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The Global Information Grid (GIG) is the enabling infrastructure for Network Centric Warfare (NCW), a concept that relies on communications technology to link together U.S. military personnel, ground vehicles, aircraft, and naval vessels through integrated wide and local area networks to provide improved battle space awareness for joint military forces. The GIG Bandwidth Expansion program (GIG-BE) is a component of the overall GIG, that involves upgrading the capacity of the busiest equipment and transmission pathways composing the central portion of the GIG. Some question whether the GIG-BE design will support military requirements for transmitting the expected future high volume of encrypted network traffic. Also, because each service is developing a separate network architecture that will tie into the GIG, some observers question whether these differences will limit interoperability of the overall GIG, and thus reduce its usefulness to warfighters. This report will be updated as events warrant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has denied Science Applications International Corp.'s (SAIC 's) protest of a $4.6 billion Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) award to Lockheed Martin (LMT) to manage its Global Information Grid (GIG) networks and related services. DISA originally awarded the deal, also known as a Global Systems Management Operations (GSM-O) contract, on June 21, 2012.

The article reports that the U.S. Joint Staff is developing common standards and policies to integrate services into the Global Information Grid (GIG). According to Vice Admiral Nancy Brown, the Joint Staff is bringing together ideas such as the Navy's FORCE net, the Army's Land War Net, the Air Force's next generation command and control constellation and the Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Force.

The article reports on the preparations for the development and operational testing for the potential $10 billion Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T). The completion of key technology demonstrations for the U.S. Army by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin signals the start of the testing. The program aims to modernize tactical communications, extend the Global Information Grid, and be interoperable with joint forces, coalition forces and other government agency networks.

This article reports on the plan of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to station up to eight modular command centers worldwide within the next several years that will be readily deployable to support contingencies into areas with minimal infrastructure and assist in restoring order after disasters at home, according to a senior U.S. military official as of January 2006.