Networked Future

Prasun K. Sengupta

Navstar-Glonass-IRNSS Receiver

As explained earlier (FORCE, February 2020) by this author, rapid technological advances since the late Nineties in the arena of network-centric warfare have seen to it that multinational military alliances—or coalition of the willing—are seeing to it that it is no longer imperative to have formal military treaties between countries to ensure multi-spectrum cooperation and the conduct of joint forces operations. Instead, today’s ‘algorithmic alliances’ can be struck and activated within just a few minutes through the exchange of alphabet-/digit-based algorithms.

For instance, the India-specific Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), which was inked on 6 September 2018 during the maiden 2+2 ministerial meeting between India and the US, deals with secure encrypted military communications channels even though the hardware being used are different. This, for instance, the COMCASA’s Military Information Sharing Technical Arrangement (MISTA) component now enables the Indian Navy’s (IN) Boeing P-8I LRMR/ASW platforms and the US Navy’s and Royal Australian Air Force’s P-8A Poseidon LRMR/ASW platforms to function in a networked manner f