How Computational Power—or its Absence—Shaped World War Naval Battles
Fnord666 brings us the following story from ArsTechnica:
"Network-centric warfare" is the hot concept in modern military thinking-soldiers fighting not just with weapons but within a web of sensors and computation, giving them and their commanders superior awareness of the battlefield. But the problems this approach was conceived to solve are timeless. I'm here, the enemy is out there somewhere. How do I find them? How do I keep track of them? Once the battle has started, how do I know where to move? Heck, how do I even keep track of my own people?
Long before IoT concepts littered the world, the navies of the early 20th century were among the first to take a systematic approach to answering these questions. Sail had given way to steam and European colonies had metastasized around the world. Warships were moving faster and required coordination across greater distances than ever. Meanwhile, telegraphs and radio allowed instant communications at previously unheard-of distances. All of this combined to create a revolution in how navies used information.
The article is an interesting vision into naval battlefield information and how it has evolved over the past two centuries.
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