Quo vadis?

Abstract

It is gratifying to note that action has been initiated and funded to modernize world-wide military communications facilities. The US Air Force Projects 465-L and 480-L (456-L) are the bellwethers. The US Army's UNICOM program and comparable US Navy projects are in various stages of implementation. All of these projects are aimed at increasing the quantity and reliability of telecommunications channels, increasing channel capacity or information rates, and reducing error rates, not only by the application of improved frequency stabilizing techniques, modern modulation and coherent detection methods, and the utilization of sophisticated coding as dictated by statistical information theory, but also by the application of highspeed mass-data-handling techniques that have been developed in the relatively glamorous field of electronic computers. Despite the excellence of the engineering effort that underlies these modernization programs, there appears to be one area of communications that has not been improved to date, namely, communications between staff-level progenitors of requirements and the working-level engineers who specify the design details of systems and equipments. Several examples, drawn from a nearly limitless number, highlight the need for establishing and maintaining effective communications (liaison) between the individuals of operational planning staffs and the implementing engineers. A free and untrammeled interchange of information between them would be educationally beneficial to both groups and economically beneficial to the taxpayer.