...nope...coax and 10bT baby!
      Instant file recovery and easy to use multi department integrated data basses...in your dreams buddy.
      Super geek wunderman IT guys that maintain and protect our networks....hahahahahahahahahahhahaha..tears..haha hahahahahahahahahaha...tears.... Let's put it this way I got an email the other day asking me whether or not I had submitted my paperwork to have the email account I've been using for the last 5 years.
      Neeto torpeedo technical orders with revolving 3D diagrams of equipment and buildings with intergrated sensors that can be controlled remotely on a really cool laptop/palmtop....err no. Bust out the TO books and get a wagon...yes I said a wagon we use them to carry tools and the 30lbs of books we need to do our work.
      Sealed room containing an alien body...that one is true...well ok to be honest it's made out of rubber but it is in a SAR access only area... is that good enough?

      An all powerfull multi-branch force combining sentient software/hardware matrix that will destroy the world by taking over all the weapons in the military. No but I do have to run Adaware everday to clean off all the crap from people surfing the net and playing flash games on government computers to keep it from crashing when I check my email. Not quite as scary as Skynet, but it does annoy the piss out of me.

  • Deja Vu (Score:5, Funny)

    by GordoSlasher ( 243738 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:36PM (#10807644)
    Maybe they could call it Arpanet

    • Re:Deja Vu (Score:5, Funny)

      by tdemark ( 512406 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:42PM (#10807693) Homepage
      Can we mod the whole project "(-1, Redundant)"?

      • Re:Deja Vu (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:58PM (#10807819) Homepage Journal
        Then they can safely shutdown "our" Internet. No more discovering stolen elections, or Fallujah casualties in the U.S.S.A.

    • Re:Deja Vu (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:46PM (#10807731)
      I hear it will be using SIPP-over-PELP (Secret Invasion of Privacy Protocol over Population Enumeration and Location Protocol). This allows network users to know who you are and what you're doing. The good news is that Microsoft GIG Explorer hasn't passed secuirty muster and the Pentagon is recommending use of Firefox for the time being.

    • Re:Deja Vu (Score:3, Informative)

      by burns210 ( 572621 )
      Well, ya, but ARPA is now DARPA. Shouldn't it be the DARPANET?

  • So (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dmomo ( 256005 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:38PM (#10807661)
    You just need one computer on there internet that's connected to one computer on "our" Internet, then it's one network; i.e. the Internet!
    • So...what if this new 'internet' isn't using the same protocol to communicate as the current one is? Plus, there's one other thing...imagine this new internet is the same size as our current one...and there is one computer connecting the two...I have a feeling the conncetion would be a bit slow. Can you say 'Slashdotted?'
      • So...what if this new 'internet' isn't using the same protocol to communicate as the current one is?

        Actually, that was sort of the point of the first Internet. It took incompatible networks and allowed them to interoperate via an "in-between" protocol. This "feature" of the internet is why you see so much cruft in sendmail. It used to have to deal with address like "Starbase773!BubbaShrimp!Blake8!Bob@bitnet.net"!!!

    • Re:So (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 )
      Any computers holding "secret" or "top-secret" data cannot be connected to public networks in any way, under current procedures. It's the only unhackable way to do it (without sneaking into a secure building), and they know that. They call it an "airwall".

      Because of rules like this and a million others, it costs a lot of money to make anything secret. The ammount of information being classified as secret is skyrocketting.

      -B

      • Re:So (Score:3, Insightful)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
        Yeah. But the amount of information that actually qualifies as being Secret is increasing less than logrithmically.

        Much of what gets classified as Secret is done so on a CYA basis. Sometimes politically, sometimes economically, sometimes personally. (Well, always personally, but sometimes that is "sort of" justifiable on a larger basis.)

        N.B.: I don't have any current inside information, I'm merely assuming that trends from the past have continued. And one of the factors was "If nobody can see what yo
  • Didn't they already do this?

