The ability to share information and maintain reliable, secure lines of communication between people, platforms, weapons, and systems is essential to military success. The 4th Annual Joint Networks Summit will convene leaders to discuss the current state of the DoD’s communication networks, the challenges facing them, and future requirements as technology continues to advance and the threat landscape evolves.

The DoD’s current communications infrastructure is sprawling, including over 15,000 networks, 17,000 satcom terminals, and 10,000 operational systems. Advancing technology has surpassed the DoD’s hardware-based infrastructure and the military’s piecemeal efforts to update this infrastructure has led to challenges with interoperability between updated COTS systems and legacy systems. In the current era of Great Power Competition our peer competitors, Russia and China, pose a serious threat: cyber attacks and information warfare have become a constant challenge, and a technology arms race has led to a DoD-wide push for network modernization and continued investment in new technologies, including space-based networks.