Data links, eh?
Some real life troubles getting diff't tech level ships to talk to each other.
Which sounds like something which could be an issue at points in Starfire.
Been so long since I've played, 1990s to very early 2000s, that I don't know for sure.
May have to be on free mailing list to see full article.
Also of note is that Aviation Week magazine was 100 years old last month. Or was it in August?
http://aviationweek.com/defense/how-get ... n-fighters
5th-to-4th Gen Fighter Communications
USAF aims to build a more effective network of its fifth and fourth-gen fighters
F-35, F-22 can’t transmit data to fourth-gen via Link 16 without compromising stealth
Industry waiting on “5th-to-4th” program of record
Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin gearing up to compete
“It is incredibly important: How do we suck up all the information that the F-22, F-35, B-21 and the other family of systems [bring in]?” Carlisle said Sept. 20 at the Air Force Association’s annual air and space conference. “There is tons of information that those sensor suites are gathering that right now we are unable to take advantage of because we do not have the ability to offboard all that information as rapidly and as quickly as we need to.”
The Air Force’s ultimate goal is to network the combat air forces so that F-35 and F-22 pilots can rapidly share images and targeting data with the airmen flying fourth-generation aircraft such as the F-15 and F-16. But the service’s history of using stovepiped communications networks on its fighter jets complicates the already difficult task of enabling all its aircraft to share information in both friendly and hostile environments.
The F-22, for instance, was designed to communicate covertly only with other F-22s, using the low-probability-of-detection, low-probability-of-interception (LPD/LPI) intraflight data link (IFDL). This approach, though unfathomable in today’s increasingly networked environment, made sense at the time the jet was initially designed, when the Air Force envisioned a fighter fleet made up entirely of stealthy fighters—not the mixed force we have today.