  • Dupe! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Swedentom ( 670978 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:39PM (#10807665) Homepage
    This story was posted 30 years ago. ;-)

    • Re:Dupe! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nicnak ( 727633 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:57PM (#10807818)
      Although it's funny to say that this is just a rehashing of the creation of DARPA net again, it's going to be more than that.

      The US military has seen what their creation has turned into with the internet and now they want to be able to leverage that for their own use. But at the same time they have seen how a robust system like the internet can still be overwhelmed by DOS attacks and worms/viri. In order to have a system that they can be sure will not be compromized when they need it most, they are forced to create a seperate system.

      However even with trying to create a completely seperate network they will run into problems. Satallites could be shot down. Microwave links could be jammed. Encryption could be broken and misinformation could be injected to the network.

      Given the current state of incompetence in the armed forces, I can assure you that this project will be late and over budget, and will not accomplish all the things they want it to.

      Oh well, that seems to be the status quo in the US.

      • Re:Dupe! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by MindStalker ( 22827 )
        Incompetence? Ok I admit a lot of things are over budget, but please find us a military anywhere in the world that can accomplish half of what we can. Now I admit, we don't go throwing around the threat of nukes as much as some countries and that does leave us at a disadvantage.
      • Isn't SIPRnet [fas.org] pretty much the same thing? Or have I misunderstood something?
  • Gopherspace is still available

  • the internets!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:41PM (#10807681) Journal
    Well, that explains the quote [cnn.com] from Bush's debate:

    BUSH: Thanks. I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft.

  • Waaah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    All that new pr0n, and we can't touch it

  • Will history repeat itself? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toetagger1 ( 795806 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:42PM (#10807687)
    "Its Worldwide Military Command and Control System, built in the 1960's, often failed in crises. A $25 billion successor, Milstar, was completed in 2003 after two decades of work. Pentagon officials say it is already outdated: more switchboard than server, more dial-up than broadband, it cannot support 21st-century technology.

    And they honestly don't think it will be the same storry again this time?

  • This is news now? (Score:3, Informative)

    by s.fontinalis ( 580601 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:42PM (#10807688)
    DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) issued RFI's on this in 2002. In Decembver of 2003, DISA confirmed they'd contracted Juniper, Cisco, Sycamore and Ciena to provide equipment for this network. Total business is about $100 to each of the 4 through 2005. Now wouldn't it have been nice for some oversight on this 2 years ago?
    • Total business is about $100 to each of the 4 through 2005

      Wow, they must be feeling extremely patriotic and generous, because I wouldn't even do the work for a hundred bucks...
      • I see you are not familiar with standard federal government budgeting - they leave the zeros off. It depends on the agency how many they leave off. Interior, HHS, they usually leave off three. DOD leaves off 6 - so that's 100 million each. Congress usually leaves off 9 - they only speak in billions.
  • They are planning on building their own network. It's no more "Internet" then my home network when it's unplugged from the cablemodem.

    Just because you plug two computers together over a WAN link doesn't mean you have an "internet." There's only on Internet, and it's a loosly coupled network of networks.

    Gosh, reporters can be so lame.
  • The dont listen SCO anywhere! :-)

  • Long time... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .l3gnaerif.> on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:46PM (#10807726) Homepage
    If it takes two decades to build, will it be relevant/secure/useful when completed? Where were we two decades ago? With the ever-evoluting nature of tech, I sure hope they planned ahead...

    In anyway, it'll sure be costly. From the article :

    "Providing the connections to run the war net will cost at least $24 billion over the next five years - more than the cost, in today's dollars, of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Beyond that, encrypting data will be a $5 billion project."

    That's just the running cost, not the hardware/implementation cost (which may rise up to 200 billions). How many social problems could we cure/relief with that kind of money in the world? I know War = Power, but Kindness = Respect too. Yeah, I live in Canada.
    • How else can we provide welfare to corporations. Perhaps we can cut all education funding and divert all social security taxes to these kinds of endevors.
    • We don't care about kindness and respect. Just obey our will and give us any natural resources we need. Otherwise just shut up and sit down... Bitch.

