Rick Kozak / Staff Col. Gregory Brundidge is the Air Force director of communications for Air Combat Command headquarters.

The U.S. Air Force is using commercial off-the-shelf technology, from Iridium satellite telephones to Internet routers, to create communications links between air and ground units in remote areas that can't be reached by traditional line-of-site communications

"The real business we are about is getting information to the decision makers at all levels," Air Force Col. Gregory Brundidge, director of communications for Air Combat Command headquarters, told the audience at the 6 th Annual C4ISR Journal Integration Conference.

Focusing on the conference's theme, "new tools for war in real time," Brundidge said satellite and Internet-based communications are changing how troops in the field talk with each other and their command centers.

One example cited by Brundidge, a career communications officer, was the Radio over Internet Protocol Router Network, or RIPRNET.

In the past, the U.S. military depended on dedicated line-of-sight radio towers or aircraft to relay voice and data transmissions between units in the field and headquarters, Brundidge said.

Now a series of towers cabled together across Iraq serve the same purpose. A convoy commander still uses a radio to connect with the tower, but once the connection is made, the convoy commander can talk with anyone else who is linked to the same net, such as the pilot of an A-10 Thunderbolt scouting the convoy's route.

Because of security issues, RIPRNET is a closed system not accessible to people outside the system, even people using the Defense Department's secure Internet network, Brundidge said.

Other systems in the field include the Joint Radio Relay [JR2] and the Fighter Command and Control Enhancement [FACE].

JR2, fielded in Afghanistan, uses portable radio relay stations linked to communications satellites by Iridium satellite telephones. A soldier in the field uses a radio to reach the relay station's tower, which in turn routes the radio call to a satellite and then onto whomever the soldier needs to reach.

The FACE system is contained in a pod mounted on a fighter's wing. The pod contains an Iridium telephone and radio communications links. The system allows anyone to call the FACE system's phone and then be relayed by radio to nearby ground forces or aircrews.

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