ABSTRACT
The deployed tactical network is a critical enabler for ADF operations. The ADF, like other modern militaries, are faced with many challenges in operating the network within a distributed, disrupted and austere environment. The challenges include the flexibility and agility required to support military operations, access to limited bandwidth, external influences competing for dominance in cyberspace and the harsh physical environment of the Land, Sea and Air tactical domains. Many military forces, including the ADF, have traditionally adapted commercial enterprise network technologies to address the needs of deployed military forces. The limitations in this approach have constrained network performance. The Commonwealth and Boeing Defence Australia through LAND 2072 Ph2B, successfully designed, developed and delivered a survivable and modular tactical network, from the ground up, to the meet the complex needs of the warfighter. The Integrated Battle Field Telecommunication Network (IBTN), is a distributed Software Defined Network (SDN) built on open standards (such as IPv6 and OSPFv3) providing a resilient backbone to the ADF’s land tactical network for Army, and deployed ground network for the Air Force. This paper provides an overview of the BCS distributed network architecture and highlights the utility of a common Joint Black Core Network (JBCN) across the ADF.

BIOGRAPHY
Andrew Brownlee is the System Architect for Project Currawong, responsible for collaborating with the Commonwealth acquisition team, Australian Defence Force end-users and engineers across multiple disciplines to establish a genuinely deployable and agile architecture for a broadband communications system. The Currawong team have maintained a culture of innovation that has delivered two major system releases and is currently developing the third release. Andrew worked in many engineering and leadership capacities for Boeing over the last 25 years including a number of System Architect roles for business development campaigns. His career in engineering began in a systems integration role on the Collins Class Submarine project in 1995 and has progressed through the many facets of systems engineering for complex systems. For the ADF’s High Frequency Modernisation Project, Andrew led the development of a system performance model, in collaboration with stakeholders from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and the Commonwealth acquisition team they delivered a model of the systems performance suitably validated for a role in system verification. Andrew is a graduate from the University of New South Wales. He holds a combined Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) and Bachelor of Science (Computing) degree. During his studies he held an industry linked scholarship which provided broad exposure to Electrical Engineering disciplines. Andrew has maintained a passion for systems engineering and a constant desire to understand the complexity behind systems development. Outside of work, Andrew is committed to his wife and two sons. He embraces family travel opportunities and is starting a new hobby in wood working.