Articles

How defense industry is affected by ICT

Most of the nations in the world are looking out to significant unit for economic growth in defense industry. The defense industry deals with the war equipments and weapons. Some of nations in the world are well developed in defense industry and has their extensive reports of exports to other countries. Generally, industry outputs of defense are two categories like hardware and software as like ICT industries.

Defense industry is the one which has much impact by ICT which is known as Information and Communication Technology. There is a strong correlation exists between the defense and ICT and have direct and positive relationship each. Developments in both the industries apparently benefits to other.

Like, internet was initiated in 1950 and is the core for ICT and it is used in aggression for Soviet Union in defensive way. The objective of this is to provide NATO and USA army force generals with strong which is unbreakable and indecipherable tool for communication in case of nuclear war broke out.

The situations prior to ICT era for defense industry are like dumb bombs, land and sea superiority, management of people-centric battlefields, hardware-based force multipliers and aftermath combat reviews.

Before introduction of ICT, defense industry used conventional bombs called dumb bombs and these are used to destroy certain targets like hydro-electric dams and bunkers, runways in airports and bridges and huge buildings, industrial complexes. So, these were used in military forces to create fear in opponents.

Why these are called dumb is because of its inability in targeting and reaction by its timing and they do not able to classify importance of target which they targeted. They frequently miss their target but wrong destruction of unnecessary ones is most common. Lot of security damages had risen when it is used in major wars like world wars.

Equipment and weapons were produced based on the individual requirement of army forces earlier; accordingly against that destructive environment for enemies these were created. These weapons were used by the armed forces in the battlefields concurrently and collectively. So, this was depend on number of individuals and the cluster of it is known as people-centric battlefield management system.

The people who are intended to join in military was very high and it created conflict in production of weapons and to win in battle field generals require huge number of army forces and weapons to get control over the enemies and front-line and cover their left and right flanks.

There was no matter of invention of dedicated devices in military to assist their action reviews in combat prior to ICT. In aftermath combat review everyone depended on their individual accounts and memories. It was possible by the maps and combat area models and higher authorities review. There is a challenge in reliability on the accuracy of information in aftermath combat review.

Before ICT, the defense industry was focused on land and sea superiority only and after ICT it was introduced air defense system. In land and sea superiority the weapon and equipment requirement is very high.

One Malaysian army general had mentioned that the decisive battle of any conflict will be on land. And, the best way to block enemy attack is to check them at sea before they reach our soil. However, this situation had totally changed with the introduction of ICT in defense industry.

Before ICT, military used to carry 155mm artillery pieces and battle tanks of size 125mm and dumb bombs which are very high and could not destruct much area. Many countries spending much money on defense hardware and nations never realized that if they spend that money on human capital and ICT expertise they can get strong defense system in future.

ICT has huge impact on defense industry and has changed complete operations of defense and equipments. Instead of focusing hardware based equipments, if defense industry focus on ICT centric outputs for advancements in defense the potentiality will be very strong for armed forces across the globe.