The US Navy successfully implemented a pilot project to connect warships to cloud services. This was reported by Datacenter Dynamics. The concept, which provides for the transfer of terabytes of data to the cloud every day, was tested on the example of the aircraft carrier “Abraham Lincoln”.
The Flank Speed Edge project, involving thousands of users, is one of the extensions of the innovative Flank Speed solution, which provides a joint work in the cloud of many representatives of the US military and state apparatus. Data transmission is carried out using Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (P-LEO) satellite services, which are in low Earth orbit and can interact both with each other and with ground stations.
During the pilot project, the Navy organized satellite connection of the gigabit class, which allows you to transfer 3−5 Tbytes of data every day. This ensures the possibility of using IP-telephony, data transmission for education, medical services, supplies, etc. If necessary, all these services can be disabled without losing the functionality of the ship. The entire satellite infrastructure together with the on-board Wi-Fi network can be managed by just three sailors. The project also allows for onboard software to be updated without the need to go to port.
In addition, the Navy is implementing the Flank Speed Edge system at shore facilities where there are difficulties with traditional connectivity options, for example, in headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.