  • zomg hax0r! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sockonafish ( 228678 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:46PM (#10807732)
    If you need me, I'll be hacking the GIGson.

  • Computerized Suits (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:46PM (#10807733) Homepage Journal
    This is a logical step considering the military suits they're designed come with a computer built in. A secure network will be required for tracking and communicating with soliders on the battlefield. You obviously wouldn't want them on any public network.

    A small side-note: I doubt www content will be a primary usage of the network. Possibly some voice-over-IP applications and a ton of proprietary stuff.
    • You're absolutely correct about VoIP and proprietary apps... specifically, battle tracking systems, (tracking friendly and enemy positions), but the article also mentioned live video feeds.

      Currently, the data network piggybacks off the digital voice network (using IP).
    • Hey, I appear to have a new freak. ;-)

      This is a logical step considering the military suits they're designed come with a computer built in.

      If I were a soldier, I would be interested in minimizing the amount of weight that I would be required to carry. Additionally, if your integrated computer were to fail (or become riddled with bullet holes) in the desert, you would be required to employ alternate methods of communication and navigation, thus rendering your device irrelevant.

      However, "friend or foe"
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Pentagon to Internet: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Catiline ( 186878 ) <akrumbach@gmail.com> on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:46PM (#10807734) Homepage Journal
    Come out of the office with your routers where we can see them! The GIG is up!
  • Yes, we already have the arpanet -> Internet.. The article does not have a lot of specifics, but the do mentioned "Internet in the Sky". And, I have seen previous articles talking about satellite to satellite communications. Basically, it's a grid of satellites connected by lasers for high speed communications. It would connect to terrestrial networks, and presumably support communication down to mobile nodes - such as jets and military vehicles.

    It's a powerful concept.. military grade ubiquitou

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 )
    They should let ARPA oversee the project.

    Since it will be some type of a network.. they should call it ARPAnet...

    It will cost billions because the idea of a decentralized network is a brand new concept. They may need to tap some nerds at MIT etc. for help.

  • Nothing new...Just repackaged! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by beaststwo ( 806402 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:51PM (#10807777)
    DOD and some of the services already run their own "Internets" and have for many years. This is another round of building that great new network that will be the ultimate IT answer for the next few eternities (Note: in reality, 1 eternity unit is roughly about 6 months of human time).

    What they haven't addressed is how this great network will be used to better defend the nation or reduce the cost of doing so.

    Paul Strassman, a regular columnist for Computerworld, often presents studies of profitability of companies that heavily invest in IT versus those that don't. His studies tend to indicate that comapnies that invest larger percentages of sales tend to have lower profit margins, indicating that perhaps those companies are investing in technology in ways that aren't optimal.

    Why should Government be any different? Didn't President Eisenhower warn about the "Defense-Industrial Complex" and the risk of Government buying non-optimal stuff to assist industry profit margins. So why should large-dollar Government-Industry partnerships be any more effiecient than what Paul Strassman sees in the private sector?

  • The man who said that he created the Internet while in Congress can do this one, can't he? He served in the military, after all (and no Texas ANG dodging; no throwing away of medals either!)

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @01:56PM (#10807807)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Almost... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The SIPRNET is similar to what is being proposed, but 'not exactly'. Every machine on the SIPRNET has to be classified as Secret; I'm guessing the GIG will not be. It will probably wind up being exactly what the NIPRNET currently is, except sites won't be tied together via normal telco clouds with normal gateways to the 'real' Internet.

      On a side note, the DISA site I work at has seen no long term planning schedules for this GIG network. My guess is it will lose steam long before it becomes its own 'Intern

  • A Small-Scale Version of this Already Exists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dak RIT ( 556128 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @02:03PM (#10807860) Homepage
    The military already has its own, albeit extremely slow, internet it calls "SIPRNET" (it's basically a secure network that spans the entire globe where the US Military is, and only handles classified information). The US Military actually uses two networks on the battlefield at the same time, NIPRNET (connected to the Internet), and SIPRNET, which is only for classified information.

