Today, the Army is embracing new technologies, moving towards artificial intelligence and mobile phone applications to support maintenance and Next Generation Command and Control as the model for producing scalable, agile Army systems. These innovative systems trace their origin to the Signal Corps’ developments and efforts from 60 years ago.
In 1960, the Army unveiled its first large-scale mobile computer, MOBIDIC, short for MOBIle DIgital Computer, developed to support the tactical striking force of the modern Army. Designed for use at the field Army or theatre of operations level, the first operational MOBIDIC was sent to the Seventh Army in Europe, marking a major evolution in the Army’s automation of combat computations in artillery, fire support, intelligence, logistics, and administration. Mobile had a different meaning then – the MOBIDIC was installed in a 30-foot trailer.
The U.S. Army Signal Corps played a crucial role developing this technological advancement. The ENIAC and EDVAC computers, developed for the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, were utilized as mathematical computation devices or special-purpose controllers in weapons. Beginning in the mid-1950s, under Chief Signal Officer LTG James D. O’Connell, the Signal Corps recognized the enormous potential of electronic data processing to meet the Army’s tactical and support requirements and recommended focusing its efforts on tactical and nontactical areas of electronic data processing. Two of the young Signal Corps captains assigned to work on these issues, Albert Crawford and Hugh Foster, would go on to lead the U.S. Army Electronics Command, or ECOM, predecessor of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command, in the 1970s.
This resulted in the development of the Fieldata equipment program under the direction of the Signal Research and Development Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, NJ, from 1955 to 1962. The Fieldata program aimed to develop a family of compatible computers that could be interconnected through data communications links, allowing for the electronic exchange of messages, data, and programs. Resulting in the development of data communications standards and codes, compatible computers with common instruction sets, and a family of consistent interfaces, procedures, and programs, the Fieldata program was a comprehensive system using computers for communications and envisioning the combination of online computers and communications networks into a worldwide network. The program was cut short in 1962 with the elimination of the technical services, halting progress as resources were refocused to support the developing Vietnam conflict.
The MOBIDIC proved successful, reliable, and a high-performance machine for its time, and was later commercialized, keeping the basic machine architecture and design developed for the Signal Corps. The machine managed repair parts for the entire U.S. 7th Army in Europe, including control over the distribution and ordering of parts. Built to extreme military standards, the ruggedized computer equipment remained undamaged over two runs on the Munson Test Course at APG, while the trailer vans themselves were broken both times. Both the MOBIDIC and Fieldata programs led the computer field at the time, foreshadowing computer development in the areas of coding, data storage, and micro-programming over the next 25 years and predating the commercial computer industry.
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