The Web: The Pentagon's private Internet

By Gene J. Koprowski
Published 11/17/2004 4:06 PM
CHICAGO, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- The Pentagon has begun a massive program -- whose budget dwarfs the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb -- to install its own encrypted, private computer network designed to connect every HumVee, helicopter and human in the military. Called the Global Information Grid, or GIG, the Pentagon is budgeting approximately $200 billion on the network-centric warfare project over the coming decade, which is intended to give soldiers and sailors bandwidth on the battlefield powerful enough to download three full-length motion pictures in a few seconds."The old way of making war does not work anymore," said Wolfgang Gentzsch, managing director for grid computing at MCNC, a computer research firm in Research Triangle Park, N.C. --The Web is a weekly series by UPI examining the global telecommunications phenomenon known as the World Wide Web. E-mail sciencemail [at] upi.comCopyright © 2001-2004 United Press International