Humvees, UAVs could create route to Internet in Afghanistan

The Pentagon is looking into how unmanned aerial vehicles and Humvees can be turned into Internet access points and woven into a sprawling wireless network in war zones such as Afghanistan.

Called mobile hot spots, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program will tackle the problem of how to bring Internet access to soldiers in remote areas, where little infrastructure exists. If successfully deployed, such hot spots would allow a wider range of handheld devices to run applications for sharing intelligence in theater. The plan is to develop wireless antennas to be mounted on ground vehicles and Shadow UAVs so they can transmit and receive high-frequency network signals. The military then would stitch together an interconnected Internet infrastructure from these mobile hot spots located all over the battlefield.