The DoD is planning to spend $679 billion in fiscal year 2008 on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in money allocated from the Defense Authorization Bill. That’s more than an 8 percent increase over the funding in 2007.
In a story that parallels the commercial technology gains from NASA’s race to space in the 60’s, new research is leading to a host of new technologies that have commercial applications.
Net-centric embedded applications is one group of technologies receiving a lot of funding. Better storage and data transmission technologies are also leaders. Applications that involve high-level imaging and video, GIS, and multiple real-time feeds are drivers behind the need for massive amounts of storage.
The demand for up-to-the-minute information is pushing the need for rapid analysis of huge amounts of raw data and has prompted some storage companies to start targeting storage devices that are aimed at capturing and analyzing military intelligence and to beef up the ability to rapidly analyze real-time intelligence data.
Technology improvements for storage devices used for military purposes are sure to later move to the civilian market, much like GPS technology has. Immediate cross-over applications for the new technologies include security monitoring and healthcare imaging.
