Military communications

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Military communications or military signals involve all aspects of communications, or conveyance of information, by armed forces. Examples from Jane's Military Communications include text, audio, facsimile, tactical ground-based communications, naval signalling, terrestrial microwave, tropospheric scatter, satellite communications systems and equipment, surveillance and signal analysis, security, direction finding and jamming.^[1] The most urgent purposes are to communicate information to commanders and orders from them.

Military communications span from pre-history to the present. The earliest military communications were delivered by runners. Later, communications progressed to visual signals. For example, Naval ships would use flag signaling to communicate from ship to ship. These flags are a uniform set of easily identifiable nautical codes that would convey visual messages and codes between ships and from ship to shore. Then militaries discovered methods to use audible signaling to communicate with each other. This way of communicating was possible because of telegraphs. They are an electronic device that is used by a sender and when the sender presses on the telegraph key, they interrupt the current creating an audible pulse that is heard at the receiving station. The receiver then decodes the pulses to decode the messages.^[2] Since then, military communication has evolved and advanced much further. Today, there are many perspectives used to examine how troops around the world communicate. The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military by Anthony King states how Military sociologists have attempted to explain how military institutions develop and maintain high levels of social cohesion. Communication plays a crucial role in fostering social cohesion in the military, as it allows soldiers to build relationships, establish trust, and work together towards common objectives.