Raytheon BBN Technologies has been awarded $16 million in additional funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under phase two of the Military Networking Protocol (MNP) program to create architectures, protocols, and network devices that will improve network capabilities and integrity for tactical military units. BBN is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Company.

The goal of the MILNET Protocol program is to enhance network security and performance by providing user-level attribution for military computer networks to de-anonymize network traffic. The MNP program's suite of security techniques will ensure that use of the network is limited to authorized users and that it is extremely difficult to spoof or inject false traffic into the network.

In addition, with the ability to clearly identify individual aspects of network traffic, unit commanders will be able to adapt and reassign network resources as dictated by constantly changing tactical situations to guarantee the swift delivery of mission-critical information to the correct individuals and units.

"MILNET Protocol is an example of the important work DARPA is doing with organizations such as BBN to ensure the rapid and continuous advancement of our military networks," said Gregory Troxel, Military Networking Protocol program principal investigator at Raytheon BBN Technologies.

"When complete, it will play a critical role in 21st century military operations by providing our warfighters with information and network-security superiority on the battlefield."

In the previous phase of the program, the BBN team developed and successfully demonstrated the network technology in a test environment using 200 network devices at a data transmission speed of 100 Mbps. The team is currently working towards the goal of a networked environment scaled to 10,000 devices working at speeds up to 100 times faster.