Starting from the deputy company commander of the Soldier Assault Team

Cui Shuai smiled helplessly, "Alright, alright, I knew you'd renege on your promise. What's the matter this time? Hurry up and tell me, my code is still waiting for me to go back and save them."

Zhang Anbang laughed and joked with him for a while, and his mood improved greatly, even the pressure lessened a lot. "Hei Zi, it's like this, do you remember what I talked to you about before?"

Upon hearing this, Cui Shuai's smile faded. "I remember, of course I remember. You were talking about the inconsistency in equipment. I've considered that. Why are you suddenly bringing this up? Do you have some ideas about it?"

Zhang Anbang nodded and said seriously, "I do have some thoughts. Don't you think the lack of unified data links among these devices is a big problem?"

Cui Shuai's tone held a hint of helplessness, "This is indeed a problem, but there's nothing we can do. All the equipment we have now is the result of painstaking efforts from various research institutes."

Well, there's nothing wrong with using it, but the problems you mentioned do exist. This is something that our 207 team alone can't solve.

"Of course I understand that this is not something that any one party can solve. It is a comprehensive problem, and the key issue is the lack of a unified tactical data exchange standard across the entire army."

From the 90s to the present, all our military equipment has focused on hardware and bus electrical standards, without mandating a common tactical message protocol.

There is no unified common language across the entire army regarding target coordinate format, target type encoding, distance unit, time base, and verification algorithm.

Even the US military only made the painful decision to unify data links after the Gulf War, let alone us, who are still in the early stages of digitizing our mechanized equipment.

The research and development tasks are already heavy, and there is also a need to leave various redundancies to exceed the targets. Each research institute is doing its own thing, which is completely a siloed research and development.

Within the weapons industry, research institutes assign tasks vertically. For example, your Institute 207 is responsible for armored vehicle command and control and self-propelled artillery fire control, while Institute 203 specializes in the control system of the HJ series anti-tank missiles.

The drones belong to Northwestern Polytechnical University, and each project is independently approved and accepted. As long as the equipment itself meets the performance standards, interoperability with other platforms is not mandatory.

Upon hearing this, Cui Shuai laughed, "Oh my, I didn't expect that, I didn't expect that, Bamboo Pole, your words really hit the nail on the head, quite professional."

Zhang Anbang laughed a few times, "Hei Zi, isn't that obvious? I'm a technical person by training. Even though I work in the front-line army, I haven't forgotten my technical skills."

"Okay, okay, you're amazing, you're awesome, alright? Just as you said, in order to complete the research and development tasks quickly, every institute can only bury itself in research and development."

Due to the mission's confidentiality and immense pressure, the proprietary communication protocols of the equipment developed by each company only satisfy the closed loop within their own system.

The research institute has no obligation to proactively make its equipment compatible with other units. As for opening up the underlying protocols and message documents, that is even more impossible, since these are core technical materials that are under extremely strict control, and there is a risk of leakage if they are not handled carefully.

There is no regular mechanism for cross-institute coordination. If you want to get agreements from others, the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense or the China Ordnance Industry Group must take the lead. No one is willing to do this thankless task.

This has led to various problems with different equipment, namely, the physical bus is not standardized. Some equipment uses RS422 serial ports, some uses simple CAN buses, and some fire control systems even have custom parallel interfaces.

This results in inconsistent byte order; some hardware uses big-endian storage, while others use little-endian storage, and the byte alignment rules for structures vary.

The coordinate datum is not uniform; some use plane rectangular coordinates, some use simplified latitude and longitude, and some use relative local coordinates of the position.

The definitions of data units, precision, and signs are all inconsistent, so even if you add a converter to all the devices and connect them with physical lines, the data will still be garbled when parsed.

"Yes, that's the problem," Zhang Anbang nodded in agreement. "This problem didn't seem serious before, but recently I've discovered significant drawbacks in our work on synthesis."

These problems come together to create fragmented data and information silos across the entire domain.

Currently, our tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled mortars, reconnaissance vehicles, small drones, and individual soldier radios all use independent systems, independent protocols, and independent data ports, making each unit incompatible and unable to communicate with each other.

The enemy coordinates, fortification distribution, and armored group deployments identified by forward reconnaissance troops cannot be automatically transmitted back or shared in real time.

The only methods available were verbal communication via radio, manual recording, paper reporting, and hierarchical transmission, which were cumbersome and severely delayed, resulting in a complete disconnect between the static situation of the command vehicle and the actual battlefield.

Ultimately, these problems will severely delay our combat response. In the event of actual combat, given the current state of attack beyond visual range, we might not even have time to react before enemy shells are already raining down on us.

"This," Cui Shuai felt his whole body tremble. After all, he was in the research and development field. When Zhang Anbang mentioned this issue before, he only thought that these issues would be troublesome.

From the moment he entered the research institute, his task was to complete the research and development tasks assigned by his superiors and ensure that the equipment he developed could be used normally by the troops under any conditions.

Regarding the issue of lagging behind in actual combat that Zhang Anbang just mentioned, he had only thought that information silos were inconvenient, and had never considered it in the context of actual combat.

At this moment, when Zhang Anbang mentioned it, he thought of the humiliating history of modern China that he had learned before and the sacrifices made by the People's Liberation Army in various wars, and he broke out in a cold sweat.

His voice trembled as he said, "Anbang, this...it can't be that bad, can it?"

Zhang Anbang chuckled lightly, "It's not that bad. I'm telling you, Lao Hei, you've gone through four years of national defense education and worked in the research institute for several years."

Whether what I'm saying is true or false, you know perfectly well. Modern warfare is all about striking first.

Currently, our various types of equipment are not interconnected, reconnaissance information cannot be transmitted, and target coordinates can only be verbally relayed via radio. In the event of war, even if we discover the enemy first, a slight delay in information flow could mean the loss of the opportunity to strike.

Without breaking down information silos, no matter how many weapons you have, you can't turn early detection into early strikes, and therefore you can't achieve preemptive advantage. Don't you agree?

"You, you're right," Cui Shuai said, his voice tightening as he thought about what Zhang Anbang had said. "But, just as you said, the US military may not have completed the full information link connection either."

Zhang Anbang's leisurely voice came through the microphone, "I don't know, but what if?"

Upon hearing these three words, Cui Shuai completely broke down. "You're right. It seems that connecting the entire supply chain is indeed an urgent matter."