Tactical Networks

The Webs Of War

Back in the day, you'd hardly be able to talk to the company fighting right next to you, let alone actually do anything of note with the.
Now, though, I could bring up my transmitter and coordinate a fire mission with Divisional artillery, call in a strike from the Air Jocks or the Fleet, and fight a battle with each individual section, all at the same time.
Damn do I love technology

— UC Army officer remarking on the opportunities offered by Tactical Networks.

The "Tactical Network" system is a concept devised by the UC Armed Forces to facilitate the rapid collection, dissemination, and usage of information across all services, echelons, and units in the battlefield. It enables real time, secure communications both across the chain of command of units and between them, enabling an incredible degree of interoperability unmatched by any other military force.

Origin Of Concept

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Tracing its roots, one could draw a line back a hundred years, to the "Army and Navy Communication Offices" instituted by field commanders operating on their own during the Chainbreaker Campaigns, where the need to share information between the services to effectively combat the nebulous, dynamic thereat of slavery and piracy compelled such systems to be developed.
Such a tradition of disjointed, ad hoc development at the lowest applicable levels would mark the development of the concept quite well. Jumping back to modern times, the current concept of "Combined Operations", and the concurrent developments in telecommunication technology, led to a myriad of projects working towards the goal of creating an integrated network of information.
Eventually, after a series of programme mergers, stark failures, and minor successes, the UC Navy would lead the first trial of the "Operational Relay Network". This system, primarily concerned with enabling coordination of surface combatants, submersibles, naval aviation and amphbious Marines, would get its first taste of battle in the Islander War, where one of its great pioneers ad supporters, then Vice Admiral Olivia D. Oxley, would use it to incredible affect, anabling the highly coordinated employment of her limited assets to cause the defeat of a numerically superior Nouvoloian foe on multiple occasions.
The sheer success of the ORN would spur increased investment into both the technology and concept itself, but also the general doctrine and theory that underpinned combined operations and the broad connection of assets and forces to achieve a mission. Eventually, the Army would develop a linked, connected system to the ORN it simply called "Tacical Networks", and so the system was born.
And not a moment too soon, because frontline units had barely become used to operating within this new framework when the 1st Great War kicked off, sparking 2 decades of near constant, mass scale conflict that saw combined operations rise to a prominence never imagined. Especially after the independence of the Air Force was achieved, the need for increasingly capable networks to facilitate the struggles of modern combat grew steadily apparent, and then blindingly obvious.
The Tactical Network programme would eventually trow to absorb and out shadow its Naval counterpart, and soon become the single, unified programme to facilitate the development, procurement, and usage of the technologies it would create. As advancements in technology shape and shift the very fabric of the modern Worlds, and the nature of an interconnected existence spreads, the programme continues to stay at the very tip of the spear of the new age of warfare and the Worlds.