Fortress Technologies BreadCrumb Wireless Network - Manual (Page 57)

Chapter 8. Case Study: Military Exercise in
Thailand
Rajant BreadCrumb devices were used by the Thai Military as an integral part of a Joint Air Land Sea
Amphibious Assault Exercise last week in Pattaya, Thailand. The beach assault took place at a Thai
Naval Base and Thai media from a major news channel was present to document the exercise.
Figure 8-1. Joint Exercise Network
There was a BreadCrumb XL on each of two ships, an XL on a Black Hawk helicopter, an XL on the
observation bluff, and multiple SEs deployed as needed. The observation center was set up 2km away
from the beach, on a bluff overlooking the bay. There were two ships at sea, one 2km away from the
bluff with a camera streaming live feed of the ship’s control center (Mission Control Center) and another
10km away from the bluff with a camera streaming live feed of the landing deck for the helicopters.
There was a camera on one helicopter as well, streaming live video as it performed its duties. Finally,
there was a UAV flown that was equipped with video to its base station. Using a new addition to the
Rajant product line, a Video Encoder XL, the analog video stream was encoded to MPEG-4 and sent
over the BreadCrumb network to be viewed by anyone on the network.
A total of eight Rajant BreadCrumb devices were used to create the portable, wireless, secure, meshed
network. Through this network, the Thai Prime Minister and Commander of the Joint Supreme
Command were able to monitor each stage of the assault by viewing streaming video from the helicopter,
flight deck, UAV and ship based command center on two big screen televisions placed at the observation
center. Most impressive was the consistent 10Km link to the far away ship and the automatic meshing of
the XL and transmission of video from an on-the-go helicopter. The assault exercise was deemed a huge
success by the Thai military, Prime Minister, Commander of the Joint Supreme Command and all others
involved.
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