    The NYT article talked about how soldiers of the future will have a "bird's eye view" of the battlefield in their own HMMWV, although something similar exists today as well. There are a few competing programs in the military right now, such as C2PC, which allow commanders and other soldiers to monitor in real time the location of friendly and enemy units, as well as sorties, terrain, etc. (although the location of enemy units of course isn't 100% accurate). Many many HMMWVs in Iraq right now (I drove a HMMWV in Iraq with this installed) have basic systems installed so that commanders and troops can monitor the same information on a battlefield in real time and coordinate with one another.

    I'm sure this new system will be far more advanced and provide much more detailed information than the current one, but don't think that soldiers don't have some of this technology right now either.

    • The only real news here is that someone has finally forced a single standard. You'd be suprised how many different communication systems DoD uses and all the work that has to go into making them all talk to each other. Now everyone's going to be TCP/IP (with a mandated change to V6 looming) and VOIP. Hopefully much easier to talk to everyone.

      As far as the other things like giving the grunts more toys to break and throwing metric buttloads of money into commercial sattelite time, these things have all been

  • Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Grey Tomorrow ( 722221 )
    I was getting really impatient for Skynet.
  • It seems like a complete waste of resources. They would be better off making the current Internet more reliable, faster, efficient, less expensive, and more secure.
  • When you think about it, it is the unifying nature of the internet that makes it really useful. Slowly but surely, I think that we will see more side nets with a disconnect from the internet happening. In particular, I suspect that the burden of patents will hasten the break-up.
  • Didn't they do this allready? You know...the original internet...
  • I used to hang out on bitnet for a while. And I found my old bang-path (agtoa!greyfox@uunet.uu.net, back when I didn't know anything... although I DID manage to configure UUCP...) Networks not connected to the Internet were fairly common back then.

    I don't like the players in this one though. I'd think that the perfect company to build this would have been Data General. They had a B2 secure UNIX and really had it together as far as security went. Unfortunately, IBM probably dismantled all of that when they

  • Will the military never learn... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 13, 2004 @02:18PM (#10807962)
    This is the military equivalent of saying "Here's a $200 billion program to Make The World A Better Place". As with so many other military programs, it throws insane quantities of money at a real problem, with a timeline so long that the solutions will be obsolete before they hit the field, without paying attention to recent successes.

    The most successful information sources to the troops in the field in Operation Iraqi Freedom were from agencies who left the alphabet soup of military interoperability acronyms behind, and built effective web interfaces (almost on the fly) which were ideal for their customers on the ground in Iraq.

    Army logistics tracking system allowed troops to request and track their re-supply orders via satellite phone as if it was FedEx. The smarter intel systems are looking to amazon.com style customer relationship management systems as the appropriate model.

    This was all taking place in an environment where laptop computers in the field were still considered "unauthorized" by the military (fortunately, an edict ignored by commanders). Some of the best Command and Control information systems used were improvised in the months before the war by a few smart techies at the Corp level out of necessity using COTS equipment, since none of the divisions in the initial action had been upgraded to trailers-full of "ruggedized" computer systems of the last multi-multi-billion dollar information system program, Force XXI.

    The military has to learn to embrace technological FLEXIBLITY and allow a Bazaar-style of advancement among it's agencies. _READ_ some of this GIG proposal... http://ges.dod.mil/articles/netcentric.htm [dod.mil]
    if you were constrained to those "Common Operating Environment" mandates, and what will be thousands of pages of specifications and acronyms, you'd never want to develop a line of code again. And noone will, except for the half dozen programmers at over-priced defense contractors who will be well paid to live and breath these standards for the next 20 years.

    -bcg

  • Members of a consortium formed 9/28 include Boeing; Cisco Systems; Factiva (Dow Jones and Reuters); General Dynamics; Hewlett-Packard; Honeywell; I.B.M.; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Northrop Grumman; Oracle; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems."

