Examples on capture and modeling of military information transfer needs

Authors:

  • Åsa Waern
  • Pär-Anders Albinsson
  • Magdalena Granåsen
  • Joachim Hansson

Publish date: 2013-12-12

Report number: FOI-R--3713--SE

Pages: 43

Written in: Swedish

Keywords:

  • Information transfer requirements
  • The Armed Forces
  • Infantry
  • radio
  • communication

Abstract

A fundamental part of the decision-making is the access to information. Radio is today the media which mainly enables information sharing at the combat and lower tactical level within the Armed Forces. To cover the troops' need of information sharing a plethora of hardware, antennas, crypto, etc. are purchased which has led to a variety of wireless solutions. The Armed Forces strives to reduce the number of systems by introducing flexible radio solutions that meet the requirements of the troops information sharing. This report details the project Modelling of radio systems work to produce appropriate requirement analysis support for the Armed Forces' future radio systems. The requirements have been collected from analysis of documents and from individual interviews with the Helicopter Battalion, Air Defence Battalion Armoured Infantry Battalion, Artillery Battalion and Logistics Battalion. Hence, the requirements have been collected from a limited number of tasks and from a limited number of military units. Since the results are derived from a limited number of interviews, we do not present a complete requirement list. However, the results shall be seen as an important part of the overall requirement picture. The results have been modeled using a visualization tool and some concrete information sharing needs are presented: ? Voice is the main requirement while the demand for large packets of data transfer is limited. ? The need for long range is huge and can depend on the discussed tasks. ? The results shall be seen as a limited base for decision support. However, the method can be used to collect the requirement even though it is time consuming. It represents one piece of the overall requirement. The report concludes with a proposal to study if a new radio system solution can meet the identified requirements.