Military communications

Military communications, or Signals, is a field of military activities, tactics and equipment dealing with communications. First of all, military communications are battlefield (combat) communications, including intercommunication with a higher command or country's government.

Military communications are part of the Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) Model.

History and sense of the terms

Historically, the first military communications had the form of sending/receiving simple signals (often hidden or encoded to be unrecognizeable for the enemy). Respectively, the first distinctive tactics of military communications were called Signals, while units specializing in those tactics received the Signal Corps name. Later Signals became a highly-distinct military occupation dealing rather with general communications methods (similar to those in civil use) than with weapons.

Present-day militaries of an informational society conduct very intense and complicated communicating activities on a daily basis, using modern high-tech telecommunications and computing methods. Only a small part of these activities is immediately related to the combat actions. That's why some prefer the term "military communications".

Modern concepts

Network-centric warfare (NCW) relies on network-oriented methods of communications and control to make existing forces vastly more effective.

Military communications equipment

Many pieces of military communications equipment are built to encrypt and decode transmissions and survive rough treatment in hostile climates. They use many frequencies to send signals to other radios and to satellites.

See also

• Signal Corps
• telecommunications
• communications protection
• electronic warfare
• radio reconnaissance
• Defence Information Infrastructure
• Kiev Military Institute of Control and Signals
• Bowman (British Army Communications System)
• Parakeet (Australian Army Communications System)