Banyan Vines / USMC

[Phil Karn]

>	The Banyan Vines network was used extensively in Desert 
>Storm/Shield/Sweep.  Before the network was in place, people were using a 
>single channel radio relay box called the Hadron.  It was capable of being 
>used with the KY-57 (crypto) on the PRC-77 (single channel radio), as well as 
>satcom (PSC-3).

I've seen the Hadron. It's an impressive, fancy, TEMPESTed, MIL-SPEC
box. When I opened it up, I found an ordinary, production, amateur
packet radio TNC (terminal node controller) speaking AX.25.

Kind of scary when you think about it. :-)

What would normally cost a ham about $150-$200 probably cost the
government about $5K each.

Phil