How to Maintain the Tactical Communications Edge within the Modern Informational Technological Environment

The US Army has transitioned its main mission focus from counter insurgency to Unified Land Operations; this shift causes the US Army Signal Corps to pivot its tactical communications coverage. Existing counter insurgency based operational networks will not function to the new mission's standards. An effective way must be found to quickly get tactical communication capabilities into the warfighters possession and have America's Information Technology industry to work in favor of the US Army Signal Corps. The Problem is that the military must balance between the interoperability risks of urgent acquisition and the obsolesce risks of a methodical approach. Research has shown that the solution must also meet the challenges imposed by the exponential growth of technology and be adaptive enough to operate in a communication degraded environment, while utilizing a "fail fast" business model. An "adopt, adapt, and author" strategy should be implemented to create a joint standardized tactical hardware architecture and implement a modular technical solution utilizing commercial off the shelf acquisition models.