I recently stumbled across an announcement that the USS John Paul Jones, a destroyer in the U.S. naval fleet, will soon be acquiring a brand-new Gigabit Ethernet network.

The destroyer is also known as DDG 53, a Flight 1 Arleigh Burke Class AEGIS destroyer that was built in the early 1990s and commissioned in 1993. The upgrade will replace "miles of point-to-point cabling, signal converters, junction boxes, and switchboards associated with conventional ship's cabling," according to Defense Industry Daily. 

DRS EW & Network Systems in Buffalo, N.Y., won the $6.9 million contract for the installation of the network, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2009.

And of course, they can't just call it a network - it's a Gigabit Ethernet Data Multiplex System, or GEDMS. The GEDMS network handles all the data transfers ship-wide, for everything from steering and navigation to combat, alarms and damage control systems. There will also be a land-based trainer for the network.

I'm guessing there's no wireless component to this network. Would give the term "wardriving" a whole new meaning.

The U.S. Navy says the USS John Paul Jones has the latest weapons, engineering and damage-control systems. It calls the ship's AEGIS weapons system "the most advanced air defense network in the world," and the ship carries Tomahawk and Harpoon cruise missiles, standard missiles, a close-in weapon system and a 5-inch gun.

I'm glad to see our armed forces are getting what are undoubtedly much-needed updates to their communications systems.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.