Joint Tactical Information Distribution System
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The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) is an L-band TDMA network radio system used by the United States armed forces and their allies to support data communications needs, principally in the air and missile defense community. It provides high-jam-resistance, high-speed, crypto-secure computer-to-computer connectivity in support of every type of military platform from Air Force fighters to Navy submarines.
JTIDS is one of the family of radio equipment implementing what is called Link 16. Link 16, a highly-survivable radio communications design to meet the most stringent requirements of modern combat, provides reliable Situational Awareness (SA) for fast-moving forces. Link 16 equipment has proven, in detailed field demonstrations as well as in the AWACS and JSTARS deployment in Desert Storm, the capability of basic Link 16 to exchange user data at 115 kbit/s, error-correction-coded. (Compare this to typical tactical systems at 16 kbit/s, which also have to accommodate overheads in excess of 50% to supply the same transmission reliability.)
While principally a data network, Link 16 radios can provide high quality voice channels and navigation services as accurate as any in the inventory. Every Link 16 user can identify itself to other similarly equipped platforms at ranges well beyond what Mark XII IFF systems can provide. Additionally, Link 16-equipped platforms capable of identification through other means (such as radar and TENCAP blue force tracking) can pass that "indirect" identification data as part of its SA exchange. The capabilities of Link 16 are best represented by the JTIDS or MIDS terminals. The TADIL-J message format forms the basis for the mandates in the DoD Tactical Data Link Management Plan.
There are benefits to the full-scale implementation of the two key elements of Link-16: (1) the message "catalog" and (2) the specific radio waveform (i.e., L-band CPSM, spread-spectrum and Reed-Solomon coding, omni-directional broadcast). Link 16 terminals implement the "NI" node-to-node protocols as well as one or more of the ICD-compliant user interfaces.