Saad Ullah
The United States Navy has invested a significant sum of money in blockchain startup Simba Chain to develop a secure communication system for the wet branch of the armed forces.
The investment is done by a research group of the U.S. Navy, the Naval Air Warfare Center. The investmenthas been done to the tune of USD 9.5 million to Simba Chain, a blockchain startup that has a history of working with defense arms of the United States. The decentralized technology developer will be making a secure, encrypted messaging platform for the United States Navy to ensure that military messages are not interceptable and only the intended recipient gets the correct information. CEO of Simba Chain, Joel Neidig said,
The platform will be up this year, with on going updates over the next 4 years,
The investment by the Navy comes under the larger initiative, called the Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR. The SBIR Phase 3 agreement is a contract spread over 5 years. This investment is not the only one that will be done for Simba Chain, with Joel saying that this is one contract of many others to come, which will be announced in the spring of this year.
Blockchain Logistics
The communication platform is based of another one, a cloud platform by Microsoft called Azure. The latest investment is one of many by Department of Defense in blockchain technology to secure their communications and information pipeline,
This is a win not just for SIMBA and our partners, but also for the DoD, which has pursued with single-minded focus, a solution to conduct sensitive, mission-critical operations in a manner that is immutable and non-refutable,” Neidig said. “We plan to deliver a ‘bulletproof’ platform that meets all objectives.
The United States defense arms are actively seeking the technology. Nearly a year ago, Viasat, a communications giant also announcedthat it had received an order of developing communications hardware that will use blockchain technology for securing communications and orders for the United States Air Force through the National Security Agency (NSA).
The devices, a thousand in the first order, are compact hardware based of Viasat’s own PSIAM technology and are in a small form factor that is compatible with current communications hardware employed by the United States Air Force.
Saad Ullah
