the u.s. military has explored the use of a “combat cloud” in its operations. the combat cloud, which was coined by retired air force lt. general david deptula, would take information on a battlefield and flow it through the command and control system to ensure that the proper data flows through the proper channels.

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in order for the combat cloud to be effective, deptula argues in his paper, “evolving technologies and warfare in the 21st century: introducing the ‘combat cloud’,” then it will invert “the paradigm of combined arms warfare – making information the focal point, not operational domains.

“this concept represents an evolution where individually networked platforms – in any domain – transform into a ‘system of systems’ enterprise, integrated by domain and mission-agnostic linkages.”

the combat cloud would need to link command and control to all areas of the battlefield, make the transfer of data “seamless” and need to be “reliable, secure and jam-proof.”

one of the companies that has looked into this concept is mercury systems in chelmsford, mass. the engineers at mercury systems have linked the combat cloud to the work that they are doing on embedded computing.  in an article for military embedded systems, shaun mcquaid of mercury systems noted, “high-performance embedded computing companies can provide the necessary high level signal processing and real-time software necessary for enabling clouds and big data centers in military applications.”

the combat cloud requires an extra level of security to a standard data center, including encryption, and would need to be more “rugged” than the standard packages, while adding “unrestricted bandwith via high-speed fabrics such as infiniband.”

mercury has focused first on the hardware component of the combat cloud, including its rack servers, and then will turn to the military’s software needs.

read more about what mercury is doing for the combat cloud at http://mil-embedded.com/news/embedding-computing-in-the-cloud.

to see the full version of lt. general deptula’s keynote address on the combat cloud from dec. 2015, visit http://media.wix.com/ugd/a2dd91_1550c5f873934b068afa8be3ad4ddd54.pdf.