(Washington, D.C.) Marcus Luttrell was the “lone survivor” who fought to the end as 19 of his fellow SEALs died fending off hundreds if not thousands of Taliban during the now well-known “Operation Red Wings” in 2005.
Many are likely familiar with Marcus’ story as it was told in the famous “Lone Survivor” movie. A lesser known, and extremely impactful development following this American tragedy, which in part resulted from communications failures, is that the incident inspired a massive and immediate Pentagon move to develop new technology.
Under Fire
As the story describes, U.S. Navy SEALs wound up trapped by thousands of Taliban after being unable to achieve radio communications connectivity from isolated mountainous positions in the Kunar Province in Afghanistan.
Not surprisingly, the event led to an urgent Pentagon request for technologies capable of establishing and maintaining communications connectivity in austere, mountainous forward locations.
Battlefield Airborne Comms Node (BACN)
The Pentagon wound up working with Northrop Grumman to engineer an aerial communications relay called Battlefield Airborne Comms Node (BACN), a technical gateway system integrated onto Block 20 Global Hawk drones and E-11A fixed wing surveillance planes.
“BACN “is like Wi-Fi in the sky,” explained U.S. Air Force Capt. Jacob Breth, 430th EECS pilot, in a 2018 Air Force news report on the arrival of BACN.
As a gateway payload technology, the BACN technical suite is able to receive and transmit otherwise separate or disconnected communications pathways, such as RF data links, in an interoperable way due to common, modular technical standards.
