Interconnectedness of defense systems. As more defense- and homeland security-related systems are interconnected, the pressure will increase on the United States to develop new technologies here at home, because relying on foreign suppliers for critical network components like firewalls and communications software might open the door to serious compromises of security and availability across a wide range of defense capabilities.Military superiority. In a military context, the goal is superiority over the adversary, which requires having the best research and engineering capability in the world.
Telecommunications continues to be a dynamic sector in which significant innovation is possible provided proper research investments are made. Some examples of potential payoffs from telecommunications research include the following:
A significantly enhanced Internet architecture that goes beyond incremental improvements to the existing network architecture to provide enhancements such as greater trustworthiness in the network core and customer networks, improved addressing and routing, and end-to-end quality of service provisioning;
New network architectures that take advantage of ever-greater storage densities, processing speeds, and communications bandwidths;More trustworthy telecommunications networks better able to address such challenges as maintaining the security of the voice network even in the face of a rising frequency, sophistication, and severity of attacks and the complexities and interdependencies that come with the convergence of voice and data networks;
Ubiquitous, higher-performance, more-affordable broadband access that enables richer, more interactive applications, including applications in such important areas as health care and education;Telepresence and telecollaboration environments that reproduce a local space at a distance and enable spatially separated individuals or teams to work more readily in concert;Public safety networks that offer higher mobility, better adaptation to harsh and changing conditions, and increased resiliency to damage;Adaptive/cognitive wireless
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