Undersea laser communications is a #x201C;game-changer#x201D; for the US navy, so how do we make the promise a reality?

摘要

Today's Navy faces a number of challenges in meeting its goal of global presence and the emerging needs of a maritime nation. In particular, the number of traditional assets or resources available to conduct these missions, specifically Naval platforms (aircraft, surface combatants and submarines), continues on a steady decline due to age and an ever-constricting Defense budget. Unmanned vehicles and systems promise to extend the reach of our Navy's platforms and enhance their ability to meet their operational requirements to monitor and control large expanses of the world-wide maritime battle space. However, the network available today to provide command and control, and exfiltration of data from these unmanned vehicles/systems is wholly inadequate for the mission. This is especially true in the undersea domain. Legacy systems utilizing Radio Frequency (RF) or acoustics fall far short in meeting the requirements to connect the undersea environment either due to physics, the lack of stealth, insufficient bandwidth and/or the ability to be jammed or otherwise denied.