| The ongoing transition towards networked warfighting, often termed network centric warfare (NCW), is causing protected communications to take on an increasingly important role, especially when considered in a purely financial context. This is due to the simple fact that without availability of the underlying communications links, there is no network within which to conduct NCW. Specifically, given the relative ease and low cost with which adversaries can now jam U.S. forces, the low incremental cost of adding protection to modern wideband military satellite communications, and the high marginal cost to U.S. forces of having expected Force Multiplication gains denied, the economic decision to an adversary to employ jamming becomes clear. The impact of the adversary’s decision to jam depends strongly upon the level of communications protection employed by U.S. forces. The corresponding rational economic decision by U.S. forces is to employ a high level of protection for its MILSATCOM communications. In this paper we develop and present models for an adversary’s cost of jamming and the cost to US forces of including protection in its wideband satellite communications infrastructure, and the cost of expected Force Multiplication (FM) being denied as a result of jamming-induced link denial. |