Sun Microsystems Inc revealed today that the US army has been using its Jini technology to develop mobile command centers for battlefield operations. The army – with Sun’s professional services unit – has been testing out self healing networks for tactical operations centers (TOC) based on Jini and Java technologies.
A mobile TOC generally consists of multiple computing devices, which are transported, in several trucks. When a center is set up, the trucks are moved together into a group and a sub area network is wired up between the computing devices. The TOC has control over logistics, firing patterns, battlefield operations and the like. The army has been using Jini to develop networks that don’t fall over if one of the trucks in a TOC is blown away or has to drive away.
Sun has also been working developing Jini networks for the army that enable nomadic computing devices such as handheld computers to log into the network and printers and other peripherals to be used from such machines, even if they do not contain the appropriate drivers. Dennis Ready, chief Jini architect for Sun professional services described the tests as, excellent examples of using Jini – both from a device point of view and from a services point of view. Ready says that Sun now has 15,000 licensees for Jini, the army being one of the more high profile users. รก