    Because Microsoft are the guys you want to talk to when building a totally secure military network...


  • Really good network technology already exists, and the military simply can not out compete the market.

    Keeping the Internet working is already a national security concern anyhow, and it would be allot more cost effective to beef up, and add real security and redundancy to what is already out there than to start from scratch.

    Other things like encrypted sattelite data, could be distributed allot more effetcively and redundantly with a good p2p network than than zillion bits of bandwidth.

  • Tax dollars funding US Hi-tech research (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Simon ( 815 ) <simon@nOSPam.simonzone.com> on Saturday November 13, 2004 @04:03PM (#10808523) Homepage
    This just looks like another case of using US taxpayer money to fund US high-tech industries/corporations. I mean, the US government can't say "Hey, let's just hand over $24 billion to these high-tech corporations". People won't accept that, but they can say "The military needs $24 billion to build a new superduper network thingy to fight terrorists or whatever". People won't blink an eyelid at that: "That stuff sounds complicated! What would we know!".

    Either way the money goes to the same place. Whether the military gets a new network or not is irrelevant. The corporations get to use the money to fund their R&D (or line their pockets) safe in the knowledge that a regular "welfare" cheque will be coming in from the US government. Any inventions/products can then be brought onto the so-called 'free' market. Except this time everything will be properly patented, trade-secret-ed or whatever, unlike Internet version 1.

    --
    Simon

  • Non-news (Score:4, Informative)

    by Yea-but... ( 743927 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:05PM (#10809265)
    Not sure what was more amazing, the story or the reactions I've read. Some of you seem to get the joke, but most of you are clueless. The DoD has had it's own isolated networks (yes, several, and they are actually isolated and independent from the W3) for a long time. The GIG is old news. DoD is refining updating it and will go on refining it and may even call it something different in the future. The new consortia (Net-Centric Operations Industry Consortium - NCOIC) is still trying to figure out it's own charter and mandate. It's all based on big money and it costs lots to join. There's a foundation (Net-Centric Operations Industry Foundation - NCOIF) that predates it and it has within it the Association For Enterprise Integration (AFEI - www.afei.org). This one is trying to be all inclusive (low cost of membership and all sizes of companies welcome. More the open model even if some of the same bigger players are involved in both. There's lots of this sort of stuff going on and it's been going on for a long time. I will conceed that many of the important DoD web sites that used to be visible are now protected and restricted access, but there's still lot of information in the public domain... if you're looking. Something you might be more concerned about is the waste of time and effort as different parts of the DoD try to protect their rice bowls. They are not all on the same page, and it's going to continue to cost more than it should for the functionality that gets deployed. I guess that's not a new story either... ;-)

  • This is such a waste of funds (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @10:00PM (#10810471) Homepage

    Instead of redoing the ailing national power grid that would bring in many more jobs than this hidden gem--intelligent I know but not for general use nor for improving the ailing economy.

    Is it just me or does The Pentagon think it has a blank check on all matters? Before anyone notes that there will be jobs done may I remind everyone this doesn't improve our security, for the general public. It makes sure that the Government can spy on its citizens more securely.

    Too bad so many idiots voted for the Dems and Reps instead of The LP that wants to scale back government to its original intent and coordinate with the private sector to reinvigorate this pathetic economy.

    Would we want to build a canal system to protect against floods and drought in the Midwest? Nope! We'll just charge more to the public and keep racking up a debt that will always accrue since Nature will always flood and bring droughts to the Midwest.

    Do we want to invest in high-speed cargo railsystems to reduce heavy machinery on highways and make the transportations of products more efficient? Nope! We would rather offer funds to revamp the highest maintenance approach to highway restoration.

    Do we want to build consumer commuter lightrails to reduce wasted congestion and traffic? Nope! We'd rather build a top secret Internet called GIG!!

    Can people finally acknowledge they are complete door knobs and don't realize they aren't getting shit for a return on their investment via their vote?

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