Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Pentagon to Equip Public Affairs Officers with Combat Videophones

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:13:45 -0500

Pentagon to Equip Public Affairs Officers with Combat Videophones

The Pentagon said it plans to equip four quick-response public affairs teams with
two-way videophones in order to provide near-real-time visuals from combat
zones. The videophones, made by Scotty TeleTransport Corp. and using
Inmarsat satellite service, can send and receive video over two simultaneous
channels at speeds about twice as fast as devices used by TV correspondents
in Afghanistan. The videophones would allow the public affairs officers to almost
instantly counter hostile propaganda, and set up videoconferences with military
commanders in the field.

Pentagon to Offer Combat Videophones
Wed Jan 22, 4:42 AM ET

By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer

FORT DIX, N.J. - The Pentagon (news - web sites) plans to equip public
affairs officers with two-way satellite video transmitters to provide on-the-spot
visuals from combat zones that it says could counter hostile propaganda.

The $27,000 Austrian-made videophone system
will allow military field commanders to hold
"near real-time" videoconferences with
journalists who may be sitting anywhere on the
planet, said Lt. Col. David Lamp, a spokesman
for the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Lamp displayed one of the Scotty
Tele-Transport Corp. videophones during a
Pentagon training seminar for about 60
reporters on the Army base here.

It's a rugged briefcase that cradles a laptop
computer with video-editing and recording
capacity and includes a built-in camera,
keyboard and a pair of external collapsable
satellite dish antennas.

Television networks began using such
equipment extensively in the past year for live
reports that previously required bulky equipment.

The weeklong journalist "boot camp" — this week's is the third of four
planned sessions — was aimed at preparing U.S. and foreign reporters to
be embedded with U.S. combat troops if there is war in Iraq.

"We're finally getting a realization in the world that information is power,"
Lamp said Monday of the videophones.

Instead of sitting silently while a disturbing rumor makes the rounds, "the
best thing to do is to try to manage it, to use it," he said. "Commanders
who don't do that, or leaders who don't do that, usually end up learning the
hard way."

Lamp said the videophones could be used to combat the type of false
information that dogged U.S. forces in Afghanistan (news - web sites) —
that an aerial bombardment had destroyed a hospital, or that emergency
food rations dropped to refugees had been poisoned.

The Scotty videophone could be used to set up quick video interviews with
front-line U.S. commanders "when the media couldn't get in there," Lamp
said.
The device might also be useful to conduct interviews with Special
Operations forces or pilots of the B-2 "Stealth" bombers, whose locations
might be secret but whose stories the Pentagon may still want to publicize,
Lamp said.

The Department of Defense (news - web sites) and U.S. intelligence
agencies already use similar remote videoconferencing devices, he said.

"They have these systems, but they hadn't thought about using it in this
kind of way," Lamp said.

The Pentagon plans to have four quick-response public affairs teams share
two of the portable broadcast devices.

Using both antennas, Lamp said the device can send and receive live video
transmissions over two simultaneous channels, at speeds of 128 kilobits per
second — about twice as fast as the videophones used in Afghanistan by
television correspondents. The Scotty device uses satellite communications
service of Inmarsat.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030122/ap_on_hi_te/pentagon_videophones_3

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