Case study: development of a SANDF tactical data link network enabling capability

Abstract

In the scope of Tactical Data Links (TDL), the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) started the journey to establish a national TDL capability with the commencement of their national Strategic Defence Procurement Packages (SDPP) in 1999. These procurement packages saw the development of fighter, helicopter, frigate and submarine platforms with requirements for TDL capabilities. In this, the SANDF pursued the development of an indigenous TDL data model and data transfer protocol standard appropriately named Link-ZA. This paper expands on the implementation evolution and challenges of the standard over the last 10 years and provides a generic TDL Capability Model with a strategy for establishing interoperability between different implementations of the standard, thus establishing a SANDF tactical Network Enabled Capability.