Page 50 - Australian Defence Magazine February 2022

50 COMMAND & CONTROL
FEBRUARY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
CONNECTING THE BATTLEFIELD OF THINGS
Australian Defence ICT specialists Insitec demonstrated an innovative software system able to connect tactical radio networks on the battlefield during the recent C4 EDGE showcase in Canberra.
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
C4 EDGE (Evolutionary Defence Ground Environment) is a consortium of 31 Australian companies led by EOS and created to demonstrate a sovereign land battlegroup and below communications environment for Army.
Insitec is an SME of around 160 people and its HIVE sys- tem successfully trialled at the C4 EDGE event is intended to connect the Battlefield of Things (BoT) to enable rapid and secure networking of forces across the battlefield, and beyond.
“Insitec has partnered with Defence for the past 20 years and our experience gives us an edge when it comes to solv- ing complex operating problems on the battlefield, in the corporate world or for emergency services nationwide,” said Managing Director Michael Branch.
“The days of incompatible radio networks that are manu- ally patched together to create inefficient, constrained net- works are behind us. HIVE’s network architecture allows any node to interact with any other node on the network.
“HIVE provides the ability to perform dynamic recon-
figuration of interconnected networks to ensure the com- mander’s intent is applied across the network’s communica- tions systems. This means commanders can make quicker decisions, thanks to reduced transmission latency and en- hanced situational awareness. Furthermore, they can reli- ably and quickly communicate their orders to warfighters at the tactical edge.”
HIVE DESCRIBED
HIVE essentially sits above the traditional tactical radio net- works, acting as an overlay to link all the disparate tactical networks and radio communications systems together to form a single network. This means that any applications above the overlay can access any individual radio or network and al- though demonstrated at C4 EDGE as a battlegroup and below system, it can be expanded upwards to corps level if desired.
The system is designed to constantly monitor and opti- mise performance by using all the network capacity avail-
INSITEC