Military communications, or Signals, is a field of military activities, tactics and equipment dealing with communications. First of all, military communications are battlefield (combat) communications, including intercommunication with a higher command or country's government. Tactics is the collective name for methods of winning a small-scale conflict, performing an optimization, etc. ... This page discusses common devices known as tools, for other meanings see Tool (disambiguation) Modern hammer A tool is, among other things, a device that provides a mechanical or mental advantage in accomplishing a task. ... The term communications is used in a number of disciplines: Communications, also known as communication studies is the academic discipline which studies communication, generally seen as a mixture between media studies and linguistics. ... Battlefield can mean: A place where a battle occurs. ... Command has multiple meanings: An order. ...

Military communications are part of the Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) Model. C4ISTAR is an acronym used to represent the following group of related military functions that enable the coordination of operations: Command Control Communications Computers Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition Reconnaissance Many subsets of these elements are used, or have been used in the past, as acronyms. ...

History and sense of the terms

Historically, the first military communications had the form of sending/receiving simple signals (usually hidden or encoded to be unrecognizeable for the enemy). Respectively, the first distinctive tactics of military communications were called Signals, while units specializing in those tactics received the Signal Corps name. Later Signals became a highly-distinct military occupation dealing rather with general communications methods (similar to those in civil use) than with weapons. Signaling or signal may mean: Look up signal and signaling in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The word encoding has a number of meanings. ... Tactics is the collective name for methods of winning a small-scale conflict, performing an optimization, etc. ... The Signal Corps is a military branch, usually subordinate to a countrys army. ... Look up Civil in Wiktionary, the free dictionary The word Civil is derived from the Latin word civilis, from civis (citizen). Used as an adjective, it may describe several fields, concepts, and people: Civil death Civil defense Civil disobedience Civil engineering Civil law Civil liberties Civil libertarianism Civil marriage Civil... A weapon is a tool used to kill or incapacitate a person or animal, or destroy a military target. ...

Present-day militaries of an informational society conduct very intense and complicated communicating activities on a daily basis, using modern high-tech telecommunications and computing methods. Only a small part of these activities is immediately related to the combat actions. That's why the term "military communications" is more accurate. In sociology, informational society refers to a post-modern type of society. ... Telecommunication involves the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. ... Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a science that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical calculations. ...

Modern concepts

Network-centric warfare (NCW) relies on network-oriented methods of communications and control to make existing forces vastly more effective. Network-centric warfare (NCW), now commonly called Network-centric operations (NCO), is a new military doctrine or theory of war pioneered by the United States Department of Defense. ... // Look up network in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Military communications equipment

Many pieces of military communications equipment are built to encrypt and decode transmissions and survive rough treatment in hostile climates. They use many frequencies to send signals to other radios and to satellites. Transmission is the following: Generally, transmission is the act of passing something on. ... Sine waves of various frequencies; the lower waves have higher frequencies than those above. ...

See also

• Signal Corps
• telecommunications
• communications protection
• electronic warfare
• radio reconnaissance
• Defence Information Infrastructure
• Kiev Military Institute of Control and Signals
• Bowman (British Army Communications System)
• Parakeet (Australian Army Communications System)