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New GIG to net "Gods eye view" for troops

Tim Weiner:

The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future.

The goal is to give all American commanders and troops a moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats — "a God's-eye view" of battle.

This "Internet in the sky," Peter Teets, undersecretary of the Air Force, told Congress, would allow "Marines in a Humvee, in a faraway land, in the middle of a rainstorm, to open up their laptops, request imagery" from a spy satellite, and "get it downloaded within seconds."

The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG. Conceived six years ago, its first connections were laid six weeks ago. It may take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build the new war net and its components.

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Advocates say networked computers will be the most powerful weapon in the American arsenal. Fusing weapons, secret intelligence and soldiers in a globe-girdling network — what they call net-centric warfare — will, they say, change the military in the way the Internet has changed business and culture.