Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in flight over Iraq capture hours of analog video that is converted to MPEG-1 video at 800Kbps and transmitted through established communications links to bases and sites. To conserve available bandwidth, says Captain David Joseforsky, SatCom project officer for the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Virginia, and also to streamline video distribution, the Marines now deliver video to troops on the ground in real-time. DataPath, a vendor of portable satellite network solutions, deployed the IP network called Joint Network Node (JNN) used by the Army in Iraq. A bid was submitted for the UAV video project of the Marines, which had additional requirements, including video storage and the ability to multicast live UAV video to various qualified theater command point, said Dan White of DataPath. A sixty-day turnaround meant that White and the project team had to create a test environment before submitting a proposal, and the first Video and Storage Wide Area Network (VSWAN) rollout included five sites. Each had a DataPath ET 2000 Portable unit, a Cisco Systems Cisco IP/TV system, a 6TB storage server, and a Web server. The IP/TV system at ground control does the MPEG compression and feeds video to the four other VSWAN sites. With the Cisco IP/TV system and the 6TB of storage capacity per unit, the network holds a years worth of programming for all the UAVs. The VSWAN also can connect to the Enhanced Position Location Reporting System, which is the line-of-sight data radio network used by soldiers in the field for communications.