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Situation awareness involves being aware of what is happening in the vicinity to understand how information, events, and one’s own actions will impact goals and objectives, both immediately and in the near future.

Someone with an adept sense of situation awareness generally has a high degree of knowledge with respect to inputs and outputs of a system, an innate “feel” for situations, people, and events that play out because of variables the subject can control. Lacking or inadequate situation awareness has been identified as one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error.

Situational awareness is critical for military administrators to make wise decisions inside battlespace. That’s why the Link 16 Tactical Data Link (TDL) is a crucial communication system for interoperability of NATO and coalition forces operating within the chaos of battle.

The key to Link 16’s operability is that it does not depend on any one terminal to act as a node for the Link 16 network. Rather, all Link 16-capable terminals act as nodes allowing various military forces to engage while distributed in various environments (land, sea, air).

Other factors that improve situational awareness by using Link 16 include:

  • Increases capacity of information exchange
  • Increases data throughput
  • Ability to pinpoint precise participant location
  • Can identify all participants in a battlespace

Security measures that have gone into Link 16 compliment the situational awareness features. Link 16 is a TDMA-based secure, jam-resistant, high-speed digital data link which operates in the radio frequency band 960–1,215 MHz, allocated in line with the ITU Radio Regulations to the aeronautical radio navigation service and to the radio navigation satellite service.

In the past, this frequency range limited the exchange of information to users within line-of-sight of one another. However, with satellite capabilities and adhoc protocols, it is now possible to pass Link 16 data over long-haul protocols such as TCP/IP using MIL-STD 3011 (JREAP) or STANAG 5602 (SIMPLE).

Link 16 uses the transmission characteristics and protocols, conventions, and fixed-length or variable length message formats defined by MIL-STD 6016 and STANAG 5516 (formerly the JTIDS technical interface design plan). Information is typically passed at one of three data rates: 31.6, 57.6, or 115.2 kilobits per second, although the radios and waveform FHSS itself can support throughput values well over 1 Mbit/s.

Link 16 information is primarily coded in J.-series messages which are binary data words with well-defined meanings. These data words are grouped in functional areas, and allocated to network participation groups (NPG).

Link 16 Training

Tonex offers nearly a dozen courses in Link 16 Training including the 3-day Advanced Link 16 Training course, which covers advanced Link 16 concepts, Link 16 network architecture, Link 16 planning, Link 16 security, Link 16 Cybersecurity Link 16 operation and  Link 16 management.

Other Link 16 courses include:

Joint Range Extension Applications Protocol Training/JREAP Training Bootcamp (4 days)

Link 16 Advanced Training/Network Enabled Weapons Bootcamp (4 days)

Link 16 and MIDS Training Bootcamp (5 days)

Link 16 Cybersecurity Crash Course (4 days)

Link 16 Systems Engineering Training Course (3 days)

Link 16 Training for Managers (3 days)

Link 16 Training/Courses/Tactical Data Link Training (3 days)

Tactical Data Link Training Crash Course/TDL Training Bootcamp (4 days)

–Tactical Data Links (TDL) Testing Training Bootcamp (4 days)

–Variable Message Format (VMF) Training Bootcamp (4 days)

Why Tonex?

Tonex is internationally recognized as a Tactical Data Link training provider with subject matter experts.

Ratings tabulated from student feedback post-course evaluations show an amazing 98 percent satisfaction score.

Reasonably priced classes taught by the best trainers is the reason all kinds of organizations from Fortune 500 companies to government’s most important agencies return for updates in courses and hands-on workshops.

For more information, questions, comments, contact us.

 

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